# school-committee — 10 documents, concatenated for reading and search # # This is a CONVENIENCE BUNDLE, not a source. Every document below is # published separately and byte-identically; cite the individual file, # whose path is given in each header, rather than this bundle. # Index of all boards: https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/minutes/INDEX.txt # The town's own scanned original is linked per document. ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-02-26-minutes-7076.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-02-26 KIND : minutes OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-02-26-minutes-7076.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_02262025-7076 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 MEETING MINUTES SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, February 26, 2025 6:00 LMS Collaborative Room D 132- Hybrid School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair - Present Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair - Present Carol Archambault, Secretary - Present Peter Beardmore, Member - Present Laura Brzozoski, Member - Present Recording Secretary Courtney Fuller Guests: Tim Santry – LMHS Principal; Norman Yvon – THES Principal, Carla Squier – Primary School Principal, Dr. Deborah Bookis – Director of Teaching & Learning, Julianna Hanscom – Director of Special Services, Dr. Susan Gilson – Director of Administration & Finance, Amy Resnick – MTSS Specialist/Coach, Lisa Cantin – MTSS Specialist/Coach In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadc ast live over the Lunenburg Public Access channel, on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page. (http://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be uploaded to the Lunenburg Access YouTube after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order by Mr. Lehtinen at 6:02 p.m. 2. Pledge of Allegiance 3. Public Comment – Mary Foyle 985 Flat Hill Road, I am here representing the LEA, obviously the proposed cuts are concerning to educators in the district and we will have more concrete details of those concerns in subsequent meetings. Today I am going to speak more about the institutional history and moving forward in regards to the budget. This is my 10th nonconsecutive year serving as union president. I have also spent 19 of my 23 years teaching here as a member of the LEA board. I can attest to the fact that most budget conversations in these past years have had talks of cuts. Your Lunenburg educations believe in the promise of a free and public education and what it offers for all students. A public school system is a nonprofit, often making fluctuations of the economy that much more impactful. Lack of overrides, a full 2 ½% tax creates an even larger budgeted gap. We cannot rely on the lack of raises, 1% and 2% to make up the budget shortfalls. The last time we faced significant cuts, we closed a building, removed key administrative positions, and had department and grade level cuts. I say this, not to encourage the same actions this time, but for institutional history, unfortunately we have been here before and if we as a school community, committee, and town continue making the same decisions we will continue to find ourselves in the same situation. Covid, despite all of its negative impacts, actually helped our current budget scenario at bay for a few years. If you watch meetings from prior years, I sound like a broken record, this shows that these budget woes are not anomalies, but rather perpetual and yes the Commonwealth could do more and needs reform in regards to school funding. Lunenburg also needs to take responsibility for its part in the issue. As a school committee, your staff implores you to determine, publicize, and advocat e for the school system you believe that our students deserve. Decide if we will be a school system that offers the minimum for our students or one that is comprehensive, allowing for the development of the whole student. Become more of a mouthpiece for the town in its goals. Perhaps a 5 or 10 year plan with steps on how to actually achieve the goals. If history repeats itself, Lunenburg’s budget woes will continue. It is clear that the town needs to make a decision; will it continue with taking similar actions and do what is needed to simply maintain a status quo or will it take steps to imagine a different future. Lunenburg Public Schools Dr. Kate Burnham, Superintendent of Schools ===PAGE 2=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 On the behalf of educators and students I implore you as the school committee to consider what part you can and will play in what the future looks like for our students and schools. Mr. Beardmore Good evening, this will be a little bit repetitive, but I told people that I was going to locked on to this until it is resolved and I am still locked on. Tonight you are going to watch five people make gut wrenching decisions that we all hope will be the least bad options. I have been dreading tonight and our next meeting and our next meeting after that and this is the situations that we are in. A previous commenter though is not wrong, we talked about the structural situation and the challenges that we could potentially face, particularly in an inflationary situation. When I was on the finance committee in 2020, 2021, and 2022 and while I was on the school committee in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 our legislators came and talked to us and told us that local aid is their top priority. Then last year they told us that they would come and meet with us following the election. They did not. Instead they held a meeting and invited our chair to the meeting, we have had an open invitation to our legislators all along. A few weeks ago Representative Scarsdale spoke at the Lunenburg Council on Aging event during the day and spoke on camera about education funding in Chapter 70, but hasn’t spoken with us. In her comments that day she spoke about the Student Opportunity Act and anticipated a very long period of time that it would take to resolve the formulas in the SOA. There were things that could be done; such as supplemental budget actions that could serve as a Band-Aid until that time. Let me tell you folks, what we heard from her that day about supplemental budget action or what we heard today from the regional schools consortium or what we heard a couple of weeks ago from the Consortium of the MTA and the MASC amongst other organizations are not going to help us anytime soon. The best we will see- any resolution to any of those items is the summer and probably later, long after these drastic cuts are made. None of that was unanticipated, we talked about this with our legislators years ago and months ago and they have done nothing. They talked about getting towns of similar interest together, but they have proposed nothing. There is no legislation other than legislation that would form a special committee that will report out in the summer of 2027. I say that wishing it was a joke, but it not. That is the situation we are in. Our legislators went to our local newspaper to try to explain the situation again rather than coming to us. They went and talked to a reporter from the local newspaper with no counterpoint. I am here to tell you that we have been pouring money into Gateway School Districts for the last three years and need to do something to fix this. While Representative Kushmerek who has been incredibly silent on this issue, pointed out that while Fitchburg doesn’t have school department issues, they have massive budget woes across their municipality. They in fact, have the contrast that in the last 23 years Lunenburg has passed an override. We have passed a debt exclusion for a fire station, a debt exclusion for a Primary School, a debt exclusion for the Middle High School, a debt exclusion for our roads and we have poured additional money every year into our pavement management program. We have invested massive amounts of money in Lunenburg in excess of $60 million just in debt exclusions. Fitchburg has never passed an override or debt exclusion. Let that sink in ladies and gentlemen, and it was said explicitly by our MASC representative, when she came and talked to us a couple of years ago. You are being asked to back stop the states lack of support by passing more and more overrides. While your income tax dollars and your sales tax dollars go to gateway cities and I am not faulting them, I think we have to support them, but we are also being asked to reach into our pockets again. The only mechanism to offer level services in our local public schools is through overrides. That is the only mechanism that we have, it is an awful situation and our legislators lack transparency, they lack practicality, and they lack urgency on these topics. I know that they’re hearing from people, they need to hear from us consistently and constantly until this issue is resolved. I will sit here in this very unenviable position for the next several weeks and make cuts, but I got to tell you every time I do I am thinking about the complete lack of support we are getting from our partners in education. When proposition 2 ½ was passed in 1980, it was passed in a much higher inflationary period then we are currently in, much higher, but it was passed on the promise that local aid would serve as a back stop, because in an inflationary period income taxes and sales taxes tend to go up, collections tend to go up and our state has gone in the opposite direction. Instead of 60% in local aid to support our schools we are at about 40% in comparison. We have to do better, we have to hold them accountable. Ms. Brzozoski Well you stole some of mine, the first thing I want to say tonight is that if you are watching this meeting congratulations, you are on deck to run for school committee or select board. If you are watchi ng on zoom or the recording later on YouTube congratulations you are an engaged and informed citizen who cares about education in Lunenburg. If you are paying attention to the issues we are facing that means you care about the interests of the students, the town, and the citizens who live here. I am asking you to run, this town is small, this town can feel a little insular and sometimes it feels like you might need an engraved invitation to be considered for town government role. That is not how this works, but if you thought it did, consider this your engraved invitation. I am asking you to get involved, we have two open seats coming up on the select board and we have two open seats coming up on the school committee. Select board typically does not have a lot parent’s serve on it, while school committee often does, but I think diversity of views is important on both boards. Right now you can help make your corner of the world a better place, you can help your community in your town and if you are watching this, you are already engaged. If you want to email Brian or any of us, we would be more than happy to answer questions and talk about the time commitment. You don’t have to be a ===PAGE 3=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 good public speaker. Secondly, I was extremely disappointed after reading The Lunenburg Ledger on Friday, specifically to Representative Kushmereks remarks about the last adjustment to chapter 70 funding taking a decade of crisis for the gateway cities. They had a decade of crisis to deal with before action was taken to fix it. I have been thinking about that comment all weekend long, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I read it on Friday; there was a decade of crisis - my kids don’t have a decade, none of the kids in any of the Massachusetts towns dealing with this have a decade to wait for it to get fixed. I recommend people go out and seek out the article, and read it. I am happy that our elected officials understand the scope of the issue, I am happy that they have become educated on the issue and that they have sought out the information and they know a lot about the issue, but is becoming clear we cannot expect immediate assistance from the state. It is just not something we can rely on. Yes I have emailed all this to my elected reps and have not gotten a response back, which is disappointing. As a parent this is heartbreaking. I am having a hard time taking off my parent hat because this does affect my own children, it affects everyone, all the students in Lunenburg. I don’t have 10 years to wait for the state to get together and fix the funding issue. All I see is year after year coming back here and talking about the same thing, we sat here at this exact time last year saying this is going to happen again and I think it’s going to happen again next year too. I am very very concerned. I am having a really hard time knowing that this is a repeating issue, that they know it is an issue that is not being fixed and I don’t know what the town can do to fix it other than continuously raising property taxes and that is not something we can continue to do. Ms. Archambault The town caucus is March 10 at 7 p.m. in our auditorium at the Middle High School. If you want to run for the select board or school committee, grab a friend to nominate you and come to the town caucus. You do not have to collect signatures, you don’t have to do anything else if you show up at town caucus. The people there support you, if you like to be part of the something that is the way to do it. Mr. Sculimbrene After watching other proceedings in the town government boards, there is a question about how did we get here and what happened. If you go back and watch the meetings that we had for school committee last year at this time and even before that we indicated that there was going to be budget crunch because of predictable and obvious causes. One of the things that I was asked when I was delivering the report for the budget task force was…why does the costs in schools keep going up and the reality is the cost in schools keep going up for two reasons. One is inflation if you look at inflation since 2020 we have experienced 18% inflation over that four year period. Our costs are going to go up at least that much because dollars are worth that much less. The other issue is unlike other service providers in town we have constitutional and legal mandates that we have to abide by. We have to provide a free appropriate public education, we cannot discriminate based on the amount of need or the cost of the education. When people move into town or come to town with children that are going to go to school we have to education them and sometimes it cost more. Those are the two primary causes for why our budgets are constantly under this strain. I agree with what Peter and Laura said about the need to have action by our legislator but, I want to make sure that it is clear that this is not and either/or situation. We need to be doing both we need to fix this problem ourselves and we need to be regularly in contact with our legislators. I know Representative Kushmerek is sponsoring a bill to help address some of the concerns about transportation costs - that is not a fix for everything but I do think that there are actions that they could take and would be shorter term solutions then refiguring how Chapter 70 funding works. It is important to remember what Mary said, but also to think about this experience from your own personal life. I deal with a lot of municipalities in my day job. This pattern of boom or bust funding for municipalities is not something that is unusual, it is something that is normal, it is cyclical and when you are in a boom period it seems like everything is working. When you are in a bust period everybody is grumpy, all the belts are tightened, and it is unpleasant, but I want to make sure that this is part of a pattern and, this did not surprise us. We are not going to be able to address the problems we have got to understand how this happened. The fact that it repeatedly happens over and over again. That leads me to my last c omment which is how do we get out of this problem. In the short term, we need to restructure how the school operates, and I think that’s one of the things that is proposed in the budget. I think we need one more town override and finally looking at the numbers and how town generates revenue in Massachusetts. This town in particular needs to adopt the Community Protection Act. We have tried to do it multiple times before, it made its way to town meeting but lost. This is the only other lever of revenue generations that towns in Massachusetts have and when our tax rate is locked in place by prop 2 ½ we have to make up the funding gaps. The CPA offers us an opportunity to do that, but it also provides a state match for tax dollars. Renovating buildings in town or renovating Marshall Park those things will make us eligible for the CPA and will help get us more money. We have to move away from the notion that this is a crisis, we knew this was going to happen last year. We know what causes are, and the solutions aren’t perfect but we need to take steps toward recognizing those solutions. The reality is we must solve the problem ourselves. 4. Chair’s Report – I want to thank everyone for being here tonight, your engagement is crucial. As we navigate these challenging budget discussions. There will be a budget Q& A where the public can participate later on in the agenda. I also want to express my gratitude for the volunteers in the community, my fellow school committee members, and our dedicated staff and administrative team who are here to help guide us through these decisions. If this is your first ===PAGE 4=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 meeting I hope you leave with a clear understanding of the budget situations and the factors that shape it. I want to provide an update on the significant financial challenges facing Lunenburg Public schools and over 200 other districts across Massachusetts. This is not a Lunenburg specific issue but a statewide crisis that requires legislative and budgetary solutions. The school committee wants to assure community that Lunenburg Public schools is committed to fiscal responsibility and transparency. Lunenburg has not mismanaged funds and our budget accurately reflect s the district’s needs. We recently negotiated a fair contract with our unions in good faith ensuring that we stay competitive with other towns. While attracting talent to our vacancies our staff are working to earn a living wage, just like other profess ionals in our community. Many of our teachers are our neighbors and we work together to ensure that Lunenburg remains an attractive place to work while maintaining financial sustainability. While we actively seek and receive grants, this will not solve this large budget shortfall. Many other districts are also competing for the same grants and these funds typically come with restrictions that limit their flexibility. The real issue is the inflationary measures and the states funding structure. Together we can focus on our advocacy efforts. The financial strain on public schools comes just 5 years after the overhaul of the state school funding formula through the Student Opportunity Act. While this law is set to increase school funding by over $1.5 billion by 2027, the majority of those funds are being directed to about three dozen districts with the highest concentrations of students in poverty, with disabilities, or English Language Learners. Meanwhile many other districts including Lunenburg are receiving only modest increases that are not keeping up with rising costs. If you read the most recent news you will see districts like North Middlesex, North Andover, and Belchertown are grappling with multi-million dollar deficits forcing them to consider drastic measures such as cutting positions and even closing schools. Lunenburg is not immune to the pressures, rising costs of healthcare insurance, transportation and special education outpacing our revenue. It is becoming difficult to maintain the level of education our students deserve. Fixing these systematic funding problems will take time, but we are actively working with key coalitions to push for change. Organizations such as The Massachusetts Teachers Association, 211 Associat ions, and the United for our future Coalitions and 15 other partner organizations that are advocating for short -term and long-term legislative solutions to address the inequities in school funding. We encourage the community to contact legislators and elected officials, attend legislative meetings and coalition events. They need to hear from all the stakeholders. Several bills have been filed to provide relief for various types of districts including rural, vocational, minimal aid, and regional schools and also to increase chapter 70 inflation adjustments, improve special education funding, and support in district transportation. While not all of these bills directly impact Lunenburg, we need to continue to advocate for the ones that benefit our town as well as all districts. Legislative action takes time, and changing the chapter 70 funding formula or securing additional relieve requires through debate committee reviews and hearings before any bill can move forward in the state. However, we remain committed to advocating for fair funding for our schools and ensuring that Lunenburg students receive the high quality educations they deserve as we confront the reality of budget shortfalls We welcome feedback and ideas from the community. It is also important to recognize the expertise of our administration and teachers who are making professional informed recommendations on how best to educate our students with the constraints we face. It is important to understand that securing additional revenue will re quire a multifaceted approach, this includes advocating for state level funding changes, while also working with town officials to explore local solutions. We must also continue to advocate for more local funding from the finance committee, select board, and town manager, This is not solely a school issue Lunenburg is facing, inflationary pressures in all departments, however, as the largest department in town, these financial challenges are particularly visible in the school budget. You will hear tonigh t that we are exploring expanding partnerships, revisit fees, and leveraging town resources as part of our efforts to increase revenue and minimize cuts. The school committee will make decisions that impact the education of Lunenburg students the least while also looking at increasing revenue, in an effort to decrease cuts. These are not easy decisions there will be many ideas presented, but not all will be accepted as some are not in the best interest of Lunenburg or the student success. A strong school system is a reflection of a strong town. As we have seen in other communities families may choose to move away if they feel their schools are not adequately funded and prospective home buyers often avoid purchasing in towns with struggling schools. Investing in education is not just about our students, it is about the long- term health and vitality of Lunenburg as a community. We appreciate the community’s engagement and support as we navigate the difficult financial decisions together. Please continue to reach out with your thoughts, and lets work together to push for the legislative changes needed to secure the future for Lunenburg Public schools. For those interested in getting more involved, the Lunenburg Caucus is an opportunity to run for local of fices, including school committee and select board. The Caucus will be held Monday, March 10 th at 7 p.m. in the Lunenburg Middle High School. The town election is on May 17th. 5. Student Representative’s Report I am here on behalf of the Student Council. The biggest concerns for the council today were around the budget. We are very worried about the cutting of upper level and high achieving classes. That will drive those kids out of Lunenburg. Students that can’t take AP classes, won’t be able to compete to get into the schools you want and students will end up leaving. The other big thing they are worried about was the rise in athletic fees, if they are a 2 or 3 sport athlete, it’s likely some of them won’t be able to keep up with rising fees and theref ore will have to drop things they are passionate about. ===PAGE 5=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 6. Review & Approve Minutes a. Regular Meeting 1/22, 1/29, & 2/5 Ms. Archambault makes a motion to approve the minutes for 1/22, 1/29, & 2/5, Ms. Brzozoski seconds the motion, all approve with Mr. Sculimb rene abstaining 7. Review & Approve Line Item Transfers, Warrants & Donations a. Warrants 2/3/25 – 2/4/25 $387,798.50 – Signed and approved b. Line Item Transfers - $9,200 from vehicle maintenance to contracted services to take care of HVAC on roof of LMHS. Mr. Sculimbrene makes a motion to approve line item transfer, Mr. Beardmore seconds the motion, all approve 8. Superintendent’s Report We went before the finance committee a week ago and requested funding for the $60,000 unbudgeted additional cost for the 911 upgrades at Turkey Hill. Our next update is we are finally 911 compliant in all buildings. Upcoming Reminders March 5th School Committee meeting March 6th PacSal meeting 6 pm zoom March 6th Presenting Budget to Finance Committee March 19th School Committee meeting 9. Presentation – None 10. New Business Action a. Increasing New & Existing Revenues I. Athletics A slideshow presentation of athletic user fees is presented to increase fee for high school up to $325 and $275 for Middle School. A 25% discount for siblings. Reduced fee for high school to $50 and $40 for middle school with a family cap of $1500. Mr. Bigelow is asked to suggest a sport to cut Ms. Archambault makes a motion to accept the increase, Mr. Sculimbrene seconds the motion all approve via roll call vote II. Student Activities a proposal for an increase in fees, potential of having a base fee, and then additional fees based on clubs or activities students participate in. Committee recommends Dr. Gilson meet with students to discuss these possibility of increases in fees. III. Transportation Bus Fee A proposal is presented to charge families a fee per student that ride the bus in grades 7-12 and also K-6 students that are under 2 miles from the school. Committee would like a survey to go out to parents to get community feedback. IV. Facilities Proposal to increase fees by 50% Mr. Beardmore makes a motion to accept this as proposed, Mr. Sculimbrene seconds the motion, all approve via roll call vote. Discussion b. Joint meeting with Select Board 3/11 The select board chair reached out trying to get a joint meeting with the select board and school committee to try and discuss anything and everything. Committee agrees this is a good idea and will propose the March 11th date for the meeting c. Protection of Students & Their Information Lately there has been concern of access of personal information. We have had a recent breach however, we do not share any personal information or school records. That information is private. 11. Old Business Discussion a. FY26 Budget Update Slides are posted and available on the website. Dr. Burnham shares the presentation and explains how budgets are developed. The administrators for the district explain their list of priorities to the committee. b. FY26 Budget Q &A Q Laura Peria, 44 Whiting Street I have a kindergartener, who is enrolled at the Primary School and I also had two high school students already go through the Middle High. I have seen all the different levels. Everything said today was spot on and I appreciate all of your comments. One question I had was you were talking about these meta-analysis studies, which again I think there is a lot of different studies out there, do you know what the range of classroom size that was studied? I don’t think obviously there is an end point that classroom size may cut off. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that a ===PAGE 6=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 classroom size of 5 is the same as 5. Do you know the actual range that was studied? A. Dr. Bookis responds A meta- analysis which looked at many studies and they pinpointed that the impact on achievement was from 13 to 17 students. For high school from that point up to 30 students and middle school up to 28 there showed there was no negative effects of learning based on the class size. Q. Can you clarify what the current proposed cuts to MTSS are? I noticed when I looked at the excel spreadsheet positions were grouped under Special Ed. A. Dr. Burnham answers all three positions were to be cut in the initial proposal. Q. Has physical classroom size been assessed for the increase potentially in students, and is it appropriate and safe? A. Ms. Squier answers that we can fit more kids in the classrooms, however the materials that would be out on display and available will be limited. Teachers will have to rearrange their classroom and be limited in their materials. Q. I saw a salary increase of $71,000 for an HR Specialist, I am curious as to what that represents and especially if we are cutting jobs why need to further HR support and do we have multiple HR positions? A. Dr. Burnham shares that is not a new position, it was moved from a different part of the budget and no we do not have multiple positions Q. I noticed on the expense cuts that were presented tonight the additional cuts to PE and music programs in the lower levels, was that just materials? A. Yes Laura Barooshian 389 Mulpus Road Q. Can you repeat where the slide deck is online A. It is under the school committee link and then the Meeting Minutes and Agendas. Q. On the line items noted for music positions that was materials correct? A. Yes that is materials not positions. Q. Some topics coming up were extra-large study halls, getting work credit, possible work credits, large PE classes were there other things considered but tabled? A. No we expect that there will be an increased number of kids in study halls, all classes will be larger. We are piloting a work a work based program, and will report back at the end of the school year. Q. I do like the idea of sponsorships, I think there are opportunities to have other funds coming in. What is the plan for a longer term, 3 or 5 year plans? A. I do not have a three to five year plan, it is going to come down to a shift in a funding mechanism, I can tell you that if this is what it is we will make cuts this year and we will be back here a year from now with likely more cuts. Mr. Beardmore comments we are in a slightly different position then we were a year ago. There are actually more knowns today. A year ago we had several unsettled contracts that are now settled, including our contract with the LEA, those are big numbers and we can now project those costs out over the next two years. The numbers that are going to be projected are not good, there are going to be more gaps. We absolutely need to deal with and we need to have a very straight forward and realistic conversation with our partners on the select board, town manager, and or legislatures. Vi-Anne Brown 118 Whiting Street I have been a resident here since 2008. I have two daughters in the school system. I am also the school social worker at the Primary School. In a town like Lunenburg that is small and highly interconnected, I do not think that our solution for the school is taking from another entity, because the all matter. They all contribute to the school, they all contribute to the public safety of the town, and they all contribute to the library, and all the other vario us organizations that we have. It all matters. I think the CPA money would impact the school, my question is: What has prevented the town from moving forward with this? A There have been two attempts, once it got to Town Meeting and lost, the other time the select board did not want to put it on the warrant. (Comment) We know learning cannot happen without a relationship. The relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be with people, they can be with a specific subject matter or specific historian. Typically with younger children it is a relationship with a caregiver. I want everyone for a moment to think back on your most pivotal educational experiences. Did the building you were in matter, did anything about the grounds or the physical aspect about the environment matter? Likely not. What mattered? So Lunenburg, we ar e a community here and we actually get to make the decisions. This is not about the school committee, this is not about the select board, although they are important, it is about all of us. I would implore you, when you are making your decisions, whether to vote or make a public comment, to think about what mattered to you and your educational experience. I was also very fond of the sponsorship program, on thing that has been super impressive to me about this community is the willingness for people to just roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done. The volunteers in this community are exceptional, from the pasta parties for athletics to the families opening their houses and garages for an entire month in the fall to let the students bu ild floats. Q What are the limitations that currently exist in allowing parents or other volunteers to come in and support the school community? What would we need to do to get through the barriers? A We have a flyer on the website with different volunteer opportunities and we do not get a lot of volunteers. You don’t typically get as many volunteers for grades 6 -12 as you might for the Primary School or Turkey Hill. We also have limitations, as information is confidential and a non - employee would not be able to access to those kinds of things. Otherwise we would in need of cori checks, it would be best for them to reach out to the PTO. Amy King 3 Gates Place Q There has been a lot of discussion about the athletics and the increase in the budget. We see many towns near us that have various advertising on their fields to help support the athletic budgets. I am wondering that h as been discussed and if we are looking at that as a source of revenue. A Currently we have a school committee policy that prohibits this. The school committee will be reviewing this policy. Q I heard the conversation about increasing facilities fees, one concern I would have is are we also cutting facilities personnel but increasing those fees? We really need to mak e sure we are maintaining the facilities. I know we had a big volunteer group in the fall/late summer that came and cleaned up a lot of the facilities and fields. A None of the personnel cuts that would be connected to the use of the field or the gym are going to be impacted, they are not among the proposed cuts. Q You mentioned health insurance went up, is that with the current roster of personnel? A What is built into the budget is based on the January enrollment when we made cuts and pulled ===PAGE 7=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 individuals out of the budget that were also taking health insurance. Q The large presentation on MTSS, have we looked at how other school districts are doing some of that? Are there other districts not using coaches and having good results? A The coach is not limited to MTSS in terms of direct service to students. The coach is a little bit of curriculum planning, prioritizing data, and differentiating instruction working directly with teachers. The MTSS structures that we have in place is a couple of licensed teachers working as intervention teachers, we have also had tutors. I think this is the standard practice that build into your system. You have staff to provide the direct service. The goal for the coaches is to be working with t he teachers to strengthen the instruction that happens every single day. If we can strengthen the instruction that is going on every single day in every single class, you have kids learning and you are not having as many kids that are having difficulty accessing the learning and therefore, in need of additional supports. Mr. Beardmore makes a motion to close the public portion of the Q&A, Mr. Sculimbrene seconds the motion all approve Mr. Lehtinen shares his list of priorities for the committee to discuss and provide feedback, Direc tor of Facilities and Grounds, it is recommended that Dr. Burnham hire the candidate she has interviewed. A discussion about sharing resources with North Middlesex, which was not supported by the committee. Committee does not support eliminating the Direc tor of Teaching and Learning position, reducing Director of Special Services to part time or eliminating all assistant principals or eliminating Athletic Director. Committee tables the idea of eliminating Director of Finance and Administration and add an accountant position and HR Consulting Contract Support. Committee supports eliminating one of the assistant principals at the Middle High School and the part time athletics secretary, making the IT tech to a part time position. Committee goes through the expense cut proposal and discusses options. c. Superintendent Search Committee discusses timeline and ultimately decide to proceed as listed. 12. Reports Tabled for the next meeting 13. Public Comment Laura Peria Whiting Street, We started this meeting talking about priorities being classroom learning, instructional learning. I would urge the committee and the superintendent to keep that in mind as you are looking at the budget. I think I heard Tony say a few times, we are not cutting enough and yet these are all really hard decisions and nobody wants to cut athletics, nobody wants to raise fees, nobody wants to cut transportation, but I would just ask that we try to keep in mind serving the most students, our most vulnerable stu dents, serving that early education that we talked about being so critical as priority. That is not going to make everyone happy. I would really urge people to look at those transportation fees, I think that we went over a little quickly. I agree with L aura though saying that may target certain groups more, but we also don’t want to raise fees. I’m imploring the group to really think about our priorities. It bothers me that I see a disproportionate cut at the K-6 levels in the classroom with the MTSS tutors and the teachers. I would love to see that be a priority for restoring those positions. I also appreciate lookin g at the admin roles, I think that is hugely helpful. Kara Harunkiewicz, 165 Gilchrest Street, I am speaking on behalf of myself. As far as the student activities is concerned, when I looked at the list, I personally participate in 6 of them. That would cost $450 which is more than any of the athletic fees were raised. Two of them are directly related to music, which is also another hu ge expense. I am trying to raise the awareness, even though some things that we are providing are seen as they don’t anything. Any student in band has spent an insane amount of money to be in the band. Instruments cost a lot, you need reeds and that can cost $50 a semester. It is not like those kids aren’t paying anything, they just aren’t paying anything directly to the school. Mr. Beardmore It has been a hard night, I need to say something that is even harder. Tomorrow morning I will be informing the town clerk and the select board that I am resigning from the school committee effective May 16 th. I spoke with the town clerk yesterday and the mechanics of this work such that, if I make my resignation known within a certain amount of time prior to the election, the position can be made available on the ballot at the next election. My personal circumstances have changed rather dramatically since I first joined the school committee. I have gotten married, my family has expanded quite a bit. My family responsibilities have changed and I have recently taken on a new job. That job is taking up a lot more of my time then my previous job. I need to manage my responsibilities better and as a result of those changes, I don’t feel like I am personally able to put everything that I want to into the school committee. I have certainly felt that over the course of the las several weeks and certainly through the budget season, I have done a fraction this year with respect to the budget that I did last year and the year before that. I think I personally, my family, my colleagues and our school department deserve a member that can put more into this then I am currently able to. So we will have three vacancies on the school committee in May. I think that we also need to look over the schedule and see what needs to be done over the course of the next few months. I don’t intend to retire from the public service, I will be back, but I do need to take a break it will be a little but I don’t know how long. ===PAGE 8=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 14. Topics for Future discussion 15. Adjournment Mr. Sculimbrene makes a motion to adjourn at 10:43 pm, Ms. Archambault seconds the motion, all approve Respectfully Submitted Courtney Fuller ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-05-agenda-7085.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-05 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-05-agenda-7085.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03052025-7085 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== REVISED MEETING NOTICE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, March 5, 2025 6:30 pm, Town Hall BUDGET HEARING HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: Tim Santry-LMHS Principal; Norman Yvon-THES Principal, Carla Squier-Primary Principal, Dr. Deborah Bookis-Director of Teaching & Learning, Julianna Hanscom-Director of Special Services, Dr. Susan Gilson-Director of Administration & Finance, Amy Resnick- MTSS Specialist/Coach, Lisa Cantin-MTSS Specialist/Coach In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast live over the Lunenburg Public Access channel. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85906741187 Meeting ID: 859 0674 1187 One tap mobile +13052241968,, 85906741187# US +13092053325,,85906741187# US This meeting will be broadcast live through the local access cable channel and on the Public Access Facebook page (h ttps://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be found on the Lunenburg Access YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law. 1. Call to Order 12. Reports 2. Pledge of Allegiance 13. Public Comment 3. Public Comment 14. Topics for Future Discussion 4. Chair’s Report 15. Adjournment 5. Student Representative’s Report 6. Review & Approve Minutes a. Regular Session 7. Review & Approve Line Item Transfers, Warrants & Donations a. Warrants 2/24/25 to 3/3/25 $92,649.40 8. Superintendent’s Report 9. Presentation 10. New Business Action a. Initial Greece Trip Approval b. Capital Project Transfers c. Business & HR Reports 11. Old Business Action a. Final Spain Trip Approval b. FY26 Recommended Budget c. FY26 Budget Hearing d. Bus Fee Discussion d. Superintendent Search ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-06-agenda-7088.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-06 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-06-agenda-7088.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03062025-7088 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== MEETING NOTICE SCHOOL COMMITTEE/FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING Thursday, March 6, 2025 7:00 pm, Town Hall HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the Lunenburg Public Access channel and on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public- AccessCable-157427270975305 ) and will be uploaded to the Lunenburg Access YouTube channel after the meeting. This meeting will be held in-person at the location provided on this notice. Members of the public are welcome to attend this in-person meeting. Please note that while the option for remote attendance and/or participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public, the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast, unless otherwise required by law. Members of the public with particular interest in any specific item on this agenda should make plans for in-person vs. virtual attendance accordingly. The following information is provided for members of the public that would like to participate in the meeting remotely: To Participate Remotely: From a computer, please use the link below to join the public meeting webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82195029392 . From a telephone, dial the toll-free number (888) 475-4499, enter Webinar ID: 821 9502 9392. If you have not registered with Zoom you will be asked for your name and an email address. Note: No participant ID is needed, just press # when asked. Telephone users may dial *9 to request to speak after joining the meeting. Computer and app users may use the “raise hand” feature to request to speak. This agenda lists all topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken because of these discussions. Not all items listed may be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent allowed by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order 2. Old Business a. FY26 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget 3. Adjournment ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-10-agenda-7089.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-10 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-10-agenda-7089.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03102025-7089 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== Town of Lunenburg Lunenburg School District Superintendent Screening Committee Brian Lehtinen, School Committee Rep, Chair Carol Archambault, School Committee Rep, Vice Chair Meeting Notice Monday, March 10th, 2025 5:00PM Lunenburg Middle High School LMS Collaboration Room The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law. 1. Call to Order 2. Public Comment 3. Orientation with MASC Field Director 4. Discussion of Interview Questions 5. Future Meeting Schedule 6. Public Comment 7. Adjournment ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-10-minutes-7089.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-10 KIND : minutes OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-10-minutes-7089.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_03102025-7089 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== Town of Lunenburg Lunenburg School District Superintendent Screening Committee Brian Lehtinen, School Committee Rep, Chair Carol Archambault, School Committee Rep, Vice Chair Alicia Mallon, MASC Field Director Screening Committee Members Caesar Nuzzolo TJ Loughlin Sarah Wright Mary Foyle Brad McNamara Jane Hall Kristen Ryan Mandy Gilman Carla Squier Liz Petersen Meeting Minutes Friday, March 10, 2025 5PM Lunenburg Middle High School Collaboration Room The minutes lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law. 1. Call to Order-Call to order at 5:00pm by Mr. Lehtinen, seconded by Ms. Archambault. 2. Public Comment-Brian introduced Alicia from MASC as our Field Director. 3. Orientation with MASC Field Director: a. Open Meeting Law-Ms. Mallon discussed the quorum of our committee which is 7 based on the number of members(12). Important everyone attends all meetings. Mentioned ethics law and respecting executive session-members prohibited from talking about any topics discussed in executive session outside of this room. We are a confidential committee and will need to sign a confidentiality statement today. If you have a question, can ask Ms. Mallon directly. Conflict of interest- if there is someone you recognize, related to, etc., have to sign ethics document. Cannot ask a candidate questions about age, race & ethnicity, religion, gender, health, disability. Role of Chair-chair has no more influence over body, one vote. Help keeps committee ===PAGE 2=== on track, making motions, posting meeting & minutes. Start in open session & go into executive session to narrow semi-finalists next meeting. Typically have 8-10 interview applicants. Those meetings will be in executive session, not shared with other semifinalists. Led by MASC rep. Screening committee has to send at least two, maybe three as recommendation to SC. No more than four. Committee can choose how many. Internal candidates can be given courtesy of screening committee interview. Do’s & Don’t’s- Come into with no preconceived notions. Wide range of applicants, keep open mind. Question as to what happens if we don’t have qualified candidate at end of process? Ms. Mallon said that MASC will come back out and do another search for no cost. Discussed key words/themes important for our district: Budget theme, inclusive, communication theme-tone, receptive & outward), community supporter, school safety, leader, families, understands needs of district (size, makeup), visibility, honest, collaboration (town partnership), data driven, receptive to feedback. Homework: think about survey and booklet. Send three questions, MASC will merge and compile into interview questions. Will go through questions with group, fine tune. Ms. Archambault said she will send listening session’s feedback to compile for group. Posting closes March 21st. Three searches running concurrently-Beverly, Monson, etc. Already have applications coming in. After deadline closes, committee will meet again to finalize questions and choose semi-finalists. Group decides how many to bring in, MASC contacts candidates. Exaample-9 people- 3 people 3 nights. MASC will send rubric and we will have our own notes from this to formulate top candidates. After this is sent to School Committee, finalists have a site visit in district, meet with admin, tour buildings, meet with teachers, dinner break. Will have interview with School Committee in public at night. Will have QR code for feedback. Scheduling-Meet Tuesday the 25th at 5pm to go over questions, pick semifinalists. Try for later that week or next? Ms. Archambault mentioned this falls when she is away. Said that another committee member would jump in if necessary. Another SC member would have to do all meetings if this was decided so process was not broken. The 27th 6:30pm & 28th 5pm & 31st, 6:00pm suggested. One member gone after 30th, asked about virtual. District visits not until after April Break. Ms. Foyle suggested interviews in Library classroom, exit right from there to side door for parking lot, and more private. A week from today is deadline to receive questions. When posting closes, MASC will send link for drop box for committee to see applicants resumes and experience. Could make a decision on 31st. Otherwise would want to meet again that week. Could ===PAGE 3=== also meet 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. Not public until School Committee decides, and then publishes. Question whether internal applicants have to apply? YES Posting going out nationally, statewide, social media posts, MASC, MASS. Ms. Mallon provided her email and personal cell for any questions or concerns. 4. Public Comment -none 5. Adjournment Motion to adjourn at 5:57pm by Ms. Foyle, seconded by Ms. Hall. ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-11-agenda-7095.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-11 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-11-agenda-7095.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03112025-7095 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== MEETING NOTICE JOINT SCHOOL COMMITTEE & SELECT BOARD MEETING Tuesday, March 11, 2025 6:00 pm, Town Hall HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadcast over the Lunenburg Public Access channel and on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public- AccessCable-157427270975305 ) and will be uploaded to the Lunenburg Access YouTube channel after the meeting. This meeting will be held in-person at the location provided on this notice. Members of the public are welcome to attend this in-person meeting. Please note that while the option for remote attendance and/or participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public, the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast, unless otherwise required by law. Members of the public with particular interest in any specific item on this agenda should make plans for in-person vs. virtual attendance accordingly. The following information is provided for members of the public that would like to participate in the meeting remotely: To Participate Remotely: From a computer, please use the link below to join the public meeting webinar: https://zoom.us/j/9091740347 . From a telephone, dial the toll free number (888) 475-4499 and enter Webinar ID: 909-174- 0347 # If you have not registered with Zoom you will be asked for your name and an email address. Note: No participant ID is needed, just press # when asked. Telephone users may dial *9 to request to speak after joining the meeting. Computer and app users may use the “raise hand” feature to request to speak. This agenda lists all topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken because of these discussions. Not all items listed may be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent allowed by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order 2. Old Business a. FY26 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget 3. Adjournment ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-12-agenda-7098.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-12 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-12-agenda-7098.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03122025-7098 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== REVISED MEETING NOTICE SCHOOL COMMITTEE SPECIAL MEETING Wednesday, March 12, 2025 6:30 pm, LMS Collaborative Room #D132 HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast at a later date over the Lunenburg Public Access channel. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2878544906?omn=82646105861 Meeting ID: 287 854 4906 One tap mobile +16469313860,,2878544906# US +19292056099,,2878544906# US (New York) Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/ksaFkesFm This meeting will be broadcast at a later date through the local access cable channel , and on the Public Access Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be found on the LunenburgAccess YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order 2. Public Comment 3. Old Business a. FY26 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget 4. Public Comment 5. Adjournment ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-12-minutes-7098.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-12 KIND : minutes OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-12-minutes-7098.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_03122025-7098 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 MEETING MINUTES SCHOOL COMMITTEE SPECIAL MEETING Wednesday, March 12, 2025 LHMS Collaborative Room #D132 6:30 – Hybrid School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair - Present Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair - Present Carol Archambault, Secretary - Present Peter Beardmore, Member - Present Laura Brzozoski, Member - Present Recording Secretary Courtney Fuller Guests: In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and broadc ast live over the Lunenburg Public Access channel, on Facebook Live on the Public Access Facebook page. (http://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be uploaded to the Lunenburg Access YouTube after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law 1. Call to Order at 6:30 pm by Mr. Lehtinen 2. Public Comment - Casey McDonnell 1024 Massachusetts I want to start off tonight by saying I know it's been a lot, there's a lot of people that do not envy the position that this board is in. It's definitely easier being on this side whether we're coming at it with our own biases or whether we're not. It's much easier being here nitpicking the decisions and the actions that the board is getting. I understand that myself I'm a teacher in the high school I teach History and ELA. I'm also very proud to be the head coach of the football program that has been brought up several times by this board in the last couple meetings. I put all that aside, I have my own thoughts, I have my own concerns about things that have been said, I put that off to the side simply to mention we all want the same thing we all want the best quality education that we can provide our kids. In order to do that we need to make sure that we are giving them the best experience w e can in the school as well as the extra-curricular that run parallel to those goals, we also need to make sure that kids can feel like they are excited and engaged about what's going on in their community and with what's hap pening. I know for myself me and my fiancé we're so excited to eventually have kids that we raise in the school system that become “Lunenburgers” of their own. I know from the small sample size that I have the privilege to work with that a lot of the families that we are working with are families that are generations worth of “Lunenburgers” that have raised their families in this town that are now having kids and families of their own. This town that's a long line of pride and commitment to this community and I know there's a lot going on right now between figuring out this budget. The fact that several members of this board will not be on this board this time next year I understand that I'm simply here tonight to ask that when the dust settles somewhat that we take a moment to re-evaluate the accessibility of information and the efficiency of information that this board and this committee works with. I will tell you from last meeting there was a large group of kids that over overwhelmed town hall and I'll tell you from what I've gathered from the kids that I have the privilege to work with on a daily basis a lot of them were very discouraged with the last meeting. For the ones that had the courage to speak a lot of them felt like they had not been heard, others that were there that didn't talk also felt like nothing was done and that things kept getting tabled and pushed off. As much as we focus on the quality of education for these kids we also need to realize that this is the next generation of Lunenburg residents that will be contributing to this community and I really think we need to reevaluate our ability to access that information. Make it efficient and make sure that kids want to be excited and engaged in what they're doing . You saw signs of it last week, Lunenburg Public Schools Dr. Kate Burnham, Superintendent of Schools ===PAGE 2=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 kids are willing to step up when they need to. I think we need to meet them head on and we need to give them a chance to continue to maintain their excitement and engagement in being a part of the community. I know for me I'm a little curious as to why the meetings bounce back and forth between in here and going to town hall. Both of which has felt very much like a very small venue for what we're trying to do here. I would love for somebody to be able to summarize what took place last night with the select board just for people that maybe are tuning in for this one or here in person that don't know about what was talked about last night between yourselves and the select board which I feel like is pertinent information for what's going to get discussed tonight Owen Snyder 985 Flat Hill Road I am a member of the high school band and I have been in band and music programs ever since I was in fifth grade. Now in the budget the fifth grade band is being cut now. I know that there are between 30 and 40 kids in fifth grade band this year and that's a lot of kids especially compared to the class sizes. That's a huge percentage of kids that are going to be missing out on this huge opportunity I know that it is a huge opportunity to get into music and to be able to be part of something that can help with many different skills that you can use in your high school career. I'd also like to talk about how with marching band and High School band being compared to Athletics in the budget. The band transportation is being cut by 100% well the athletic transpo rtation is being increased by 231.38%. I'm not in any way trying to cut Athletics or speak to try to cut Athletics all I want is equitable treatment between all extracurricular here at Lunenburg Chris Sullivan, 108 Highland Street first of all I just want to say I appreciate all the time you guys have all put in so far and continue to put in tonight. I did want to speak here tonight to share some continued thoughts regarding the athletic cuts. I'll preface this by saying that I'm a parent of two student athletes - girl soccer, indoor, and outdoor track, golf team, and the ski team. I'm also a very active in sports here. At the school committee meeting on February 26th Dr Gilson referenced having a breakdown of cost for sports by season and individual cost by sport. I requested this information as a matter of public record and assumed it was fairly easily accessible. As she was reading that data off the laptop at that meeting and referenced it was information that was received from the athletic director. I was told today by Dr Burnham that this data is incomplete and not ready to be shared publicly which leads me to believe that the school committee will also be making decisions this evening that will impact student athletes futures without having the full picture. Also speaking based on facts alone, that I know tonight, and also don't have which also means that I don't have the full picture for each sport because of this lack of information regarding cost to particular athletic programs. I can see how it might be easier to look at a less popular sport or a team with fewer athletes and say let's shut that program down. Or a program that does not generate revenue for the school. I'm hearing rumblings that perhaps the Lunenburg ski team is on the block tonight. This is a partnership with several area schools including Leominster, Ayer Shirley and Quabbin, this team uses zero transportation budget, zero equipment budget, no referee fees, the extent of the expenses are fees to two mountains for training and racing. I know the total cost of those bills is $1,440 for this year. Outside of a coach's stipend that is the total expense, I expect that we're sharing these costs with other schools who are part of this program. I don't know if that's the case or not I couldn't get clarity on it. Perhaps maybe we just discovered a cost savings for this particular program. The athletes buy their season passes, buy all their equipment, there's no Lunenburg ski jackets or helmets, they even buy their own race bibs. Student athletes have made choices sometimes pushing themselves beyond their comfort zones to try new things and participate in a sport to build a resume for college, demonstrating hard work, commitment, and dedication. Before you look at completely removing the sport from our program, please consider that you are taking away that opportunity in its entirety. Please look at how you can equitably share the burden that we are all facing across all sports. Allowing all students to live the path that they have chosen. We keep hearing how transportation is a huge factor, I still recommend this is a place where we should start looking -how much is a bus, we've heard about this, but how much is a bus that goes to an event, most of the students ride home with their parents. How much do it cost to send a football team to Martha’s Vineyard, I assume a soccer bus to Cohasset isn't cheap. I think the same thing should be kept this in mind when you look at other extracurricular as well. You just heard Owen speak about students who choose to participate in anything, should be supported and encouraged in any way that we can, as best as we can. No student should have something ripped away from them entirely we need to think about the social and emotional impact on the wellbeing of theses students as we continue to create and foster opportunities for all students to find their path as best we can. Laura Barooshian, 389 Mulpus Road after being at the meeting last night understanding that there is a there will be cuts here today to urge the committee to use equity and fairness. We're raising well-rounded students’, well-rounded athletes, musicians, and chorus. We just have to look at all programs. Everyone I think needs to share in this, you know in what we're trying to do here and trying to get something where we can continue all of the programs and not single one out. You know one music program, one ski program one whatever it might be. But just really looking at how we can look at cuts where they're significant and where they're equitable Shoshana Mule, 139 Cove I will try to be brief because I know you guys have a very long night and a lot of big decisions to make. Having been through this process with you all last year I have a view of perspective. It's really hard when you're in it and I feel very strongly about all of the activities that mean so much to these kids, and I wholeheartedly understand the mental health benefits to kids from whatever activity they participate in. Unfortunately the situation that the school is in, fiscally right now, is a lot worse than last year and so that leaves various interested parties fighting over ===PAGE 3=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 scraps. I guess my main message is that whether or not there's a request for an override this year or next year the school budget needs to speak to the fact that the in classroom instruction is the most important thing. So that means keeping paraprofessionals and keeping classroom teachers. I know that you are going to revisit the administrative positions, some of them that have very high salaries, and that's important I would not want any kids to miss out on sports, music, or art etc. However you're going to hear from a lot of other parents tonight too, but I just want to stress that this budget needs to put Reading, Writing, and Math as the most important for this year because of the situation. Thank you all very much for all of your work, I really appreciate you Ms. Brzozoski I wanted to ask everybody if they could close their eyes and think about when they were kids, when they were students at school and if they could remember as a student a time when they were nervous about school budget issues, if that was an issue they faced as kids, if they spent time being nervous about programs being cut, losing teachers they cared about. Or if they ever went to a school, did any of you guys ever go to school committing meetings when you were younger to fight for programs, was that like a thing? I know some of you did, some of you were born doing this. I don't think that's a normal childhood thing to worry about. I'm a little upset it's the childhood we're giving our kids. I'm not happy this is what we're doing to Lunenburg students. These are kids that were hit by Covid. The fifth graders were in kindergarten when Covid hit they learned to read and write over a computer. They have the handwriting to prove it, they returned to masking, they returned to six feet distancing, they missed out on playdates, they missed out on field trips, they missed out on school concerts, and a normal childhood when they were very young. The se are kids who are in school right now, they had that, and now we are cutting things from them. And while we're talking about things like cutting this year and delaying things and waiting for the town to get their act together. We are saying well you can keep or cut, we can do without for a little bit these are kids have already suffered and now we're doing this to them again. I don't think it's fair. I'm frustrated - is this the best that we can do for our kids? Is this is the best that Lunenburg can offer our kids? We're at a point where we're making cuts that are going to hurt, and they're going to affect kids, and people are going to be unhappy because we're at the point where we have to remind ourselves that we have to focus on our core mission of educating the kids. That extracurricular come with the word “extra” in front of it because we're at that point where we have to take very hard looks at everything in the budget. I'm very frustrated that we're at this point. I'm really frustrated. Frustrated that we've put kids in this situation of having to fight for what's important for them when we should be doing it. I'm frustrated the town has put kids in this situation. I'm frustrated the taxpayers have put kids in this situation. Mr. Beardmore I've got a few comments tonight. First I'd like to address the point that was made by Mr. Snyder a little bit earlier about the transportation budget. Sometimes when you read lines from left to right in a budget they don't necessarily reflect the reality of the situation. The cost of athletic transportation is not up 200%. The way we are accounting for athletic transportation has been corrected from past practice that was done incorrectly. It was not transparent therefore, you are seeing a number that is substantially higher than what was carried in previous years, but is not necessarily that substantially higher than what has been actually paid in previous years. So I apologize that sometimes these things are illustrated in a way that don't necessarily reflect reality. Second comment for those of you on the zoom please mute if you're not speaking thank you. Third comment, I grew up in this, I think everybody knows, Laura just said my mom was on the school committee for six years while I was a kid in Lunenburg schools. This is in my bones and Lunenburg as was discussed last week has been through feast and famine over the years. We had massive budget cuts when I was a kid programs cut when I was a kid. The walker radius which we don't have any more was increased dramatically when I was a kid and then retracted again. As I said last week this is an ugly business, it's a messy business and while I regret that some people don't like what they see, you are seeing a microcosm of the reality that exists here, and in businesses, and in state government, and federal government. The business of government is a messy ugly business, I wish it could be cleaner, I wish it could be easier. We have to bring five people informed by a variety and a lot of different data some of which is unfortunately incomplete to a conclusion. We all come from very different perspectives and that is a really hard thing to do and on top of that we have to do it in public. There are three or four exemptions that you're allowed to do executive session and a budget discussion with the exception of the discussion relating to a security item has to be done in public. I have a kid who graduated from Lunenburg 5 years ago that kid was not an athlete, they were a band student and a theater student and a straight A academic student. I have another student, who needed extra help in the Primary School grades and was extremely well served in Lunenburg, and is not an artist, he's an athlete and a very good student. I've seen the full spectrum of what it is, and I've lived it by the way, but I've also seen that full spectrum of what it is to be a student in Lunenburg. The ups and the downs, the services that are needed, the benefits of living in a small community and the activities that define our character and who we are. I think that is all important and we have to find a way to find a balance and ensure that we are protecting and preserving what it is to grow up in Lunenburg ,and be a part of this community. These are issues that I'm struggling with, I've come around on alot of these issues over the course of the last several weeks and you're going to hear tonight that I have changed my mind on an issue or two as well. Just since last week that's what happens. This is hard work. Tony and I got into an argument about this sitting here two months ago, about how much work this was going to be, here we are. I'm sorry that people don't like it, I'm sorry that I get blamed via email, and on social media on a pretty regular basis. This is what we signed up to do it's ===PAGE 4=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 not pleasant frankly it's quite unpleasant right now, but we have to do the job and we're not going to make everybody happy with decision. Ms. Archambault First I want to thank all the parents, all the families, all the kids, the staff members are wonderful, office administration and building administration for the time, the effort, and the concern put in to what we're doing tonight. This is very difficult and as Mr. Beardmore has said not everybody's going to be happy and I'm going to say none of us are happy. This is not going to work to anybody's advantage. We are, as Peter said, a couple weeks ago, trying to make the least bad decision. They're all bad decisions somebody's going to get slighted or hurt or their experience is not going to be what it should be because of what we do tonight. What we are hoping to do tonight is to maintain as much as we can of the character of the school district. We have listened and read every single letter someone has written. Mr. Lehtinen replies because that is our protocol, but we have all read every word he passes them right on to us. If you've written to him your thoughts are with us as we look at everything. We have people saying you know keep all the academic stuff don’t worry about extracurricular. We have people saying extracurricular need to be taken care of first. I was a music teacher, my husband was a music teacher in the district for 28 years. I understand extracurricular are important, everything is important and this is why it is very difficult. I can’t argue with anything anybody said. I want to thank people for being involved and want to remind people about the caucus, there is a one year school committee membership still available if you wish to run. You go to the town hall you take out papers you get 50 signatures and I believe they have to be returned on the 20th. Mr. Lehtinen we did have a question about last night, so the school committee had a joint meeting with the select board, you can watch it we also posted it on Facebook it's on YouTube as well. For the first hour the school committee and the select board sat down we discussed the budget and potential overrides. The consensus by the school committee was that we were not interested in an override this year. It makes more sense to wait and do a full town override, instead of doing an override this year and still needing one next year. Also if you watch the video, throughout the whole select board meeting they talk about concerns of the towns finances. Dr. Burnham Mr. Sullivan made a comment that he was looking for the athletic program summary by sport. I told him that it wasn't in a cleaned up version for me to post yet, but it was posted before the meeting this evening. It is available for everybody on the district web page, go to the school committee link, and then go to the meetings and agendas link and then it's posted under tonight's meeting 3. Old Business a. FY26 Superintendent’s Recommended Budget Dr. Burnham shares the one page summary that was shown at the last meeting and at the select board meeting. A list of the proposed cuts along with changes in the budget expense lines. This is also available on the district website. Ms Brzozoski makes a motion to table the cut to the ski team and give the athletic director an opportunity to negotiate terms with co-op schools, Mr. Lehtinen seconds the motion all approve Ms. Archambault makes a motion to accept the superintendent’s proposal to restructure of the Business Finance Director Position, Mr. Lehtinen seconds the motion all approve Mr. Sculimbrene makes a motion to vote on bus fees and send to policy subcommittee for setting rates and language of safety of travel. The rates would be $180 for 1 child, $270 for 2 kids or more and a $50 reduced fee, Ms. Archambault seconds the motion. Motion passes 4:1 with Ms. Brzozoski opposing. Ms. Archambault makes a motion to accept the superintendents recommended budget with the change of the ski team continuation to be funded by the bus fee $25,787,474 and 3.6% Mr. Beardmore seconds the motion all approve. 4. Public Comment Mary Foyle, 985 Flat Hill Road I am struggling as a high school teacher because I think as Mr. Santry said we have taken hits, and I know my department took a hit last year. This is actually the same point I made last time we brought in a busing fee. I do have concerns about economically disadvantaged families and some of those families who are on the cusp, who don't fall under free and reduced lunch. I think it puts an unfair burden on those who may be more disadvantaged if we have a bus fee that they have to pay but nothing happens with our parking fee. I know the parking fee goes to the town and not the school, I think that's something else it's two separate issues and that needs to be a change. I know this last time I brought this up for discussion with building leadership, not Mr. Santry, with building leadership at the time, I was told that having a car is expensive. I do understand having a car is expensive but if yo u're in a family who can somehow afford a car then you can afford a car. My own son will probably be a junior and maybe ===PAGE 5=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 driving next year as well, I also don't know what our parking situation is and if we can even absorb more people having cars and not riding the bus if that's an option that people are looking at. I think it's just worth a discussion point. Jim Broden 24 Autumn Road 19 years ago I created the ski team and I asked only to use the Lunenburg name. The team was completely self-funded. What I think happened with this $1,000 bill is that after four years we co -oped with Leominster, the Leominster athletic director and the school gave me the money and I ran the budget. When we get to our expenses from Wachusett Mountain and Nashoba Valley we had the athletic fee and then we looked at how much we owed and we divided it by the number of people which automatically adjusted. If there were 10 people from Leominster and 10 from Lunenburg we adjusted that fee every year. After I think 14 years, the first 12 years I coached the team for free I wanted to do it. After 12 years Jay Conroy took over as the head coach I became the assistant coach because my kids had all gone through. At 14 years the school decided they wanted to handle the budget, I think what happened is when we went over the athletic fees there wasn't a kickback to the team to say hey you got to collect more money to make it balance out even. So all of the parents when we have an opening meetin g we explain to them this skiing - ski racing is not an inexpensive sport. We have never had any transportation. I think for two years we had a bus that brought the kids to the ski area but the kids went home on their own. In 19 years no kid has ever missed a race or practice because they couldn't get a ride so basically what we did is we went with the approach all the parents have raised their kids through youth sports and paid for everything. Once you get to high school it's a different story. We went with the approach I don't need the school's money because people are used to paying for this stuff . I just talked with the athletic director and I think what happened is they forgot to say hey here's how much extra money you owe and if we go back to that I think in a minimum you can save $7,000. Yes sounds great and that would leave some money for the coach Jay Conroy. He had his kid on the team and he wanted to do something, he was retiring as a prison guard and he thought this would be great because he could get to work with people that didn't want to kill. He became the head coach and I think that the school recognized and probably had good budget times that they decided to give him a certain stipend and he said okay. I don't think he ever asked for it. That's the way to solve the problem and I can help you do it Chris Sullivan, 108 Highland Street I just want to come up and talk ski as well. My son's a freshman on the ski team this year. First time doing it, I was certainly under the impression that with multiple schools involved and multiple schools are contributing to the program so that's one of the reasons why I brought that up . There are four kids from Lunenburg on that program, four kids - 100% four kids should not be spending $11,000. The list is wrong there are about 20 kids in the ski team this year not 14, so there were 18 alone at the banquet last night. I had actually reached out to Jay this morning when I kind of heard rumblings that this might come up tonight. I have the bills its $10,400 .The bigger bill is from Nashoba. The issue is there is not a Mid-watch ski league if we could all ski and race at Wachusett it would be a lot cheaper. I would also encourage Kevin to reach out to all the parents having a group conversation exactly kind of what you're saying, that you know this is this is what it is and fees need to come into this program to continue. Tim Santry, LMHS Principal It is my responsibility to advocate for the students and the staff in my building. We are going on 13 hours of debate and discourse over this budget. In that time not one mention of the impact of the cuts will have in our High School. We as educators, we understand the importance of learning to read, no one will dispute that, but our responsibilities to students in this district don't end there. We have the responsibility for all students in the district. That means it's as important to prepare students for college and career as it is to teach them to read. The cuts that we are going to experience are going to hurt us, every student, and every classroom. I think we are gambling on the fact that myself and my faculty are going to be able to pull a rabbit out of our hat and we're going to be able to pull this together. There's a 0% chance of our schedule looking like it did last year, I want people to be aware of that there's going to be a major impact to our high school. I implore you that if you did get any free cash even though it would be a Band- Aid that you look to the high school to restore some of those positions. Some of those class offerings that we've cut, we now cut 27 class offerings from our high school schedule over two years. It’s going to have a major impact on our students. I had a discussion with a student at in lunch today, she is my her self -proclaimed my favorite student, I've written several letters of recommendation for her for private schools and checking in and how those were going and always saying you know why don't you stay here at Lunenburg high we always want you here. She said to me that she was looking at choicing out if her private school choices didn't come through. I think that's going to be the reality that we have if we're not able to offer our student choices they are going to hemorrhage out of the high school so please I implore you to look at that free cash and restore some positions at the high school. Tom Woodward 221 Leominster Road I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the road its going to be toward charging kids to go to school. I really appreciate you, I can see it is hurting you in this way. You know how many kids are injured or killed walking to school a year -67,124 kids. It is not going to be your fault but what if a Lunenburg kids, because maybe a parent couldn’t afford the fee, or maybe they only have one car, but what happens if that kid is walking to school one day and gets injured or killed. Are you going to be ab le to look at yourself and say – it was the right choice? You guys want a town override, I understand that, but the town was able to fund $20 million or so for the new town hall, we could have done an override this year to make a little less of a deficit. Most of this community might not have kids, I don’t know the percentage, but if we don’t choose to make huge cuts this year, which makes us all hurt in a different way. I think we failed our kids and it is going to hurt because like some of them said, a lot of kids are going to leave. I moved to Lunenburg for the reason of the school system, it was great three years ago. Obviously we ha d a little ===PAGE 6=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 bit of lower numbers, I come from a city where we are fully funding, obviously great stuff I want to be abl e to give my kids a better life, and right now it’s not better and it hurts. My biggest thing is that you guys are going to charge kids t o go to school, it is not fair, you are going to hurt families in a lot of ways, you are going to put them in collecti ons, which puts them in debt, which puts them at credit. You guys have kids, you’ve talked about the athletics, and track team and how good they are. But we need to be Lunenburg strong, we need to stick together and we are not doing that. TJ Loughlin 207 Rolling Acres Rd. I learned a lot about municipal budget in the last two years. I hope I understood it correctly. At this point I understand the logic behind waiting for another year for the override. It is the same playbook as last year, same argument, all the same justification. What I want to make clear to the public is depending on how the override is pitched next year, we may still have this cut deficit build into the Lunenburg budget forever. If you go forward and decide to put forward an override for the future this set of cuts, which you heard Mr. Santry say is going to be painful, is that pain is going to be baked in our school system unless the override accounts for this year too. No matter what you have to account for this year’s deficit moving forward, which is also going to be a weird ask for the town, because it is going to back projecting. The next thing a few of us have said, the select board meeting last night, the joint meeting, is the same playbook. Everyone wants the same, town wide override, account for all departments, we need long-term projections, we said that last year and again, just like Ms. Brzozoski said it didn’t happen. How are we as tax payers and citizens supposed to believe that is going to happen this year? What is going to be put in place to know that is actually going to happen? We need a holistic view, we need to understand our town finances, and we will be here again. How do we know this is actually going to take place? Sandi Orni 365 Sunny Hill Road first thank you all, I know this is hard and I know it is getting late, so I appreciate all of the diligence you are putting into this. First comment I have is around the bottom of the list of restored teachers, if I look at that list, I have a middle school and high school students and I see 6.5 out of 13 of those restored positions going to the Primary School. While only 1 ½ are going to the high school. I very much want our kids to be able to read and I want them to be in small classes, but once they learn to read, I also want them to have the best opportunities they can to get into college. I would like you to consider that as we continue to cut the offerings at the high school. Second comment is around the ski team. You know I was a little disappointed to he ar just today that we had a little lead time to get some of the kids on the ski team to come and speak in front of about their experiences with the ski team. I am happy with your comments today and where we have landed but, my son was on the ski team for o ur years, my daughter was on the ski team for two years and was unable to participate this year due to a sports injury but would have been the fifth child on the team. I think we want to look at this comprehensively. I agree we need to pursue funds from other schools that is absolutely the right thing to do. Bu t I think we should also look at the history, we keep throwing out that there are four kids in the program from Lunenburg, this is a low year. If we go back historically during Covid, there were six freshman boys alone, because it was a great offering and inclusive. Obviously there is speed just like any other sport but there are no try outs, Coach Jay says I don’t care if you are a competitive skier or you’re just learning to ski I will teach you, you will learn, you will be better than you were before. It is a really nice alternative to sports that have strict cut offs for members. I’d also like you to consider that as you look at the ski program going forward. Mandy Gilman 186 Reservoir Road I want to thank you for your work tonight. I know this is not easy and not fun. I just want to leave this meeting with the impression that we shouldn’t have to live like this . Last year when I started to fight for the override, I took a very aggressive stance with the committee, and told people we didn’t have to live like this. Last year we fought for an override of $1 million dollars. Is very scary to think about where we would be if we hadn’t gotten that million dollars. There has been a lot of talk that this is not the year for an override. I am very conflicted about that, last year I basically didn’t take anyone’s advice and just told you wall we were going to do an override. It is not all about me, but I feel like that’s what happened. I am scared that next year are going to be in this huge hole, and the economy could go down. I volunteered, I am running for the school committee, so lucky me I get to sit up there maybe next year and listen to everyone complaining. We need to start in June. I a m disappointed that we did not look at this last June. I know that the teacher contract wasn’t finalized, I know there were a lot of moving parts, but I am disappointed that we waited this long. I know we were waiting for the state to save us, that wasn’t going to happen. I had a good meeting with Senator Cronin last week. I have a meeting coming up Kushmerek and Scarsdale. I think eventually there is going to be something there, but we have to limp through until then. They are not going to be able to fix every problem, so I haven’t come up here with a plan of what to say, but I think we need to start planning in June. If this committee doesn’t think this is the time for the override that is fine. The only good thing I have really gotten from this whole thing is that if you are active on social media, there are many parents in this town who you been getting their emails who are incredibly fired up. I just want to implore the public to stay engaged because you are only governed by people who volunteer. It is government, it is not about every single person, and government is about those who show up. That is the reality of the way the system works. Amy King, 3 Gabes Place I echo what Mr. Santry and what Sandi had to say about the high school taking huge hits here. The ability for our kids to have the experience they need to get into college. I implore the school committee and the future school committee that as a finance professional the manner in which we put this budget together and that we look for trends for expenses and revenues. Splitting everything into revolving funds is not a good way to manage finances. We need to lay out all revenues and all expenses. We need to understand what those expenses are, how they ===PAGE 7=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 increase and decrease and where the funding is coming from so that the public has the full transparency of where all of the money is going. Someone just mentioned the parking fee that we pay doesn’t even go to the school, why not, isn’t it because they supposedly plow the parking lot, I mean the $50 parking fee, every one of those kids almost fell in the parking lot on the ice this year. I really think we need to do a better job as everyone has said, in how we are managing our finances. I would love to see something done with the curriculum director to get more money into the high school. I think that is a position, that while it is nice have at the state we are in, this school system we need teachers, we need offering for these kids. We have done a great job improving the curriculum over the years. Can we take a break for a few years and give the high school kids a little bit more options. Mr. Sculimbrene I think what TJ said is right, we need to have a long-term plan. I think that one of the things we would do as a school committee next year is immediately star working on the long term plan. One problem I see and I keep coming back to is we don’t do this budget discussion correctly. No one brings forward a case about what impact this will have on student achievement. What I want to know is the dollar value of every impact on student achievement. We have people come up and say I love this or that, I don’t want this to go, and my kid does this. But we don’t even know how to quantify student achievement in a predictable way that allows us to do a forecast. We need to have that data, we need to have a utilitarian approach because if all we do is constantly listen to people making good cases for things. Everyone loves their children, all of these things are good things, we could make a c ase for any of them, but if we don’t have a way of figuring out which ones count more, which ones are worth more, which ones have a bigger impact, we are going to perpetually be in a budget cycle that is based on emotion not fact. First thing we have to do is answer TJ’s question is we need to create a rubric to decide budget decisions to make calls about student impact. The second thing I think that we need to do whether it is as a parent or group, we need to understand how legislation changes. We are not in the 1700s version of the United States, a citizen request is not going to change the agenda. I testified two weeks ago in New Hampshire, I was the only non-lobbyist in the room and I was a lawyer. There were no citizens’ there at all. It was a decision that impacted hundreds of millions of dollars. It was for the insurance, it impacted hundreds of millions of dollars, the reason the hearing happened was because people with money coordinated together and got a lobbyist, we keep talking about this, we keep saying our legislative delegation isn’t coming to our aid. That is true, but we haven’t approached them in a way that people do now. If we expect the 17 th century version of all of us get on horses and ride to Boston to work, it is not going to work. The last thing I would point out is I understand the concern about not going for an override. I do think that there was a little bit of politics last night in the presentation about why don’t you go for an override, when the groundwork that it took to get the override last year was already months underway by this point. You don’t go to the bank and get a loan to start a business in an un-pressed shirt and none of your tax records, we need to have that level of preparation when we go and ask for a big amount of money. We can show the town that we have done our homework. This is the only options and we need it because of the way inflation has impacted municipa l finances. My guess is given the people that said we should do it now, they know that we would fai l and cannot fail for the kids. Doing it now at the cost of doing it later better, doesn’t seem the best. I think that we should as soon as this is done, start planning for next year. We should have a vision and a vision should be based on real concrete information, dollars, data, student achievement, we can’t keep doing this on an emotional level Ms. Brzozoski I will be honest, I came home from the meeting last night thinking what the heck did I do. We were not going to go for an override, this doesn’t quite sit right with me, because these cuts are so difficult. But like Tony said w e need a comprehensive plan. I am trying to balance it against what the town is going to need in the future. The town is not ready to present what their needs are going to be. I said it last night too, I don’t think we are going to get three yea rs in a row of overrides, I don’t think Lunenburg tax payers are going to be wild about voting three years in a row for overrides. I just don’t. I wish they were because I think that would be great and I think overrides exist for a reason especially when inflation is high. I don’t think we could sell it and I have to live in the town too. I would like us to have a functioning fire department and the things that would bring that they are going to ask for next year. It is a calculated risk, is it the right answer? There is no right answer because all the options suck. This is awful, this is terrible and I hate it. I hate that it affects our kids, which makes it terrible. I wish this was a board that didn’t affect our children, but I think this is what we keep saying – the least bad option. I think we are going to have a rough year, I think that we have managed to make a budget that we are going to have a rough year, but it is not going to be a disastrous year. I think that we have built structures in place that we are going get by. Lunenburg has a very strong staff and teachers th at are going to make it work. We have fantastic staff and teachers, I think we are going to make it work for the year. I don’t think we are going to make it work long-term under this staffing, but I think we can make this work for a year. Then we are go ing to figure this out next year starting soon. We are going to go up from there and fight for an override next year. Mr. Beardmore I am not going to belabor my reasoning that I outlined last night about the override. I am still very comfortable with that reasoning and I understand that you can’t make all the people all the time. This is a difficult decision, I do want to say that these are really difficult challenges I volunteered for the finance committee six years ago. I have spent almost three years on the school committee, it is getting harder and harder and frankly I am out of answers. Which is part of my decision to leave the school committee at the end of budget season. I am exhausted by it. That being said what has been represented through the last several weeks by people who have come and spoken and by to conversations that we have had here, some of which have been very spirited debates and we have certainly disagreed on ===PAGE 8=== 1025 Massachusetts Avenue, Lunenburg, Massachusetts 01462 978 582-4100 ~ fax 978 582-4103 some issues is ultimately the way to come to those solutions. We have some good energy in the community, we have good ideas and to the extent that I can I will continue to support the schools. Please keep in mind, while we are governed a little bit differently we are a department in the town of Lunenburg and we all live in the town of Lunenburg. I am not particularly happy with the way the town has been run. I think it is run way too lean, but we have got to give our new select board, town manager, and new school committee the opportunity to envision what that is going to look like and ideally support them to move them in the right directions. I am hopeful that the leaders that have stepped up and our new leader, and our town manager, and that we can hire a really good leader to help us in the schools and figure this out o ver the course of the next several months. Ms. Archambault I just want to say that despite all the gray weather her and the blizzard that we are maneuvering through, I see a really good silver lining. The silver lining is the engagement of so many people. As long as so many people stay engaged we will find a way out of these difficult issues. We have found a way out before and we will find a way out of this one. I want to thank the people for their thoughts and their difficult nights of not sleeping, be cause they are worried about this. I want to thank the staff for hanging in there because having been on that side many times, not knowing if my job was going to be cut or not is torturous and I thank them for hanging in there, it is not easy to do. Moving forward next year you will get this figured out and I think Tony will still be with you and has committed to hanging in there and finding a plan. Mr. Lehtinen I want to thank the students, the children of Lunenburg, the parents, and the staff for being c onstantly involved and giving feedback. I want to thank Dr. Burnham and her team for all this work and thank the fellow committee members too. I think we did it as a team, we did it as a community, it’s not great, but it is the best we could do. I think having all those voices and emails and public comments made the difference and it gave a full picture of what we needed to do and how best we could serve the Lunenburg Public School. I want to thank everyone for staying engaged and going to town meeting, voting, and running for office. Volunteer and be part of the community. 5. Adjournment Ms. Brzozoski makes a motion to adjourn at 9:16 pm, Mr. Beardmore seconds the motion, all approve. Respectfully Submitted Courtney Fuller ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-19-agenda-7111.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-19 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-19-agenda-7111.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03192025-7111 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== MEETING NOTICE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, March 19, 2025 6:30 pm, LMS Collaborative Room #D132 HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: Tim Santry-LMHS Principal; Norman Yvon-THES Principal, Carla Squier-Primary Principal, Dr. Deborah Bookis-Director of Teaching & Learning, Julianna Hanscom-Director of Special Services, Dr. Susan Gilson-Director of Administration & Finance, Patty McCarthy-Guillette-Director of Community/Schools Programs, Kevin Bigelow-Athletic Director In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast at a later date over the Lunenburg Public Access channel. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85906741187 Meeting ID: 859 0674 1187 One tap mobile +13052241968,, 85906741187# US +13092053325,,85906741187# US This meeting will be broadcast at a later date through the local access cable channel and on the Public Access Facebook page (h ttps://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be found on the Lunenburg Access YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law. 1. Call to Order 12. Reports 2. Pledge of Allegiance 13. Public Comment 3. Public Comment 14. Topics for Future Discussion 4. Chair’s Report 15. Adjournment 5. Student Representative’s Report 6. Review & Approve Minutes a. Regular Session 7. Review & Approve Line Item Transfers, Warrants & Donations a. Warrants 3/3/25 to 3/12/25 $138,511.41 8. Superintendent’s Report 9. Presentation 10. New Business Action a. FY26 Extended Day & ELC Handbooks 11. Old Business Action a. FY25 Quarterly Budget Report b. Unaffiliated Salary Schedule (FY26-28) c. FY26 School Calendar d. Athletic Camp Proposal Discussion a. Parent-Teacher Conference Pilot 2024-2025 Report b. FY26 Budget c. Superintendent Search d. State Funding & State Delegation ======================================================================================== DOCUMENT : 2025-03-19-agenda-7113.txt BOARD : school-committee DATE : 2025-03-19 KIND : agenda OUR COPY : https://lunenburgbudgetproject.org/docs/minutes/text/school-committee/2025-03-19-agenda-7113.txt TOWN PDF : https://www.lunenburgma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03192025-7113 ======================================================================================== ===PAGE 1=== REVISED MEETING NOTICE SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, March 19, 2025 6:30 pm, LMS Collaborative Room #D132 HYBRID MEETING AGENDA School Committee Superintendent Brian Lehtinen, Chair Dr. Kate Burnham Anthony Sculimbrene, Vice Chair Carol Archambault-Secretary Laura Brzozoski Recording Secretary Peter Beardmore Courtney Fuller Guests: Tim Santry-LMHS Principal; Norman Yvon-THES Principal, Carla Squier-Primary Principal, Dr. Deborah Bookis-Director of Teaching & Learning, Julianna Hanscom-Director of Special Services, Dr. Susan Gilson-Director of Administration & Finance, Patty McCarthy-Guillette-Director of Community/Schools Programs, Kevin Bigelow-Athletic Director In accordance with the requirements of the Open Meeting Law, please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast at a later date over the Lunenburg Public Access channel. Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85906741187 Meeting ID: 859 0674 1187 One tap mobile +13052241968,, 85906741187# US +13092053325,,85906741187# US This meeting will be broadcast at a later date through the local access cable channel and on the Public Access Facebook page (h ttps://www.facebook.com/Lunenburg-Public-Access-Cable-157427270975305/) and will be found on the Lunenburg Access YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting. The agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the Chair. Votes may be taken as a result of these discussions. Not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by Open Meeting Law. 1. Call to Order 12. Reports 2. Pledge of Allegiance 13. Public Comment 3. Public Comment 14. Topics for Future Discussion 4. Chair’s Report 15. Adjournment 5. Student Representative’s Report 6. Review & Approve Minutes a. Regular Session 7. Review & Approve Line Item Transfers, Warrants & Donations a. Warrants 3/3/25 to 3/12/25 $138,511.41 8. Superintendent’s Report 9. Presentation 10. New Business Action a. FY26 Extended Day & ELC Handbooks b. Grants 11. Old Business Action a. FY25 Quarterly Budget Report b. Unaffiliated Salary Schedule (FY26-28) c. FY26 School Calendar d. Athletic Camp Proposal Discussion a. Parent-Teacher Conference Pilot 2024-2025 Report b. FY26 Budget c. Superintendent Search d. State Funding & State Delegation