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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-05-15-SC-min LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING Wednesday, May 15, 2024 Meeting Minutes AGENDA: CALL TO ORDER AND WELCOME: 5:00 PM SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT Sara Cuthbertson, Chairperson Deepika Sawhney, Vice-chair Kathleen Lenihan, Clerk Eileen Jay Larry Freeman joined at 5:10 PM SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS PRESENT Dr. Julie Hackett, Superintendent The minutes were taken by Julie Kaye, School Committee Meeting Recording Secretary. The School Committee convened remotely. Members of the public can view and participate in person or in the meeting webinar from their computer or tablet by clicking on the link provided with the meeting agenda. Please note that this meeting is being recorded, and that attendees are participating by video conference. This evening's meeting is being broadcast live and also taped by LexMedia for future on-demand viewing. All supporting materials that have been provided to members of this body are available on the Town's website unless otherwise noted. CALL TO ORDER, WELCOME,AND EXPLAIN THE GOAL OF THE MEETING. Ms. Cuthbertson explained that this meeting is being held per Ms. Sawhney's request to discuss financial matters. She added that there will be no community speak during this meeting as this is not a regular meeting. Ms. Cuthbertson turned the meeting over to Ms. Sawhney so she could explain her goal for this meeting. Ms. Sawhney shared that her goal is for the School Committee to come together as a team to look at the information in her presentation and memos. • Brief Overview of Ms. Sawhney's Memos • Trends Noticed • Comparison Data • Suggested Next Steps Presentation on Finance Matters and Trends Ms. Sawhney was concerned about the increased dollar amounts on the consent agendas. She also mentioned a newspaper article about another school district being under financial stress. She looked into what went wrong at that school and wanted to make sure that something like that wouldn't happen in Lexington. After speaking with our staff, Ms. Sawhney was very reassured that Lexington has a lot of "common sense monitoring mechanisms" in place for JK 5/15/24-DRAFT costs. Ms. Cuthbertson spoke about how we see and sign off on the consent agendas at each meeting and that concerns should be brought to the Finance Subcommittee and the liaisons. She also mentioned that, unlike other districts, we use Munis, which allows us to see "the minutia of the spending" and made the point that this meeting is "excluding staff who I think can offer more insight." She added, "I just wanna remind everybody, our role is to approve the budget. And yes, we look at those things and make sure nothing's going crazy. But also, it's not like individual day-to-day operational things. Like we want to be careful also not to overstep, so make sure everything's staying within the budget that we have approved. And making sure we're not getting asked for more things that we don't need. But I think we need to kind of keep that in mind to what the role of the School Committee is, because I know that we all do many, many meetings, but we have lots and lots of fantastic staff. So we should have oversight. And we do." Ms. Sawhney would like anybody listening to know that there is "a huge caveat." She explained that numbers seem to have a life cycle in terms of cost; starting with the need to purchase something for a classroom, ending with it being reflected on a consent agenda. She states in her slides, "I have tried to keep the numbers, at least on one slide from that same point in the life cycle, but that doesn't mean that they are all completely accurate because some of them are projections" She added, "What I'm trying to do over here today is more for us to think about it conceptually, philosophically, and not necessarily get bogged down in the numbers, but more to think about direction, guidelines, and mind share for something like this as a School Committee member who has to vote." The slideshow was projected and started with slide 6, which shows a comparison of salaries and wages. Ms. Sawhney was surprised by the 14%/$462 market increase. Ms. Cuthbertson is concerned that this slide makes it look like we are paying everyone 14% more. Ms. Jay recollected that one year staff were paid retroactively in the early payroll cycles for that year; she wonders if this data is from that year. Ms. Sawhney explained that having a salary scale means that there will be a lot of movement from year to year. After she met with Mr. Coelho, she understood that the large part of what the impact of the Union contract has already been factored in and that she expects this year's increase to be small. Ms. Cuthbertson pointed out that we have a large percentage of Unit A members that are near the top of the steps. "That does mean that Lexington is going to be paying more are in payroll overall, if you're looking at the same amount of Unit A members from district to district because we do have such an experienced group of educators and we want to keep it that way. We know that that means not only paying those increases in percentages, but making sure we're valuing that experience too. Because I think that's super important. Because yes, we could get Unit A members lower on the pay scale, and that would save us money, but that doesn't necessarily pay off for the education of the kids. So I just think that's important to note, and I'm sure everybody on School Committee agrees with that, I just want to make sure that was said" Ms. Sawhney explained Slide 7 which shows revenue projections. She stated, "So what I would like us to take away is to what are the percentage growth amounts we can do, and really keep it into mind...What I am asking us to do is as I go through these numbers, for us to have a lens that JK 5/15/24-DRAFT is somewhat finance focused" Ms. Sawhney reflected on the data on the slide saying that "we have had good years, we've tried to be conservative in terms of what we think our overall growth number will be and we've managed to reach it or achieve more every year." Slide 8 shows Town Meeting appropriated numbers, Ms. Sawhney explained that these were the "best apples to apples numbers I could find". She pointed out the 101 to 134 million dollar growth. Ms. Sawhney stated that on slide 9, what she "tried to do over here is reduce the noise of numbers, and just look at the trends"; she spent time pointing out numbers and lines on the graph. She also wanted to emphasize that Mr. Coelho explained that there are so many moving parts in a school system budget. Ms. Sawhney just wants to "understand these three numbers" It was clarified that the three numbers Ms. Sawhney was referring to are the -0.62%, -10.41%, and -26.72%. Ms. Cuthbertson wonders where these projected numbers are coming from and finds it hard to be able to ask questions because "it's just a spreadsheet with numbers on it." Ms. Sawhney is happy to go back to her memos and attached source documents. Ms. Jay said that she thinks it's "a very interesting idea to look at things longitudinally" and she added, " I think to just see some of these numbers and the percentages are very misleading, unless, you know the reasons behind it. And I think the one that jumps out at me is the FY 25 budget where we had very lengthy discussions with Mr. Coelho around a lot of the salary and wages. So you know, you look at this number of 7.15%. Well, how come suddenly we're seeing that? But if you recall, when we went over the proposed budget, this was the year where there was an addition of 5.93 FTE in Unit A, and several of those were from the change in the course loads for LHS. From five classes to four. And at the same time, there was a net decrease in total FTE across the district. So it's a little hard to just see that percentage number,and people will look at that and wonder why. I think we had very extensive discussions about why that was when we approved the FY 25 budget. And so I think it's a very interesting thing to be able to look at numbers over time, but sometimes just looking at that, it can highlight things, but it can also make things look a certain way. And I think until you can dig in and understand what's behind it, it's misleading." Ms. Lenihan thinks that in terms of the 2026 budget, it would be interesting to have a finance committee take a look at it in the fall. Ms. Sawhney reacted to Ms. Jay's comment by saying, "that is exactly the kind of thinking that I was hoping we'd start doing," and to Ms. Lenihan's suggestion by emphasizing that the projections are estimates. Slide 10 shows growth in personnel. Ms. Sawhney explained that this is an Excel spreadsheet and a graph. She got the numbers that are included from Town Meeting documents and spoke about how she is very concerned about the increases. Ms. Cuthbertson expressed that increases were expected due to the contract remedying course loads for the high school teachers and that the School Committee was given a presentation on it. Ms. Lenihan stated that "This is one of those things that just varies, when you start the school year there's just no way to know what's going to happen in the middle of the year." She went on to say that "it's challenging to deal with a certain level of uncertainty. But that is just, that's just the reality of the school system. We don't know what the future holds." Ms. Cuthbertson added that FTE's JK 5/15/24-DRAFT also include staff who are not benefits eligible. She and Ms. Sawnhey spoke about adding supplemental FTE being included into the budget. Ms. Cuthbertson commented on the challenges of turnbacks. Ms. Lenihan added that spotting trends is tricky and she does not think this is a trend. Ms. Sawhney explained that on slide 11 she is trying to give frameworks; she also gives examples of "must have" and "nice to haves." Ms. Lenihan said "one person's must have is another person's nice to have and vice versa. And that's something to keep in mind." Ms. Sawhney mentioned that it was her goal was to look at things with a more finance lens. Mr. Freeman responded by saying, "I would be very concerned as a School Committee member or as a parent if all five of us were hyper-focused in the finance part of things." He added, " I don't think looking at numbers and giving numbers 90% of your attention is going to meet the ultimate goal that I think we all ran to be elected to be is to watch out for our students." He went on to say, "I think it's just important to remember that ultimately, we are in the business of children. And I think that should be our Number One lens. And while 1 100% recognize that finances are just essential, critical, that we have to pay attention to that. I also want us to all remember that you know why we're here, what we're doing, why we make these kinds of sacrifices to our families, to our own personal lives. I mean, ultimately, it's because we want life to be better for the children of Lexington. And for these the staff that work here" Ms. Cuthbertson stated that she "thinks some good questions came out of this, and I think that we need to find a procedure or process that we can all agree upon for how this can be included in regular agendas and how to move forward." She suggested discussing this at a retreat. Ms. Sawhney explained that slide 12 is a memo she made after she was looking for information in Town Meetings. She asked the School Committee to think about doing a financial stress test. Ms. Cuthbertson suggested that if anyone has any follow-up questions to direct them to Mr. Coelho and copy Dr. Hackett. ADJOURNMENT Ms. Lenihan made a motion to adjourn at 6:10 PM, Ms. Sawhney seconded. Ms. Cuthbertson took a roll call vote,passed 5-0. JK 5/15/24-DRAFT