you you you you you you you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.03 pm. And tonight we are here to listen to the school committees are actually, excuse me, the school superintendent's presentation on the proposed budget. And the proposal for the fiscal year 2026 budget has been thoroughly reviewed and vetted by the School of Committee at two previous workshops, both workshops are online for review and we're very eager to hear Dr. Cummings what you have for us. So well thank you Alex and so I will kind of give a broad overview of the budget and Dan I'll just kind of point over to you and are you guys? So thank you usually self-control so we're a little bit of it Sorry to have you guys on the phone. No worries. Um, yeah. So we have, um, Sorry it's a public hearing. Um, is there a motion to open the public hearing for the Narryance School System Budget Festival year 2026? So moved. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes, three, zero. With Councillor Jason Colonies, Absin, as well as Councillor James Starr. Thank you. All right. Great. Well, thank you and thank you for engaging this discussion tonight. You know, as I go over things, please feel free to stop and ask questions. We're happy to go deeper on any of the topics that we covered this evening. My intent is to give you a sense of what goes into the proposed school district budget. We do certainly have here members of our school community are here and also our team, so if you switch, you know the budget as you will know does not happen quickly nor without a whole lot of work. So our team, particularly care in our finance director, Melissa, our director of student services, Gail, our director of curriculum, in our principals and support staff, Julio Steve, you know, put a ton of work into this. And we actually start working on our budget in November. And so putting all the pieces together is certainly undertaking that issue both seriously and with a lot of thought. And one of the things that I want to make sure that I'm emphasizing is that the school committee really sets So the school committee has a strategic plan, really set goals, and then our budget is the way to make those goals come together. And so for us as a community, the school committee has really set ambitious goals around learning, around access, around having equitable schools, where all students have a chance to learn and thrive, and really the things that we do are all meant to make those goals come together. So as a part of the process, we have several dates of which we are already in and some of which are coming ahead. This school can be voted to approve the budget last week. You know, this is your public hearing. You go through the town portion of the budget coming forward. There is another opportunity necessary for the school committee to get together with the town council on that's on April 28th. If, you know, either the committee or the town would like to me if both entities don't believe that they need to get together, then we do not need to hold back meeting. And so, you know, first of all, let me talk to you a little bit about who's in our schools. So we are this year right around 966 students that sometimes goes up and down by one or two students depending on kids moving in the district. We have six students who are placed out of district to formally have to pay tuition and those are typically students whose educational needs cannot be met within the district. They have a specialized profile that requires more intensive services. We have 21 students who attend career and technical student programs out of the district, and I'll go over that in a minute. We have 11 that attend five charter schools. Those are typically K to 6 or K to 8 students. There are 17 students who are homeschooled. That is down from maybe three or five years ago where it was up close to 30, coming out of COVID. So that continues to go down. And I think we had three return this month. We do take in 33 students from James Town. So those are students that pay tuition to come to the Naragansah schools. That's a agreement that we've had in place with Jamestown for about nine years now and Jamestown students when they only have a K-8 program. So when they leave Jamestown they have the choice of coming to Narragansett or to North K-Stown. So we are changing the number of Jamestown students. We have 58 students coming into our district for CTE and that's Greenstone 9212. There's roughly this hard network to pin down. So, somewhere in the range of 50 students, K212 through a 10 practice school. Quick question? Yes. What's the breakdown of the 966? That is a great question. So, I will go over that in just a second. But if you go ahead, let's sort of back it. Yep, it is in there. And so, but I can't get a hold on. I will go over that for just a second. So, one of the things that's often not considered about Narragantza because everyone, you all live here, know this but you know everyone thinks that Narragansett is being relatively well became a over a quarter of our students qualified for free and reduced lunch which is an indicator of a student being a poverty and so you know if you think about it one out of four students is in poverty in the Narragansett schools schools. When you consider that and you compare us to districts that have similar demographics, we certainly outperform any district with our same demographics. We are about 15% of students of color that has to be actually risen over the last four or five years as our community has become gradually more diverse. We still have very few students, I believe there are seven this year who are English language learners. We're at about 16% students who have an IEP or require specialized instruction and are around 4% at 5.4. I'm just wondering are you concerned at all about what's happening at the federal level for the IEPs and the 504s? I mean will affect those students' plans in any way? So that is a great question that I wish I had the crystal ball of people here. So you very clearly. Here's what our best guess is, is that there may be some disruptions to fund. I am relatively confident that we will still get the resources, how those resources delivered, I believe, will become less efficient, because there is a really kind of well-practiced infrastructure that gets those funds to us pretty quickly from the federal government. So I think that's going to get disrupted. I do not believe that we'll have interruptions to service. There certainly are going to be lots of interruptions to regulations and laws and those types of things. We do a really good job with our specialized students and so I don't anticipate that I'll get in the way of our day to day work. I do think it's going to severely impact the regulatory agencies such as RIDE and Department of Health. Thank you. So where we are and this is current staffing, is that we have around 138 teachers. I was left at the point eight because it's like point eight of a person. But first I'm John. 28 teacher assistants, you know, we do have our own transportation, unlike other districts that contract out their transportation. We have our own buses and drivers. As you know, our schools are in great shape. We have great operations and maintenance staff. And so overall, we're at around 240 people, all in. And that's to meet all the requirements that we get from around. So we've had some really great outcomes over the last couple of years. We were recognized by the College Board and the APU Error role as being among the best high schools in the country. And so we are very close to being at the very highest rating. We got it at two out of three indicators, but they give you the one that you don't get because you're rated, right? And so that's really nice, you know, the number of students who are taking AP classes, what I first got to Narrogance in 2016, we were right around 25 or 30% of students before they graduated took an AP class. Last year's graduating class, we were over 65% of students when they graduated took an AP class and should be right around 70 for this year. And so we're really proud of that. I mean AP classes are do you offer? I saw a list once and it looked like a very expensive list. Yeah, it's right around 14, give or take. And so it's really a terrific program. And we're really proud of our students for continuing to challenge themselves. But we've added one or two AP courses every year for the last several years. Our CTE programs are amazing. If you recall, we have plumbing. I almost just called it farming, agro science. We have the computer science, the digital media literacy, the education, and our newest one is sports medicine. That has attracted quite a bit of interest from students. Our preschool is amazing, and again, you know, one of the things that we attribute the success of the district to is the commitment on the part of the school committee in the town council to provide high quality early education. Now every research study out there supports that approach to making sure that students are reading at grade level at grade three we see a reduction in the versus students being identified in need of specialized instruction. And more students really engaging and thriving in the early grades. So that has really done a success. And you may have noticed, you know, we just won the D2 wins pass ball championship. So our athletics programs doing really well well. So, one of the things that I also wanted to highlight what I did is, there was a study that came out about two weeks ago from Harvard and rated not, and I want to be clear about this, not who has the highest scores in Rhode Island, but who has improved the most since 2019. And so, when you think the resources that we have devoted and what we have looked at in terms of how we have supported our students, near against it, both in math and in ELA has the highest rate of growth in math and ELA of any district in the state. And that's really attributable to a, the resources that we put in, and b, the innovative teaching that our teachers do. And that doesn't happen without support and resources. And so the reason I bring that up in this presentation is that it's really important to understand that in a time where every other district in the state either grew slowly or actually went down over time, Naraganset except. And why is that again? Because of the support of the community that has allowed us to do some innovative things over time. So that is math and if you're the next one, then reading is in the same place. So we have exceeded where we are, where we were in 2019, in both cases, by almost the whole grade level. And so I think that's really important to know, right? And again, that happens because we've been able to develop the right resources and the right staffing resources to kids. I think this is a really interesting, and I will make sure that we all have questions at the end, but I was doing a double take on this because I saw a percent free reduced price lunch and then we're talking about reading and math scores and I understand it but it's very interesting to see holistically where everyone stands in the state from a percent free reduced lunch and then right you know in relation to and this is really great to see really appreciate the illustration here and seeing their answer to excel to help. It means all of the plans that we worked on in the school committee side over the past couple of years, academic recovery, everything that you're putting into place is working and that's really possible to say. We thank Alex and I think that's an excellent point, right? So when you, if you were to look at their guess and just go kind of burrically up and down? So people within our band of free or reduced price lunch include North Kingston, South Kingston, Chairho, Chairman, all there kind of equivalent scores are in the negative, right? And we are very strongly in the positive. And so when you look at similar demographics, right, we are really doing quite well. So where are we going, right? And that's certainly an important piece to consider as we think about a budget and we think about the voting resources. So one of the big drivers for us is their last year. So the current freshman have to follow a new set of regulations for graduation and so that requires some shifting of our resource and able to do that. So, cars more language, more math, more credits. And so there's some things that we have been doing and planning for over time to allow that. That's part of our AAP push. We've also kind of restructured our schedules and we structured our pathways to accommodate that. Again, we continue to look at school transitions. We'll transitions are really hard for students. You're going from elementary to middle to high. So that's a real area of focus for us and making sure we have the right supports for placing students. Mental health is huge. You know, we have a great partnership with Thunder Missed Health where students can kind of access mental health resources through Thunder Missed within their school day. That's a grant. That's eventually going to go away. We are staffed well, but we have had to make some cuts in that. This, you know, for this upcoming school year, just because our resources are getting more constrained and we can't continue to offer everything we're able to offer what we had some of the COVID money from the federal government, unfortunately. So I'm not going to read this slide to you. You can take a look at this, but you know, there are lots of things where we have had, you know, accolades across the state. One really delightful thing was that we had skills USA champions in our CTE programs, what that means is that that's a statewide competition where every CTE program in the state kind of sends competitors and we had our students win in several categories and they went down to that national championships and they had to last something. So it was really exciting. So one of the things that I want you know you all to be aware of that I think is really important is that American sense is not alone in population challenges. And so when you kind of look at the chart in front of you, you know, while we're certainly close to the top in terms of the number of students who we have lost since 2019, it's really all of South County. And so all South County has had severe challenges with that South King's Towns at over 18% you know, West Laine Airgants at Jamestown Newport. So you kind of go through and those are really the top ones and so that has required some adjustments for us and we have made those adjustments along the way. As you'll see you know in a, we eliminated nine positions for the upcoming school year. We've made other adjustments along the way as we go forward. And so this is something that as a community, we need to continue to have a conversation about in terms of how are we dealing with population loss and what adjustments do we need to make going forward. So this is the enrollment production so you'll be able to see how many students are aware. And so for next year at the elementary school we do predict will be around 300 students. You know at the peer school at the middle school will be around 250 and at the high school be around 370 or 375. So overall while we do predict that we'll still be over 900 last year, it continues to be a challenge because when we are graduating classes of around 95 and taking in kindergarten classes of around 45, you're continually dropping somewhere between 30 and 50 students a year. So it's a challenge. It's not that people don't want to come to our schools. I get regular calls from people who came through A that ask, how can I send our children over here? And in some cases, we can't tuition. In other cases, there are some regulations from the Department of Education that make that difficult to do, have them do with special education and other services. And so, you know, we do take in though a number of students at our high school as soon as it's allowed, we have lots of students applied. So which gets to, you know, our incoming students? So we do anticipate that we will be somewhere around 100 students. Give or take, this is just an estimate on our part. This year we're at around 91 students, and we think we'll be somewhere around 100 next year coming into our programs. One program that I will highlight that has been really popular is our digital media where they've been doing a lot of filming. Our student actually, one of our digital media students actually does the filming and broadcast of physical comedians now. So they get to do kind of all of those things. And our computer science program is just amazing. And so we continue to get students into that. Outgoing students, you know, we think we'll be somewhere between 30 and 40. We always kind of overestimate this just a little bit, just in case. And so, you know, just like we have students who choose to come to Narragansett, sometimes we have Narragansett students who want a program that we made it. Not offer or have another reason to go to a different school. You know, often we do have students who are already enrolled in some of these charter schools that may move to Narragansett and then we are responsible for their tuition. So they may not have been in Narragansett to begin with but we then have to, as long as they are resident here and they're attending another school, and they establish residency. If they go to a charter school, we do have to pay it, unfortunately. So how does that all come together? Well, there are a few things that we really have to think about. One cost contractual obligations. So roughly 80% of the cost of the school budget is that, right? If that's most of it. And as it should be, right? Because education is a person having endeavor. And so if it wasn't the bulk of our cost, we'd be doing something wrong. Reductions in state eight, so we had roughly a $300,000 cut in state eight this year, about 13%. Why is that? Because over the last couple of years, the state has been quote-unquote holding homeless districts that had population loss since 2019. And so they were maintaining our aid at the 2020 level. The state had slowly discovered that they don't have any money. And therefore, they are passing that on to us. We have done a great job of financing our long-term capital investments. That in truth has been a commitment on the part of the town and of the school system. And so, those who spent some time in our schools, you can really see that, you know, they are clean, they are well maintained, and they're, you know, safe in respectful places for students to learn. That sends a message. And I think that's a really important message that we do. So it's a huge, you maintain that. It's an important piece. Then we have the school system goals, right? And so that's really an important piece about really child education, career and tech, and AP programs continue to invest in those. We are obligated for charter school and CTE and tuition obligations, and also just continue to grow and innovate and to try new. So as I mentioned before, we are having some changes. So we've had to make some major changes that are middle school to accommodate changes in population. So overall, we are cutting right around nine positions this year. So that is a pinch. You know, unfortunately, often they are positions that we love to keep. So for example, we love to keep. We've had an additional school psychologist at our high school, kind of coming out of COVID, to really help students. We're not going to be able to maintain that. And, yeah, at the military elementary school, we've made some adjustments for a population in the same holds true at the peer school. We were fortunate in that we had seven retirements this year. So we really are kind of having to quote, quote, fully cut to teachers that we really kind of love to keep. But the others are retirements and we've been able to adjust our positions to accommodate their needs. So our capital plan, which is a real important part of our budget, is roughly about the same cost-wise of where it was last year as a reminder. There is a town council resolution that asks the school committee to spend roughly three percent of our budget on capital improvements and to keep about 2 percent of our budget as an emergency fund. And so this is roughly 3 percent of our budget overall. And you know, some of the highlights that we have in our capital improvement this year so at the elementary school we're going to be replacing the gym at each VSEA so none of these are kind of like big flashy things right but this is why our schools are able to check because we take care of the things that you get taken care of like each VSE window replacement switch around electricity. Steve has explained to me what this is seven times and I cannot relate to you. Taking care of the painting, all of those things, those are really critical infrastructure things that if you don't take care of them, they lead to higher costs in the future. And so that is why we take care of them when they are needed. For those of you who are able to be at our capital-improving meeting, we have a 10-year plan where we look forward and we project out what our capital improvements will be over time and we budget for those accordingly. If you look at districts around us, many of them are happy to go out to bond or having together to vote our initiatives to have the money to be able to just maintain their schools. You know, because the town, the council, the school committee have worked together to make sure that our schools maintain our well-maintained and our in good shape. We don't have to go to the community to ask for that type of thing. So overall, the total budget is less than 1%. So we're at 0.99%. And so why is that? Because one, we eliminated 10 positions, or our 9 positions. Two, we were pretty conservative, and our budget is not so that we were threatening programs, but really looking outside for different grants and different ways to help support our operations. And so I do think that it's a really reasonable budget given one, the adjustment population that we've had this year into the economic conditions that are out there. So, you know, you'll know that really the difference is roughly what our state aid was got, right? You know, the give or take. And so that really was a kick for us. You know, I recognize that state aid cut is roughly about 1% of our budget. Last of our budget is restricted for salaries and those things. And there's now a lot of discretionary spending. And so when we get that state aid cut, it can really hurt. And so how does this all kind of work together? Well, our salaries only went up 1.28% because we didn't have reduction positions in the same rules, true for our benefits. That was a little bit higher overall, but because we had reduction positions, that's a little bit lower. Our purchase professional and technical services, again, that's around the rate of inflation for the other pieces. And so, as you go through these categories, we're either well below the rate of inflation or right around where it is. And so that is kind of where we want to be. Unfortunately, things get a little more expensive every year. So if we just roll forward some of the things that we're doing, it's going to be around 3 to 5 percent more costly year-to-year. So if you look at the overview of our budget, and look at this pie chart, what you're really seeing is that just about 80% of our budget is salaries and benefits. And so when we make adjustments to our staffing, we don't like to do that unless it's really called for by shifts in population. But that's really the bulk of our spending everything. It goes in support of that instructional core, that interaction of teachers to be content. And so it really only happens when we're doing everything we can for our teachers. I will take a moment and say, we have some really great teachers. And so we've spent a lot of time training them. We've put a lot of investment into making sure that we have well qualified individuals that are committed to students that are committed to learning themselves. And we're really proud of all the things that we've done. We have a great relationship with both our teachers and our support staff. And they have worked with us really closely to ensure the success of the district. And so when we do have to make staffing adjustments, it is really painful. We We do what is necessary but we also try to make sure that we are working with them collaboratively going forward. So how are we going to fund into the budget? Right and that's really the key piece here. So you know right now the committee is requesting a 2.9% increase and a lot of that is to cover that cut in state 8 and be able to maintain services where we are. And so that is, you know, 832,600, you know, 159 kind of increase over last year, 2.91%. And if you look, that is mainly because our state aid is going down. And we are fully using our full fund balance to fund both operating capital expenses. And so if you were to look at kind of a readout of our fund balance is fully committed to make sure that our ass remains reasonable of the time accounts. So then if you were to look, right, you know, just kind of repeating that you hit on 32 please, you go to the next one. So one of the things I do want to highlight for you is that when you go to, you of the Secretary of the Secretary of State at the Rhode Island Governor's office and you can look up all of the different budgets of all of the different towns. So I did that a little bit recently and you can see how much each town, what percentages of each town's budget goes to education. So we picked a few that are kind of comparable. And you look, you know, very to 61% of their town budget goes to education. South Kingston, 61%, West Italy, 53%, North Kingston, 52%, East Greenwich,% Narragans is that 40% Okay, and so again, you know part of the reason our state aid gets cut is that in the funding formula They really analyze that Narragans it the property balance in Narragans and we can easily Has the pay and so that gets back to into the funding formula and yet you know all the whole town budget only 40% is going to education and that is because we've been really responsible over time of our requests of the town right and so again while I request this slightly more than we've requested in the past this year, we're usually even around 2.3, 2.4%. The reason for that is the cut and state aid. And so, to maintain services, we really would need to be right around that 2.9%. And when you look at the disabilities around us, less money is being devoted to education and there against it, than in surrounding cuts. So with that, you know, I would just kind of make the appeal that, and I've heard many, who say the same things, that excellent schools attract daily slip in the arrogance. So if you don't have great schools, people are not going to move to your town. You know, if we have great schools, employers want to be here, partnerships emerge emerge with universities kind of all those different things. We have really innovative programs. We have lots of parents that come to us from different towns and say I cannot believe all the things that we are offering here. As I said before to have great schools you got to have a great staff to have a great staff you have to compensate them and you have to make sure that they're treating well and well-trained. And for us, we try to be really thoughtful about our allocation of resources. We are lean but not cheap. And so we try to make everything work in the best way that we're doing. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions or any questions that you all may you very much start coming on once again a very thorough presentation But become very familiar with over the last four or five years now And thank you Karen Christine Maryance School Committee members for all being here and for your additional efforts as well as each of the staff members each building department head for the tireless efforts that go into creating V budget and that goes into behind the scenes to get it to where it is today. So, really appreciate those efforts. So, I will open the floor up to either counselor Tori Alvete or counselor Rina. Well, we serve you, counselor DiMelli. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I just want to reiterate that the schools are doing an amazing job in keeping the taxes down and keeping the percentage of the budget going towards the schools. It's just an amazing thing for what you are able to do with those kids. I know I have two grandchildren in the schools and every day they come home, I'm just totally amazed at what happens in their classroom. So thank you to the teachers, thank you to all of you. I really, all I could just say is, really if I have a question, just praise. I mean, you know, change in math and being at the top and all the great things that are happening. I mean, I think you did a great job presenting this budget. I did attend the Capitol budget hearing. I was there and I was very impressed with the way people were able, the departments were able to come in and say, look, I have a plant, I have a five year plan, I have a 10 year plan. And this is what we need to do this year, so that next year we have to do this. And so things are maintained and looking ahead that things aren't gonna just all the sudden hit. And we're gonna be in a mess. And I was just so impressed with that when I sat there. So that's really all I have to say. Next one. Thank you. I'll give you a couple of extra minutes, unless you want to go to the other side of the office. Just to develop your thoughts. Was it a great presentation? I agree. I agree. I, of course, was just a 100% of what it is. Thanks, Ellen you for your presentation. A couple questions for you. Just looking at the enrollment change by district. Do you have any thoughts as to why problems is down so significantly? Charter schools. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and so they have lots of students, so their actual school age population has gone up, but they have lots of students as a district where students have left Providence to seek charters either in surrounding communities or within, within Providence. So some major major trade on their budget, quite honestly. And so because when a student goes to a charter school, you pay about 85% of the per pupil funding that you get for that. So that's been a real challenge for that. We have the role of projections. What is the percentage that we expect to lose from grading to grade 9? So it's like proud or kind of himself. Great question. So we typically lose somewhere between 4 and 9 percent. We're typically under 10 percent. There are some blips from a year to year. So for example, last year we had a group of students that were very high level basketball players that wanted to go to a different community that has very high level girls basketball program. So that's the RNA of us winning this year. And so there was a group of students that did that. So some of it is sports sometimes when we lose students. Often what we find is that while they may leave from grade eight to grade nine, we do have a lot of the students that come back. And so it may not be, will you say, may not be everything that they wanted or they may want the opportunity, if they thought maybe they could do athletics at a different level and then they come back and find that they want to kind of be at the Indian American level. And so he kind of goes back and forth. There is way more mobility of students than there has ever been particularly in Rhode It's very interesting with the opening of kind of CTE where you can virtually go to any district. Student mobility has increased quite a bit. We actually, the fact that we take in, you know, almost three times as many students as go out is very unusual. You know, most districts are even and maybe districts kind of lose more students than they got. With us taking in additional students, do we need that cost or is that not by districts? So there is a formula put out by Ride. And so each district pays essentially, you know, a percentage of their pro-pupel, right? And so most of the districts around us, even though we're a little bit high, and we are high because, if you think about it, our denominator is a little bit smaller, right? Then the district's around us, but we still have the responsibility for all the other costs. We are not paying for things like for those students transportation or some of those other associated costs. And so what they pay, A, more than covers what the cost of attendance, and B, those are seats that would otherwise be empty, right? And so these are classes that we offer anyway for ourragans and students. And so when we get 20 students into a grade level, let's say we're anticipating we'll be somewhere between 15 and 20 students until next year's grade nine, we're going to be offering geometry and whether there is 14 students or 17 students in there, we're still going to offer the cost. So the cost is the same. So actually adding those students to phrase the cost rather than enhance the cost. I guess kind of to that end. All right, marketing we can do. We do. We certainly do. So we'll make sure we'll loop you all in there. We do open houses that are very well-attended. We do marketing in kind of the local publications. Follow us on Instagram. And so there's all sorts of social media pieces that we do. We have stopped short of getting a billboard, but that might be next. I would also add a sound by, you know, a shout out to Lauren Regiera. Who's done a tremendous job at outreach and communications to the district as a whole. Since being on the school committee and then transferring over to the town council, I still get the monthly updates about what's going on in the district. The website as well as for each of our schools is easily navigable. And I, you know, I think we're, you know, the open houses. I think we're doing a tremendous job as a district at showcasing all of the opportunities that we have here and there against it. I think there's a lot of fundamental issues that we can see across the state that are definitely not unique to an air against it, lack of affordable housing, the marketability of the town as a whole might be more of what needs to be worked on rather than specific district of the schools. And so, you know, we're always open to suggestion, right? And so, certainly welcome that feedback and we'd love to have it. And one of the things we do try to do is to get good and positive vibes out there, right? When good things are happening with the schools, we're excited to have one of our students come to town council, I think, at your next meeting. And so I appreciate that bringing that forward. So we're going to continue trying to get the good news out there. Unfortunately, social media works both ways. Sometimes some ideas that misrepresent what's actually happening in the schools can widely spread. So we try to make sure that we're putting out accurate and timely information for people so they can make the right judgments about these kids One last question for me just looking at pre-K or next year looking at a classic 70 Which is pretty sharp increase for our prior years classes I know it's a boss is too pretty, three, four, so does this indicate a larger trend that we might see similar class sizes in the fall of New York? So do any indicators that in the Ash? Yeah, great question. So we do a demographic study. We contract with a group called New England School Development Council in East Act and they look at birth rates in the area and available housing and kind of do that whole demographic. So we are hopeful over the next couple of years we will be right around this same place. We initially have thought that we would have to reduce one class this year based on last year's population and then we had actually more signups than they expected and then we had men's that kind of we do that numbers for us. They are predicted for the next year so we should be right around this case. So which would be correct? Absolutely. Do we traditionally see much drop off from kindergarten through elementary? Or there are schools for elementary. We do not. And so one of the things that we notice over time, especially with our younger families, is that they tend to stay where they if there is a continuous program from pre-K through elementary school, they tend to stay where they start pre-K, right, just because it's convenient, you're in a routine, kind of all those things. So when we combine that with the research that we know around students, you know, really meeting a high quality pre-school, the school play in 2016-2017 really committed to having a continuous program pre-K, you know, all the way through. And so we do get most of the students in the area coming to us for pre-K, and if they live in there against it, it is very rarely that we have a student that attends for PK and then we'll leave for private school. Any other questions? Cancer, totally. I'm at the moment. All right, excellent. So I'm going to jump around and it's a gift and a curse to be a former school committee member, but I promise I'm going to do my best to make it more of a gift. Back on the slide 8 and 9, looking at change in math and reading achievement, can you just elaborate on, and this is going to sound ridiculous, but how achievement is measured? Sure. It's months above grade level, right, in comparison to the kind of road-I-wing baseline, right? And so if you were to look at the math one, right? So if he go back to it, right? And so what this one says, and where Narega is highlighted, is that our students, right? So 0.0 is exactly where students would be predicted to be, if that makes sense, right, across the district on average. So we are roughly, you know, six to seven months above grade level, right, in mathematics across the district. And so that's pretty significant, you know, if you think about that, because if you think about the amount of learning that a student would do, you know, between September and, you know, whatever, like the end of spring, right, you're looking at most of Australia, right? And so that's pretty significant for us. And so when you combine that with where we are in our free and reduced lunch, which is naturally something that makes learning a little bit more of a challenge for students, they don't have the right resources in place to be able to learn at the rate that we would like them to. That really shows that our growth rate has been six months of learning ahead since 2019. It's a little complicated measure, I'll be honest with you, like I had to read it about five times that I understand it. But really the the base message is kids are way ahead where they were in 2019. Excellent. That's awesome here and shocking here and real and maybe not. Just with all of the academic recovery that we've had our students have had to undergo since COVID it's it's really amazing to see the turnaround time to go from 2019 here we are now and and I just want to be clear it doesn't mean that there aren't district that that have higher scores there aren't districts that have higher scores you know without a doubt right but the very fact that we're growing in such a clip I think it's really something to be probably headed in the right direction and I also speak to the low student to faculty ratio. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And congratulations on seeing the five star preschool program. Awesome. That's one thing that I like to remind the district every time. And it needs to be celebrated as often as possible. In regards to the preschool enrollment, where are we currently standing? Are we at full capacity going into that? So if already you started a weed list for beyond where we are now. And so, again, if we get to a weed list that would necessitate having a class, we'll have that conversation with the school committee. going to going to ask actually, in case somebody were to listen in, seeing the attendance grade 135 and seeing where the highest population of our grade levels in the elementary school are, you know, everyone's coming in to pre-K 70. Does it get warranted to say, you know, will reduce here, put put it here, or we'll add an additional preschool class and its entirety. Do you have a number in your mind as to what that level is in order to add an additional or expand the preschool program? So without getting too far into the weeds, right? You know, we roughly look at, you know, we get to around around 10 students, on a wait list, 9 10 students on a wait list, that's when we're able to add a class. And so, you know, again, we're not there yet because there is some movement. People have unexpected moves, you know, those types of things, right? But I would, that would be a good problem to problem path and in order for it to also be considered full there is also an allocated amount of space for residents who come in and there is that there needs to be an allocated amount of space for what's known as early intervention which is students who are in need of enhanced services and ages 2 or 3. And so we are obligated to save some seats for early intervention students who are required, who we are required to offer preschool tips. Excellent. And then I noticed just a call back that you had mentioned that there was a reduction in the need of specialized instruction. Wonderful. It means that the programs that have been put into place are working. Are those going away at all or are those going to be staying in place even though the need is declining? So what are the services? So the services will still be there despite sometimes the best efforts in the federal government. And so what will happen, right, is part of our challenges. We are allocated, and Dr. Denton says this way more eloquently than I do, but I will try to paraphrase her, right, is essentially, you know, whether there was one student in first grade or five students in first grade that required a service, we still have to provide the teacher and provide the service. And so the cost of that service, where two students is exponentially greater than if it's five or six or seven students that needed. So it is really good news for students that if we have less students who are in need of those specialized services it means that they're growing and thriving and have developed in the appropriate rate and kind of all those pieces. Unfortunately, it's not always a cost reduction, right? Because we still have other students who may be that service and so sometimes you know on paper it may look like it even increases our costs because on a poor people basis, if it goes from five to two students on paper, it looks like it's increased, even though we have less students needing to serve us. So that's the commitment of being in the small district. And so to reiterate, and again, a shout out to all the hard work that goes into creating a budget every year. I know nobody likes to cut positions and you have reiterated. I know in past this year I'm sure is no different but I want to ask anyway. There's no concerns about the loss of services that we're providing our students with the cutting of staff and where the cuts are being made. So in many cases, you know, I will tell you that we don't have concern because they are appropriate cuts given the level of student population. So, you know, I'm not concerned, for example, of our grade one, because we have very small grade one couple them, so appropriate for them to go down to two classes. Where we do have some concern is when we get to things that are really things that are nice to have, but we can no longer be able to sustain given budget realities. So having the Astroschool Psychologist has been awesome. It's been good for kids. Unfortunately, that's something that we can sustain and, you know, pass the time for a responsible level of funding. Things like our behavior or our ACL coach, those are things that we would like to have. We think that we can absorb those into other situations, right? But certainly it will be some adjustments. You know, we're also being proactive. So for example, our physical therapist is retiring this year. So we're going to make that a contract with service, right? We think we can get a better price for that. And so, so there are lots of things I will say we'll have any effect, I think that we have a really thoughtful group of school leaders and also really responsive and thoughtful group of educators in all of our schools that will make the adjustment. Excellent. So I promise to wrap this up in like two or three more questions. Poor statements. What was I saying about that? One note that I had made, and I apologize if I missed it in one of the workshops, I'd have not read the latest course curriculum. But I know in school committees past, it had been brought to our attention about the opportunities to work with and engage with the URI campus, the May campus. Has there been any additional conversations or programs about taking advantage of what's on our doorstep? Yep. So we partner with the URI very deeply. We do a lot with them in our computer science and our agro science, digital media. We actually have a great partnership with them for teacher training. And so our education CTE works with them. And we also are a partner district. So we actually beginning next year will host student interns slash student teachers for a full year in partnership with URI. So that's all really terrific. We are in the midst of exploring doing some work at the Bay Campus so our Agro Science program is thinking hard about and designing a future CTE that is more blue economy based and so that would be very much in partnership with the URI Bay campus and so whether that is aquaculture or that is a little bit more into some of the other maritime needs of the region. So we are working with them in the process of designing that. We've applied for a grant from the Department of Education and the Governor's Workforce Board to fund that research and their design process. So we're open to have something in place. Really by next winter. Excellent. That's awesome here. And I know a lot of people here are probably excited here as well. Last one final question and then one reminder to the council afterwards but the when it comes to the cuts from the state aid and the anticipated unfortunate cuts from the federal level. What is it that we can do as a council to support the initiatives, the visions, you know, to ensure that the Narragans and students continue to have a high quality education? Can we, is there any advocacy that we can do on the District's behalf? I know you were already fighting. We would fight all of you are. I appreciate that. So there are a couple of things that I think go unseen that are really important. So one, if you were to go to our website, I believe I have given some of you copies that's already. There's about there's about an 18-page single-space list of unfunded mandates from the Rhode Island legislature of things that we're responsible for. Everything from curriculum to secondary regulations to all sorts of things that they say we have to do, that we have to fund, that community has to fund, and that ride doesn't support or the luncheon doesn't provide any financial support. So one of the things that I think is really important when you talk with our legislators, and I will say our legislators are great. They are regularly in touch with me. They, if there's an education, related bill, they do reach out. But really being thoughtful about what the requirements are that we put in place and having a realization of the fiscal impact of some of the pet projects that may be kind of going on in the legislature, I think it's really important. So that's one. I think to, you know, continuing to fight for there to be able to be housing within their against it, I know that's something that's a hot topic at the council level. You know, from the school level, we think we have great schools, right? And we think that, you know, it's a great place for families to live. I think it's hard to afford a housing certificate set. And so the work that you're doing to make those housing affordable, I think it's really critical. And I think three in campus emphasized this enough, you know, really being in alignment with the school committee about their goals, understanding things like why we need high quality preschool, understanding why we need college level classes, understanding why we need professional development, are all really critical. And so having an understanding of our school budget and alignment and support of the school committee goals I think is really critical. Excellent. And we'll do all that we can to keep up the good play with you. And the last is actually to stay just something I just want to bring up. Can you go to slide 12 please? The topic? Oh, the topic. It's in the Omen projections. This is just for the Council and the general public. Just to reiterate a point, I saw a 923, and I thought, like, my pulse yet a little bit. I was shocked to see the number of that low. It's something that we had always anticipated was coming the reality of of declining enrollment. And I know it's an issue that all districts across the state and around the country are facing. We're certainly feeling it here. We are a small town and we are definitely seeing it. It's just a reminder to the council that when looking ahead, when looking ahead over the next couple of years, you know, we really want to do all that we can to support families coming into our town and do everything that we can to try to reverse the script. But if you look at a trend line as the district has shared and the attendance records are in every meeting, you can see consistently, even well before our time here, and before COVID, that there was a slightly steady decline. And one of the major issues that this council will be addressing is the lack of affordable housing, the affordability of property in town as a whole. And it's not something that's going to be solved overnight, but it's something that we're well aware of and we're going to be workshopping with and are really eager to hear feedback from the community as well as the school committee. know We're all in this together here. I know you guys sit in your own world and you guys control that portion of the budget but you guys see it more so than any of us on the school side and we really greatly value the families who come into our district and we want to see that continue and not go the other way. So it's a pitch to the school committee members as well as anyone in town. If you have any good ideas on ways in which we can help to reverse this script, let us know. And with that being said, really appreciate you Dr. Cummings for coming for coming forth and sharing this very thorough presentation. Karen, for the very thorough work that constantly goes on behind the scenes, I'm sure any additional funds were squirreled away appropriately. And I just as a reminder, the council we are already hearing. So we do have the opportunity if there is anyone in this large repopulated room from the public who wishes to come up and speak you may do so. Is there anyone from the public who wishes to comment? Yes, please come forward. I have this, you need to be sworn in or just name and address. Thank you. Please take your name and address. Stephanie Cogwell, 104, Camden Road. Thank you. Thank you. I have a written down statement because what I'm saying is not my forte, but thank you for having me. My name is Steph Cogwell, and I'm here to make both as a parent and a student in the district and as an employee of our preschool program. I'm a teachers assistant as of this year. And I just wanted to speak to you tonight to ask that you approve of budget increase requested by Dr. Cummings because this decision directly impacts the future of our students and the strength of our schools. As we saw earlier, you know, the town provided a amount is slightly less than the minus budget provided to the schools in our surrounding areas. But yet, even with that smaller share, our teachers and staff have delivered incredible results, as you highlighted earlier. And this success is an accidental. It's the result of dedicated, talented educators and administrators who show up every day to make a difference. As a parent and someone who works directly with their youngest learners, I see that impact firsthand. Teachers are the heart of our schools. They are amazing. Our teachers are unbelievable. They provide not only education, but stability, encouragement, and connection, all of which are critical to students. I ask that we work to protect student teacher positions, that we risk losing the momentum we've worked so hard to build in the past few years. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so much. I think you did a great job for someone who does a lot of business. And couldn't agree with you more. A lot of really amazing points that you brought up. We have some amazing programs here and we'd like to see them continue and be preserved over the coming years. Does anyone have any questions? Comments? Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the public or the school committee? Actually, I'll let the public speak first, and then I'll give the school committee an opportunity. Anyone else from the public? Wish their comment. I'm usual. Anyone from the school committee and opportunity. Anyone else from the public wish to comment? I'm usual. Anyone from the school committee have any comments or final thoughts? Yes, welcome, Sharon Tammy Miggies. Hi everyone. It's not a question, it's just a really a comment. It's a thank you. So we just are very appreciative of your very thoughtful approach, your great questions, and our partnership in that communication. And so that's all I would say moving forward. It's going to be a very challenging budget season. If you have any questions, please reach out to Pete because he can provide any of those kind of detailed answers to all five of you. And then, you know, keep in touch. You know, we've got a placeholder for a joint workshop that we're happy to have. We have any questions, but please leave that up. If you have any questions, please reach out to Pete and then be in touch with us if you want to meet again as a full body or if you get your questions answered. So it's really just thank you, that communication, that partnership, we really appreciate that. Excellent. And does she need to say her name and ask for a letter? Oh, from Campanignis, 50 Lambert Street, and there are the answers. Even though I know we're all that with each other, it's what I'm thinking. It's a public hearing, that's it. That's good, thank you. appreciate that was a lot. Thank you. Anyone else from the school committee wish to comment? Excellent. Well, I thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the school committee wish to comment? Excellent. Well, I think that's probably going to conclude and is there a motion to close the hearing at 708 PM? So all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes passes for zero. Anything that concludes this evening's business. Awesome. Have a great night everyone.