🏫 January 4th School Committee Agenda Preview

The Reading School Committee (SC) of Reading Public Schools (RPS) is meeting on Thursday January 4, 2024. The meeting is being held at 7pm at the Reading Memorial High School (RMHS) library and will be broadcast by RCTV and will be accessible via zoom. Links to the agenda and packet as well as links to watch are listed below.

Contents

Focus on Excellence Votes to be Taken Rise Adjustments FY23/24 Update on Budget FY25 Proposed Budget How to Watch this Meeting

The packet is 146 pages long with the bulk being the presentation on FY23/24 staff additions and the full proposed FY25 budget.

The major things to know from the rest of my post, based on FY25 budget data and other packet info:

RISE tuition for 5 half days proposed to go up by $1075, RISE tuition for 5 full days proposed to go up by $200
Full day Kindergarten (FDK) tuition proposed to be reduced from $2650 to $1450
Only 4.1 FTEs proposed to be added in FY25 budget (compared to 31.7 FTEs added during FY23/FY24)
Clerical staff and Para-educator staff have proposed salary increases ranging from 10% to 22% as compared to FY23 salaries; most professional staff (teachers, nurses etc. ) range from 3.17% to 6.14%)

Focus on Excellence

The SC meeting will open with a recognition of the RMHS State Champion Field Hockey team. These recognitions typically include brief speeches and comments as well as group photos with the SC.

Votes to be Taken

There will be the usual votes to approve consent agenda, approve prior meeting minutes, and approve donations. In addition, a vote is planned on approving a proposed RISE tuition adjustment. It does not appear that there will be a public vote following the executive session at the end of the meeting (which is being held regarding collective bargaining discussions associated with the paraeducators union).

Rise Adjustments

CHANGES IN PROGRAMMING HOURS, TUITION INCREASES) (p. 19-20 of packet)

As indicated in p. 19-20 of the packet (which I have included as an image below), the SC is being asked to approve changes in the hours and days of certain RISE programs, as well as tuition increases for certain RISE programs. The rationale for the hours and days changes relates to student needs. The rationale for the tuition increases appears to be to “equalize” the hourly program cost to around $300 per hour for all RISE programs. However, this results in a significant proposed tuition increase of $1075 for the 5-half day program (the 5 full day program is proposed to increase by $200).

FY23/24 Update on Budget

Additions (added staff) (p. 21-49 of packet)

The SC will hear a presentation on the functions and impacts of many of the FY23 and FY24 budget additions. As the listing on p. 23 of the packet shows (I have included that image below), this included 31.7 new full time equivalent (FTE) staff, broken down as:

8.4 FTEs added to support teaching and learning
7.6 FTEs added to support special education
13 FTEs added to support student services
2.7 FTEs added to support multi-lingual learners.

The presentation provides detailed descriptions of these roles and how they benefit students/RPS, as does the FY24 budget (p. 64-69 of packet), and the details are not part of this post.

FY25 Proposed Budget

(full budget p. 50-128 of packet; budget presentation p. 129-146 of packet)

The big story in my review of this budget, as noted above is the significant proposed and/or actual salary increases for the clerical and paraeducator bargaining units (with the latter one still not finalized in to contracts)s. These raises (compared to FY23) range from 10-22%, as discussed further below). There are not that many new FTE additions to the budget. The other big story in this budget review is a proposed reduction in the full day kindergarten tuition, from $2550 to $1450.

The FY25 budget is 4.27% higher than the FY24 budget, which reflects the 4.00% approved in fall 2023 by FINCOM plus the addition of $150k in “community priority” funding towards the cost of full day kindergarten.

The only FTEs to be added include:

Increasing the elementary speech language pathologist (SLP) from 0.4 FTE to 1.0 FTE (funded via existing budget funds)
Continuing addition of a 0.5 FTE teacher for Joshua Eaton LEAD program (funded via existing budget funds)
Continuing addition of a Coolidge special education teacher of 1.0 FTE (new budget funds, previously funded via ESSER grant)
Continuing addition of two RMHS guidance counselors for 2.0 FTE (new budget funds, previously funded via ESSER grant)

There are some additions with no expected budget impact, such as expansion of the RMHS innovation pathways and dual enrollment programs. RPS to date has received approximately $250k in grants towards these programs so far and have applied for another 10 grants, with the potential of $800k more in funding.

Some brief summaries of the proposed salary increases that appear to make up the bulk of the changes in the budget:

Clerical salaries up 8.2% in Administrative cost center (not part of collective bargaining unit), up 15.12% in regular day, up 10.34% in special education, up 15.07% in athletics dept, down 2.12% in health services
Paraeducator/substitute salaries: proposed to be up 22.06% in regular day and up 20.78% in special education – but note that these contracts are still being negotiated
Professional salaries (teachers, nurses, counselors, etc.) – up 3.17% in regular day, up 6.14% in special education, up 2.75% in athletics (note that coach salaries for athletics are up 49.17%), up 6.5% in health services, up 3.25% in tech dept, up 3.93% in admin cost center, up 6.37% in extra curricular