News&Notes from the Superintendent

"If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude." — Maya Angelou

It was so nice to see the sun again these last few days! Punxsutawney Phil has predicted an early spring this year – we will see!

Please find below this week’s updates & events happening in our District ~

The second meeting of the Finance Subcommittee is scheduled for Thursday, February 8th at 5:30 pm where the focus will be on the operational funding needs for the Elementary, Secondary, Student Services, Maintenance, Technology, and Curriculum & Professional Development areas of the FY25 Budget Proposal. The District continues to meet internally with Administration, Department Heads, and other Teacher Leaders in preparation for the presentation to our school community in March.

At last week’s School Committee meeting, I shared some additional highlights of the Governor’s FY25 Budget Proposal that was presented state-wide on January 24, 2024. Chapter 70 Funding, which is the amount the state believes it costs to educate a student annually, was increased by an increment of $30 per pupil. For FY25, 74% of districts are slated to receive less than a 3% increase in Chapter 70 in the Governor's Budget. For SBRSD, this amounts to an approximate increase of less than $20,000 over last year. The Regional Transportation Reimbursement rate is proposed to be 80% of last year’s costs, which is down 10% from the prior year. It is important to note, that as part of the state’s incentive package encouraging District’s to regionalize, a 100% reimbursement rate was promised, but has yet to come to fruition. I also discussed the Rural Aid Survey that was due on February 1, 2024, and completed, and shared that for FY23 the District received $101k and in FY24 we are expecting $254k which is our share of $15m that was allocated to Rural Aid Funding for this fiscal year. Tonight, our association analysts reported that the January state revenue continues to fall below the “revised” benchmark by $263 million, and again advises us to be conservative in our spending and planning.

The Superintendent’s Student Advisory Councils are meeting this week! We are talking about the budget process and gathering ideas or needs identified by students as well as how these concepts might be incorporated into the FY25 Budget Proposal. So far there have been discussions about additional courses they are interested in, the addition of sports teams or clubs, improvements to our Secondary Library space, the possibility of updates to our playgrounds, and “big ideas” around improvements to the campus that will require community involvement and the need to see what the public’s interest for these types of projects may be!

The Core Team is actively refining the proposed programming and planning for the upcoming piloting experiences. The Design Team will meet in March, and the Community Team will meet in early April to help with this next phase as well as to form subcommittees to move the pilot initiatives forward. At the end of the month, the Core Team will travel to Austin, Texas for the in-person Convening to finalize the preparations prior to incorporating the other teams into the next phases!

More information about this incredible Initiative can be found by clicking on the link below!

Interested in learning more about our Early College program? Learn more through our website!

Please feel free to reach out with questions or concerns as I welcome the opportunity to hear from you.

Best,

~ Dr. Beth Regulbuto, Superintendent of Schools