Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Monday, April 13th, 2026 budget and capital improvement program workshop.

Was this meeting properly noticed?

Yes, it was.

Perfect.

Um just so the audience knows, we currently have two counselors on Zoom, Councilor Teamy and Councillor Peralt.

Uh, Counselor Hicks is absent.

Um there any adjustments to the agenda not seeing any.

Then we'll jump right in with our first budget workshop and we'll ask uh Superintendent Pentanziano to come up to present the school department budget.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You should have a copy of uh the presentation before you tonight.

Excellent.

So tonight you're gonna hear from uh myself.

You're also here from uh Don Blanchard, Director of Finance and Human Resources, and you'll hear from uh board chair and vice chair.

So good evening, members of the town council and the Brunswick community.

Last November we I sat in this chamber as we began discussing the parameters for the upcoming budget season.

In January, I presented a core budget drivers to our school board, initiating a process that centered on a difficult but necessary mandate that I heard back in November, maintaining our commitment to excellent educational programming while significantly reducing our footprint.

The budget before you tonight is the result of that exhaustive scrutiny.

It has been reviewed multiple times, first by administrative team numerous occasions, and then subsequently six or seven times we've presented to the school board.

So I don't take these recommendations that you're gonna hear tonight lightly.

It is in fact an impact of these decisions that will be felt by every student and employee for years to come.

Next slide, Larry.

So you'll see here our Brunswick believes Brunswick schools are welcoming inclusive and safe learning communities where all students are held to high expectations as they develop skills necessary to thrive in a diverse and ever changing world.

This budget is undeniably austere.

The balance to balance the necessity of rising operational costs and fiscal responsibility to our taxpayers.

The budget drivers you see before you are some of some of what I discussed at uh back in January.

So you'll see wages and benefits, unforeseen special education costs.

So I'll pause there and talk about unforeseen special education costs.

As a reminder, special education, individual education plan and programming is not something that we can say we don't want to do.

It's federal and state law.

So when we talk about unforeseen special education costs as part of our budget, it's not a want, it's a have to.

So to be very clear, these are so this unforeseen cost was approximately a million dollars that came after last year's budget cycle.

Meaning that we had services that we have to provide federally and state required services that we had to provide.

We uh the school board in the district had made a commitment on the next uh uh box there of replacement buses.

We had gotten into the history uh over the years that I've been here, where we decided not to purchase buses, and we've seen the implications of that.

So our plan to continue to replace to to purchase two replacement buses is part of this budget cycle.

As a reminder to the community and the s and the town council, we get reimbursed the next year uh part of our general purpose aid.

We can talk about that more.

Facilities and projects and safety and continued maintenance is a driver.

Region 10 food and food service assessment is a driver, and then contracted services.

So uh when we were when I was developing this budget with my administrative team, the initial budget had already included a total reduction of $155,000.

So when I proposed my initial budget to the school board, we'd had a reduction of $955,000, including supplies, materials, uh equipment, projects, facilities, projects, and whatnot.

In addition to that, or included in that was a reduction of seven full-time equivalent positions.

However, now the budget before you next slide, please.

However, in the next however, the budget before you now and officially approved by the school board goes further, totaling one million nine hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars in overall reductions for a total of eight FTE positions on the bottom.

Adult education and marry meeting assessment was reduced because that came in less.

We had initially budgeted for 15%.

Fortunately for us, it came at 8.72.

We gave some, I'm giving some examples of projects removed.

The 1967 library stacks at the junior high.

We we need to replace those, but we're we're going to keep those around for a little bit more.

The field house project, field house bathroom project.

If you've used that field house bath field house bathroom, you know that's outdated and no longer uh ADA accessible and not appropriate.

Projects and facilities of maintenance, we reduce things.

We had a ground struck in our budget.

We ended up doing some additional work on it this year, so we're gonna stretch that out much like anyone else would do in their home budget, and then supplies and professional services.

The school board has officially approved an FY27 budget in the amount of sixty-one million one hundred and eighty-eight thousand one hundred twenty-seven.

This represents a 6.03 increase over the current year.

I want to highlight that through this rigor rigorous cost saving, cost management and resulting tax pick tax impact has been held to 2.89%.