Here Why, good evening, everybody.

Welcome to this meeting of the City of Somerville's City Council Committee on Legislative Matters.

I'm JT Scott, your host and chair for the evening, award two counselor, and pursuant to chapter two of the Acts of 2025.

This meeting is being conducted via remote participation, and we will be uh posting the recording to all city channels shortly after the conclusion of the meeting.

Uh as such, we will go ahead and start this meeting off with a roll call to establish a quorum uh led by our esteemed clerk Latelier.

Ms.

Roll call, Counselor Davis.

Counselor Mbaugh.

Present.

Counselor Young Campen.

Here.

Counselor Streso.

Present.

Counselor Scott.

Present.

For counselors present.

We have quorum.

Delightful.

Thank you.

We have a brief agenda tonight, which hopefully we will uh go through in good time.

And uh it starts with the approval of the minutes of the legislative matters meeting of February 17th, 2026.

Uh is there any comment on those minutes?

Seeing none, I'll go ahead and lay those uh lay those minutes on the table for approval with a single roll call vote at the conclusion of the meeting.

Then we will go on to the first substantive item that is the mayor's request 260161, requesting the acceptance of mass general laws chapter 40, section 13A to establish a special education reserve fund.

All right.

Uh this is a pretty straightforward uh pretty straightforward item attached to the item is a record of the December 15th school committee meeting uh and a copy of the general law in question, uh, which simply says we are going to establish a we are allowed by state law to establish a reserve fund uh to pay without appropriation for unanticipated or unbudgeted costs of special education and recovery high school programs, or for out-of-state out of district tuition or transportation.

So uh to that end, I guess who do we have here to uh address this from the school side.

Hi, good evening, everybody.

Uh my name is Dr.

Bretta.

I am the uh interim chief financial officer of the district.

Uh happy to talk with y'all a little bit of tonight about um the rationale behind establishing the special ed reserve fund.

Um want to start by saying I think this represents like a really awesome partnership uh between the city and the schools and just evidence of our continued collaboration in trying to support uh you know the work generally of the district, but particularly of our most needy students.

Um, what we're really trying to do here is um basically some risk management, right?

This is not a savings account.

Uh, this is uh some very prudent long-term planning that we've engaged in, knowing that special education costs can change quickly uh from year to year and even during the year because of out of district placements, because of the related transportation costs for that, and even for required services for individual students.

So this stabilization fund would help us address some of those unexpected costs related to uh providing those services without disrupting uh, you know, the general budget for that year uh and you know, potentially endangering the general education program that we have.

Excuse me.

Um similarly, it helps protect our special education students.

You know, our special education students uh are often our most needy students.

We want to make sure that we have funds set aside to serve them, to provide them with the uh education that they're legally entitled to when uh you know uh new students might enroll in the district, or we might have a better placement, a more appropriate placement for a student.

Um, I think finally it it's really designed to increase transparency and and public trust.

We don't ever want to absorb costs in a you know, unpredictable costs in a way that's hard for the public to sort of keep track of.

So I think having a dedicated fund uh sends the signal to everybody that we're planning for, you know, known both unknown and unknown financial risks.

All right, thank you for that very much, uh Director Beretta.

And uh I sounds like a great idea to me for those who are looking for more detail of the conversations that happen in committee.

Uh, they start at the end of page 11 of those minutes that are attached to the agenda item and go through about halfway down page 13.

I see a couple questions from colleagues here.

So we'll start with Councilor Streso and then go on to Mba and you encampment.

Counselor Streso, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, let's start with happy to see this and hear all about this.

Um, we'll be uh catching up, but for those who uh maybe new to this, uh and and first time hearing about this.

Um what is the process for distributing the funds and uh and also who is in charge of distributing the funds?

Uh yeah.

Yes, through the chair.

That's a great question, uh, Councilperson Streso.

Um, I think Ed Bean, if he were here tonight, would have um a little bit more uh expertise in explaining some of that.

My understanding is that uh and disbursement of these funds requires approval not only of the school committee but also of city council.