October 23, 2024
Shout Outs:
- A huge THANK YOU to Laura Valli, MS English Teacher. Laura led a professional learning meeting with her colleagues. She shared her experience of using a student work protocol, the data collected and her plan to continue the process.
- I received an email from a community member to SHOUT OUT Stacy Lemay, Penn Brook Teacher and extended day Coordinator. Stacy works very hard to support ALL students with strong family communication and partnering with them to create successful programming.
- The Georgetown Education Association Executive Board is working collaboratively with administration to help solve individual technology issues and pilot an initiative that will allow teachers with specific skills (google classroom, audio/video, chromebooks, etc) to assist their colleagues. I appreciate the process of working together and problem solving!
Strategic Planning:
As of today, we have received 218 survey responses! We are planning to extend the time frame of survey completion from October 31, 2024 through November 15, 2024. In addition we are planning and preparing for individual interviews and group focus groups. If you requested either, you will receive information about it in the next couple of weeks. If you have not completed the survey I encourage you to do so. The more voices we capture the deeper our data will be resulting in a richer 5 year plan.
Here is the QR code if you want to complete it on your mobile device and the link if you are like me and prefer to complete the survey on your computer!
Budget:
Last Wednesday, October 16, 2024, the Select Board and School Committee held a joint special meeting to begin the conversation of a potential Proposition 2 ½ override for the May 5, 2025 Town Meeting. In attendance were members of the community, Finance Committee, the Chief of Fire and the Chief of Police. There were lively discussions on creating a plan to make a decision about adding this to the Warrant. The result of the meeting was that the Select Board will continue discussing the topic, creating a time frame for all Municipal Department Heads to submit budgets and for each of us to develop 3 budgets.
The first budget would be what is known as “Level Funded”. This would result in the exact same budget totals for 2026 as was in 2025. A “Level Service” budget is the second budget being developed. This would be the total from 2025 plus additional costs to maintain the exact same staffing and services into 2026. The increase will be based on salary/wages and inflation to products and services. Both of these budgets, if passed, would be catastrophic for all municipal departments. The third budget request includes the 2025 totals with additional financial resources to modernize, maintain and improve municipal services town wide. To fund this budget the townspeople would need to approve a Proposition 2 ½ override in the spring.
I will continue to keep you updated on the budget process as it unfolds.
-Margo!