again the appropriation amount does not change but some things may have changed based off of other things that have happened between between the time the budget was submitted and the end of this calendar year the last thing we have to review is the school corporation fiscal indicators that do ad which is the distress units appeal board puts out um information or data related to every school corporation and they highlight certain Financial aspects of that school corporation determine if there is any distressed units and so this is found on the website of the duab which stands for the distressed units appeal board and they highlight every school corporation so we have to review our school corporation's fiscal indicators so there it shows you what our 2122 student fall count was and what our 2022 net assessed valuation was and the estimated population in the county from 2019.
October 1. yep the October 1 count is what we use for our numbers every year okay so this slide is from edsite and one of the reasons why it piqued my attention was because when I got to Canton I said I want to make sure that um I wanted to see where we lined up in terms of identification and make sure that uh we were identifying at an appropriate rate and the good news is that we are on average in the state of Connecticut um we're around the state is around 38 we're about 43 for identifying students with specific learning disabilities or sld dyslexia so that's pretty pretty on par and then our next two highest are other health impairments and autism and we are really at the state average I think it's about 14 and 12 alike um and again you can't really get a sense of the need when you look at this it's not the most exciting graph I mean a lot of it looks kind of Flatline it's when you have those conversations with your parents and your teachers that you really understand where the needs lie and through those conversations we found that there are real significant needs in District in terms of supporting students with Behavioral next slide please thank you term that isn't necessarily a physical location we all know that as local Boards of Education it's our responsibility to provide all students with a free and appropriate public education um and there is a why Continuum for what that can look like our goal is to start with the lre which is the least restrictive environment and that is a general education classroom with basic special education supports and maybe some related services such as speech and language occupational therapy things like that from there you can move from resource room support to self-contained support which is a more restrictive level of support in a school system to homebound all the way to the other side of the Continuum which is out placement when you start talking about out of District placement you're looking at some pretty significant costs so now as of last January so January of 22 we had 22 students out placed between January of 22 to January of 23 we added eight additional students and I'm sharing that with you because that's a big driver to the tuition and transportation lines in special education and it could really range based on the student and their particular needs some students might require a special education teacher the tuition could range anywhere from 80 000 to 145 000 depending on the school and then depending on what Transportation looks like if we're able to offer a ride share sometimes we can bring those costs down but other times we're not able to do that for a variety of reasons and you could be paying upwards of sixty five thousand dollars related Services could also add-ons so these are all things that we're thinking about and it's an opportunity to look at what we can do in program to start thinking about bringing in some more and District therapeutic supports if we were to bring those students back we could save almost eight hundred thousand dollars so that that's significant yeah yeah so it's exciting a little bit put it through that lens um if you can find drivers like yes so coming to Canton being brand new I said well eight you know eight additional students that's pretty significant it piqued my curiosity so I wanted to take a little bit of a deeper dive and look at this this slide's a little bit busy but on the bottom it breaks out um based on primary disability category where the students um fell so there there wasn't really anything that specifically told me a story there and it was kind of across the board however when I had the conversation with case managers and um our department chairs what I learned was over 83 percent of our students that were out placed were out police because they required some level of Behavioral therapeutic support so that was like aha right that's something that we need to take another look at a deeper look at to see what we can do in District to start to continue to address some of those needs if half of those students moved into the districts over the summer yes so half of the students were not even on our we didn't even know them in June right they were they identified prior to or no yes four students this was the presentation the board of Finance saw right I mean these comments yeah okay great thank you yes so these are these are the numbers and the breakdown of the eight students this is the impact to the budget I shared this last night but I think it's really important for all of you to be aware of this as well so tuition the additional eight students is an impact of about eight hundred and two thousand dollars in outside Transportation impact is 138 thousand dollars so some of this will be offset through excess cost funds that we receive back and there's also the credit card bill back which will help but but these are significant costs and if we can find ways in District to prioritize and build our programming um we can ensure more sustainability for our students over time we want to keep our kids here this is a lovely Community we care about kids and and we want them with their peers whenever possible does a parent prefer that their student is out placed and they believe that they're getting better service when they're outplaced than when we're keeping them in-house not necessarily okay it really really depends you know I've the director I've been on both sides of that I've been in situations where we're experiencing um a student that's really significantly dysregulated and we're bringing in Specialists and we're using all of our resources and we have a one-to-one and we're still struggling to get instructional control and we're talking about exploring out placement options and Karen's like no no I want them here we got to figure it out here so I've got that side of things um and and that's a testament to the fact that they trust our district and they want their child here and they believe in in the work that we do um and then there there are other instances where there are some families that think oh gosh you know my student has dyslexia or my student um you know is presenting with behaviors um that are pretty significant I'm not sure that we can do it and I maybe I want to push for an out placement so we go through the whole process and we really try to work with our families and give them where they're at and show them all the things and opportunities that we can do to support their child here first and foremost and and we work on it so oftentimes I found the collaboration it's it's not an adversarial thing it's very collaborative on both ends of the table next slide okay so they're all my big needs analysis right I went through I you talked to the people we looked at the data we looked at the numbers there are two areas that I really think that we need to keep our focus on and in thinking about this and thought about what we're doing really well in the strengths column and then our opportunities so we want to make sure that we're designing IEPs that are rigorous all going back to that instructional core we want to see growth over time and we want to see meaningful growth not Minimus growth meaningful World um so some of the things that we do really well here and that we're incredibly proud of my partnership with John we've talked a lot about how we've expanded Universal screening to make sure that we're identifying students as presenting with dyslexia early on in providing them with good sound intervention we still have training and work to do in this area this is an area we're growing in but we are absolutely on our path so we're incredibly proud of that Sabrina process we're also continuing to look at data or progress monitoring our sit teams are being revamped and enhanced to make sure that we're looking at the right kinds of data and that we're putting together actionable plans to move forward and monitor student growth and we've got structured literacy in place teachers are using foundations they're using hegarty some of our staff started using a program called Spire which is another phone image-based program for structured literacy and teachers who have received training are starting to use the support and Gillingham approach which really is best practice for reading so we're going to continue to work on that where do our opportunities lie well we want to continue revamping and enhancing our work and of our sits which are student intervention teams uh and working very closely with John to look for ways to support the behavioral needs one thing that I've done in districts that they started we have a partnership with behavioral Consulting Quantum and harwinson and we have behavioral consultants in our schools five days a week and they are working on staff training parent training and making sure that staff have all the tools and resources they need to meet our students where they're at and that has made a big difference just in the last 40 days that I've been here we've already started to see improvement with them we have a lot of work to do um so I don't want to Sugar quote that we're but we're we're making good steps uh and then you know we have an opportunity again if we can strengthen our in-district programming and expand what we have in our learning Labs uh then eventually down the road this could be a possible Revenue Source where we could offer spots to neighboring towns and they would be paying tuition to us to send their students to our therapeutic and District programming so there's lots of potential here which is super exciting my vision for this just so you're all aware transparency I would see it kind of highlighting what this looks like ideally if all goes through with the budget next year and then fine-tuning things in year two and then by year three hopefully we'd be able to offer some spots so it wouldn't be an overnight thing but it would be something that we're absolutely working toward in the future next slide please um okay so the other area that we want to really hone in and Target on are to make sure that we have good systems in place to recruit hire and retain high quality staff uh we have quite a few para educator openings right now and we have some certified special education teacher openings as well happy to share and I filled one of those special education teacher openings today in one of our learning Labs so I was like um that's a big celebration uh and then strengths here we are yes have these been open since since September since July no no Friday no the the Asian ship how long have these positions been opened for the eighties yeah currently we have eight para educator openings two special education so with the para Educators um you know people are leaving so we're filling we're filling vacancies or are going on maternity leave or fmlas some of these people will be returning hopefully from their leaves yes and then with special ed teachers um we had one resignation um um I'm an antennier teacher at Cherry Brook that we just filled a very a very very important position in our learning lab yes where many students identified with autism received their education and uh we also have um maternity leaves coming up for a couple of our special ed teachers so um so we're filling those vacancies now before they leave so we can have that transition how are they doing with the preschool search the name yes I did I made an offer though I've actually built the two special education teacher opening so I wanted is to cover a long-term leave um and uh that person has accepted and then we offered for the learning lab today a teacher with almost 30 years of experience in autism so that is very rare so is that number technically like the eight but not that tunic well once those not the two we still have we still have para openings yeah yes and that is really evolving on a day-to-day basis so that number I have to consistently stay on top of it fluctuates between five to eight eight and it has seen that there's been a bit of a pattern where we hire a person we fill it and then and then we have somebody either teaching a leave or moving on to another opportunity so it's just it's something we continue to work at So speaking of all that and thinking about it you know we want to focus as an opportunity on incentivizing and retaining high quality non-certified staff so we want to make sure that we are aligning our our contracts with area Market rates and think about what other towns next to us are offering as the hay rates for their para Educators so that they can be in aligned with the cost of living additionally we're also exploring Partnerships but community colleges and agencies as other creative ways to support those needs okay so what what else can we do to mitigate our impact here right so this is uh what I like to call the professional term is theory of action I call it a big bet though it's what we think that we're going to if we do this then this could potentially be our outcome so if we continue to build these Partnerships and continue to cultivate our talent then we'll essentially our opportunity is that we'll strengthen and expand our District programs will become sustainable we'll be able to withstand um challenges and and uh that done continuous need of complex behavioral situations that are arising and becoming more and more frequent we'll be able to withstand some of those challenges over time and then hire and retaining that's that we want to keep our teachers here we're investing in them we believe in them so we want them to to be here and to stay so those are some of our indicators um for success and things that we can do reduce outplacement costs and eventually hopefully have some additional Revenue sources once we have those strong programs here in Canton and then the last piece that I'm just going to mention is a point of reference for all of you is our 2223 excess cost projections so this projection is a better rate of 65 um and we feel pretty confident that we'll get um that amount we hope for more you can get usually up to 70 75 um but this is not always fully funded so 65 is is a conservative way to figure this and we're at 639 941 for that number and that coupled with our correct buildbacks will help to offset some of those High out of District 8 additional students that we post questions welcome questions at this time too oh I'm sorry okay well um so my question is uh you know oftentimes I'm I'm a teacher and I've taught in a few different districts and oftentimes um when we talk about um special education purposes and all that kind of stuff um we don't really talk about uh gifted and talented and so when I'm looking at your triangle like the instructional core and I'm just so I'm just wondering about those students and kind of what is happening for them and what kind of support they're getting yeah thank you I appreciate that um so that's that's a very thoughtful question and uh by law the Ben special education we are required um to identify students as gifted and talented um and then from there I'll be perfectly honest with you I haven't dealt super deep in my first 40 days is into what we are doing but sure I'm a better person to answer that I know it's only good in 48 but um but I wonder if maybe um Mr Bishop could he could help describe a little bit more yeah so we're still learning thank you um so uh our our process does begin at the the CIS level um and then there is correct and then there's an enrichment program that's available through CIS that we that we provide and then once you move into the middle school some of the opportunities that we have based on your honors level or other Pathways that's what we get to be able to ask individual homes for them and then we also look to be able to provide additional opportunities through clubs and co-curriculars and and things like that as well because of your support of the budget last year we added halftime enrichment teacher at CIS okay so for the first time we have the Serve by teacher in that role to help challenge our students thank you yeah thank you for the question all right thank you for your report that was very helpful I was delighted to hear that you're looking at uh opportunities to keep youngsters in our town and our school if possible and I do believe the majority of parents would support that they prefer their child was successful and stay across the home you probably can't answer this at this point but I assume there'll be some expenses associated with that will there be some savings and there may be some space needs and and again as you look to plan that and it would be important we know what you're talking about in terms of additional space maybe some additional personnel and a training that sort of thing and the expense of the volume at that space could be a really big issue correct I appreciate those comments and absolutely I've been working very closely with superintendent case Mr Bishop and Donna and we are already thinking and mapping out in terms of budget projections about what we think we would need um in short in terms of ensuring that we have resources to get started with this next year um and we're also exploring what our options are for space opportunities but you are absolutely right space the space is a vector that's something that we need to continue to look at and we'll be having future conversations and we will keep you up to date throughout the whole process I think I was just going to say what Joe had said too but I'll just add on like I couldn't agree more like you said the teachers are the number one driver right right so I think even if we get the space in the building and funding program is only as good as the staff absolutely hopefully we'll be creative ways to recruit because I mean having the outpaid care as sure is a challenge but I know canton's not the only if this is going across the country at all scraps but Maybe by that time they'll be surge of applicants you know the reason Barbara is celebrating today is because uh thanks to Barbara's efforts we were able to recruit the very experienced teacher that's wonderful many times we look to hire you know highly qualified teachers but with less experience right that's a fiscal movement and this time we brought in a person because we needed to really enhance what we were doing in that program that's going to have a fiscal cost to us so you'll see in our next financial report but we're going to have to put money in now for a long-term investment and I know I know most of you here agree with that the last thing so on February 7 when I present the budget you'll hear more about what Barbara's talking about everything we know who will build that position who was cited yes go ahead Barbara So Andrew Brown is the teacher that will uh be taking over at the end of February at the learning lab in Trevor and she has 29 years of experience um teaching students with autism she comes from um an out of District placement therapeutic schools so she really has a deep understanding of what's required in terms of support for students with high needs and behavioral support means and I truly believe she is the right person for the job and she came along at the right time um right yeah so we are referral that was like hitting a grand slam we wanted to come to campus she did she only applied to Canton and she was looking for a small community District um that she could be a part of and you know she said she wants to be here for you know at least the next 10 years of her career and um we're thrilled to have her other questions question how's the adjustment when working with the High School population then um it's it's been different um so I will be honest with that it's um very different personality at the high school level compared to my background as as many of you know is is in the elementary age but I haven't found challenges or barriers I found what works really well um in terms of supports and working with families does also translate to high school and uh so far they've uh the teams have all been incredibly receptive parents have been receptive um and they they appreciate the approach I guess that I'm taking to being open and working with all of them as we navigate some some complex situations so so far so good okay yeah but it is different yeah yeah [Laughter] I mentioned that you um select one teacher from each school for training so just curious to know the process of how they bring that knowledge back to the school Community to other staff yeah so I love that question thank you Felicia um so they are going through their process right now it can tell you um Liz broadbar over at Cherry Brook is so excited um and she was already we had finished a PPT and she was already um talking with members of the team's speech language Pathologists kind of organically and naturally just some different strategies that we can start thinking about in terms of programming on a more formal level we use our weekly seminar meetings to share out on new learning from training so we do that whether it's the CT saids training modules um or something like Orton Gillingham so they'll be able the teachers will be able to go and kind of summarize what they've learned in high level big takeaways and strategies as an opportunity where they can model a strategy and encourage their their colleagues to try which is great and I often find that if you find a few teachers that are really passionate about teaching a certain subject let them go off and do it and model it and then you start seeing when we're meeting and talking about progress monitoring you start seeing that student growth and it gets the buzz going and it gets greater interest from other teachers so we are at the very beginning stages of that but there seems to be at Cherry Brook at Cas the middle and the high school there is a real want and desire to keep learning and to figure out these best practices are so yeah we started with three but I plan to expand that every year and budget I budgeted that in so yeah anything else well this is an impressive presentation I I wasn't here for the uh for your predecessors but uh this instrument's enlightenment thing and informative maybe in June you can come back and tell us how the first six months have been I love it I'll have to come up with any catchy titles thank you so much thanks for being out on that you know Tuesday night thank you good times and if you'd like the regular routines I think I think tonight you can see why uh Barbara was selected um Barbara as you can see is a true a true visionary a true collaborator which is one of our three most important values here here in the Canton Public Schools but along with that she's boots on the ground so Barbara said every school visiting classroom was collaborating with teachers um it's it's hard to find a person who has all of those strikes but we found her so Barbara we're so glad you're here great thank you kudos to you for for finding her okay thank you thank you all right um okay so moving right along we go to miss division thank you all I have a quick report tonight just wanted to let you know how we continue our work with our uh developing our literacy uh program waiver uh continue to have good conversations with the state um also with um representatives from our current uh curriculum uh our teachers College unit of study and we anticipate putting in our our waiver by the due date of uh February 26th we will have an opportunity to be able to with Americans from Craig and some other districts as well on Thursday to continue to be able to refine the waiver process but we're doing we're doing well with that and and we're anticipating meeting our goals um I wanted to share with you as well um that uh great work that Kara has been doing so far but one of the things that you might not see or understand just yet is that there is some some underground work that's being done or some background work ideas on on our newsletter so we're working to be able to revamp the newsletter that we've had in the past I was able to develop an electronic and print version of that that will go out so um may see her around in different staple photos doing interviews and working with folks to be able to put information together I know Mr Daniels will have a conversation with you about an element for us to be able to have in place our vote for that is to have that out by the end of February early March to be able to go in in sequence with some of the other major initiatives that are happening for us in the district I also want to thank Felicia for joining us um as an opportunities uh and uh Community engagement uh conversation coming together so thank you for being willing to join in Johnson the big deal on this is going to be how we promote ourselves for the budget yeah so you know how we plant those seeds and uh work community in informing them and educating them so they can help make a good decision one of the things that one of the things that um that we have done in planning our our newsletter is we did look at past newsletters that we've had here in Canton we may have also looked at some possible newsletters that were coming out with Grandview as well to be able to help cast the vision of what we're looking at to uh to move ourselves forward so I think you're absolutely right telling the story of the richness of what we do and the value of continuing to be able to support that is exactly where we want to be so we'll we'll talk further about that on Friday and be happy to be able to give some more of eggs um and then finally I just wanted to be able to give you all a quick update on um our our numbers um from we we received information from NASDAQ last year on what a projection for bodies look like for us going forward we did receive an update from them that is a little bit less aggressive but still contains the same kind of information that we were seeing that we will have uh a bubble in the in the relatively near future for us I'm competent in the the work that the board has been doing so far in having the conversation around that work and we'll continue to work with some consultancies to be able to provide us with the resources and possible next steps there so so the space issue is just not um it's it's classroom certainly it's new initiatives that's right uh that we're talking about it's also uh where our where our sexual office is located and how we're we're disjointed and we don't have that kind of same synergies and and uh we don't know what the future is going to bring the State Board of Education continues to look at mandatory Pre-K full day Pre-K I think it is right um which would which would add even more issues for us so so we're at the point right now where we're trying to be proactive we don't want to be reactive to our space um so so I think what John is doing right now and the plan that we're putting together and we're going to come back to you with a proposal of how we want to move this forward and touch all those bases for the uh for the education um this Pre-K um like three and four-year-olds and then five-year-olds would be kindergarten so it's adding two grades which is part of what we're offering right now Julie and that's exactly what we want to be able to do is continue to be able to ingest those early Learners to be able to have early intervention and early supports for those kids and not just the research is very clear on that in the sport for for kids as they continue on however it would be a bit of a change in practice from what we've had so far with only having one one class and then we doubled that to two this these past two years so okay anything else shown on Space uh that's it that's it for me right now okay thank you John good report thank you Donna let's kick it off okay tonight we have to approve the CIP so Donna was nice enough to the CIP meeting the Russell Brand and then she went back to the office to revamp what we talked about so thank God [Music] the church um a couple things there's one uh section there are one one page that I just handed out that is a summary of the grants that we also shared with the order Finance last night uh so that's just kind of an FYI so you can see what the grants are what we use them tours uh the date and it's just kind of an FYI I just figured I'd get that to you since I handed it out to the board of Finance last night um foreign okay so the CIP um you can see um the top item is uh boilers which is a we put a little bit uh away each year started that last year so uh and that's just basically the cost of a boiler because of the age um underground storage tank uh building up for the removal of the underground storage tank at Cherry Brook uh plate play playground repairs um relatively okay so that fifty thousand dollars on the Underground oil storage tank that's fifty thousand dollars to an existing sinking fund to take those out right which has to be totally removed by summer uh end of summer you know 20 times so that's not the whole cost that's not the whole box now uh okay the uh Turf and track replacement 74 000 that's an annual amount that uh I believe when the Trappers put in the board of Finance asked us to set aside each year uh 26 000 uh this is for uh this is the room that uh Camden Intermediate School which are really uh in dire need so uh that is a truth quote for twenty six thousand which is a great price on that um the AC units the rooftop units that's another one of those things that because there's so many uh and because of different ages of the units um we are starting to put aside twenty five thousand dollars a year for those units and that again began last year uh security upgrades uh this this um is basically the uh film if you remember last year we had some of the buildings front entrances uh uh we added film and uh on the Windows security film so we were hoping to do all of Cherry Brook uh as well as provide some ballards and some door upgrades at the high school and then in February we will have an executive session just to talk about our specific security measures and specifically what this look like right right exactly uh floor machines um for lack of a better word these are the uh machines that clean the floors some of them are pretty big they're the like buffers and things that have not been replaced in many years and are are pretty aged uh so this does not cover all of them it just covers like warning gear and we'll have more in the outer years uh as we interview um the second flooring and hallway ramp this is in addition to the project last year last year uh you remember we um allocated uh 110 000 basically for being revamped of the tech ed uh shops and uh during that time it became apparent that a ramp I don't know if you remember your walk around the ramp leading up to that the tile needed to be replaced so uh uh that tile has been removed uh and this is the cost to actually replace it uh bathroom upgrades uh at the high school high school slash Middle School really but this represents one bathroom this is again we're hoping to do this over a series of years to upgrade the bathrooms at least in the old wing of a high school uh including the fixtures and that hasn't been done I don't know ever so they are in need of uh some new pictures and repair so that totals the 402 and 500 that um the finance committee uh came up with uh this evening who else do you want to add any color to that or um no I mean we went through it and prioritized it from the last meeting so it was pretty well vetted by the finance committee that's what Donna ran out to uh go back to the office there's a lot more we wanted to ask for but clear minimum further questions on the ciph I'm just curious on the um rooftop AAC units these are 25 000 set aside for a year so out of the 16 total how much do we have set aside we know we only started the last year or so for two yeah and the floor machines you said started last year no that one started I'm hoping to start this year and the bathrooms that was the bathrooms is new this year they were identified last year interesting bare minimum is there something that's not on here that really should be on here getting done are we gonna be okay so you what you have to understand is 402 is one of the larger requests last year you got a pretty good sum but typically as you know the Board of Education gets between 150 and 225 on a request so we went we we uh put Donna help just prioritize that's how we get to 4025 I'd be shocked if we get it but um we'll we'll go from there any other questions you'll vote on this uh at the end of the meeting tonight audit report okay the auto report uh are the Auditors actually presented to the board of Finance last night uh but we do have um audit reports available for your for I only have six um what the bottom line is it was a clean audit um there were no findings um and so everything was uh really good as they said it was a really boring uh presentation because there was no fun there were no findings so cool what we like that's a good thing why don't you why don't you leave the books and anybody who wants to take The New Daughter whoever wants one could grab it and there were no um recommendations in a management letter for the board of education so that's a lot to be proud of and I thank Donna and our business office for ensuring that ensuring that everything that we do um followed proper procedure and protocol thank you thank you so much Diane no problem any other questions for Don on the finance report of Russell okay let's go to the recommended actions and let's go to the consent agenda if the case okay thank you for the consent agenda uh the one item is the approval of the meeting minutes from the January 10 2023 regular Board of Education meeting okay can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you Russell the second delusion thank you any discussion all those in favor all right unanimous 8-0 thank you the next item is um something that Donna and I come to you a couple times a year are regarding and this is our Capital Improvement uh Project Reality so it's important that once a project is completed we move that money to another project that is yet to be completed and that's what Donna is requesting that the board do tonight move the monies under the recommended actions from one account to another okay so um so you want this right into the minutes or you just okay um Russell why don't you make this as a finance chairman you want to make this motion do you have it in Florida go ahead uh move that the Canton Board of Education we're allocate following funds within the poe Capital Improvement budget in order to eliminate residual balances between the projects eleven thousand dollars from Project number 048.00.994.59455 CIS sleep sleep roof repair fund project number 048.00.994.59463 CIS chimney repair um and then 455 dollars should be moved from Project zero four eight.00.992.59463 cbps brick and sidewalk prepares to fund the negative balance in Project number 048.00.994.59461cis correct and sidewalk repairs and then lastly 3615.75 project number zero four eight zero zero dot nine nine six now five nine four six one CHS 88 boys locker room to phone the negative balance in Project number 048.00.996.59459 cahs Ada girls collaborative thank you second please please thank you Erica um discussion I I have a question so um so Cherry Brooks brick and sidewalk was fixed and there was excess funds and it's being moved over to CIS to fix that um is that how that works yeah I mean it's we've been it's basically the CIS brick and sidewalk repairs were done but it went slightly over budget okay um basically so it was a negative balance of 455 dollars so we have to cover that somewhere where's that repair them where was that I walked that pretty frequently yeah yes yeah uh it may not have been very very recent oh um is uh okay the CIP only comes out quarterly and I think it's been there for about important what exactly was done to the locker rooms uh that was actually last year on the girls locker room uh naked Ada yeah showers uh I'm not sure if the showers are done I'm not sure exactly um I know it was different uh uh lockers and movement around so we so we did work on the boys locker room and then we sure we also did work on the girls like we went last year okay one of the things I might recommend is um another opportunity for board members to walk to schools again to see what's been completed what's not completed uh I don't think we we should do that once a year so I'll leave that to you later on the schedule thank you all right so I have a first and second uh we've heard of discussion hearing none all those in favor I opposed to say oh thank you very much thanks Russell okay and uh the final is to adopt the CIP do I have a motion for that or are we just gonna make one of them on the CIP oh it's great it's fun so what do you want to make a motion to uh that we adopted 20 23 2024 Capital Improvement plan thank you Russell so I can thanks very much any discussion any further discussion on faculty hearing none all those in favor aye close eight zero thank you on that okay good work any any uh further board member comments on anything at hand um I know we're looking to make a couple hires on the um and we have another round of interviews set up okay your anticipation in that hire would be about when I would like to come to you on February 7th okay with our recommendation great yes okay um anything on meetings that we need to know about anything special coming up we know February 1st the next boarding meeting is February 7th and then is that the is that the blood pressure but okay that's the project and and those who can make it tomorrow is the annual time meeting at seven o'clock in the uh it's a high school mission thank you okay anything else for comments nice sure the second question because you had on committee updates I'm very I didn't know we we don't you heard findings I didn't call him Erica for curriculum uh and Joe we're still working on constant policies they'll come forward at the next meeting But Eric I didn't mean to we didn't yeah thank you for that thank you for keeping me on track okay Joe did you answer uh yeah and a couple equipments I should ask our news report a Nature's Classroom go or no go or not don't know we're going to vote on that in the future so let me check on that also the third one uh because you got the budget for uh the proposed sabbatical yes can you ask that again I'm sorry can you put you guys a budget for the professionals you'll have that before the next weekend are we having an executive session a follow-up on class meetings executive session that we were going to get updates on you won't get an update until the next meeting okay yeah we're we're just completing um she hears something for the seven yeah our school calendar for 20 for next year yep are we updating that or modifying that or is that saying yes yes but we look at that in the spring we usually look at that in March okay um but to Joe's point I'm not even I haven't even looked at that yet so do you have a question about it or no I just I was looking ahead obviously because a lot of parents have asked and I interact them to the website and it's there um it was adopted in 2021 whatever advised in 2022 but I don't know if it has come does it have all the early releases and stuff someone's asking I just didn't know if it was it wouldn't have those need to approve those again yeah the last year one but I didn't see them on next year and I know how important essential those were for yeah I think you did a calendar um happy March right yeah I mean we're just second meeting in January I didn't know if we did a multiple year I just don't know how many years in advance foreign thank you Joe and Kim anything else anything else all right hearing none what would you do a journey at 902 .
just one second what we budgeted what's in the budget that's been presented in front of you is 948 767 . so we're certainly enraged even if the council who's the ultimate Authority besides that they want to drop the interest rate assumption we're within three thousand dollars that makes a question no you're interested already it's a Town's decision actually I do have a question interest rate you is it it's the rate that they're using like a growth rate or something we're not we're not collecting seven percent no they're using that as the Assumption yeah it's a race gotcha yeah yeah yeah okay so even if we go to the 6.75 um our our funding ratio actually is in a worse position then so what explains that and um I don't know I we seem to be doing better with a seven percent return if we could just get the market to cooperate you don't have to [ __ ] I mean this is a long-term assumption now if you compare us about a decade ago there's a pension plan was funded over 100 percent we were using an eight and a half percent Insurance assumption and by dropping the return assumptions from eight and a half down to seven is that reduced the funded percentage um to try and make it feel a little bit better if we look at the statement in plans or the teacher friendship plans they're funded at about 15 to 55 range so we're relatively good shake and I don't know that there's any discomfort about being you know above 70 percent funded at all right I'd like to be more funded but um yeah there's a lot of assumptions here and is the 6.75 or 7 long-term um I think it's pretty conservative is my opinion and I'm sorry one more two we know what our return this year was well it was about a minus 15 but the year before we were up over the pension plans were over 20.
uh but the the my purpose as a superintendent is to ensure that we put in place a system and a process and protocols um that once followed the board and the community will be absolutely informed on how finances are being used I love that and that's exactly where it was um or trying to speak to and you did it much more eloquently than I did um I think part of me too and um separating out like the ft and the operations um it just provides another data point and another opportunity to be transparent because we can like we just had an update from Doc and we talked about the improvements then we could reiterate that and say you know you'll notice in this line we've we've added you know five FTE because we listened to Doc and we we created full-time family liaison positions and counselor positions and um I I think you uh yeah will be impressed with uh the work that Nathan and Jeff are doing with the Staffing where before you come in and say how many staff do we have it was like you picked a number now we got it broken out by each School how many staff member are in that school where they're allocated to so I think here in the next month you're going to go wow look at this so I think that'll show you exactly whether we're overstaffed in areas or understaffeding areas you'll see that that's wonderful thank you and also I want to add if I may dog and I are open to meet one-on-one with any of the board members at any time if you want to go into more detail or ask more questions as we learn together the finance process of the district foreign I don't know how how much you want to dig into the other funds I know I've given you all this and if you have questions as you're going through any of them please reach out um I mean I could spend another two hours just talking different funds and stuff oh no thank you I would be all in I'd be ready Doug maybe we need to have everything yeah yeah laughs so yeah please feel free to reach out to the three of us on anything whether it's funding or FTE or anything else and uh if we don't have the answer right away we'll get it for you okay and I look forward to the one-on-ones if we can have any and uh please please reach out if you have any questions at all thank you um I will say from attending previous doc meetings that's where I learned a lot so if we can continue that collaboration and the information they get with what we get so we're on the same page um that would be appreciated um I think I have a couple of general questions um do we still offer free lunch I had that I saw that question on social media and I felt like a bonehead because I couldn't answer it no no we we do offer full we do lunch to everybody great we still try to get all the forms because that generates our funding yeah and and to be honest we received about 85 percent this year back which was phenomenal that what food service and buildings did to get those in because that that funnels the at-risk dollars that we receive and a year or two ago there was only like 50 percent received you know that affects funding and so we're we'll keep working on that for next school year I I think the July uh program that we had at the high school on that one Saturday that was phenomenal and we need to do maybe one or two of those and and get those reports in because that that helped us tremendously so I can't wait to see what the governor and the state does funding wise because that's gonna with our higher numbers this year that's going to affect us for years to come so sorry I have a clarifying question um around right the answer that you gave right now so is it free and reduced lunch for students that qualify is that what you mean if we have free lunch or do you mean across the board correct so the district is yes now if if some parents they want to put money in their students account for a la carte or something like that to where they can get more to eat then that that's up to each family to do that but an actual Mill We're Not Gonna tell a young student sorry you don't have money in your account you're not eating so we just covered that and is that it'll be ongoing and another thing uh Dr Lauria had me look at was the fees that our students are paying yes that was the next question our biggest one I was shocked that the high school I was expecting art fees and all these other they don't um the only fees that they're really charging is for athletics and so I put it out to Mr La crew that I wanted to know how much he receives yearly just in those fees and if it's 25 30 40 000 I would rather the district say okay we're not going to charge any fees yes we'll transfer whatever the dollar amount is that they could have raised for that for that year to offset their official fees and things like that and we'll make a transfer from the general fund into the activity fund to wipe out fees I'm not a fan I'm not a fan of fees so let's get rid of those families especially got three or four kids playing four or five different sports it's a lot of money thank you yes thank you for that because I know even last year attending continuation I remember some of the kids who because they owed fees weren't able to get their continuation or they're not able to get something because they owe certain fees so I think this is incredible as long as they keep up I think it's also a good motivation to keep up the attendance numbers and grades because if you're waiving fees and that's all they have to do for it I think that would be a great motivation for students I know I would do that if and I as a parent I make sure my kid did that because then I wouldn't have to pay any fees for them to participate so I think there's a good way to tie it back into that education realm where I'm sure there's grants out there or other funds to help support that so thank you the only fees that would be charged would be they lose a book or they break their computer or sometimes they like my Sunday that would be that would be the only fees that they said they would charge to get that money back I was good with that so that's wonderful thank you so much digging into that moving forward yeah all right any other questions um oh it died all right as as Mr ma said um if you guys can if you think of things just on them your way and then um if you guys can include me in that Finance meeting that would be awesome yeah great I know um sorry I have to read great well I think that's that's all we have for tonight thank you all for joining us um well um I do unfortunately have to move that the Board of Education can be in an executive session for the purpose of CRS 24 64024b legal advice uh litigation attorney clients may I have a second thank you Ramona vocal please was it was it uh [Laughter] um Mr Amador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Molina thank you thank you all for your great work great presentations um thank you for joining us this evening um we're going to go ahead and adjourn because we don't have any further items except our executive sessions so have a great evening our next board meeting will be Tuesday February 14th Valentine's Day sorry sorry to all of you
understand that this information that they are showing us sins on December 2021 so it's not even December 2022's information so it's a year behind so they're always a year behind on this data that they share so this is based off of 2021 end of calendar year so one thing they look at as a physical indicator is ADM obviously that's a huge Revenue Source uh for our education fund and all the other school corporations education fund and a big fluctuation of ADM could have an impact on School Corporation so this just shows what our spring and fall counts were over the past several years you can see we've been kind of stabilized for the most part at least the last three or four years we can see from this graph you know we've had that huge drop for about eight nine years and then we've just been kind of fluctuating up and down a little more steady over the last three or four years the other thing they look at is your fund balances um they want to know what kind of balancing that you have in case of emergency situations and if you're able to kind of fund and pay for things that you need to pay for on a daily basis and so you can see there um all the different funds back in 2019 they combined funds and so that's why you see some of the different colors and some of the colors no longer really existing the education fund obviously is a big fund for us that's in the orange you can see the increase there operation fund is a big fun for us as well that's yellow you can see the increase in there and then though One Fund that you might notice is the one that is in the negative uh which uh was a big negative back in 2015 16 17 18 that was a self-insurance fund you can see that no longer exists and that was that was corrected and taken care of back in 2021.
so you know last year the market we're down looked at unless the presentation last Tuesday night the portfolio was primarily invested in equities it was only about 15 to 20 percent you know bonds and more conservative Investments so it's not surprising that it had a negative return last year so one of the things that's been a concern for me in the past particularly with the teachers pension the state level I think at one point it was it was below 50 it was probably close to like 30 or 40 percent and in theory just in theory if everybody retired at the same time there would have been a massive problem with it so word funded it the board part is funded well it's yeah it's 70 right now with regard to our staff have this I believe is closed out to new staff correct since .
can you point out too as far as the federal funds so federal funds would include things like our Title 1 title two title three title four grants that we receive dollars for uh that also include any Esser funds that we perhaps have spent but typically federal funds are in the negative because those are reimbursable funds so we have to pay those monies out before we can get reimbursement from them this just shows you kind of something similar but in a line graph I've I kept track of this myself uh on this line graph you can see how our education fund has grown over time our operations fund has grown over time and our food service fund has grown over time those are the funds that I usually keep cash flow spreadsheets on uh because we want to kind of make sure that we have a better understanding of those funds and what's coming in and out of them the next thing that the do app looks at for fiscal indicators is um if there was any deficit or Surplus from year to year and so this represents all of our funds and it shows in green the revenue and it shows in blue the expenses uh and then any surplus would be in yellow and you can see that we've done well over the past several years and um controlling our revenue and expenses so that you do end up with a surplus at the end of the year this is my own graph of that I kind of I just like to look at this visual because what I've shown here is that um and this is for the education fund the basic Grant which is the dollars we get for students compared to the total revenue in that fund which is the green compared to the expenditures so what I like to do is make sure that our budget is balanced by making sure our basic Grant and expenditures are pretty similar and so then the total revenue anything above that is just extra for the most part building up those balances um for Surplus for things that may come down the road uh for uh salary improvements and those types of things because you understand that most of the money that's being spent out of that fund or for salary benefits you can see how that compares to our ADM which is that line graph in there [Music] as well so the next thing the doab looks at are your fun balances as a percent of operation expenditures and you can see out of all of our funds we have a fund balance that is 80 of our expenditures so pretty strong there the next thing they look at is your Revenue stream and the type of Revenue that you're getting in and seeing if there's any major changes in Revenue growth or decrease and so this just shows you that as far as you know kind of where our federal revenue how much of that is federal how much of it is state revenue how much is it is debt Revenue how much of it is local property tax revenue Etc so you can see how that plays out there as far as our total revenue was concerned and local tax revenue is called a flat line isn't it the next indicator doesn't apply to us but it's something that's that the doab considers important because if you're having to borrow a lot of money I guess to continue to operate I guess we would see that as a potential negative we don't have an operating referendum so we don't receive any revenue from local property tax through an operational referendum just so you know Jeff is a referendum that school corporations would put out that would fund salaries and benefits which is different than the referendum that we tried to pass for capital projects and then I like to review our SWOT analysis uh at the end of the year as we talk about our goals um so we went over this before we talked about this back even when we were looking at the referendum but you know some of our strengths of the corporation we feel like are as our assessed valuation the fact that we have debt falling off we have a good cash balances we are impacted um as much by tax cap impacts and then we do have a good student transfers from other places called side of our district some of our weaknesses uh you know uh student capacity in some of our buildings which is different than I consider that different than um programming capacity in our buildings because obviously programming is driven a lot not only by us but but by through the doe through changes and requirements that they push out double services in some of our buildings primarily our high schools the age of our buildings and just needing some facility updates and you know just really a lack of a long-range facility plan and a lack of a debt plan that would play into that facility plan especially with the debt falling off optimal times to um focus on those things and build those things out and Dr and I discussed this a little bit about the lack long-range facility plan we really worked on that and obviously we had a plan but that didn't go through so something else we will continue to look at so but the referendum would have passed I think we would have taken that off of there as far as leaving us so but I did not so we're moving forward then looking at low Opera opportunities uh again with our good assessed valuation that allows us to manage our tax rate with our tax rate being low that's an opportunity for revenues to fund things like capital projects um develop and manage some type of tax rate plan and that plan with that Capital project plan uh we can always look at continue to expand and build on our out of District transfers through some of our marketing and other things and then just you know that developing of the long-range facility plan or long-range other planning kind of goes hand in hand with the tax rate at home threats and these things can happen at any time and you know unannounced for the most part you know decline in enrollment you never know what your ADM is going to be from year to year we have another ADM count in February coming up February 1st will be the next count you could have more students you could have less students if you have less students you lose the money that you've already built your budget for so you know those were always threats that can come and go State legislation this is a big year uh for State legislation because it's a budget here so they're building out their budget we could receive funding uh increases we could not uh funding could go to other things so that that always has impacts on what laws they put out there as well impacts school districts resistance to just facility needs and upgrades um you know things that are going to improve our ability sometimes people may not really understand or or want to understand the importance of some of those things uh Tiff impacts there are some test districts that sit in our district those usually have tax impacts but I think we have three test districts maybe four now some of those housing projects and now we have four yes but you know those are things that can be good and can be can be harmful uh if not taken care of and then um other threats just you know the programming that I talked about and there's a lot of things are always mandated by us but you know sometimes we have to offer try to provide things that maybe we're not ready for or we don't have the facilities for uh and then just any unexpected growing costs pandemic was an example of you know some unexpected growing costs inflation comes and goes from time to time there are other things that can happen that you know you just don't plan for um that have an impact on on districts including us so and I'd just like to add the declining role like Dr said it is it could be well it's always a threat but fortunately the last two years MSC Walbridge county has increased uh both in the fall and the spring last year and then a more significant one this fall and then next Wednesday is our day again so February 1st and it gets really tricky when when you even get a little more specific with it like you have a grade level that has a very small amount of kids and then how do you prepare and plan for that um that type of stuff so that can go along with it as far as financial goals are we set these goals a couple years ago and I just like to review them I think they're good goals to continue to reflect on and pay attention to so one of our goals is to maintain an education fund balance as equivalent or better than three months of expenses while being able to increase pay benefits and other programming needs so I've laid out the last three years just to kind of show you what that monthly average has been the last 15 years of expenses out of the education fund what that three months average equates to and then what our end of the year fund balance actually is so we're we're doing well uh with those rules the second goal is the same except for the operations so there it lays out what our monthly averages have been in expenses out of our operation fund and what that three-month average is and then how that compares to our end of the year balance then the last goal is to increase our rain day fund to 10 of what our education operation funds budget is so our budget for 2023 out of the education operations 23 million for 23.8 million 10 of that would be 2.3 million uh and our end of our beginning of the year balance in for rainy day sits at 1.6 million so 1.7 million so we're getting closer to that role but that again that just takes some time as I continue to build that up wow 6 28 we were anticipating 30 minutes two minutes of questions or thoughts for Chris excellent presentation Chris appreciate the effort that you put into all of this so the rainy day tried will increase this year so to build that up to 2.4 basically will take a number of years to do that so I just really felt something right right which we've built you know I guess one of the positive things with the self-insurance issue is that we built that pattern into this uh with the rainy day so we have that kind of strategy strategically built in so we can at least for now I'll continue to um put some extra funding into that rainy day fund um to build it up as we go well you have to remember too that with that it was a little over three million dollars so if you add that three million dollars to this okay um look at what that would have been too but that's kind of my point too Mike that fund is not very old yeah it was used to get rid of Self insurance so it's it's a it's a great thing and then when we set that up we have parameters or whatever what right so that fund can be used for and I forget all the specifics but it just gives a resolution yeah Chris I was wondering on the operations fund what have we've done to make it I mean our monthly average just went down over the last three years so what's been done to drop those expenses I guess uh well first some of that is um again not necessarily Staffing just some adjustments in Staffing over time we've done some things to kind of uh help within our buildings to be a little bit more efficient uh like we did the lighting projects at Northfield and Southwood where we retrofit everything to led to kind of cut some of those types of costs we've done some things which uh we'll talk about another time just even like with some vendors that we use like I'm changing over our insurance to another vendor which is going to end up saving us some money in the long term um but we've also had some bonds that we've been able to work off of as well so that we don't have some of those larger Capital project expenses coming out of the operational Center student enrollment do you expect to bump up and get them like previous years in the spring yeah yeah not this yeah we looked at that right now and so it should bump up not maybe a significant as it did last year from Fall to Spring but we looked at those numbers so we are anticipating yeah a little bit of an increase foreign [Music] all right we're called to order the regular board trustees meeting for University of Wabash County future board meetings will be on the 14th and the 28th of February and also the 14th of March all of that here at the regular meeting time and the regular meeting place no rehabisions of agenda apart from the human resource additions so we'll move on into public recognition and approve some wonderful donations we have a hundred dollar donation from an anonymous donor for a Southwest wrestling three thousand dollar donation from United Airlines herself with softball and then the 250 donation from Craig and Tanya uh compass for South for Northfield FCA I moved to accept all those donations again everyone in favor of approve the donations say aye aye op close we want to thank them again can you thank the amount of stormers staff spotlight all right this is one of the favorite part of our our meeting so I would like and I know you just came in perfect timing so Mrs shinkle if you can come up here and I have not met Mrs Swig but you are hi nice to meet you so we we typically would have our introductions prior but we had the board of Finance earlier so just come on with over there so um yeah there we go so actually Dr cute has a camera right there on me now so yeah you are on Facebook live so then you can see this afterwards but um yeah it's gone up uh since you just came up here so anyway so our staff Spotlight from Shark Creek fourth grade teacher Mr debb shinkle and Mrs swick is the one that nominated her and so I'll just give you an opportunity to go ahead and share what you wrote in the application so I had nominated Mrs schenkel because my daughter was new to the district this year and she came in kind of a little reluctant with reading like she could do it but it was it was painful so we had gotten this letter in the desk and Mrs like had this the child at the end of the school year write a letter to the new student kind of what to expect and in there I said we hope you like to read and she was like I'm not going so then I was like it'll be fine but you know Mrs schenckel does a really good job doing like read-alongs with the kids and then giving them small goals so that it's achievable so it doesn't feel overwhelming so she I guess I was just told that is the top reader in her class and she's routinely found up past bedtime reading and um in there apparently as of this morning so she's doing fabulous and I thank you because that's like a lifetime skill that you can give to somebody like she can find any answer now because she's confident so thank you so much and so while you're still up here why don't you go to introduce your daughter and your other guests so we know who's here okay this is Elizabeth in fourth grade and my mom Tina McMullen thanks for coming Elizabeth and it was interesting reading what your mom wrote though because I thought it was interesting that you were staying up a little too late but it's great that you're reading you do you need your sleep too though speak that in mind so yeah yeah um Mr Martin you want to say anything while you're I just appreciate that a mother would take the time to uh to be so kind as to say what anything and share this and in the corporation doing this and and Elizabeth is there anything you're specifically liking reading right now what kind of books are you I don't know what you got there is there a series or anything that's yeah babysitter's Club it was very popular for a while yeah and and the well-deserved that's a shameful good for you it would you like to say anything yeah just thank you all right so let's Get Around the Clock what we've done over the years First Farmers Bank and Trust is kind of like our sponsor for this for some donations and so typically we would have different things but MSC of Walbridge county is starting their own um and so you'll get a 40 voucher when that opens up to buy whatever you want from it could be an MSD but obviously it could be a Sharp Creek item also too so anyway that'll be nice and we should probably give you something because that's how we should get it done okay anyway let's give her a round of applause no thank you we'll move on to school recognition yep so Mr Martin I'll let you go ahead and do your thing as far as introduction of the people that are here and what they're going to do and I guess I do need to ask do you want me to get I do have that you may connect to it okay let me go ahead and connect uh get out of here would you like for me to do a couple of other recognitions that I've just typed on sure go ahead while I'm getting that that'd be great um Sharp Creek Elementary PE teacher Gary Norman recently submitted his retirement letter effective in the end of this school year and also tonight I hope this isn't out of line but it will become official of Mrs Tina Riggle will retire from teaching at the end of this school year so this time on behalf of all Shark Creek Elementary students and staff and that's both past and present I just want to say thank you to Gary and Tina for their many many years of service for their dedication to the very serious responsibility of of inspiring and motivating kids to to dream big work hard and we're going to miss them both and I just wanted to make sure I did that tonight because I'm not sure that there's a workout for me personally but uh very happy for both of them in their next big challenges or whatever they take and then also um I just wanted to recognize the paraprofessionals we have at Sharp Creek who are doing a wonderful job this school year and we have quite a few Deb Elliott Sarah ederman Tammy Sloan Teresa Coe Melissa Metz Tricia miracle and Carrie Pugh and we're just so fortunate to have also Lisa Beaver who's our technology assistant in the building and her wisdom and knowledge is available to both students and staff but but that group like paraprofessionals including Lisa Beaver they are a big part of what we do every day and they're working with kids on a regular basis and it all is a very positive Arrangement so thank you to them and now I'm ready to give a quick video okay uh so we have with us our shark treat fourth grade teachers uh this evening and they're going to do a presentation a brief presentation on Camp Tecumseh um which is uh a trip that all of our students as fourth graders have the chance to uh the opportunity to participate in each year uh we're fortunate to have teachers and staff members and many volunteers whether that's parents or others who are willing to do their the work necessary to provide this great opportunity and learning experience that is unique and memorable and so closest to me is Mrs Kim bear you've met Mrs Deb shankelman seating and this is Kelly Ross this is our fourth grade team and I appreciate them being willing to be here share just a little bit but this is this is an example of what MSD Sharp Creek I mean it's just amazing to me the trips that our kids get to have and the opportunities for all the grade levels so this is an example of a really unique and good opportunity so ladies I'll be quiet anybody that's right now back to the wall if you want yeah I have the TV screen on the TV show all right so we're just going to tell you a little bit how we got with Kim okay so Camp Tecumseh is located outside of Brookston Indiana so it's about an hour from here excuse me and it is a YMCA Camp and they have a year-round program for students and then they have facilities that like church groups can go in um Boy Scouts Girl Scouts I mean anybody so we um are involved with the history side of it and we do what's called Pioneer Heritage so that's our group that we took this year so if you go ahead and flip it again please um how we got started is years ago when Mrs Baker was teaching fourth grade and I got the privilege to work with her we got this pamphlet and I said this looks kind of interesting and she took it and she came back she goes I think we need to go because it'll be all Hands-On for the kids not just the textbooks and so we went and the first year we went we went in December and of course all the kids it was called um Christmas in the colonies and we told the kids you got to dress really warm you know you're going to need hats and you're going to need snow suits and all this we get there and it's beautiful they don't have to wear their stuff it's sunny it's warm no rain and it was a really cool program um as I said it was Christmas so they um they Yule logs they got to shoot BB guns those kinds of things they make quilt blocks and so then the next year we got to go back and but it was way below zero when we were supposed to go so the school board said so then we got switched to May and it was like 90 degrees and mosquitoes everywhere so we switched our program to then the Pioneer Heritage and um it's a two-day one-night overnight stay so it kind of gives the kids a little bit of what's going to happen when they go to fifth and sixth grade camp um it's just close to home um one night and and then he seems to have great time so that's how we got started there and we've been very blessed to be able to go I'll tell you how many years I think I saw 1985.
I'm sorry the audio is better yeah we've called we closed it out to new staff in 2012. okay and about about how many staff do you have right just 50 is it no there's who are still eligible to enter the pension I think it's about 120 100 or so that haven't retired that are still in that plan as opposed to actually notice here a couple of hundred plus are now in the defined contribution plans which are the plans that you know new employees so in the in the past decade or so you've added a few hundred employees right the okay and that's basically everybody besides certified staff this is all non-certified staff yeah they're funding their own that's basically the teachers yeah and the administrator yeah they fund their own pension it's not an obligation yeah or an expense on the board's operating right yeah okay that's that's fine um and I know I have the numbers in last week's presentation but it's much many more employees are in our new defined contribution plan than there are in the pension plan but that doesn't mean the liability is any smaller and just to give you a sense we're budgeting 948 000 for the pension plan and about 300 seventy thousand for the defined contribution plan contributions yeah we're we're moving towards the day when that risk the theoretical risk of everyone retiring at once creates a massive problem it's just built into the budget because it's a defined contribution instead right okay thank you you're welcome okay good on that okay and then the other thing I was reminded that we forgot when we talked about the things that are coming soon on health and wellness we do have our Pinewood Derby this Saturday um you know this is this year's event we have about 20 participants this is an adult pinewood derby meaning that it's you know typically this is done by the Boy Scouts but with our adult pinewood derby the car weight allowed is much heavy it's 12 ounces it's very competitive there are 19 people aiming to displace Marlene Solano as the two-time winner of the pinewood derby and this does get a lot of attention we broadcast it on YouTube you know even though there's 20 participants there's a lot more people that watch it on YouTube there's a lot of family involvement there's a lot of competitiveness and there's a little bit of a buzz you know in the schools about doing this so there is you know a real benefit to doing these kinds of programs you know for our staff so I did want to share that and when we have the link to the live stream we'll share it with the board members as well because you could you could tune in It's One o'clock on Saturday okay so now we'll move into the agenda for tonight instructional expense um you'll see here that instructional expense is about 5.4 percent of the requested budget the budget requests for next year is 4 million 667 on 92.
I think Kim and I were talking with fourth graders they do get to experience a lot of Hands-On and some of the things they get to do is have fin fishing or they just have a stick and a string and a hook and this year we actually had quite a few of the coffee she just won a real-time fishing they do some animal trapping they do Yankee Ingenuity which is where they take ropes and wrap them around the picture right here until they came to build a bridge or a ladder um they also have a Schoolhouse with some of the pioneer ways of teaching um I think some of the kids they get to experience the dance count a little fun with that um they have hand-up candle making Mrs Ross she's looking scared that um cooking I mean Johnny cakes and biscuits clothing there's a sample of the clothing menu and here's the Shanker usually prepares all that for the kids do the outline sewing Pathfinders they take a walk and they use like the landmarks and directions to find their way to move the trail um they have Barnyard games and learn about animals and then they have cabin building too so a lot of hands-on experience is about 10 different stations for your students with the slide and then we eat and have a dinner meal there at camp we sit with eight to ten people students and adults where they eat family style and then they are given a slip of paper where they have a skit that they have to go back to the cabins and work as a cabin and tell and try to perform it they go then to the campfire that night and we sing songs We Do the Campfire um usually they ask Mrs shinkle to pick some of the chaperones and there's an adult one where did you ever go Scott okay I didn't so they might get parents involved in a skit and then one of my favorite things is we have a night hunt there's no flashlights there's not supposed to be any talking and they take us around through all over the camp and they tried to take us back to the Pioneer spot and if it's nice weather um one year we laid down on the ground all in a circle and we can look up at the constellations and they told us a story um and then we walk back but it's just that's my favorite and it wasn't even something the kids mentioned this year but that's but I don't think we did so then we go back to our cabins get ready um take showers kids stay up a little past the bedtime and then we're ready for the next day pictures um the quilting and then the other two are the Pioneer cooking where they grind they have to grind corn um like the primary suit and then um getting ready to make the biscuits looks like there's a person familiar in that one I want to take a picture she went as a student and as a parent because you've only been doing it 10 years and then our last slide is I just kind of talked to the kids and this was some of the things that they said I like the one that says I was worried that they were with their family because some of them had never been away from home overnight um but they said listen that's good and one should I didn't have to talk to my brother yeah so we just thank you for the opportunity to let fourth grade go um we've enjoyed it and hopefully continue on I've been to several of those unfortunately we're fortunately that's right the nighttime thing is the hardest thing for me but scared of the dark yeah right that's what I my one was probably close to that and I um what I really loved about I love about these kind of opportunities is that the Ingenuity some of the kids that there's a lot of Hands-On and so they don't get to experience that I mean my kids are on a farm they get to have all kinds of that but there's other kids that they don't have that and so when you see some of their brains just start working when they're tying knots or when they're trying to figure out a good way to cook a fish or things like that it just kind of you know they're too much on these when they don't get the experience outside and so I I wish we could do more well you know when it comes to those kind of things it's just quite amazing well thank you let's get them around thank you very much if you're you're welcome to stay but you also can leave if you like and Elizabeth I would tell you that you know you might be able to stay up a little later tonight I don't know what's going on yeah it's a better alarm because she thought that she needed to be online for the e-learning by nine yes so she didn't want to be late we have not made an announcement though we'll have to wait and see from what happens thank you thank you oh I appreciate that that makes you approve that true but generally yeah I had no idea what happened or what goes on there I don't know what it's too late it was fun you didn't do it and they as a kid and it was a kid no no he just missed it generated foreign so I have a few more of the scooter recognitions and staff recognitions and I'll go ahead and begin with Southwood so Southwood is proud of Duke Sparks and Caitlin rank they will be performing or they have performed actually at the Indiana High School All-State Honor Choir at the embassy theater this last Saturday qualifying for this choir is a very challenging process so we're proud of these two two students also south of Junior Senior High recently received an exemplary behavior report from the IHS double A submitted by one of the game officials the report read I was at whitco on Friday and that was actually on Friday the 13th and I want to give a huge shout out to both teams very kind and promoted sportsmanship there was always a thank you or yes sir even in a tough situation these small things do not go unnoticed keep up the good work guys from Northfield then Mr Snyder wanted to recognized Ella France and Ella Yale who advanced from the regional to state for Northfield girls definitely a huge congratulations to sophomore Ella Gale for winning an individual state championship Ella pinned all three of her opponents at the level state level on her way to the championship and I also want to recognize that it's not in the script here but William Carroll who is our new editor new editor at wall base Plain Dealer he's been putting a lot of good articles in about the great things that are happening at MSD of walrus County so we appreciate that also Northfield a couple weekends ago Visual Arts students from Northfield competed in a Scholastic art competition the national art competition Norfolk students did an outstanding job awarded 26 different Awards students who won awards include Emma bone Brianna lucer Lane Deaton elegale Emmy Haynes Anna Kissel Jason Crum Schuyler Lamson Victoria Lane Sage Martin main new career Jessica Ray Peyton Turley and Emma Warnick congratulations and good luck as your projects continue on in the competition and then also the last one I believe I have from Northfield Northfield senior Addie France auditioned last September and was accepted to the Indiana All-State honors choir just like the Southland students as sang at the embassy theater in Fort Wayne on Friday the 13th and Saturday July January 14th she joined a handful of other students from Southwood Manchester Wabash that made up a 300 plus singers from around the state they sang a number of advanced choir songs that required many hours of individual practice this was Addie's third All-State honors choir appearance we are proud of Addie and her accomplishment of making all state honors choir three years in a row I think so excellent we have those students that are doing well in Fine Arts so students are doing athletic and those students are doing academically too so we just really appreciate the principals and all the staff who work with these students and then also take the time to put it on the recognition so you guys can hear those good things that are happening so that's all I have for that tonight maybe thanks Mike for sure before we move on I've missed in my notes to make a motion to approve here donations step by step thank you any public comment on agenda items if now we'll move to approve the minutes from both the prior reorganization meeting that we had on the 10th of January and also the regular meeting that followed on the 10th we'll group those together I have a motion don't move any questions or claims tonight all in favor of the motion to prove minutes for both those meetings right here at one on dark hole stock price of the cold cyber security program that uh we purchased to help keep us out of trouble with any type of it's usually ransomware or anything like that this is the first year for that uh I think it's a section and just to keep the board updated on those kinds of things also just another school located here locally but north of us not in Wabash County had an attack of ransomware attack and so a lot of things that our tech department and Dr is doing to try to make sure that we don't have that because it will really really want to disrupt the school district so I'm going to do everything we can to make that work I move diploma all in favor aye payroll uh this is just the first payroll in January instead of nothing out of the ordinary motion for that thing on your payroll all in favor all right anything then on financial or we're skipping that tonight or no since we went over most of it the last four meetings no I don't have any programs can you grab your HR we have underemployment this evening to consider we have Samuel Cole Tana cells Brenda Carey Tiffany livesick and that's all on your employment you can see the positions there Tiffany would be head volleyball coach at Northfield for the coming year transfers we have Amanda rigney moving from English teacher at White stainbridge teacher for the bridge program Chris Whitaker transferring from classroom supervisor to that English teaching position at White's High School retirement is mentioned earlier as Tina Regal I believe we have some other sports Northville for spring coaches Choice Troy Shaffer stancox is baseball Brayden rip ripplinger baseball junior high or JV Greg Tomlinson varsity baseball and Joseph Mitchell varsity baseball Matt Burkhart varsity baseball Marianne Milam good tennis Casey Dyson JV tennis AI uh senenko I just want to take a shot at that no I'm kidding I'm sorry [Music] emphasizing their own consonant Kyle France softball Carlos Delgado softball Abby Hunter JB head softball Emily Pennington assisting JV softball Jordan Ekman also a volunteer assistant in softball Nick gallato volunteer assistant softball Gary Hunter Matt schreider and Jeff Crum all volunteer assistants in softball for track at Northfield this coming spring we have Heather Hayden head track Larry Vaughn Boris the assistant Krista Hoover also Varsity assistant Tricia Oswald Junior High head track Sarah patterman Junior High Assistant track and Michelle rice also assisting in junior high track I moved to improve the HR approval yes all right foreign coach Carrie Hamlin assistant track Chad Andrews assisting you know Jacob Marlow assisting in track Jeff Hobson doing Junior High track uh Danny basis Junior High track and Natalie younger Junior High track and then Gary Dale heading out this head goal that's Southwest to recording us through the skull emotionally okay all in favor of proving HR all right getting opposition thank you Mr Bowman if I can just mention though I know that Mr Martin already talked about Tina Regal but we do appreciate um she's had 36 years on the embassy of walrus County so a great run and we just thank her for all those many years and just wish her well but we do know that she has a few more months that she's going to work as far as weekend to continue on with their students but again that's a long time and we appreciate all those years of service of 36 years we have a couple big shoes sets of shoes that have no doubt which is foreign just a little bit uh we had our meeting last week and the one thing that Mr Hobbs he had a possible concern I think it's House Bill 1002 yes um where there are the states looking at changing the way CTE monies were distributed uh they're looking at a different way to fund CTE services but is it similar to like the educational fund that money that's what following the kid students to different Career Centers so I can create a mess or a possibly but he doesn't think it'll affect Heartland too much because we have five member schools and those positions are all taken or could be taken so you wouldn't have people coming in and say well I want but that hasn't passed yet you can give more about that no and there's also another part of that is for general education it's already being done with special education Arizona is the one state that's doing a lot of that already and I think Indiana somewhat some of the legislators are trying to tailor it after that but we'll just see what happens it's one of those things we don't know exactly what will happen but something that we're keeping an eye on other than that that's it just something to be aware of the funding may change again superintendent yeah I don't have anything um formal tonight but I did just want to mention that you know with this imminent uh possible I guess eminent impossible they'll match up together um but uh when we're talking about weather maybe we'll say that a winter storm just a reminder to everyone that we if we are canceled we will transition to an e-learning day of course this year we had the new schedule with the counting the minutes but we are continuing to have e-learning on those cancels days unless we go multiple days in a row but we'll just have to wait and see about that part but would you appreciate everybody's flexibility especially the flexibility of a two-hour delays also we know that that's a situation that for parents you have to be flexible and that causes A disruption in their lives too but we are looking at being safe with our students and with our staff and everyone involved so I just appreciate all of that flexibility and understanding that's why yeah I included just a little bit of report here first Purdue University and Indiana University of kind of Flagship universities for the states and we send stuff out for advice we try to listen to that and so I just pulled a board off from something they sent but basically just saying make sure your kids are taking some AP classes there's a big push for dual credit and that has its place so they say oh you can read it there but um uh that kind of supports our mission and making sure we offer those for kids that many of those challenges um might be a balance uh underneath that then another bill uh kind of like Mr Jessica brought up on this one pertains to education pretty strongly uh we have books for standards for math and science and social studies for every grade and for every class and the general assembly has passed the Department of Education with reducing those standards which most teachers will tell you is a good idea we have so many standards some not possible really to cover them all and amount of time we have or to at least cover them in a way that kids can actually you know understand what you're trying to get through and so by law they're going to have to reduce those 25 or 33 percent and so they've started that process but we will be getting new standards for the teachers for our classrooms like and so it's it'll just kind of it'll give us a chance to kind of revamp where to ride with that but that'll happen in the next year or two hmm and then finally that bottom I think we mentioned this before but just to remind you we're starting to look for science material actually tomorrow is the day we were supposed to go to Fort Wayne so so I'll be heading to Northfield to get an activity bus to drive our science teachers to Fort Wayne tomorrow should we not have increment weather at either our school or at the Fort Wayne Community Center yeah so we'll have to see you here whether we get traded on 69 with uh yeah so the textbook Caravan which ironically last year we did math at this time and the same day the school system had a delay but we've forged through and made it up there but this time they're offering a virtual presentation and so we will if in clinical weather comes up we will connect with those vendors virtually and then get their materials and we are looking to get print material as much as we can textbooks to have kids to promote that reading and University and Science and so the timetable right now the goal is to get all this stuff so we get to you guys by March by the March so we can have it for public preview before you officially the development let's make sure the community for it so much a few favorites to make his decision early enough early enough so I don't have to drive anymore let me kind of you know save me that trouble I think he sees one snowflake [Laughter] actually it's a cloud all right we have three items under new business this evening the first one being the approval of the 2020 or the 23-24 calendar which is subject to change yes and so you don't really want me to go through everything here and I'm not going to do that but I do want to say just like Mr Bowen said this is definitely subject to change due to current and or possible new legislation so as you know from last year the state of Indiana said that we could only count three a maximum of three asynchronous days and you could do as many synchronous as you want but you can only do eight uh three and then the doe came back and told us talk to us a little bit more about the 1003 flexibility waiver which you guys did approve the the resolution we applied for it it was approved and so we're counting minutes this year instead of actual 180 days so that was just a one-year waiver income and so we will continue to apply for that waiver but there's talk that it might be more difficult to get through that process this year so we don't know what's going to happen for sure and there has been some talk to that maybe the state would go and allow for more asynchronous days so again I will stress that we will put this out to the public upon your approval but it is something to change due to current and or possible new legislation and we did have to change the calendar last year late in the year because of that legislation and we do know that the the session will last through April would be longer about through April so there might be some changes late and so we apologize for that but again we know people are flexible this calendar is very similar to last year's calendar Christmas break is a little bit different because it's the two full weeks it's still 10 days for students and last year or this last year this was 10 days also but since Christmas falls on a Monday we go through a Friday and then we come back on a Monday and it all depends typically on when Christmas Falls and so it is very similar to last year's account so I would ask that you would approve this calendar with the caveat of the double asterisk at the top I moved to approve this schedule I know this question all in favor say hi hi one thing I did fail to let you know part of this whole discussion is that we have five number schools like Mr Driscoll talks about as being a part of the Heartland career center so we try to match those up as much as possible with the other four school districts that feed into uh Heartland career center and also Wabash Miami area program knowing that there are some tweaks here and there but it's my understanding that we are going to be fairly simple are similar we already know that North Miami had already created their own calendar for two years and so it looks almost identical Wabash and Manchester are still in conversations about that but they told me probably would look the same but they don't know for sure and they have some other different ideas too and then finally Prue typically does things more with some of the other Miami County Schools I.E the kind of call but theirs might be off a little bit but hopefully a little bit closer to match up so far second item a new business would be the recommendations before us to approve the administration moving forward with bonding process for a little summary and fall projects in 2020.
so the increase is about two point um three seven percent the largest categories of an instructional expense are here it is the special education tuition line these are for students that we cannot serve in District that we send them to a center that specializes in helping them with their specific needs and so that's about 2.2 million dollars budgeted for next year it is flat to this year um and Miss Kerry will talk about you know why that is and then another 808 000 is what we call pupil Services these are Consulting and other services that we typically pay provide us for to service the needs of our students you know mostly in District but sometimes for students that are outside of District so that's the Lion's Share about 65 percent of instructional expense and then the other categories are instructional Supply textbooks newer replacement equipment about 250 000 staff training library periodicals media and items that we need and then testing an adult at Supply so that's kind of the high level um breakdown of what instructional expense is I'll just quickly highlight a couple of lines here because you see some of these lines um you know we're holding pretty steady this is the big one tuition out placements staying steady at about 2.25 million some of the increases you'll see here eleven percent six percent and seven percent for our instructional textbook and and library items you know what we're trying to do is get this budget back to a historical levels we've been funding it pretty low the last couple of years because of the budget reductions that we've experienced and then we're trying to get new and replacement equipment up to the 125 thousand dollar level each so all totaled the request is is relatively modest at 2.37 for instructional expense I do want to start to kind of focus on special education and then I'll turn it over to miss Carrie so this this shows our historical special education cost by year going back to 2018-2019.
foreign Council and trying to figure out filling out a debt structure like we talked about in in the finance meeting a little bit in regards to um uh some relatives that we have potentially upcoming that we'd like to get in this calendar year about sport getting started I moved to the recommendation of the bonding process for coming for our projects I have a motion and a second on that item of the business called famous AI opposed okay thank you the third one is recommendation approve overnight out of state field trip for Northfield 7th and eighth grade choirs for the music in the parts of Kings Island on the 19th and 20th of May and I believe they've done that before right now I believe this is the new one we've done other things with like physics classes and things like that to Cedar Point or Kings Island yeah out of state field trip second all in favor of the motion all right proposed nothing under unfinished business but we do have something under board policy this evening the first reading of arise revised number 4085 on attendance yes so our handbooks um were changed a couple years ago as far as attendance and the actual policy needed to be changed really because of some Indiana code and doe recommendations and so again this is just the first reading so if there are questions that you have afterwards we can talk about those because we don't ask for approval of this until the end so if you look at the second page there basically we're talking changing the eight to five as far as absences per semester we do not have our handbooks and our policy match and so we need to get that matched and this is the proper way of doing it as far as the five and not the eight so those were the changes also making some note about language from truancies to unexcused there are definitely different definitions for truancy compared to unexcused also just changing some minor things as we look at it from social worker to staff because we have guidance counselors and social workers so we just group it up to staff and then we took some language out to make it just more to go along with the handbook the work permits that was still in that policy we no longer schools do not deal with work permits anymore that's Indiana code also and so we had to strike all that out and then the attendance policies we're just really asking um having the parents or actually this policy say that it's more based on what you look at as far as the handbook because we know sometimes the handbook is more specific than the actual policies so actually there's quite a bit that's been stricken from the policy um but it all goes back to your hand mode too which you approve on a yearly basis so if there are any questions now or later but not asking for approval now or just through the shows bottom line This brings it in line and correct question under attendance procedures I maybe I'm not reading right the pattern of excessive attendance develops how do you have excessive attendance is it coming too much they come on Saturday I can't keep them away that's a good point probably Charlie Charlie yeah yeah and that's what I think yeah the words written in there well we can talk about this too because ill regular I guess when we're talking about ill regular that word is can be associated with other things too and so um that needs to be changed so we don't encourage accessibility yeah actually it's accessible actually there will be some students tomorrow if we cancel that would rather be in school so I guess I beg to differ on some of this but uh all right Josh what did you say would be better on that so I think it reads the pattern of absence yeah yeah because it was written previously irregular attendance now it's excessive yeah absence that's why we do this that's why there's a first and second reading so we can make sure we catch boys [Laughter] [Music] all right all right thank you anything else that looks so regular about that so impossible for the second reason we'll try to get that correct we'll check it okay opened up the public comments on all items for this evening I haven't seen the board anything yes now and we're doing 2014.
and you could see that the percentage of our budget that goes towards special education has remained kind of steady and you know fluctuating between 24 and a half and 25 and a half percent one thing that you'll notice here in the circled boxes the number of students that have an individualized education plan has increased rather dramatically this year where uh last year we're at 577 but as of like this week we're at 619 special education students so as I was you know talking a little bit earlier about the assumptions that we used in this budget where enrollment was increasing in the special ed enrollment is increasing as well and that's driving some of the budget requests this year uh next year's projection at 6 25 you know is is uh probably light but we didn't want to overreach on the projection and you could see that the percentage of students that have an an individualized education plan has increased from about 12.6 percent we're at about 14.7 percent this year and then projecting to be at about 15 for next year and the cost per special ed student is about two two and a half times you know excuse me about two times what it is for a regular education student so we're just breaking out the math in this chart and with that I will introduce Miss Carrie who will take you through her presentation on special education and then we'll come back and wrap up the rest of the lines okay good evening so this is my first opportunity to have to actually present live to you guys for the past couple years we've been virtual on this night and so I've done it from my office so it's nice to be in person this year okay all right so I wanted to give you a couple updates as to some of the things we've been working on last year you know I came we asked and requested a transition coordinator we have a large population of students from 14 to 22 that required transition services and so we put that new position in place and it's been just a tremendous difference in the first few months that we've had her here so um the position was put into place to comply with the state mandate and what we really wanted to do was provide a very consistent oriented process and identifying the transition needs for our students so that required us to do assessments and to look at evaluations so we've updated our assessment toolkit and we've been applying those and doing conducting evaluations and determining the needs of our students which then drives the IEP goals and objectives in the area of employment post-secondary education and daily living skills if needed our transition coordinator also has already jumped on board with supporting our families there was a fall presentation with DDS and BRS that was I was over the top excited about the number of students that um came in person and were online it was one of our most highest attendance that we've had in a parent presentation in this winter will be um presenting a transition fair come March we have several different agencies that are available to our students once they graduate from here and they are now looking for those Services after the age of 22.
we also did present a financial planning evening again very well attended so that's nice to see so our transition coordinator is helping our school-based teams also work with those assessments and to plan for our students in their transition needs thank you another area that's been focused on with this new position is really growing our opportunities for students to get experience in the employment setting or in the um work setting so some of you as you can see some of the places listed here are places that our students have visited and or worked at these work sites as well as some that have been in the past that we haven't accessed so much recently but are hoping to get back on board and get our students there oh my God one of our main focuses over the past couple years has been on Executive function executive function is all the skills you see listed up there that really um support our students in being independent um and building those independent skills developmentally appropriate we always look at it from that lens what's developmentally appropriate for students to be able to be independent to and then we try to address those deficits in those areas to build those skills so again we focused on assessment we've done a lot of professional development training with our school psychologists our special ed teachers and our Support Services in looking at those assessments pulling out the information that's necessary to address the deficits look at the strengths and then to build that IEP so we can um Target those those skills we are currently seeing an increase in goals and objectives in the area of executive function which to me is one indicator that our PD work is working so and then um also at Cheshire high school and at Dodd um there is a focus on Executive function in those classes where students are receiving um support specialized support uh one other thing that we've done is we've um we've accessed the smarts curriculum it's a curriculum online that provides lessons and activities to help build executive function skills in students and the staff is using that curriculum we're focusing on right now at the high school with it and um so again it's something that the the teachers can go to as a resource pull up different lessons in those different areas of executive function and then through those ASCS those academic support periods they're able to Target those um objectives another important area that we've seen a lot of growth in in special ed is our unified academic enrichment at the Cheshire High School so this program what it does is it pairs up students with special needs and gentle-led teachers so generally teachers have expressed an interest in working with some of our most neediest students and um and utilizing the peers and the other the students at the high school we pair them together with our students with special needs and the students are then attending a class that they might not normally attend because they're in a more self-contained program having this program this at unified academic enrichment helps expose the students to more topics and more activities it's an it's a place for them to generalize much of the skills that they're learning in their self-contained programming and their intensive instruction um our hope is is that in in exposing them to these different topics that they'll walk away with something um and some additional information and some addition additional um learning um the other thing we we hope that this encourages and it is encouraging is um some relationships with students without disabilities and we're hoping that those connections with those peers will continue outside of the school so some of the current classes that are um that are are participating in this program are per art music Foods social studies technology science and theater foreign by having that academic enrichment piece we're really increasing our students time with non-disabled peers too which having those appropriate models is always a plus and helps increase our student skills lastly one of our major updates that we have is the Implement implementation of CT sets we had talked about this a little bit last year the state has mandated a um Special Education data system for all districts to utilize in that data system goes all your IEPs your 504s your service plans and we're able to do our Medicaid billing through that platform training has taken place over the summer we train 15 Ex expert trainers and then we've provided training within our school buildings for our special education teachers and our Support Services uh there is um getting on board with the program was very interesting um there were lots of things that the training didn't provide us and utilizing that program but we we hung in there and some of these things have shown a lot of improvement now and I think the staff has really started to really get using um understanding the use of the program and with all those with the improvements that have taken place it's been a much more friendlier program parents now have access through the parent portal they can access their child's IEP and documents they can also sign documents uh right there in the meeting or it can be sent out virtually to that um through the computer and they can sign it there or have a print out their paper copies um the staff also in dealing with the new program the CT said's platform they've also had to um become accustomed to using our new IEP so the format of the IEP has changed I think it's far more parrot friendly but there are some things that the staff needed to get used to using and so what we are seeing is a real increase in time when they're building those IEPs pardon problem or when the glitches we ran into is that the staff if you go in there and someone else is working on something you will what else's work so that was one of the things that they did um update uh but again we are seeing that it is taking more time but I think as you get more used to it um it goes a little quicker I think the first one I put in um for one of our outplacement students took me four hours four hours to put to put that IEP in the first one I did I'm faster now Faith I'm much faster and it was an outplacement IEP so there were a lot of goals and objectives in there Okay so students with IEPs as you we've been talking about our numbers in in the uh in our general population is growing as well as our numbers in Special Ed so this year when I went in in October cdac Paul we do always do an October cdac pull our number came out to 575.
I went in it just a couple weeks ago and we're at 6 19. so that was a little shocking um but I knew when I was hearing that we were growing and we were growing rapidly I hear from other districts too that the same thing is happening in their districts so um it took a little deeper dive into things wanted to take a look at what is what's going on here so in 2122 the prevalence of special ed and Cheshire was 13.3 percent the state average was 16.7 we've always tend to be lower than the state average um one of the things I wanted to point out right here was that since 1718 we've seen an increase of about 154 students with IEPs we've seen an increase of six special ed teachers and I have that in quotes because our transition coordinator is considered a special ed teacher she does not have a caseload so out of those 154 students will increase she's not picking up any of those students some of the other um teachers that we've hired have focused on more of our specialized programs not so much on resource support so that's just something to keep in mind when we look at we increased by six but it's not picking up the the general IEP population taking a look at Derby the prevalence I rank these in order you can see Cheshire is towards the lower end so we're not doing um so we're falling somewhere towards the low end with Avon being at 10.9 percent now orange you'll see is at 8.6 but orange only covers elementary schools so that's probably contributes to why it's only at 8.6 percent and at the very high-end region district 15 is at 18.1 percent so you can see how that all breaks up um Mary southberry that area I think Marlene you came from that area right [Music] what is the driving force why is there 42 if I did the math correctly 42 more students this year than last I'm gonna get to that you're going to get to it I will I wanted to know surprise that you didn't it's okay I wanted to get to know that too Andrew so um as you know you've seen this before these are our specialized programs I put an approximate number of how many students they are servicing at this time so you have your intensive Ed programs and just to point out too this Darcy kindergarten intensive class that was added last uh last year we at we because we saw that increase in numbers in students with intensive needs that are classified under the autism disability we needed to add that program and that is located at Darcy and IT services the kindergarten students and again we still have our transition programs at q-u our bridge to life our College to life and our community Life program and then our therapeutic Programs located it do little Dodd Cheshire high school and our Alternative High School um at humiston so here's our outer District placements it's been pretty steady around 18 um which is we're doing uh it seems to stay about that we have some kids that exit out we have some kids that go out we have some kids currently that we're in the process of going through the PPT process that may need more intense needs so we may see a rise in that number when I speak to other districts they're seeing a rise in outplacements so I did took a deeper dive and I wanted to look because this question was asked to me last year someone asked well don't we exit kids and then we refer kids and we identify kids doesn't that kind of balance out and over my years here I have seen that happen so we haven't seen a lot of growth but here's what we're seeing so we have our students oops wait a second go back uh sorry I hit the wrong button here we go so if you look here I labeled this as our students leaving so that is students that have moved out or left the district you can see there were 13.
these numbers are pulled from December of 21 to December of 22. so we had about 13 students that moved out of districts and we had about 49 students that graduated or exited from special education and then when we look over on the other column we see 66 students entered our district with IEPs and on top of that we had 51 students that were then identified through the referral process no when we look at the number of students that we saw in that increase when I look at to see well what kind of students what are we seeing what disabilities are we seeing we're seeing that increase in the area of and I keep hitting that wrong button I'm sorry guys I'm just in a rush to get this done for my colleagues we're seeing that increase growing in our LD uh LD with dyslexia that area seems to be driving um uh more so growing at a more rapid rate than our other disabilities and our um autism students with autism what grade level are we talking I looked into that through for this I really did so let's take a look okay so now I'm looking at caseload numbers and what I found was that we saw we're seeing a lot of growth at Doolittle so at Doolittle when I take out the specialized program I'm looking at about 61 students that are between our Darcy kindergarten resource room and our Doolittle resource room about 61 kids so we're averaging around 15 per case load with our Cheshire High School taking away those specialized programs we're left with about 138 students where we're averaging around 18 average caseload size one of the things I wanted to point out about the high school is next year our teachers will drop to five teaching periods as opposed to six teaching periods that they have right now so this the teachers that it was per our teacher contract and now our special education teachers will drop to those five teaching periods and then Highland School take out the specialized program we have 99 students that are being Services through the resource room we're averaging about 17 per caseload those numbers are as of the beginning of like mid-December when I started pulling those numbers so highly school is seeing the largest impact what we're seeing is that out of 70 percent of the students that we saw coming in through new referrals and through moving in with IEPs 70 of them are at the elementary level and out of that 70 of them 20 of them were knocking on Highland's door so I Highland has seen the the biggest growth and you all knew that I don't think that's surprising um when we talk about a special edu the biggest impact we're now seeing is on the resource room teacher so the resource from teachers are so they service multiple classrooms and in many cases they service multiple grades yes 20 figure for Highland is that a general uh special ed figure or is that because of the specific programs being offered at Highland um It's a combination because Highland does house the students with autism Pro more are intensive autism program there there are other disabilities in that program uh but we do have many of the students are under the autism classification and in the resource room the general resource room population so it's a combination um because yes our intensive Ed classrooms are at full capacity there's three classrooms there and they are at really above capacity I think there's a classroom of nine we typically like to keep them at eight that's part of the reason why we don't absorb kindergarten in there we leave kindergarten at Darcy so um our resource room teaches at the elementary level you know we all know what the research says about our students and providing them the appropriate Services as quickly and as early as possible so we we do provide a lot of service hours in the area of Reading Writing math executive function and behavioral support in a pull-out model and in an inclusive model um several years ago back in 2015 we saw an increase of growth in elementary students at that time as well that was around that was the the following year after full day kindergarten um came into play we didn't add any staff when we went to full day kindergarten we didn't add any staff and special ed but what we did end up having to do was we took those diagnosticians and we reassigned them and made them special ed teachers so that we could absorb the growth in the number of students we were seeing diagnosticians focused on assessing students evaluating students for initial evaluations for identification and re-evaluations so basically their responsibility was to test kids they did not necessarily have a caseload but we had to do away with that we moved them as back to Resource room teachers and we trained all our teachers to do their own assessment and evaluation and of their own students and to help with those initial referrals our specialty teachers do a lot of collaboration and communication not just with the teams that work with our students but also parents outside clinicians um the administrators the different departments so uh they pre they they provide a lot of collaboration and need a lot of collaboration time they also supervise and support our Perry Educators they provide them a lot of guidance and a lot of training and they are you know they're held accountable to meet those state and federal guidelines the other impact that we're seeing with our students that are coming in that have learning disabilities and autism speech and language is always well in many cases on our LD students but always on our students with autism part of their IEP so if we're seeing an increase in those numbers we're seeing an increase in demand for speech and language speech and language address are in language area and in the speech area obviously so they work on vocabulary comprehension syntax phonological disorders and pragmatics um speech they can work articulation and fluence disfluency we're speech and language impacts our students you'll see it a lot of times in the reading and in the writing you'll see it in their ability to comprehend all their core subjects um because of those language deficits following directions and those communication skills with that increase we're also seeing a more need for board-certified Behavior Analysis so our board our bcbas which is you'll hear me refer to them as do a lot of collaboration again with staff parents and outside providers they support instructional strategies as well as behavioral strategies they conduct evaluations they identify students behavioral needs they write and develop various plans for the staff to follow and Implement to support those students they do a lot of data collection they support not only students that have an IEP but they also support a lot of our students who are not identified they might be in the srbi process or they might be just dysregulated maybe having a period of time that they're dysregulated because of outside outside factors things that are going on in the home things that are going on in the community but they do assist us in that they conduct a lot of trainings and they support our intensive programs at darcyhighland Dodd Cheshire high school and our trend transition programs so taking you know whenever we see these a growth and special ed and we start to see these needs pop up we always look within first what can we do with the resources we have how can I reallocate do I can I shift something is there maybe an increase in one area and maybe there's a decrease somewhere else and I can shift so one of the things we're looking within to do is to take our Darcy kindergarten resource from teacher she Services the kindergarten students that are basically Doolittle students that are housed at Darcy and at Doolittle so she splits her time and she supports those students with IEPs through the resource room we're looking to move her to or that position to do little by doing that not only can she support the kindergarten students at Darcy and Doolittle but she can now pick up some of that overflow at Doolittle because we saw those numbers are increasingly growing as well so now we would have four special ed teachers to support our resource room students there we're also looking at a revision of our Q U college Life program in looking at the needs of our students we've done a lot in District our students are coming out really well prepared and so when we look at our numbers of students that require a q u College Life program our numbers are quite small and we're looking at restructuring the program to meet the needs of the students as they currently are presenting and what we're finding is is that the current program provides not only they take one course on campus excuse me they take a college 101 course with a special ed teacher they get some consult time with the special ed teacher and they also get some employment experiences so their placed at a site and then gain some employment um skills what we're finding is a lot of our students that um are eligible for this program already have those employment skills because they already have a part-time job they're already working somewhere else and we're addressing some of those needs within our ASCS at the high school with our new transition coordinator and how the impact of that we're providing those that instruction and those strategies and those skills we're addressing them while they're still in high school so we're looking at um taking the program and adjusting it to meet the needs of what our students are currently needing and what they currently need is there they are looking for uh obviously to take a college credit course they're looking to have experiences on the campus they need to understand or learn how to access their supports and to have someone a mentor and someone that they can go to that they can get some additional support from so what we're finding is is we don't need a full-time special ed teacher on that Q U campus there's what we can do is revise it we don't provide an employment opportunity because that's already taken care of when they're in high school in that situation but we're going to provide them with that executive function skills that they really need in order to be successful in that college environment we're going to provide them with the mentorship that they need to feel comfortable navigating the campus and the Student Activities that they're eligible to go to and also accessing their uh their supports and their accommodations and how to access and those resources on the campus so we're in the process of having conversations with qu as we begin to look at that and develop it and see um what what we all agree on will meet the needs of our students so in doing that we no longer need a full-time special ed teacher on the qu campus we're able to take that position and we're able to relocate it at Cheshire High School so going back to what I said earlier where our special ed teachers at the high school are dropping down to five periods that was opening up a lot of empty spots where we were not staffed so by relocating our q u teacher especially teacher to the high school we're able to fill that spots one other thing we are doing is that we really want to make sure we might want to look to see how efficient we're using our resources are we getting the most bang for our buck are we are we meeting our needs of our students and providing the best programming that we can provide with the resources we have so we've contracted with a consultant and she's come in and she's been conducting um interviews with our administrators with our resource room teachers she's met with the department heads she's met with the supervisors and myself she's conducting a survey observations she's going in to observe we're focusing at the elementary level right now and she is also well there is a survey that our teachers are filling out she's Gathering that information and she will be coming back to us with a report with recommendations and commendations what's working what's not working and what will come out of that will then be an action plan as to how are we going to move forward with some of these recommendations so um we're really looking forward to that we're really excited about it because uh we think it's it's a great time right now to really be looking at what we're doing and how we're utilizing our resources across the district okay in summary we're see we're seeing an increase in special ed students most of those students that are coming in are falling under ldld dyslexia and autism the services that are most impacted by that are special ed teachers speech and language Pathologists and our behaviorist or bcba we're really looking we looked within to reallocate some of our resources to see if we could fill some of those needs and we're conducting the program study so at this time in as you are aware in our budget we're requesting one full-time special ed teacher to address the growth at Highland School a halftime speech and language pathologist at Highland School that would be located at Highland and then 1.4 full-time bcba support that would be District y .
any questions yes just a point of clarification for these do little Darcy program you said that there's an average of 15 per case load that's with three sped teachers currently servicing those that's with the three so it doesn't come out even like that up in our upper grades they're uh they're at they have 17 and 18 students and in the lower grades you know because we typically not a lot of students come in with IEPs but over time we identify them right and then for I guess the other item that I would assume adds to the increase because we have a system in place now that is able to identify dyslexia early on I would project that you'll see more cases coming through in the next few years once we you know are able to well we've been um we've been very embedded in identifying our students with dyslexia we have a lot of great tools to do that and we've done a lot of training on that so I I think the Inc I think in my opinion part of the reason we're seeing this increase now and we'll continue to see it is the outcome of covid so we have students that um were disengaged during remote learning then you had the following year where you had students that may or may not been back in but we still had the effects of teachers being out students being out with illness or students choosing to be remote and then we had the following year where everybody was in there was no option to do remote but now you have this period of time you have this these gaps that have been created so it it's interesting when you test and you evaluate and you look at those gaps it's not clear it's not is it's not so clear to say yes that's dyslexia or no that's a result of covet and not being engaged in learning in in the instruction but there's a need there so typically students do fall in in qualify under that LD classification based on the state guidelines you also have um will go through the srbi process but sometimes we don't get to complete the srbi process because um because parents are concerned we find that we may find that um there's there's a need to go to testing right away and we end up doing so with your you know are we going to see more students identified as dyslexic we could because we do get better at our at our Craft um and tools get better I think also um you know I worry about tier one in our srbi process the goal is not to put students in special education right so I'm looking at the 500 the after you deduct yeah the graduates and those entering math graduates those entering in in those referred into you still have 502 students that are still sitting in special ed what are we doing prior to that to stop that 502 you know that's just a broad question out there yeah well you know we have an srbi process in place and actually we've been focusing on revisiting it and taking a look at the process across the elementary schools and across the the secondary schools um looking to identify if there are additional tools we can add to our toolbox additional strategies that we could add um you know through the srbi process I think there's always room for improvement so we continue to not just sit back and continue to do things as always but I know Marlene and myself and Kevin Hanlon we've been visiting different srbi meetings and looking at the process and uh you know hoping that you know by will be coming out with um some changes or some revamps revisions your diplomacy with CT says though because I you know what it's like four hours is just not yeah my secretary kept coming to the door are you done with it are you done with it no go ahead Andrew so you mentioned that you know alas is a result of coven so is the answer just IEPs for the students I mean is it I'm sure you've thought a lot about this I mean isn't is there some sort of other mechanism for these students excuse the ignorance on that topic because I'm that's okay special educator I just that's okay so I'm going to refer you back to I believe Marlene was the one who did the presentation when we talked about acceleration so we we suspected we knew that we would have students re-entering in our schools after Co um you know once we were back in full time that we're going to have gaps that had um may not have been engaged in the instruction we knew that was going to happen and so much of our professional development and our work was towards acceleration so we were going to continue to move forward and at the same time as we identify those gaps that students had we're going to work with we were going to work with those students in small groups and it address those gaps within the classroom and that's happening that's what people are doing but um I you know like I said sometimes um you know the referrals come in whether it's from a parent or a doctor um the concerns rise to the level that they're they feel that they need that at this point in time we need to go to testing and so then once we take a look at the testing you know the guidelines the LD guidelines have changed in the past um just last year they made some changes in it and so we go through the process we follow those guidelines as close as possible and um and and the guidance that the state provides us and that walks you through whether the child uh is eligible or not based on you know your testing results your observations your parent reports there's a lot of information that's pulled in for that how long have you been doing this this is my 35th year okay so I mean just so yeah you know obviously this is a completely changed world like so how do you feel about it how do you feel like are we giving you the tools that you need to do this uh I have been extremely happy in Cheshire uh I'm very proud of Cheshire uh it just gave me goosebumps um you know I I'm fortunate that I get to talk to other directors and I get to meet other people across the state and we talk about some of the struggles that we're dealing with but um but I think that um I I feel well supported by the board and in the programming that we have and the amazing staff that we have and my two supervisors I have to shout out to them too because they're really uh they deal with the day-to-day all the time and uh having come from that I know what that can be like um but but yes I I things have changed a lot you know I piloted inclusion back in Massachusetts when it was just coming out and when I think about you know Marie's work at the high school with the unified art program what she's doing there is really pointing out how what I saw when I did inclusion with my students with learning disabilities they did pick up things on the on the on skirting on the edges of some of these topics that they never would have been exposed to so it's really nice thanks thank you yes so I'm going to just kind of tag team on what these guys are and I want to Echo what Sam says I had always thought that the goal is to get is not to not to over identify yeah um yeah it's not too necessarily grow their special program for the sake of growing the special program but to meet needs but also assess me you know treat the kids fairly hey I'm digging myself a hole here but let me so um can I just get some acronyms you said sure yes I'm sorry I'm a Layman here s srbi what is scientifically research based intervention okay all right and did I I that's all I heard I didn't hear s-r-e-i did I no okay then there was B sorry okay um so with regard to dyslexia I had always thought that that was um an or or almost inorganic condition you know it's it's a it's a disorder in the processing of language and but now you're saying because of covid these kids are coming in have developed dyslexia and and how much is this so you touched on learning loss acceleration so hopefully we will start to see some of these dyslexia numbers decline as the kids catch up are these kids never going to catch up all right so let's like take a step back a little bit I think what we're seeing an increase in learning disabilities students identified under learning disabilities um some of that is kind of coming out of covid um because that's where we're seeing the numbers grow um dyslexia also comes under the category of learning disabilities but like you were saying when we're talking about dyslexia there are so there are other areas that have deficits that indicate a student is a student with dyslexia versus a student with a learning disability okay so you can have a reading with disability but you may not necessarily be dyslexic your disability could be in comprehension reading comprehension you may not have difficulty decoding words but it's more in the comprehension the language the syntax the vocabulary if you if you have dyslexia typically dyslexics our students have difficulty in decoding um words sounding them out blending um applying those phonemic rules when when identifying words so so what I'm seeing or what we're seeing is an increase in students with learning disabilities okay um all right it's like that moment that one little oh my God it's out there I know it is all right so um I may come back I need to think about it okay okay yes Tony Rob and uh first of all thank you so much for detailed presentation hang on I got a question I see you I I look first but we're here to go no no I see your next Tim um sorry so thank you for the detail I just want to acknowledge the work beauty team are doing before I extend my question so I want to thank thanking your team um this is not an easy area um but Cheshire at least since I've been on the board of education I'm sure long before I've been on the board education has always been known for my pain outstanding special education services Focus I personally know of many families I know over the years that specifically move the Cheshire because this program um and you know the kids have thrived and I know that you know as much as we want kids to transition out of special education not all can't which is disheartening but I'm confidently leave the system that the tools needs to see an adult life so I commend you and your team for trying to uh continue assess and look at getting our kids to move into or outside of the program when they're ready one of the things that comes to mind is the behavioral side of things yeah I think soon we're going to get uh School safe climate statistics the board gets reports on just general stats on um things happening at the schools I don't have any solid numbers to back what I'm about to say other than I do different parents from time to time um to me it seems like this year probably last year um perception is there have been increased incidents of Behavioral situations be on the school buses or in the classroom or a playground for various reasons um it seems to me it'd be seem to be happening in earlier grades as early as kindergarten and uh you know some parents that reach out to me and of course we can never get into the details um are very supportive of the behavioral program but also are very concerned about kids that have extreme needs being adequately serviced or supported in our schools so so the question I have is the behavior analyst the 1.4 we've asked for would that help not just help identify and course correct but also keep helping situations when students are identified throughout your certain issues to be able to intervene and put I mean it it seems to me that again I can't quantify it but that seems to be growing yeah I wonder if the 1.4 is enough in my opinion so um yes it's true we are seeing an increase in Behavior increase of students coming in dysregulated at very young ages um the the bcba's due often help with our students that are dysregulated so they'll help support the team coming up with behavior plans collecting any data trying to identify what the triggers are supporting the teacher with some additional strategies so absolutely the bcba is a big help with that and it's am I quite to say it's uh that's also supporting Outreach to the student's home as well as I believe there's also discussions of parents and Guardians absolutely it's just collaboration it just seems like it's a very yep training sometimes we've had um you know parents come in and participate in some training um on how to uh put some of these strategies in place at home we've bcbas have also provided homes with visual schedules and some of the same strategies that we util in some of the same tools that we use in school to carry them over into the home so you have that consistency absolutely thank you Tim did you have a question yeah yeah I'm sure thank you Tony um yeah I've got a few different questions that are kind of they go back to the beginning of the presentation I'm hoping to keep her ultimately quick um you had mentioned at one point that your special ed students go to have uh go to the General Ed uh this was right before you mentioned seds oh our UniFi unified okay the Unified and you said that what I heard you say was uh you hope they walk away with something so I wonder do they walk away with something and I'm thinking you said specifically what we find is that even our students with some intensive disabilities some severe disabilities you'd be surprised at what they pick up so if they're in a class and in that classroom they're talking about a topic that that student may not have been exposed to if they were in their self-contained classroom say it's a science teacher or something and there's talking about a topic um it's surprising at what they do pick up on and then what they do hold on to and then they'll bring up or talk about at a later Point um so providing that exposure for them gives them new experiences it's educationally stimulating yeah you know for their their learning um expands vocabulary and that setting because it's a mix of of their peers and students with disabilities you have those role models and it's a place for them to kind of generalize all those skills that we're working on in the self-contained classroom to a more natural environment okay thank you um I'm glad you asked that because I could I could clarify it a little better yeah no I'm pretty sure those are your words I hope they're getting something right yeah okay um when you're discussing saids you mentioned Medicaid billing yes and one of the things that goes through my mind is I see the news and like a funding problem for you know say like a retirement home this is Medicare it might include Medicaid they talk about you know they pay 17 cents on the dollar or so in terms of Medicaid billing like what is could you give a brief background because I didn't know we were billing Medicaid for yeah and are we getting fully reimbursed for whatever we're doing and that I'm sure Vinnie's going to help me with but a few years ago it became mandatory that our support service providers so your speech your OT your PT they're providing therapy yeah so we're able to build that under Medicaid so what happens is our staffing uh was trained in how to use the CT sets program to document their services for students who qualify under Medicaid and so then those services are then um that that is then submitted to the state and we are reimbursed for some of those services I don't know what the percentage is no the exact percentage is not a big video but I'm just I just want to get it conceptually we have as an example we have an OT on the books we're paying them a 60 000 salary 30 000 in benefits ninety thousand dollars a year we're getting reimbursed 20 of that from Medicaid or something like that it's actually based on their services they provide to that individual student of [Music] payment that Medicaid pays for that service first year we started about Medicaid building in 1819 we received about 14 000 total reimbursement and 2122 was about 20 000.
so it has been increasing for us but it's a pure reimbursement that we've never got before reason the state required us to do medicate the building because as Cheshire and money support the community we don't have a high population of parents that are eligible for Medicaid service okay agreement mistake requires us to do it now because the state is getting a pretty good cut that we're getting so absolutely okay so you're confident that your team does a reasonably good job of you know documenting the hours the services that are provided and getting it through to you you do the billing okay it's a work of progress I'm sure actually makes it better for our staff to be able to log and track and enable us it is a tremendous amount of work that we had to add on to accommodate this larger school districts Hartford New Haven Bridgeport they were doing Medicaid billing through here if they have entire staffs that are just dedicated to the Medicaid building because they're reverse is substantially higher okay thank you um let me see oh as a general question and I just step out for a couple minutes I apologize about that so if you already answered the question I could watch it on video but you said uh 66 kids moved into town within IEP this year that was between December of 21 and December 22.
okay do you have a do you have an idea Tony mentioned that people come here specifically for the special ed program but do you do you have any is is that a primary driver or um is there is there anything you've said I don't know um I think you know just driving through town and seeing all of the the new um developments that are going up I think you know that's contributed to the growth and our I think that's contributed to the growth in our population as the elementary supervisor uh previously before becoming the director I often did get phone calls from out of state and people across the state looking to move and asking about our programming but they were calling me specifically to ask about the special ed programming so I guess my question it's probably not for you it might be for the superintendent or event how many in that same time period December 21 to December 22.
how many do you happen to know off top of your head about how many kids moved to the district the total number from December to December no okay um is that a high percentage the 66. I'm just wondering if it's if 15 huh if 15 of the population is yeah if you consider it wasn't 600 kids which would be you know 15 percent of 660 you know six six seven ten percent is 66 kids yeah so it wasn't that many kids that moved in that's a disproportionate number okay okay agreed that number looked high to me but when we talked about it that that was accurate okay so that's really disproportionately high yeah our I asked our um Scott Conway who does all our data and he pulls from our state um you know as the data is inputted into the and sent into the state he's able to access that and pull out the numbers for me okay I was curious about the trend so it sounds to me like people for me it seems likely that people are moving here for the special ed program some people say that if the percentage is higher than the regular population I've been here for a lot of you know educational programming sure we recognize that um oh you had mentioned that there's a drop uh starting next year I'm thinking uh to five teaching periods and you were saying it it seemed to me you're saying it in a way that that affects your teachers so five teaching periods for me a classroom teacher at the high school is straightforward they go from six to five there's you know 20 to 30 kids who don't have a teacher there what does it mean in terms of special ed so what we're what we're seeing is if if our special ed teachers just like our general teachers drop to five period teaching periods then given the number of students that we have we are not going to have enough teaching periods to address the needs of our students with special needs okay and that's why there was a need to add another another resource room teacher at the high school in preparation for that happening next year okay got it um and my last question uh with regard to Quinnipiac yes so the way I'm seeing this framed and tell me where I'm wrong in this is your students I think they get to 22 years old it could be younger that they're doing it they're going to Quinnipiac and this is steering them toward College so I know and the reason just so you know where I'm coming from the reason is I I just wanna I it probably could work for some kids but for the kids it might not be the right thing and I'm just wondering if you're steering them in that direction so I mean our hope you know whatever student decides if a student with a disability wants to go to college a lot of our students with disabilities go to college sure sure um what the research was Finding several years ago was that when you looked at the number of students who went on to a four-year college program and the number of students that graduated it was disproportionate to students with disabilities meeting that graduation and students without disabilities meeting that graduation so far more students with learning disabilities dropped out of college or weren't successful in attaining that four-year degree then a student without disabilities and so that's when you know these programs came came into play so why is it that they're not able to make it through the four years and they're dropping out much of the skill set that they were lacking false in those executive function skills planning managing their time if you think about a kid or a student who goes from the high school where they're really scheduled up you know they go to class they're there every day from time in the morning to time in the afternoon and then if they have sports or something or a job afterwards they're very much scheduled when you go off to college now you're in charge of scheduling you may have classes on some days and some days you don't then what do you do with your time and then there's the social aspect managing the social aspect so these were skills that are we were finding that our students with learning disabilities didn't attain by the time they were ready to graduate from high school they had all the academic skills to go on to college but they weren't being successful so that's when these programs like qu ite came about and were put into place so I guess I have a I have a my question or my concern is even before it gets to that point are kids being does every kid who come into every student who comes in to talk to you and they say I'm graduating high school and are you saying well let's go join let's go look at the Quinnipiac program because I'm just thinking you know somebody doesn't want to read they want to go become a plumber sure do they get steered or Quinnipiac um no no we listen to our students there's lots of assessment that happens so you know through our guidance through our school counselors there's lots of opportunities for those types of discussions to take place there's lots of different assessments that students go through they even starting at a very young age I think it's sixth grade we start looking at gee what would you like to be when you grow up kind of so and they start to go through those conversations and and those exercises to start to explore and then it gets more in depth and more detailed in middle school and then of course when they get up to high school there's lots of Assessments that they can go through and take through the school counselor through um that they're able to kind of narrow things down so that's where the conversation comes and are you one who wants to are you looking at a career or um that needs requires education furthering your education are you looking to go into the military are you looking to go right into the workforce so that's a piece of how that gets teased out okay with our students with disabilities we I'm going to go back to what our transition coordinator does and and our teachers is there are tools that we can use to assess students even further look even deeper to help them identify their strengths and to identify the areas that are not so strong for them so it may not be a good idea to go into this career because you're not like you may think you want to be a um you know some you want you know accountant but your math skills are just not a strength for you so maybe being an accountant is not the area you want to go in so we help them to work that out part of doing that is giving them those job Explorations you want to you know you want you think you want to work in this area let's see if we can find you an opportunity to go and experience some of that um so there's there's just a lot to it and then you know when we're looking at the college Life program we're looking for students who a want to go to college want to earn a four-year degree they are have are pretty self-sufficient they don't require a pair educator to support them because that's not going to happen in college and um and uh you know they and and then so we but they may be lacking some of those executive function skills they may need more support with that they may need some a little more support understanding their disability and how it impacts them and that's what we're going to provide them for them in that semester of q u college life while they're in the environment versus in the high school environment yeah yeah okay thank you any other questions yes if I could um all right so since we're on qu how many students are in this program right now with all of qu because we have two programs at que all of them and what are you talking about and then also well which one are you talking about streamlining the college the college Life program right now we have three students in that three students okay and if those numbers been going up or down or consistentary last year I think we graduated seven from that program okay um if that program were eliminated would there be opportunities within the high school for them to gain those both the courses through our own career and college um you know Career Training and also the SK the uh executive so I just want to clarify we're not looking to eliminate it revising it we're revising it we're looking at we're looking at what the students needs are we're still going to address the student needs but we're we won't we don't need as many resources to do that okay because of all the work that we're doing in the high school addressing those post-secondary and employment skills okay um um and then going to I'm just going to kind of go all over the place here unified academic enrichment um when those kid when the special education students are in the class the high school classroom do they have AIDS with them also or if they require an aid yes okay all righty and then um what is the overall cost of the seds program and I know it's mandated it's nothing right now it's it's per it's does not there's no cost to the district except it's at four hours per student that's taking time yes when do you when do you find that time you know teachers teachers choose when they are going to work on sets um so sometimes they may use their planning period to work on it they may um use um they may do some work at home they have access to it from home if they need to get on it so they really choose when they want to access that obviously when they're teaching in class they're not on it you can choose to answer this or not but has seds made the program in life better for everybody I think it will it's a process yeah you know you it's a learning curve the whole entire spread department has had to learn this new IEP has had to learn this new program and as we worked with it and discovered things that were difficult or were not doing what it should do we've been working you know the state has been providing um lots of um time where they're listening to what our concerns are and then going in and you know addressing some of those glitches that we've run into a program that we work with that we purchased IEP direct so the the reason that Robin was explaining it took four hours about 14 000 per year savings because we paid for IEP direct now the state provides that free yeah yeah I think it's hard for free I mean yeah taxpayer expense yeah I think I think part of the reason why it was taking longer was because those glitches but they cleaned they have cleaned up a lot of them and it's going at a much faster rate let me ask my supervisors how long is it taking you to do an IEP at this point okay so what she's saying about finalizing the IEP is this two supervisors are alerted by the special I teach you when the IEP is ready to be reviewed so then they go in they review it on the platform and check to make sure that the dates are accurate that there's no mistakes in it and then finalize it so it now becomes a finalized document and it gets pushed out to the parent okay okay so the implication is that the teachers who are filling it out are taking significantly less time than the four hours yeah something maybe a third or a quarter or something like okay got it thank you and then last but not this may be for Ben what is I have asked this couple years what is the cost we have the cost of uh per pupil of special ed students what's the cost per pupil of General Ed do we have that that's all students that's all students so you're talking about netting it out correct yeah I think last year we were at 13.