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Thank you very much. Thank you. That will uh possibly bring our meeting to a close. Uh is there a meeting or is there a motion to adjourn our meeting tonight? So moved. Thank you, Miss Humphre. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Dr. Robersonson. All those in favor of adjourning our meeting tonight say I. I. I.
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Any opposed? And we are adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Don't forget to stay for signatures.
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Okay, it's uh it's uh 7:00. We'd ask everyone now to please take their seats. We'd like to uh get the meeting underway. Uh this is a unique situation. This is the first time there's been a joint meeting of the Bel mayor and council and the planning board. It's been advertised as a special meeting because under the open public meetings act uh we have to whenever there's a quorum we have to conduct it as though it were a regular meeting. The reality is it's more of a presentation. It's a and uh we want everyone to see this basically for the first time. Most of the planning board and almost everyone on council they haven't seen this. This is the first time they're going to see it. So if you will note if you had look took an agenda you'll see that it's bifurcated the question period.
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to salute the flag please pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the repblic for stand one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all for the general public here and um at home uh this evening we will uh do our budget presentation after our budget presentation we'll have some uh uh presentations uh uh for some uh students and some great achievements and after that will come back and uh go over our consent agenda at this time Mr alfano can you please call the role I I will Mr capano uh Mrs Abu here Mr capano here Mrs Fredo Mr garca here Mr nadw here uh I know Dr pontano is here oh a little you tricked me uh Dr Pano uh Mr rank rep yeah uh Mr Russo I don't see Mr tabak I see and then Mr yizi is not here Lou it uh do we have to do our opening statement yes I'll read that right now Mr Pano thank you the New Jersey open public meeting was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provision of this act the clide Park Board of bet has caused notice of this meeting to be published by having the date time in place there are posted in the office of the Board of Ed the offices of the school numbers 345 and six and the high school on March 19th 2025 and notices were forwarded to the reporters of the record March 19th 2025 this is an official meeting so this evening we'll uh before we start with our budget presentation I want to thank everybody that was an essential part of putting the budget together from uh our uh superintendent to Lu Alano and his staff and also to all to our great ad admin ministrators that work closely with lu Alano in conjunction of trying to put a a fiscally responsible budget in front of the uh the voters and the uh the taxpayers here in clad Park so Lou I'll turn it over to you for your budget presentation please thank you Mr capana and I want to reiterate Mr capan I really want to thank the board for all their support uh administrators uh our business office staff uh obviously the public the municipality uh everyone has been very gracious and very supportive so I just want to take the time to thank everyone um yes so the 2025 2026 budget which will commence July 1st 2025 and then June 30th 2026 uh tonight as part of the public consent agenda will be approving the final budget the overall budget is approximately $72 million and I'll go through some quick Trend analyses over the last three years so folks can understand where the key metrics are moving of that 72 million about 69 million we call the general fund and approximately 3 million is the general fund that general fund is made up of federal and state grants the local tax levy is approximately 4,9 $4 mil 950,000 again we'll go through what that means to the taxpayer and how much it's gone up year-over-year and we also have as we do each year a statement of capital projects which are are going approximately $4 million in capital projects specifically we're going to engage potentially the multi-purpose room upgrade at school six potentially engage two gymnasium HVAC projects at school numbers three and school number four those are the three major bided projects that we are looking to engage uh in regard to the $4 million allocated for capital reserve projects for 2025 2026 Mr Alano I just want to be mindful uh to the general public that $4 million Capital Improvement project is privy of the procurement and bidding process and that $4 million hypothetically if the multi-purpose room comes in at the million eight hypothetically uh we have a cost estimate I think blw of uh around2 million million 7 1.75 then the Board of Education and then all the other projects the HVAC project for number four school is everybody knows when you're at number four School uh during the end of the year it gets hot and sticky and uh that's the only part of the the building that's not air conditioned so we're trying to allocate some Capital dollars there and in reference to number three School the same way but please be mindful if hypothetically the multi-purpose room comes in at 2.2 and the Board of Education feels that let's move forward with the multi-purpose room we're still going to draw from that $4 million pot that may not give us the possibility to do an HDC project so I just everyone want to be mindful of that it goes through the bidding process and then uh we sit down with our engineers and Architects and make a determination of what we can afford and what we can do just want everyone to be mindful Contin I have a question only because I got this from the public can you just be specific when you're talking about the multi-purpose room in school 6 if because I'm getting the question isn't that brand new I think that's the middle school right so I distinguish that that's the multi-purpose room is uh the older part of the building uh that uh we held a lot of recreation functions a lot of school functions it pretty much Mrs calib can interject it caters to grades uh uh right now it's five and six right five and six and then Middle School caters to 7th 8th right but that room that multi-purpose room/ gym uh concerts uh there's an auditorium in there with seating and there's a gym that is uh don't like to use the ter terminology Antiquated but a little bit outdated so it needs to bring up to par we also want to make sure that uh you know structurally sound for the future and everything so for the the general public what you're calling the multi-purpose room is really the original gym it's basically still the original gym that hasn't really been touched correct for the elementary section of number six school then a new edition that was constructed in '95 the middle school has the a newer more modern uh gym so uh I think it's it's needs to be done it was part of our physical need assessment that we do every x amount of years to give us a forecast of where our building are going to be and uh what needs to be done we don't just pick this out of a hat we hire professionals like Engineers that come out and that's mandated by the state statue in the Department of Education to do a physical need assessment so that's what we're uh doing and that was on our wish list but it comes down to Dollars and cents and in any other District be mindful and again I'm always going to put Cliffside Park first magnet projects of this magnitude they go out on a referendum when you go out on a referendum it affects the taxpayers we've been fortunate enough with prudent and uh responsible uh budgeting we're able to do these projects at no impact to the taxpayer from the tax levy yes the taxpayer has a big part of the budget because everyone's taxes do go up but uh this is included in our budget to do this project these various projects anything else from the board turn it back over to Mr alfano yes Mr capan just to piggy back on that yes the $4 million is a a trigger to previous historical Surplus that we've banked and used for facilities projects each year anywhere from between $2 and $4 million each year we're fortunate enough to bank and use for capital projects which ultimately we don't have to go to referendum and and impact the taxpayer any further so in regard to the levy yet we talked about the 4,900 and change in regard to the total Levy that's up 3.51% year over-year um and we're always mindful of the taxpayer so we work with our burough municipality Frank barado uh the CFO and he does a calculation based on the average tax assessed home value of approximately 400,000 if your home is assessed at 800,000 then the impact is linear it'll be twofold the tax impact so for an average assessed home value of approximately $400,000 it's going to increase your taxes approximately $100 uh if your home is worth $800,000 it's going to increase your taxes approximately $100 so it's linear again we're always mindful of the taxpayer um but the reality of it in regard to what's been happening right now in regard to our expenditures you know we're at this 2% cap and the struggle is we have our medical and our uh prescription going up some north of 20% per onom over the last two years that's created a very large challenge in regard to trying to balance the Zero Sum budget so that's the levy up 3.51% $1,900,000 $100 approximately $100 increase in taxes for a $400,000 assess homeone we have miscellaneous income transportation is the largest component of that and by transportation we mean we transport other school districts to schools that we take our outed District students to and we transport Fairview Pal Park and Richfield to those St same schools it earns us about $800,000 per onom which which is a real positive for the district uh adds a revenue source and other components of that is interest and whatever that's been pretty much flat year-over-year uh tuition tuition that we receive from Fairview we are the host District Fairview is the sending District we're up about5 $600,000 year-over-year that's due to the rates have gone up the certified rates from the state have gone up year-over-year for regular and special needs tuition students and we're projecting approximately an additional 15 to 18 Fair viiew students coming over from the middle school and Fairview to our high school next year couple the rate increase with incremental students uh that gives us an increase of approximately $600,000 year-over-year in tuition income which totals about $10.5 million we also use we talked about Surplus that we use for capital projects we also use a component of the Surplus to fund future budgets so we used approximately $1 million of surplus to fund the 2526 budget to help us offset some of the incremental increases such as medical and RX increases we talked about the $4 million in capital reserve projects Mr capano embellished on that we also our state aid went up approximately $500,000 year-over-year which is a good thing but there was a component that is sits outside of state aid called Medicaid Aid and that went down $200,000 so net net our Aid in quotes was up about $300,000 a year-over-year and our federal and uh state grants Title One Ida Ida is Special Needs grant that helps offset our out of District tuition for students was pretty much flat year-over year so net all that out that's our $72 million uh budget Levy up 3.51% miscellaneous income which is transportation flat our tuition's up about 600,000 year over-year our Surplus that we use for future Appropriations to pay future expenses is flat our capital reserve is $4 million and our state aid is up about 5 600,000 year-over-year and our grants are flat that's essentially your revenues obviously we have to balance our revenues must equal our expenses and we call these approach Appropriations and our our instruction is relatively flat year-over-year and the reason why it's flat even though we have incremental new staff we've had breakage where essentially we've had retired teachers making X bringing on new teachers making y less breakage more teachers same dollars so the overall instruction is relatively flat over year over year the component the subcomponent that's continues to go up year-over-year is our special education teachers of course our special education number of students with IEPs continues to grow so that component within instruction has continued to grow year over-year the real impact to Appropriations expenses that I mentioned in the revenues was our employee benefits are up significantly 20% on an absolute basis it's up nearly $2 million year-over-year our premiums for Mr Alo medical and prescription right if I can interject on medical uh um you know portion of our budget uh as you know the the entire district is in the state New Jersey health benefit program uh and U uh working at the a Housing Authority that also is under the New Jersey State Health Benefit Plan we've seen a 17 to 24% spike in uh Blue Cross Blue Shield medical and uh prescription and that that does not include also U Dental Envision that are provide to uh uh employees here at the District so it's one year L we had we're lucky we only had 8% but the last few years we're experiencing uh 20 double digits here correct yeah so that does impact the budget uh tremendously yes thank you Lou of course and you know we also work with our consultant Brown and Brown and we're trying to see if we have the opportunity to maybe engage private plans but unfortunately they call it our modification factors what we pay in and what's being paid out by the insurance company exceeds 1.0 Factor so unfortunately we don't have the opportunity currently based on our modification factor to engage the potential for private plans so we are where we are right now the state understands that this is not sustainable especially with a 2% cap and you're getting 20% increases uh plus increases year-over-year they know that's not as sustainable supposedly there's going to be a meeting of the mines in the com coming months and hopefully uh there get some relief down the road um the next component we talked about instruction we talked about the benefits the operations we call it of the plant that's really any maintenance of the buildings and grounds salaries of our custodians supplies ENT that's essentially been relatively flat uh year-over year uh administrative salaries principal secretaries Professional Services again that's been relatively flat uh year-over-year again we've had some breakage some more mature folks leaving bringing in um younger staff which we have some breakage so you have incremental staff but you keep your overall dollars flat our transportation which we mentioned is a r is a also not only is an an expense component it's a revenue component because we transport multiple schools to schools that we go to where we take our outed District students so our transportation is actually not only generates expenditures but it's generates revenues and our transportation essentially is the cost of the bus drivers and maintaining our buses we have a bus fleet of approximately 24 and about eight of those buses are less than 5 years old the board's been kind enough each and every year that we bring on one to two additional whether they're 29 39 or 54 passenger buses that we bring on new buses so we're kind of swapping out the old for new again we're fortunate enough that we got approval for two new 54 passenger buses for the 2526 budget that keeps our Fleet renewed reduces our maintenance costs and keeps our drivers happy because if you haven't been one of those buses that are relatively old in the tooth it's quite a ride um and those course have been relatively flat uh year-over-year uh instructional support services such as guidance nurses child study team educational Media Services um that has ticked up again because specifically through um child study team and support services that's in increase because the number of child study team students continues to increase so that's Al always it's going to be a challenge moving forward and another challenge is our added District students to which we've held relatively flat thanks to Charlene pinto and her team uh over the last couple years that the students that go out of District that we simply can't handle whether it's Behavioral or physical or combination of both has been relatively flat but unfortunately the tuition that we have to pay for each student has gone up considerably double digits each year for over the last three years so that's the Challen that's another challenge that we're facing um and then we talked about our our federal grants um we've got more pea money that's preschool education money and the reason for that is we're looking to ex expand our preschool especially our regular students that were half day were looking to uh incrementally move them to correct me if I'm wrong Don or right to uh full day right and that's where we so we got some incremental uh dollars for that in regard to the early early parts of the expansion process so we got some extra money in regard to that from from the state and the FED uh which is very helpful but overall besides paa our grants are relatively flat a lot of folks have asked me with the new regime political regime what does that mean for title title one through title four which is federal money uh we don't have a crystal ball but I can tell you Ida which helps us offset that's for students with disabilities helps us offset our added District tuition we have to pay for out District students and Title One money which is for our students with English as a second language or lower income students those two Grant allocations total approximately $2 million so we hope the FED leaves it alone or even gives us incrementally more because that's a huge help in US balancing our Zero Sum our Zero Sum budget so just in giving you a summary our our instructional cost are relatively flat our benefits are up almost $2 million year-over-year our operations of plan are flat our administrative costs are flat our transportation costs are flat our instructional support specifically the guidance and child study team are up we spoke about that and our and our federal in federal and state grants are relatively flat with the exception of the incremental increase we got with the pea the preschool expansion anything else Mr sit here and I'll move over one that's uh sit next to you that's uh pretty much it Mr capano and Dr Hayes thank you at this time anybody from the public have any questions or comments on the budget presentation now you can come forward oh sure I yeah can I can I just interject I apologize we were going to kind of start bringing the students and then engage all the questions at the end after the consent agenda we should I think we should focus on the budget because it's fresh in everybody's mind so if we have any comments or questions problem I think that's the right course to take I'll talk apologize for interrupting oh I have a couple of questions you said the tax levy was 3.51% the TA the in the incremental increase but the state allows for a 2% cap does that mean we'll be voting on this budget or do we come within the 2% cap because of your allowable uh expenses in certain areas yeah we got two line items that we got adjustments for healthare right and enrollment those make up approximately one and a half% they made up approximately $600,000 which is an additional 1 and a half% that's allowable above the 2% cap and if you think about it Dr pontano the our enrollment continues to take up especially our special needs component and our uh English as a second language group and we also know that our health Healthcare prescription medical went up $2 million so what the state does they give you a little bit of help in regard to what they call adjustments and those adjustments do not go against your 2% cap but it does impact ultimately the taxpayer because your Levy is going up by a percent but it doesn't impact it's an allowable adjustment above the 2 that's how we got to the 3.51 so we were at two the two allowable adjustments was Healthcare and enrollment that got us to 3.51 so our constituents will not be voting on the budget because it's within the 2% cap that everybody the state of New Jersey has to be within correct correct that is correct because Cliffside is one of the 16 districts left in the state of New Jersey that still would give our constituents an opportunity to vote on the budget if we were above the 2% that's correct right that's that's correct you stayed within the 2% so there's no voting on the budget just because that's allowable that is a correct statement so I want to make sure because otherwise we would be voting on the budget because we're one of the 16 one of the four in Bergen County that still give our constituents that opportunity right we are the last four of the the last four in Bon County the 72 or something like that but because we stayed within the 2% yes we won't see that on the on the that is correct all right two more questions I'm sorry I was happy about this but I don't think it was brought up what positions were added to the budget because I always love when we get things in for kids child we added a autistic teacher and we added I believe two guidance so we did add the guidance yes we did and I believe Dr P the reason why we did that you could probably correct me if I'm wrong we wanted to have uh guidance in each school so they're not it's not a shared space we have staff guid staff in each school elementary school I want to be clear on that El thank you Mrs cal every elementary school is going to have its own dedicated guidance counsel they're not going to be running all over the place so no more traveling guidance when kids behavor correct me school counselors yes yeah I every Elementary School school coun counselor in the building for the kids for the kids because I always love like I said when we add positions that are dedicated to the kids and then we're going to add another counselor that I see districtwide counselor even though it's kind of part of the breakage were we talking about that before we're going to post tomorrow post okay so that's that's good and my last question because I've gotten this from the public too about the preschool expansion which I am thrilled about because now we're going toing in our threeyear old and our four-year-old population my question is where are we going to house those classes do you know yet we're still trying to figure it out but um there are a lot of um you know configurations that we're thinking about but what we can do in year there are waivers so from what we're understanding and Mrs mortad and Mr Alan have really been you know dealing with this but from what we understand they're not allowed to be in um theu modular after year 2026 so we do have to come up with some other kind of a plan after after that well you know my favorite place is The Epiphany but I bring it up all the time you know it was nice when even though I Liv next door it was really nice I remember when my daughter was little she didn't go to that program but it was really nice that we had a whole building for preschool dedicated just to preschool and they had you know a principal and teachers and it was really just all around that particular age group so I'm always in that but thank you very much Mr Al for answering my question of course Dr anytime you know anybody from the public any questions in reference to tonight's budget presentation seeing none Mr savastano anything from the public no Mr Alano would you like a vote now or you want to we will vote after the consent agenda it's embedded in I believe it's resolution 41 okay thank you Mr Al once again I do want to welcome Larry Pinto the high school principal I also want to we have a special guest Maryann that works in the administrative office she does a great deal Maryann thank you for all your help with this budget I know those long hours that you spent with Mr Alano thank you so much thanks Maran and for the record we have uh the Board of Education attorney stepen Fogerty present also thank you for coming this evening Mr fery my pleasure good evening okay and at this time I'll turn it over to uh Dr Hayes we have some great presentations on some great work that our administrators teachers and students have achieved so Mr capano and Lieutenant tyak would you like to join us mrto Mr Venia Mr am I corrected Mr Helm yeah Mr Helm is did not show so ladies and gentlemen Board of Education Mrs Cali members of the public thank you for all being here uh ladies and gentlemen you are among greatness tonight um on Monday the 27th Mr Venia sent us an email letting us know that he'd like to highlight the incredible effort and achievements of a mock trial team he was immensely proud of their dedication skill and sportsmanship throughout the season and not only did they qualify the for the playoffs which was an impressive feet alone they represented the very best of Cliffside Park with their teamwork and determination um further predicting that next year first of all to the seniors thank you so much for your leadership and we wish you a great success in your college Endeavors um and but Mr benia wants us to know that next year this team's going to be even stronger uh he's incredibly fortunate to coach this amazing group and he knows they're going to continue to make C side PR congratulations on your success thank you for being here tonight please I say I say something yeah go say something and uh okay um hi I'm Mr Venia um I've been mck trial coach since I think my first year at Cliffside I remember the first time we did this it was I remember the first competition we went to we didn't even really know where the courthouse was so it's it's very interesting and whenever you have we had our we had seniors leave last year and then they said oh we're we're doing an expanded playoffs this year and I remember our vice president Matt Grand said to me we are going to make the playoffs I'm like Max how are you so confident you haven't se like we are making the playoffs Mr vinia and I just I will and I remember that and there are just so many great times that I've had I remember Mr Pinto when you're walking by the room it would be a Thursday or Friday night and we would be still doing all these things and just it was it's it's it's amazing to work with this group of kids that just it takes dedication there's a lot of talk today about how students they don't know how to do this but like when I see the amount of time and energy that they put in and you know that they themselves are practicing and I'm sure that that all of them are looking in front of a mirror and saying okay how am I supposed to do this how am I going to do it it's just it's an amazing experience just to just see that and to experience it and when you feel that when as a coach you feel your team is robbed you definitely feel that and you and you and you're the the enrage is that they Lo it's that you didn't lose it's like no they deserved it so I'm I very much have hope that our team will will go further and every year I remember the first thing was we're going to win one we have winning record then we're going to get the playoffs it's like okay and then we're going to keep going and maybe in the next couple of years okay then we will win then we'll win counties and so we just need to just keep on that track and I have a great great group of kids and it's great and it's amazing to know that we have such an amazing board and we have and we have a principal who has always been supportive of mck trial always Mr Pino whenever I'm walking by him says how are things going with M trial Mr M and he's got a thousand things to do and the fact that he we'll take a a couple of minutes just to talk with me about what I always thought was a club shows that we have a we have an Administration that is always behind us and I just want to thank you and I'm sure that my kids also thank you from the bottom of their hearts you want their labels do you want to call them up sure and then um I'll shake their [Music] hand all right all right we are going to call up our first um the first courtroom artist that our school ever produced for the competition uh Victoria Machado there you go thank you congratulations okay Marita's not all right one of our our go-to Witnesses if we ever need someone to help us out in practice someone who is always willing to help to make a hand senior Sophia Molina all right another one of our seniors this is her second year um always willing to help out actually was um drafted into being our main witness at in the last minute in one of our scam and helped beat uh Spartan Sparta High School Melanie Ruiz Leon the main witness in both the last two competitions um has a winning record in going up at the competition Siara estr I think one of our senior who was our witness this year one and0 Veronica Carrera I do not know that congratulations congratulations another one of our seniors who's always willing to help out and helped out during the competition as well argued with a argued with the other teams um jury to make sure that that we didn't lose on that Lizette conat ah one of our one also one of our seniors another one of someone who who was a witnessed this year his first time did amazing in the competition Matthew Lazo pon congratulations I'm glad you join one of our newest members who is I who is going to be our president next year um d i I can't congratulations thank you very well go to one of our one of our future leaders of the club a freshman this year who I remember when she was her first scrimmage was so nervous that her whole body was shaking but did amazing in the competition and I know she's going to be a future leader of the club and she's probably going to be one of our lawyers next year Kelly congratulations thank you another one of our lawyers who who will always who I always remember gave one of the greatest and I don't know if that's in quotes or not but one of the the most memorable closing arguments in a scrimmage ever against West Orange and also competed very well and and always was willing to be the the butt of Jokes which was always welcome during when we would have a 4-Hour practice Nicholas Velasco I got it in there it's okay it was a memorable one congratulations why did we know one of our freshman members also a future leader who was drafted at the last minute in the play right before our playoff game playoff competition to be a witness and did amazingly well actually made their lawyers stop talking for a couple of seconds it was actually pretty amazing to watch um and I know that she will do she will be a future leader of the club and I'm sure she'll be a lawyer in the next year or two Diana Mohammed congratulations thank you the only time I've ever had a freshman lawyer in my six or my seven years of doing this and she was 1 and0 in the competition and I know that she will continue to be a future leader of the club and will'll work with d Kelly and Diana next year guy good job the person who told me we were going to the playoffs someone who's always been probably one of the one of the most I would say amazing I've I've known him in both of the clubs I run someone who is always willing to try and is never and is always willing to inspire his team and I just and I remember I have so many great memories of working with the vice president of this club as well as the president of my the president of my Debate Club Max get up here congratulations thank you I may have done this on purpose but our president the person who always inspires the team who always would have to would always ask after either we won or lost to talk to them and I remember after we lost the playoff game by one point she was as devastated as the rest of the team was but she kind of just said look this is my last time but I know you guys will do well next year and it just shows the The Compassion that that she has and just the fortitude that instead of saying this is how it's going to end it was more of a focus on what their she is was so concerned about what the team thought and how they're going to take this into the future and I could say I could go on and on about Maria but just come up here Maria oh you're welcome I forgot Alex another one of our Witnesses in this year I apologize Alex chick so sorry about that sir you're welcome Mr Mania what can we tell you on behalf of the Board of Education myself and our vice president Teddy teraka I commend you we have great leaders coming out of that the high school and it's all that hard work you put together a great Round of Applause for all the special thank you work thank you thank you Mr 2 minut recess uh at this moment we're going to just take a quick two-minute recess and then we're going to continue with our Board of Education agenda this evening thank you everybody e e e cide Park Board of Education now we're going to focus on the consent agenda at this time um no they they're not here this evening next month yeah there's a schedu Conflict at this time uh I know we went out of order but uh normally at this time we do the assistant superintendent report and uh the superintendent report and then committee reports but I'll start start off with uh Mrs calibri on the super uh assistant superintendent report please um yes so thank you what I what I'd like to talk to you about is the fact that on Monday the 31st we'll be having a full day of professional development and um just so that parents know as well that it is a full day of professional development with uh Renaissance Learning will be coming in for um each staff member will receive probably about two and a half hours of um staff development with Renaissance Learning and then the rest of it will be data analysis for the upcoming njsla um Statewide testing and also uh they will be working with their you know building supervisors and um you know working on action plans and lesson plans and we will also be talking to them about as a result of our qac findings and whatnot we're also uh working on um upcoming summer school already that sounds nice right summer school um well summer sounds nice I don't know about summer school guys but uh we're working on summer school already and we're already planning believe it or not for anticipated openings and and whatnot for for next year so we're already planning our 25 26 um school year so thank you Mrs Cal any questions or comments from Mr Cal from the board at this time I'll turn it over to Dr Hayes for his report just three resolutions I'd like to speak to Res Personnel resolution number 11 with regret recommending to the board to accept the retirement of mine Colangelo High School teacher effective July 1 2025 I had the pleasure of interacting with her resolution number four pardon me um I had the pleasure been interor with her several times but I am going to ask Mr Pinto to please comment on her illustrious career with us so miss cangel has been with the district for over 20 years uh she's been a extremely impactful uh special education teacher she's touched hundreds of students possibly thousands of students over the course of her career at Cliffside Park High School uh she's going to be very difficult to replace uh we do wish Miss fangel uh Happy retirement and that she can enjoy it with her uh her her her grandchildren and uh and uh go off into the sunset and uh you know kind of relax a little bit now that she's not in the classroom anymore thanks so much I appreciate you being here I think on our resolution number 14 speaks to a calendar adjustment as you know we did not use one of our sick days that were banked and recommendation to the boardnow snow days what did I say on my all they care about is get no days is uh we're recommending taking on to Memorial Day Weekend Tuesday May I interject Dr Hayes I know Mrs calibri can vouch Teddy he's older than everybody uh we what happened Teddy the days when we would snow in April and we didn't go to school what happens if this happens here Dr Hayes snows in April then I'm standing here it's no longer a holiday you're going to get another resolution saying kill the Wednesday I just want the public to understand if we do get in nor Easter or blizzard in April school will be in session so much so much for the summer school okay lastly nobody yell at me on this five H investigations three alleged two confirmed in each of the five investigations counseling restorative practices and parental contact was made and that concludes the report of the superintendent panel thank you Dr Hayes at this time committee reports any committee reports from the floor Dr T I do because I get to give the athletic report that I love to give so the uh the high school winter Athletics we have 53 students who were recognized um we had 20 First Team all League 13 second Team all league and 11 honorable mention across our went to school and we had two second Team all County four third Team all County and four honorable mention which is significant for our win sports so congratulations to our athletes who achieved that uh designation and the spring Athletics is underway we have baseball Boys Tennis boys volleyball softball and novice track and field I'm anxious to know how are boys volleyball is doing because uh that's a new sport that we added for the students that's cor and I want to know you know how how they're doing so maybe we'll get a report on that or maybe one of them will come in the future and talk to us about that because it's always nice when you can actually add an entire sport uh and spring Athletics and very important is our Ben lutter day that's on April 12th Leon will be playing Richfield Park at 10: a.m.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
this picture um this is from one of our programs students participated in a unit that we call histories Mysteries so they got to build their own water receptacles out of recyclable materials um so they're using the scientific hypothesis to build these water conservation machines they're measuring how much water they retained they're going back and changing their designs they're collaborating together but they just think they're playing with water having fun so the idea is that they're using skills in math and science and engineering the same measurement the same things they're practicing in the classroom they're just embedded um within Hands-On Project based activities I think when we talk about coming into a community the idea is that the community really drives right at school versus right at school driving the community and so I think one of the things that we see here is that there's good programming happening the addition of right at school isn't about replacing that it's about expanding and elevating the good things that are already happening here um so as we do that I just wanted to talk about three really important things for us um the first is job continuity so all members in uh the comes kid kids program will um receive an equivalent position at right at school um and they'll also receive a transition bonus so if they are currently working at com's kids um they work at com's kids through the end of the school year they um will be offered a position at r at school and receive that transition bonus as well um in addition they'll be um guaranteed a position at their that matches or exceeds their current pay rate and then benefits eligible staff will cons consider to receive continue to receive benefits and we'd structure the hiring so that there was no lapse so that if they're currently covered that coverage would continue um in addition to that we have what we call a learnto earn model where folks who are working with us can participate in our industry leading Blended learning if they're interested in learning more about working with students with special needs or they're interested in learning more about Child Development they can take courses in those areas and then actually um raise their pay rate we also have a tiered support structure so that you know while teams are working locally and curriculum is locally inspired uh there's also levels of support available to provide assistance and ensure that we don't run into some of the same Staffing shortages or challenges the other key piece of our mission is a commitment to families so safety is our number one priority um our staff do receive intensive training in CPR medication administration um and then we also work with um district and building level leaders so that we're prepared in the event of an emergency if there's a fire or a lockdown situation we want to make sure that what we're doing before and after school matches what students are practicing during the school day um I'll go through rates but again the vision is flexibility and afford ability so families can enroll for 1 to 5 days they can change their enrollment every month um and then we also provide discounts for free and reduced lunch active military siblings and then um anyone who works in the school district we are a licensed program through the State of Arizona so we would also accept um State subsidies that way the programming is accessible to all families and you know I think the most important part of programs are the students and um in our most recent we do a a survey of students um in our most recent survey this spring 95% said that they like coming to school or coming to write at school every day this is a quick overview of um our program pricing so you're going to see a slight increase here um from the current rates that being said we're returning about 3% % of any Revenue back to the district so the district will continue to generate Revenue through right at schools program and then um the increases are really happening um at those five day per week rates so we're actually seeing reductions um at I believe 3 two and one day rates we also built your Wednesday early release into de pricing so families don't have to pay separately for that if they just want to find out if they just want to sign up for Wednesdays um and use that one day a week they have the opportunity to do that and it's included in their monthly enrollment um they can change their enrollment every month as their kids schedules change so if you're doing baseball you may only need one day a week during baseball season but maybe in the fall or winter that changes so that flexibility is embedded uh the registration process is fully virtual and again um families can make changes to their registration at any time time I think our promise um is that we know are here to support students to make before and after school meaningful outcome driven and fun to support families um give them access to more opportunities at all School sites so eliminating that Transportation piece ensuring programming is consistent um and available to them and then also to the district so working alongside as a partner um and being responsive to not just like the local needs of your District but the local needs of your community um I think the most important thing is we're all in this together um we are experts at write at school and out of schooltime programming but really the the district and the community is the experts of what it means to live and work here um and so again our Focus isn't on um coming in and completely doing something different our focus is on coming in and expanding um and elevating what we currently have in place so with that uh we're happy to respond to any questions and I should say I also have two members of my team um here with me Andrew Cohen who is um our vice president and Tracy punty um who is our regional manager okay questions will you have do you have anything Mr Beach um G to call me out yes or I can start this way if you want no you're good you're good thank you thank you for allowing me to start I um I'm looking at reviews and out of 1,39 reviews they're to 4.9 I think parents greatly enjoy what this program is doing for their kids seems pretty good 4.9 rating it's not like three people sometimes it's over a thousand so um and then pretty good am I able to sure um we also um you know WR at school is National right so those are going to be people from everywhere I think what school districts and and boards and families care most about is like their community so we do um a family survey twice yearly where we'll gather information from um parents and families right here they'll have the opportunity to respond to questions and then also give their own feedback and then that data uh will be broken down by school um as well as districtwide shared with um building principles Administration um and then you know it it if Administration so chooses um often presented to the board as well yeah um so do you have opportunities for students to work after school as well like high school students or even we have um CAC different programs yeah um it looks a little bit different state byst state based on the licensing requirements so for example in Arizona if you're operating a licensed program which allows you to accept that Dees subsidy high school students may not be qualified to work in a paid capacity um that being said we've gotten creative um as a rid at school team and we've done things like are we doing internships can students who are like in coursework around like CTE for Child Development can they come and do observations in our program and then write about it or can they get like they might need a certain number of course hour credit this could be a way for them like of observation credit this could be a way for them to do that without having to miss out on classes during the school day so we've certainly got creative in in those ways that's absolutely Andrew do you have anything that I'm missing in that regard okay so so what you're saying is no they can't employed so in in Arizona they cannot because they don't you have to have um a high school diploma or um GED in order to work in a li any licensed Child Care Program in Arizona so they couldn't be eligible for daily paid employment but if that's something that's important to your community giving students that opportunity I think we talk about what does that look like sound like feel like and then how can we deliver that to them thank you Mr Ray do you have anything not right now okay you reserve the right okay Miss Horn um I did have several questions that I asked um prior to this meeting and um the information that I got back it was great it helped to answer those questions um I did ask several questions regarding uh Dei after visiting the website um a lot of the descriptions were uh they came across pretty Dei heavy um and then I did click on a link WR atschool.com diversity to find out more um there was a eror 404 not found um so that and right at school confirmed that that has since been removed from the website um and just just in the spirit of transparency for our constituents that might be watching on online um administrators teachers staff and others um there have been several news articles uh specifically regarding Arizona Arizona colleges universities changing or cancelling some convocations due to Dei Arizona Senate votes to SL money for universities colleges that teach Dei were left reeling Arizona school districts lose 16 million in critical funding amid into to uh Dei policies education department to investigate Arizona State University over diversity initiative schools and least 46 States embraced Dei fac losing Federal funding um so there was a reason behind the questions for that um I will say that after my questions were asked and the answers were given um and you even supplied some samples of the curriculum um I was impressed actually um and it and I found that it was very fair um as both a parent as a member of the school board um as an educator myself um it looked like it was qu quality curriculum um and education that would be happening um I love the fact that you were direct with your answers um that it does not include anything related to gender gender identity pronouns or sexuality um as well as not inclusive of any religious activities practices or spiritual beliefs so thank you for your direct um bold answers with those um questions that I did have um so I just wanted to address that um the contract I I do Wonder um I I personally and I can't speak for the rest of the board I would like to be able to have the board view the family surveys and feedback um I also in the agreement um it basically States let me see if I can pull it up that there would be an annual Auto renewal basically let's see um after the term of this agreement the agreement will automatically Renew on a year-to-year basis um I would like for that to be something that is brought to the board annually to review um also if there's any changes to the curriculum I don't know if that's something that we can amend to this agreement not amended but we bring to the board every June all of our contracts and agreements and so this would be this would be included so in June what you get is you just get a a laundry list of all the ones that are there usually Julie you can correct me if I'm wrong usually Karen puts in that this is year two of the agreement or this is year five of the agreement or next year is the last year of the agreement so it usually tells that piece in in addition there's usually an opt out piece if something's not working from both parties it's a standard contract that says we'd have to give prior notice but if it's if it's February and for whatever reason things aren't working out from either direction and then there's always that provision to move move away so so it does automatically but it's not yeah but it's still got to be approved by us now we have to follow the the guidelines that say you got to give them 60 30 I haven't looked to see the specific dates but 90 days whatever it is but but there's an automatic but it is subject to your approval okay and some a couple other things that I would like to see um with that annual review um any changes to program pricing curriculum um or employee feedback um that whether it's employees that were originally with com's kids and they're now there um do they also partake in that family survey the employees uh the survey is directed towards um principles uh towards families and then towards District leaders that being said I know we do have um internal metrics in place to assess how our people um are feeling about working in our programs Andrew do you want to share any of that yeah so uh as Kate said we we do measure employee satisfaction we look at turnover retention at a local level um and we also do localized Employee Engagement surveys so if that was something that was sort of important here we can absolutely absolutely do that yep okay we can also add in a lot of my markets I do see a level meetings with staff members so where they meet with me instead of their area manager to feel comfortable providing not comfortable providing loal okay is that it y okay can I oh sorry can I say something before I start yeah um I wanted to just thank you for your questions um and giving us the opport like being willing to look through the curriculum um and see what's happening for students we take a lot of pride in the curriculum that we put together so really appreciated it um that said our theme we do thematic units they change every year so we will make sure that you have a copy of that like the calendar for the subsequent school year as soon as it's developed by our curriculum team um because part of what keeps it fresh and fun is that the activities are ever changing so we'll make sure so you know next year we'll do like we have our French language so we'll make sure you have access to that so you can see what's happening it was pretty neat the gross out guts or whatever I showed it to my seven-year-old and yeah he thought it was really cool isn't it really fun yeah it's a little messy but it's great Okay so you might have the tag team our district and you um so how many kids currently do we have at each site that like are we just doing Elementary or is it Elementary Middle School I assume we don't need it for high school it is only our elementary schools and currently due to Staffing we are only running at Ellsworth Ranch and Harmon and then CTA kids are bused to Harmon okay um we currently have 150 families in the program and we have at each site we have anywhere from 9 to families on a waiting list that we are unable to accommodate at this time so it says I noticed I think I saw someone here that you have to have at least 15 kids at each site so how will that break down for them like where where will you be what schools will you be at so we're shooting to have this program at all of our schools it would be an expansion for simonon the rest of our elementary schools will already meet that 15 child minimum okay and and when we say all just as a reminder we're talking Elementary correct it's only Elementary this not apply to middle school or high schools okay okay um can I ask a question that no I you have to wait no I'm just teasing well it has to do with the 15 okay go ahead because I guess the program says it says right at school requires that a minimum 15 students be pre-registered in each parent paid program can you explain that specifically what that means absolutely so right when you have three or four children in in a program it's sort of not fun and engaging so we said that 15 threshold just as a baseline you know I can assure you you know okay we're we're committed to running at at all the schools and we know especially in sort of a first year transition one of the the schools might have 12 children we fully committed we see growth in years two and years three and Beyond so it's in there sort of to you know protect everyone and have a conversation if we open enrollment and there's one child but we're fully committed to running it at all the schools we've Contracting for I don't think I asked the right question okay so the contract says a minimum of 15 students be pre-registered in each prepaid program so can you explain what is a prepaid program so we'll par we open registration tomorrow next week and we ideally want 15 children enrolled by July for the for the C upcoming school year okay so there's so the for example there's an after school program right right so there's a 5 day 4 day 3 Day 2 Day one day does the 15 mean you need 15 for five 15 for four 15 for three 15 for two and 15 for one no or do me 15 day average of 15 so 15 total yep now what about before school so before school if you have five but after school you have 15 what happens to the before school program right we've we've run programs with with less than 15 so again it's in there that we could have a conversation but we are are committed to running even you know if we don't hit those minimums certainly in year one is the transition because we grow in year two and year three yeah does that make sense what I'm asking so currently at Ranch we have 54 students enrolled at Ellsworth we have 54 and at kman we have 45 and CTA we have 16 so those are our current enrolled numers so I don't feel that hitting that 15 be it's not going to be issue at all and if it were would you just combine schools say Ranch for example had nine would you instead of eliminating the program combine them with another school or ideally we'd reach out to the principal and we'd say Hey you have nine kiddos that are taking advantage of this program like what can we do to keep spreading the word do you want us to come to back to school night should we hand out flyers at like the first step that's a great idea so the the vision isn't like oo it's small let's take like the the idea is that this is happening onsite at every school you know kids want to do this at their own school so then it's about how do we partner with principls and their admin assistants and get it in the newsletter um to make that happen and sometimes for families as Andrew kind of shared um they they might want to see the program um especially in year one they might just want to see what's this all about for the first month um and then come August they're ready to register themselves okay I don't I think we have a disconnect here are we getting your answer your question answered or no maybe I think I'm just a little slow because maybe I I just want to make sure that you know I mean I understand there's there's 15 right but it says in in each parent paid program and so that could be interpreted as 15 you mean you're interpreting that that way no go ahead well I'm just I am and that's why I'm asking clarification it's fair I because I asked a question about it says automatically and it's not automatically So it's 15 total regardless of the program if that is a concern we're we're happy to remove that but but I think the idea is it's it's 15 at each site and then we'll work with them on the 158 site and so if we have the numbers that that Mandy's talking about with the exception of simonon because we don't have a program we we don't know what the numbers will be yet but we would hope that we have it each site and and the reality is with the waiting list what the real issue is for our district right now so that everybody's clear is that we cannot get enough people hired so there's Staffing ratios we cannot meet the Staffing ratios therefore we can't bring more kids in because we can't meet the Staffing rues we're helping with their hiring process and their connections that that won't be as big of an issue and therefore we might be able to exceed all those because um uh we'll be able to uh bring more families in that right now we can't because we can't meet the Staffing ratios but the goal would be 15 at each site would meet the the condition but as I'm hearing it they would work with us if we were at 10 at one site we would automatically shut it down we would continue to work with it if the other sites have 15 and you can correct me if I'm wrong but I'm just summarizing if the other sites had 15 then we would keep the other sites from what I'm hearing through the first year we will monitor it we may have a conversation with the board we may have a conversation with them that says next year what are we going to do because we just don't seem to be getting enough kids at school X so what do we do with that particular situation is the way I'm understanding it and and based on your question so if I'm wrong just I just wanted to make sure that we're not talking about okay we got to have 15 for the after school 15 for the before and 15 for combo which is a total of 45 y so I'm just making sure that our total is 15 now we're getting it's 15 technically 15 in the morning 15 in the afternoon okay the combo it just means it could you could do that as a family so they would they would okay okay does it does my question make sense now yep now that now that you explain it that way okay are you done yes and I'm sorry you can you can you can just butt in whenever you want okay so our current program J might as well stay up here um are are they teaching some sort of curriculum so we have struggled with leadership in the program um and that's something that has been a struggle is that consistent curriculum okay so are you saying that you tried and it's not happening is that what you're saying or I'm saying due to a leadership issue that that curriculum was not consistent okay all right so um walk me through this is not for you um walk me through a regular day after school program walk me through I want this like tell me what the schedule looks like yeah um okay so these are Elementary School students so I think during week one um it takes us a little bit of time right five-year-olds through 10 year olds to get into our routine but once we're rocking and rolling um students transition down to the space where we're meeting for right at school that looks different ways depending on the school building sometimes teachers will walk them um sometimes we our staff will go to the rooms and pick up that is principal preference um they come in they check in so that means that they're greeted by you know their name and a staff member um they drop their backpacks get their stuff situated have um a snack that's provided by right at school and then we go into what we call a town hall meeting um during that time we talk about our agenda for the day so what does our schedule look like what are we going to do um we review our essential question so in the curriculum you saw you know our essential question might be um what happens to your heart rate when you move your body around and why um that's going to relate to like the activity that we're doing as part of that disguise learning um town hall is also a time where we're going to celebrate students so like if you have a spelling bee winner um or you have students that are getting PBIS Awards someone's birthday um we'll call those things out as well during town hall and then we'll all cheer um it's multi-grade level so that's really just a time to build community um and sometimes we'll lean on our um older students fourth and fifth and sixth graders to help facilitate those Town Hall meetings we call it a junior educator program um from there we move into what um we call um our like Right Moves Fitness blast it's like a 15minute fitness blast just to get those wiggles out um before we transition to homework time um homework time typically we're working in grade bands um so students are working you know like with peers in the same grades um our members are helping them work through their homework for some of our older students potentially around like organizing what do you have where do you want to start um and then uh for younger students if they don't have homework it might be things like foundational literacy where they're practicing buddy reading or reading to our staff um or our staff are reading to them and they're answering questions uh from there we transition to what we call our flexible enrichment block which sort of looks like stations where students rotate through activities so um that might be some like gross motor group games either indoors or outdoors I typically say weather dependent but like here aside from Summer weather is amazing so we can play outside um and do group games a lot and that's structured right it's not just like we're going to go run around outside there's a game going on that connects back um to the learning in the theme uh there's also disguise learning as a station so students will rotate through that and I think at that time you know knowing that what gross guts and odd organs looks like for a kindergarten is going to be different than what it looks like for a fifth grader so that can be differentiated based on Age and and grade so each student is really getting what they need out of that disguise learning piece um and then some districts may ask us to incorporate other um curricular initiatives that they're focused on during that time like I ready or I Exel we've done things like that too um from there once flexible enrichment is done um we have another Fitness time um Fitness blast again typically structured um and divided by age often outside if we can be um and then we transition into what we would call like our um maker station time um so students are working um on Independent projects of their choosing this is also typically when parents are are coming to pick up between like that last 30 minutes of program The Vision there is we're going to kind of bring that energy level down um before families come and also um students were getting um sad and upset when they were missing out on what was happening with the curriculum um if parents were coming before time to actually leave so as just a preventative behavioral strategy we kind of give that 30 minute time um for wrap up and closing and I think I forgot to mention language adventures sorry that happens after um let's see Town Hall WR moves language Adventures um and that's like a 20 minute um exploratory time for um foreign language so this year our focus is on American sign language students are learning um how to say their names how to greet each other they're learning how to finger spell the alphabet and then they're learning basic vocabulary words colors vehicles um and then short phrases like where do you go to school um I need help and then next year um it will be in French and there's a there's a it's I mean this year it's American Sign Language so there's like a music component to it too so there's like some rhythmic pieces and then next year there there might be some songs too that go with it okay awesome um let me see here I see that you what is our you're giving 3% back to the district is that that's what that is and when does the district receive that um monthly yearly like how that it's paid by yearly twice per year oh twice per year oh okay um so you would you you would receive that it's typically paid out um after the first semester and then again after the second semester okay so then other than that what is our financial obligation as a as our there isn't a financial obligation that they're really we're entering into an agreement but they're like a outside vendor that's running our facilities so there's no cost to us the based on current number we would anticipate uh not a significant increase in dollars coming in about 13,000 I think is what the number was if that number were to grow and spread out then obviously the 3% increases um but there is no financial obligation this is just like um uh any other outside vendor coming and using our facilities we're just working in arrangement with them okay so I'm done with my questions is anybody else did that that spark any other questions I have one more question um the program pricing how does that compare to our current program pricing for families did we do you want to go on I mean you'd have more detail I said before it's slight increase on the uh five day little less on the other four I when I say slight increase you might have the exact dollar amounts but but what we've looked at is just generally speaking where we stand relative to others and trying to be within the same ballpark but you may have the exact dollar amount yeah so you're going up about 10% at the 5day rate um you're actually decreasing at the 32 and one day rate um and then that rate though includes every so like we bring our own paper our own printers our own walkie-talkies our own computers our own program phones snacks supplies that's all Incorporated in those costs so there's also you know not a use of District materials I do like the the um sibling discounts military I like that especially District employees at 50% that was nice okay any any yeah I think the only other piece for clarification is the $50 uh registration fee is per family not per child so to make sure perfect okay I do have one more question perfect so if you combine how do you combine how do you get the kids from point A to point B within the building no so like let's say you have five at one school and five another how do you how do you get the kids so currently we have a I think you call buses running between CTA and Harmon that's transporting those children um it is putting an additional Train strain on our transportation at this time no I'm asking how they would not be transporting children this would be at all sites and so we would not be transporting students anymore between schools okay so then I'm obviously slow okay well let's so obviously like let's we only have five at at Simington are we GNA push them away and say you can't go or are we going to try to get them to as I said as we said we are committed to running in all the schools okay this school year that minimum is in there to sort of you know protect us or have like a beacon if there was ever a discussion around consolidation which clearly you're asking us to come in because that is a challenge right now so knowing that right it's not going to be a conversation any anytime soon but down the road if that was ever to be a conversation it would be a conversation okay District Partners around if we were to move these five children to another school would you know would there be busing available okay okay good all right so any other questions because I think we question them out okay so we're making this tell what sorry one more other question okay so I I obviously understand we have to move quickly because we're looking at licensing and things like that correct yes um now the first when were we like so we were made aware of this when were we first made aware of the email I think when I think the the challenge has been ongoing for several years we've been working with the the current program we had and it was getting to be unsustainable that several years back we had a program at sing 10 that we had to close this year going into this year we had to take the CTA and move the CTA to a combination between Harmon and CTA so it's been an ongoing issue and we've been trying to make it work it's just gotten worse and worse uh uh in terms of issues with Staffing have really blown up I would say uh probably January maybe December uh and so we started realizing we need to look at at at other options conversations about possibly having to close another school next year so that just accelerated the conversations that we take a look and see if something's else so we've been fighting this issue ever since I've been here uh but it's really come to head probably last year and a half this issue to come out and ask for right at schools is probably a five four five month process that we've said we got to start looking uh more intently at what what another possible solution would be so that we could offer more so that's kind of the time frame um that it's that has occurred okay so I mean I looked and I couldn't find any other communication except for one in March does that seem right like about the challenge with the community head program yeah because the first communication I remember receiving is is mid- March is that same about right yes early early early March came from us because we were taking care of it internally and we thought we could handle this and we have in the past March 25th right now there might think there was might have been one maybe not but it doesn't matter but but the reality is is is we've been hand handing lit and for a variety of different reasons um it just uh exploded on us going into spring break and coming out of spring break some different issues with some health issues of some people um and some other things like that and so it's been building I would say like I say January and February and it just that's why we were working or talking to right at school and it it's uh kind of raised itself really coming out of spring break okay so we current have nine open positions within the community Department um three of those are full-time we put a full-time offer out to someone today but we are really plagued by consistent staffing issues okay so we're on a time constraint because they have to we they have to have this by when like when is your what's your what's your deadline here tonight what we need to do is if there's approval what they would do is they would start on the per in process tomorrow if we push it back into April 19th we run into the potential problem that the permitting process from the state would not be such that we'd be able to start school with a program um and so in terms of communicating we've already communicated once or twice with the staff that are currently on board we would communicate again with them tomorrow um we would start the registration process uh tomorrow I mean the the communication of registration we would start the process I believe they said they would start the process a potential at least posting for positions and and seeing about hiring so the whole process starts now but it'll take time to get in uh I believe there and they can speak if they want but uh to bring someone on board is is a three four week process because of their training so uh so there's some there's some time that that has to take place um and we were hoping to do this in a two-parter uh but due to a couple different issues it it just had to get accelerated to be brought to you guys at this meeting okay all right so with that would somebody like to make a motion I will take one I move to approve right at school's contract as presented second all in favor I I motion carries five to zero don't forget to vote oh I'm waiting for it did you click on it you have to click on there you go all right all right I appreciate you guys coming we have a lot of questions we now sorry okay okay thank you all right we will move on um so 4.2 discussion and consideration of approval of overnight field trips we just had a couple come up at the last second and so we had because we had this meeting we had one action item uh given the timeline for when they were at we're bring in these three I'm going to tell you that we're having some issues with field trips this year and so we're reviewing three parts to the process both What It Takes uh in terms of um the process to actually get a field trip going and why are we having the problems we're having this year uh number two would be uh what's policy and regulation say I will tell you we had a conversation today there is a bill that's going through that may change whatever we're talking about today uh it's more geared towards boards and and district office Personnel but but we got to see what that bill looks like it it it appears that it will be passing uh based on everything I've heard and then the third part will be how do we train um our staff both uh uh administrative assistants at the sites as well as individual teachers on the process that needs to take place so so we apologize for bringing this one late we wanted to get them in but we're understanding of an issue and we're moving forward to correct any number of issues don't know that we'll get it all done by the end of this current uh school year but our anticipation would be that going into July we would be uh uh communicating those changes to staff as appropriate uh and if there's any changes in policy Andor uh regulation that be shared with the board if it's policy I don't see a change in policy other than if uh the legislation goes through then then asba will bring bring forward probably those changes uh usually we get that in August for first read September for second is what the normal procedures are okay so we'll take some questions do anybody have any questions on any of these um I did have questions uh the first one was pretty straightforward with where the costs were being covered through Club funds fundraisers students and scholarship support um but I did also have questions for uh a couple of the others especially when it mentioned that the cost was covered by District um and I wanted to verify where that was coming from I felt it was important to ensure again in the spirit of transparency um since in a moment we'll be discussing budget um where where are these expenses coming from and so I don't know if Julie would like to speak to that Julie I'll just summarize I'll summarize um the the FBLA trip is is throughly is through uh funds from student raise funds um uh as is the ranch trip uh that would be pretty standard of of where they come from um the uh um out overnight travel down to Tucson by the teacher that comes from the school budget uh per se we allocate money and they have the authority to approve different projects uh different principles have picked up different projects and so this is just one of those those approvals to to move forward with that so that would come out of the M but it's it's out of the allocation that goes to the site and then the site makes that decision and and various sites over the years have made various decisions relative to this kind of uh use of the dollars okay anything else okay so take a motion I move move to approve the overnight field trips as presented I second all in favor I I motion carries five to zero so now we have our dis our information and discussion items goodness an hour later I'm just going to move over here just so it's a little bit easier so you guys can not strain your necks um what we're what we're going to do is is go ahead and make a presentation uh that just talks about what some of the recommendations are I'll tell you up front that there's still a degree of fluidity with the budget for lots of different reasons I'll also tell you as we go through there's also some issues related to the the federal budget and what happens at the federal level so so this is by no uh means cast in stone uh there could be some adjustments but we want to bring it to you uh because I think we're at a position right now that would allow us to take the next step starting in April to move forward with the things that we need to need to do so this is from from last uh meeting so you've seen this before and actually from previous years what we have Again by State Statute and again this is a state budget so when we please make sure we're differentiating between title dollars and state budget M dollars because title dollars are related to the federal budget and that's still up in the air but for the state budget uh for the balance of the State dollars we have to have a balanced budget um uh we're not allowed to do anything other than that so that becomes one of our main goals obviously the biggest key in determining where we get uh our dollars comes from enrollment so we've talked about that we'll talk about it again in just a second um that becomes the key and we are using the JC's demographic and enrollment analysis that's a report by Rick Brammer and applied economics that uh you guys approved and we presented to you in the past our goal and this becomes critical because when you ask where do we come up with some of these Solutions one of the things we've made a commitment to do is to protect our staff and students and so when we come up with Solutions to what we're going to do relative to find the money the goal is to protect our staff and students and so if that changes on down the road um then we'll let people know up front and by protection if we talk about staff is that would be a layoff issue we know that there's lots and lots and lots of communication across the country and the state about school districts that are laying off there was just one in the paper this morning I'm drawing a blank right now who that is um our solutions would not be laying people off we would not fill positions through attrition but we would not be laying people off okay and then we want to meet board priorities and staff priorities some of those priorities I'm not going to go through each of these because again you have seen this before we want to look at how do we retain recruit staff how do we do it with students how do we maintain um uh competitiveness with surrounding school districts relative to salary schedules how do we make sure our facilities continue to uh be improved uh at the next meeting on the 9th you will see a presentation from High Ground uh uh Consultants about the potential survey about a potential Bond so that might be helpful in this particular area and then continue to work with student supporting student Behavior whether that's through programs for kids that are missing school or mental health or discipline and then how do we make sure we continue to get our staff to grow from a professional professional standpoint so the three key pieces that drive everything right out of the gate and this was based on a conversation with uh CCC and Leadership and then a conversation with you guys uh at the last board meeting and what the conversation said Is We believe that we should build our budget on a loss of 138 ADM that loss would be 50% at the K8 level and 50% at the 912 level okay so just short of 70 kids um 70 adm.
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home and it didn't. Okay. Um, today is Wednesday, March 26. It is 6:32 and I'm going to call this meeting to order. Lisa, roll call. Robert Downey. Patty Coutrey, present. Carolyn Lopez, present. Ben Owens, present. Shante Rosschild, present. Thank you.
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graders the class of 2032 that's pretty amazing um I am not used to standing in one place and I know that's gonna make it I'm sorry I'm so sorry my name is Lisa slara I am the principal here at Hanto Regional Middle High School um we have a big crew for you today to meet um um and I'd like to right now introduce um our assistant principal who focuses on the middle school students that's Renee Leandra um we will in oh nice absolutely so we are so happy this is a wonderful turnout it's really um fantastic what a special day this has been to see all of our students wonderful work in um all the grade levels I know it was uh filled with excitement at the elementary school and we had some wonderful presentations of innovative projects throughout the middle and high school and then to end it with this transition it um is very special I will make note that we do have um a performance coming um Beetle Juice and that is being is very exciting and we're um doing some um yeah some set design so that is something to look forward to when you come up to Tanto so uh first and formost I want to provide an understanding of what this afternoon is it's really an introduction a beginning to become familiar um for having our parents get comfortable with the idea of because some of you is your first student to come to the Middle High School some of you this is old hat this is um the youngest you have you've had multiple kids come up through and we are we have the caring concern for making sure everybody has support and attention for this transition because it is an important transition and oftentimes we know that there is some some anxious feelings around that so if we can provide uh some steps moving forward to make this transition comfortable that's what we're here for so this is not an indepth um you know uncovering of all that is sixth grade this is an introduction to say what should we expect what um we're going to hear probably the Highlight we'll be hearing from some sixth grade students this evening um and and just to provide an introduction there are other opportunities for our students and I want to um the other opportunities we will have a fifth grade stepup day and that is going to happen on June 4th it coincides with the practices for the course and band concerts that happen here and so we'll have fifth grade Step Up day and that's an opportunity for students to this the most important thing about stepup day is lunch that is the absolute most important they get to eat in the cafeteria they'll eat with the sixth grade students and they'll get a taste of what it's like to eat at Tanto that is the big highlight and then we'll spend some time with our sixth grade team teachers and then the other opportunity we will have is the um day before school starts we have a sixth grade orientation where our sixth grade students will have an opportunity to meet up with our high school student council students and they'll U be guided through um you know get a tour of the whole school and learn how to open their lockers and and also become familiar with some of the students who are the role models in the the school and have familiar faces at every grade level so there will be many opportunities but we all know that it's important to start with this night because it's it's getting close you know it's we're sliding to home of the you know of the school year right it's in a couple weeks it's April vacation and then it's summer right that's what happens so we know that this is what happens so um let me just follow along here so um again my name is l we have um our so our admin team um Rene lantro Rich Cameron um is the assistant principal who focuses on grades 9 through 12 and then we have our middle school guidance counselor Greg [Applause] [Music] picarello this this is a nice crowd yeah this very nice um so and I know Kyle I know this is driving you bananas but I really I get a little like claustrophobic when I start to um so I'm walking slow so you can do the camera so uh one of the things I think is one of the challenges for parents is how do I fit in how do I I have been a room parent I have been intimately involved with the activity of my grade school student how am I going to stay connected because we all know as they get older and I've experienced this even though we don't want to admit it they are going to become more and more embarrassed by you even though there is nothing to be embarrassed about but we know this is a natural progression of what happens so how do we stay involved and this slide will help um help identify some important groups that help you stay connected and provide opportunities to support what happens at school and to support the the whole student so we have the tono PTO which is incredibly uh um critical critical critical to so um so much programming that happens we have here um Stacy plunet is the um PTO president but we have uh Cindy M uh Kenzie who is here tonight if you have any questions please seek Cindy out she's also going to be at the school store um the school store is managed by the PTO so please make sure you stop by a very critical source of support for our teachers for our students for our school Community they funded an U we have this refresh day they funded a speaker series throughout the day we could have never provided that experience for our students without the PTO CPAC which is the special education parent advisory council is very active in our school Community um we'll show you the links of that we we did have car extrom she was planned on coming but El last last minute emergency so we I will show you how to get in touch with the CPAC group we also have the tono athletic booster club very active very involved and provide and host a lot of opportunities for parents to come together and I think as parents you will find that there is a shift and because I remember you know if there was a ship I'm gonna if I land don't laugh um oh yeah I'm GNA go so we have it is a shift for parents like how do I fit in where because our friends our friends were our children's friends in preschool our P the pars right that like are kind of that's how we navigated things and as your children get older and become involved in different things we have to find our own way so it's where it's like you know growing up of the parents as well so these are opportunities we also have I want to make a plug for Clinton Savings Bank they are an incredibly supportive Community um presence and provide many special opportunities so how many people have Clinton Savings Banks accounts from school because I know that you guys that there's um Clinton Savings bank accounts so you can continue continue to use those bank accounts up here and you can start new ones and there's a branch right in the building really building a sense of um you know personal finance responsibility so with that being said I just want to take a few minutes to um so how do we have a strong Middle School experience and I won't I know I've taken a lot of time I apologize so prepare your child for today in the future so we're preparing our children for what you know the daily assignments are but we're also providing them opportunities for skills that they will use Beyond today and that's really what we want to focus on the here and now but building skills that they will use further on and Beyond High School support your child's Independence and encourage them to take risks and be self Advocates this is when as a parent you're going to step back a little bit and and and tell your student have you spoken to your teacher have you and that can be scary that can be scary and I know some of you are going oh no no they're not going to speak to anybody they will not speak to one person oh but we can write an email to our teacher let's sit down and write an email to our teacher together so promoting that self advocacy be supportive but don't enable what does that mean that means don't do the project you are not doing the project they are doing the project go do that project I will get you the materials you don't do the project remember to help your child balance their interests with their academic and extracurricular schedules please understand that we want our students to feel good here we don't want them to constantly be stressed out we want them to take academic risks risks we want them to stretch themselves but we don't necessarily want them to always be like well you know I I can't I can't join I can't join soccer because you know what happens if I have a science test we'll figure that out we'll absolutely figure that out you should be on the soccer team absolutely you should be part of the art Club because we'll figure it out and it's all about and that's part of prepare your child for today and the future learning to balance because you've got to feed interest you got to feed your soul if you're going to be successful in other areas is so I am going to hand the presentation over right now to Mr picarello and he's going to introduce our sixth grade team and thank you so much for attending and oh just so so everybody I'm sorry I know just grab the um this is being filmed so if there's anyone who's missed this you can assure them that it is on it will be posted on the same link that school committee meetings are posted and we are going to send out this presentation for everybody so you don't worry oh thank you um so so fancy um so I'm H Greg Pell I'm the school counselor here at tondo uh Middle School specifically 6 through eight I'm here to introduce the team so first we have Miss Cox who is our math teacher in sixth grade we have Mi SP speroni who is our special ed teacher in um sixth grade next year here M you're done already M Miss Barry social studies and Miss galoa who teaches science if we don't have him here but Mr starak is our Ela teacher um do you want me to read that I'll read it uh the transition to sixth grade is a big step teachers in sixth grade work hard in Freedom progr meets needs for students will Foster your community of kindness and cooperation thank you hello everyone um like Mr picillo just read the transition is a big step and it actually starts right now it's starting today with this meeting um we often think that it starts when schools the next school year starts but it's it's starting today and transition means change right a transition is a change and the transition from elementary school to middle school is a really big change and every know um but changes can be exciting but they can also be overwhelming and we want you to know that we are here to help you with the change because a lot of things happen there's a lot of new things that you have to get used to when you come to Middle School there's all new faces you have new classmates that you weren't in school with before there's lots of new teachers there's a new building there's a new type of schedule to follow there's even a new routine at home where you have to get up a lot earlier than you used to but on the end of the day you get to go home earlier too and so in the beginning of the year um well our goal all year is that you are comfortable okay we want adults and kids to feel comfortable able with middle school but it takes some time it takes some getting used to and so we're going to spend a lot of time in the beginning like Mrs squa also noted we're going to learn how to open and close lockers and we're going to learn how to navigate the building and we will walk you to your classes until we think you're comfortable getting there by yourself and we really do want you to ask us for help because you're going to have a lot of questions and you're not the only one who has those questions I guarantee right six current sixth graders there's a lot of questions and you're not the only ones who had them right everybody else is in the same boat so we want you to ask us and if talking to us in person is a little scary you can send us an email right um so and one of the things that we notice as teachers is that the transition a lot of it happens in the beginning but throughout the whole year things change too because you might discover maybe a new learning style you have or you might notice that your friend groups are changing because lots of new people are in the mix and maybe you try something new you you try out a club or a sport those are all new changes and so again we're here to help you we want to support you we want you to go home by the end of that first we can say I love Middle School even though you don't know everything yet so I am now GNA turn it over to all right so in sixth grade we focus a lot on progress not Perfection uh we understand that students will be receiving letter grades for probably the first time and that's a change for the students it's a change for the parents we find some students are obsessively checking their grades and they are devastated if they get an 80 on something and we have some students who are like what's Power School um how do I get in okay um but the reality is is that your child's not going to get a 100 on everything um and that's okay right our focus is are they learning are they growing are they improving and in sixth grade there's a lot of opportunities to redo assignments do test corrections redo things to show that they've learned so that first time that they take that assessment maybe they're they didn't know what they were doing yet okay now let's try it again right so let's that's really one of our big focuses progress not Perfection um there's going to be an increased workload your child's going to be going to seven classes a day that's seven different teachers every single day that's a lot um and so they're going to have to learn how to manage that workload time management all of that stuff and throughout the year at the beginning of the year we're very good about allowing them to pass things in late and we start to scaffold that as we go through the year because again we're looking for Progress not Perfection we're not expecting every single sixth grader when they come in to pass every single thing in on time at the beginning of the year because that's just not a reasonable expectation for students who have never been expected to do that before um and middle school is a time for growth we understand that this is the next step towards High School which is then the next step towards whatever they're doing after high school um and so this is a great time to let your child figure some things out um because it doesn't like they this is the first time they're seeing grades so they're not going on college transcripts they're not going to matter as much there okay so that's our focus is progress not Perfection so we're fostering we're fostering Independence right so we want our students to become more self-reliant we want them to be responsible for their academic success we want them to own their school work right this is my responsibility to do this and we know that these things are new and you all have different kids right even if you have a family you know the kids in your family are different right so some of these kids are going to come in and they're going to be ready to go and some kids are going to be like you want me to do what um so self- advocacy is huge um their ability to come talk to us and I will admit right off the bat that I am terrifying right yes absolutely so it may be hard writing those emails is a way to go absolutely um or if you're having a hard time talking to one particular adult maybe talk to a different adult that makes you more comfortable right and and we're always happy to go back and forth that way you know we'll have a conversation together that other teacher can go with you right if that's what it takes to get you used to doing that and anything you can provide over the summer if you go to a museum or an activity encourage your student to talk to an adult that's not someone in their family someone they know well or have them pay for something at a counter so that they can want to get used to those experiences because talking to us is going to be something they need to do and sometimes it's in an uncomfortable situation it's because they've lost an assignment and they need to ask for a new one and they're uncomfortable with that so building those skills is huge once a student can self Advocate they're going to be fine they're going to be able to do all the things they need to do um self motivation that one sometimes is you know again some kids are coming prepared that's who they are and some are going to have some more trouble with that and we're here to help support that we understand that it's there's going to be growing pains as they transition to Middle School um our hope is that by the end of the year they've cut it down right they they've come a long way you see huge growth in sixth grade between what students start out doing in the beginning and what they did in the end you know um I think these guys can even tell you when we started at the beginning of the year we started doing vocabulary and they're like people want me to do vocabulary I don't know what this is this is such a lot and now they come in and they're like pH vocabulary that's easy I know how to do that so um another piece that they need to take responsibility or you know for is how their words and actions affect um both themselves and others kinds of things that they do and say are going to affect their relationships um a lot of students just like to kind of like the thing the idea that pops into their head is what they say and you know they can get into a little bit of hot water socially when that happens so that's something else that that we're trying to teach them to kind of make sure that they have responsibility for the things they say and maybe stop for a second and think about something before they just say it and whether that's going to hurt someone else's feelings um we'll have kids who are having all different levels of success right hopefully by the end of the year everyone's having success but there's they're all going to come in in a different place and it's going to have different levels of comfort and so some of the things that you know you say when someone else is struggling can be hurtful so we've had lots of you know social issues about those kinds of things so teaching kids that they're responsible for the things they say and that they will have you know issues with their friends if if they're not careful about those things so it's basically kind of you know being responsible for yourself that's the kind of Independence that we're looking for in sixth grade um again we are going to expect that there's going to be growing pains but that as we progress through the year all of it will become much much easier Independence um so I just wanted to take a minute to introduce the entire counseling department so you can see uh I'm am the counselor for grades six through eight and then uh we have ktie Schmidt who is our uh ninth through 10th grade counselor and she's also part-time adjustment counselor uh we have Eileen Rodman who is our department head and she's our high school counselor in 11 and 12th grade uh especially helping your students in the process of applying to colleges or post-secondary plans anything like that uh we also have Cara Ford who's our school adjustment counselor and Dr Kim trainer who's our school psychologist so it's a big team uh which to me means there's a lot of resources in the building for you and your students and I think the counseling department is uh the the type that we have the freedom to work with with a lot of people and make connections and act as like a middleman for a lot of uh different departments in the building and always here to help whether it be a parent or a student or a teacher we're always here to help work through problems and try to find Solutions so um I I didn't always have a slide about School counseling um this is my you know I think I started in 2013 um if anybody's reading uh the book anxious generation like I am right now that's prime time our switch over to iPhone forward- facing cameras and we see these rises in anxiety in not just uh adults but kids as well um and it's it's this age it's this heading into Middle School it's 12 13 14 these years are really formative so um as a department it used to be myself a high school counselor and a school psychologist and there's no way we could do that now um with the things we're hearing and seeing from from kids and families there's just there's a lot of pressure on kids these days not necessarily from families but from culture and Society so our counseling department we work really hard um our number one goal is building relationships whether it's building relationships with parents or students we want the counseling office to be uh a visit to the counseling office to be as normal as going to the nurse's office if you need uh a Band-Aid or something like that if there is something you a student needs help working on we're we're there for that because that's where we're seeing kids really need um I'm a product of the 80s so I don't know if you guys have the same experience as me but my one time talking to any counselor in my life was in high school going to the count my counselor who was also the football coach I think he was the football coach first and then counselor fourth and I said I think I'm going to apply to one college and he was like yeah seems like a good idea so that was my experience with guidance through school so I didn't even realize that um this was a career that people had where we could um support students with the the ISS isues that they're facing these days so we've got a really really strong team uh we've got a very very strong team that works together really well um we have a uh in our office you'll there's a sign in uh we try to track every student that comes down requesting anything from counseling we track it so we can make sure if we don't see the person in that moment we can get back to them we don't want it feeling necessarily like a DA counter like take a number everyone sitting in one room crying together we want to make sure you have a space to go if you wanna like come I want kids to talk to me when they had a good day I want kids to talk to me when they had a bad day I want we want to be supportive to everybody because we're all going through things right now we all need um support um the value of being heard is so important I think we all know we we have problems we want to talk to people about them we don't always want an answer we just want to know someone Hur us we want to know someone understands us and I think I'm sorry I'm a parents as well parents it can't be you sometimes you just they need someone who's not their parent sometimes to hear them because we're probably saying the same thing you guys are saying but it's different because your parents I know that again I know this because I have two kids so um is someone in the in the in the building who can support you who can support your kids um and I I put up here miss cook so I have a um I had a teacher in middle school I wasn't a good student so kiddos that are here I apologize not setting me off for Success here I had a hard time in school school was very difficult for me I had an art teacher Mrs cook who every day she saw me whether I had her class or not check in how I was doing she gave me a hug can't do that anymore but she would check in with me see how I was doing and send me on my way which made me feel a little less worried about that day it made me feel a little less worried about what the rest of my day was going to look like because Mrs cook was there making sure I was all right so we're trying to be more Mrs Cooks in the building we're trying to be resources for you guys and and your kiddos and um we're going to spend a lot of time with them I teach classes these guys can test we spent a lot of time together we talked about normal you know Middle School things and we want to try to normalize feelings and normalize being a human being and you we're trying to help them grow right now so that's my counseling Spiel if anybody wants to reach out to me my email um it's on later on the slide if you have questions about the transition if there's something that you think would help your student um just let me know I really just want to make sure I'm here to help so thank you guys all right so um I thought it would be valuable to real quick just show you you talk about there being seven periods in a day um um there that's a lot of transitions so uh sixth grade students are going to have their four core classes their English science social studies and math uh currently we also have an extra block we're calling it a Wind Block it's been called a quest block if you have a kid that's already been through sixth grade um it's basically a block that's meant to give students extra support in our core um curriculum State something is coming up in a certain subject is a struggle for your students specifically they might work with that specific teacher to get some help definitely going to be focusing on um drilling the ELA and math thank you very much um we also have um students are going to get PE every other day all year these guys only got it every other day for half a year that's why they look so sad but yeah but we're going back to our old model which is PE every other day all year you know sixth graders have a lot of energy and they need to get it out um opposite that there'll be half a year of reading support and half a year of computer science discoveries which will actually we have uh computer science every single year all through middle school and then options when we get to high school for part of our digital literacy program so um that's ba that's basic version of what the schedule might look like along with some other electives that are TBD based on um some you know the next month or so um but that is a typical day for a student here I'm going do a quick call back um I didn't realize that the counselor slash foot coach was a universal experience I did totally have that too and I also applied to one college and he said great and I did it um but I only have a few things to say about special education services um for any students in the room that get special education services um those will automatically be scheduled for the IEP so you don't have to worry too much about those yes and the transition meetings we will have as well we're going to talk about those um AC academics report comes out of a non-core academic class an Ila intensive language arts comes out of a elective yeah so just to picky back off of the um the special education slide there the transition meetings for those of you that that have special ed students we will make sure that we have a a separate transition meeting coming into Tahanto um that will typically happen May June um time frame with the special coordinator down in the elementary school as well as our coordinator up here at the Middle High um we'll also make sure that we have a teacher um at least one teacher Core Teacher plus our special education teacher in those meetings because your services some of you that maybe um have gone through a special education meeting this past year if you've already done an annual meeting they may have said well this may look different when you go to Tanto so we will make sure we have that transition meeting we are also going to do Transition meetings this year um as much as possible for any students that are on a 504 um so I coordinate the 504s for the middle school students um so we're going to try as much as possible to reach out to those families at the end of the year um that are already on those plans so we can coordinate any Services coming up um especially those those particular accommodations necessary okay okay so the orientation actually Mr quer covered this which was great um we will send out the date in the summer when we will ask your students to come on in and um again it's it's not mandatory it's just a great opportunity to be here with the student council representatives and the teachers will be here it's a great tour when no no other students aside from those you know role models are here so um you get a little bit of free range and you get time to practice the locker the locker is a big um and and um we we want to make sure you have plenty of time for that so that'll be a really nice opportunity oh I'm in charge of this office information slot okay so the biggest you know I I I know how great the the principles are at the elementary school with communication and it and and I again I'm a parent I have a middle school student right now in West Boon and a high school student and I work at a school right so shame on me if I'm not looking at my email and reading those weekly Communications but it happens um but that's the way we communicate here as well it's really really important and I can't stress it enough that we have your correct information so if you are getting regular weekly Communications from your current principls you know at Berlin and Boyston great because that's the email we have too um there has been some slight confusion when new students come in to register um with some emails I also know as a parent and an educator many of us have two three emails and we're not always you know checking you know the same one every day so just make sure that we have the right email on file what probably we will do in the summertime um we communicate regularly especially in August we'll we'll put out kind of a posting to make sure that we have your correct contact information um and you know if if we don't you know we maybe we'll send out a school messenger just to say hey did you get that last email if you didn't please let us know because really so much information comes home in a weekly email from Miss sequera um every Sunday evening um and it's just really essential that that that gets to you something that sometimes is a surprise um is you know we physical exams that they're they're we know they're annual and I have to take off an hour on Friday to get my daughter one because we missed an appointment so she can play softball so it's it's so um we you won't be able to enter the door without that current physical exam and many of you already have them from this last past year but if you don't check the date and what ended up happening um which was unfortunate last year in the fall was we had some students that wanted to do soccer and they didn't have that physical yet um so just as a FYI there's some of those ready meds will do the sports physicals you know appointments so just just kind be on the lookout when that annual appointment is for your student we need that when they walk in the door the nurses have become really really you know on top of that for good reasons but so just please make sure you have that into us um attendance the biggest thing here is and I know the elementary schools have different ways to communicate that attendance piece here is you can call the main line and and leave a you know a sick um attendance you know um out today for your student or we will send out in our communication Miss square is also to show you the website kind of how to navigate contact info you can also send an email to our secretary if your student's going to be up and yes this I would love to show you some of the updates on the um the district website we've been working really hard uh actually I I see the superintendent in the back here Mr gan's here he's he's had technology director um you know coming in and really updating our website so it's userfriendly and there's lots of great links on there um and getting to the individual schools you'll get a lot of great information there um everybody notic so we go to we go to the regular District website and then if we go all the way to the right hand corner we can go to schools click down and wait there we go look at this and if you scroll down oh wait a second are we a National Blue Ribbon School yes M aquero and and then we have this is um this has been reformatted really we got a lot of feedback from staff and parents from our school council and really allowed us to like what what do parents need and so Middle School information High School information contact Direct to re register your child and the lunch menu everybody's like we need a tab for that and you do because that's the number one so let's look at this Middle School information oh wait a second um I think I double clicked so we Middle School information so the first thing is um the program of studies um that that was the one from this year and then we have additional tab scheduling handbook summer Work N um National Junior Honor Society which is we actually have to um put that tab um and then Athletics so it really is a much easier website to navigate mcast update district report cards so these are news and announcements really those um kind of pressing issues or things that are coming out right now um we have links to scholarships we also have um a lot of great photographs our mission and vision um and if you scroll down this is a really nice this is our calendar that is updated so we have a schoolwide calendar that is updated um kind of sinking you know um as we're changing it so this is a um a really great spot for it's not districtwide this is for toono backage just to them that that contact information pth so if you have questions throughout the the summer um all of the um emails and phone numbers and if you keep scrolling down I think they have our roles and kind of who to contact when this is a great resource when you said oh you know I wanted to ask about this but it's July will anybody answer me there'll be people in the office throughout the summertime so feel free to either email or call um and many of the teachers are not here but if you want to email um an admin or if you want to give a call to the main office that way you'd be able to get a response um so just please take a look um play around a little bit with the Tahanto piece of the website we um they Continue to update it and and we're really really happy about that it's much easier to navigate I know that some Middle School teachers have individual web pages and I'm not sure if those Will Go On on here or how that's going to work but there are Middle School teachers and teams I know sixth grade had like a website at one time seventh grade has individual pages so that'll all come through your child's Google um email and Google classrooms oftentimes okay okay okay so we're at our closing but miss squa might want do you want to bring up your guests now or so this is the most important the absolute most important part of the presentation we actually have some real live sixth grade students who have survived up till this point [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so we have this is so they've been um they've been asked to share a little bit of their experience and to um help answer any questions Mr piccell UMC I because people are way more comfortable with you than me maybe I don't know okay um so we're going to have Mr pi because they um we've talked about different things that they might want to share you know some be highlights maybe you know something special something they've learned um so yeah we just want to say thanks Evelyn barha and Sasha came gave their time to to speak to you guys which we really appreciate so um we just love [Applause] to so I'm going to let them say their piece about their experience in sixth grade and then I can help um coordinate if anybody has any questions they want to ask of our three sixth grade students or you guys after that have questions for us I'll definitely help facilitate that conversation um I think that when we first transitioned into sixth grade the teachers did a really good job of sort of introducing us to what we were going to be doing throughout the year well you really scared were you scared no it wasn't that scary the first day of school is kind of just weird because you're all over the place and you're just so excited it's like all your friends are there but after like the first week or two you kind of get used to the schedule and it's not like you straight like just go straight into work it's kind of like the first two or so weeks are just getting to know the teachers like what they expect um you get what you're going to learn the curriculum do you get a lot of homework the first day uh no you don't have any first day yeah I agree with Marsha the first few weeks are very calm it it's a very very easy to like figure out where you're supposed to go how to manage your time get used to all the new parts and yeah the teachers help a lot with that you do you guys have any advice [Applause] for we do have a lot of fifth graders soon to be sixth graders here do you guys have any advice for them about maybe the transition or things that you were worried about walking in the building that you realized afterwards like wasn't such a big deal stay out to you guys um well first um I wouldn't be worried because getting to classes like you can't get lost teachers help you out in the first couple weeks and even if you do like not know where you're going you can tell by the people in your class they're going to be going the same place so you can see you be like oh this person's going here I must have Spanish that's where it is so the first all of the classes are in one hallway they're all like lined up and your lockers are right next to the classes the only thing that you should be slightly worried about I guess is electives but you get you know where they are because the teachers walk you to your elective for the first week or so well until you know that until they know that you're ready to walk to your own elective but one of like the hardest parts for me was remembering to charge my Chromebook every every night you have to bring it home every night and then you have to bring it back so I put my cbook in my backpack and charge it from inside that's a what one of major problem the major problems for me was getting used to the early wake [Music] up I sometime sometimes would leave my alarm clock on the other side of my room so that in order to actually turn it off I would have to get out of bed does anybody have any questions for our our sixth grade students because we want to give them the opportunity to answer I you know I could speak but they they just are going through this experience now so if anybody has any specific questions for them yes how much homework are you doing now question um we do we don't have a lot of homework because you get like one sheet of math homework for the whole week and then the rest of it is just things you haven't finished or like there might be like something every other week we do not have a lot of homework and it's really easy to manage how much we do have question answer um and I think a lot of it in sixth grade is um things you don't finish in class go home so your student might be it might be harder for them they might be bringing home more and that's just something to talk through with them and talk through the teachers but I think we see a lot of that times it's it's work that's done in class that's not quite finished end up going home so more yes there's a variety of electives and so you're not if you and your friend pick an elective together on purpose you're not going to get into the same elective but there's a chance you could so I wouldn't base your electives off of your friends the electives that we have are art Spanish jazz band chorus band and Lego robotics and if you're not put into the elective that you want first you also get a second pick for your elective um that was the one piece that I I didn't put up there was the elective choices we typically have one period for sixth graders for the electives that they're choosing just because of we're going through just picking what classes are going to be available every year it's slightly different so for these guys that's what they've had but that's not exactly necessarily what it's going to be next year but that information is going to go out when we send out the scheduling information yeah way in the back so what if you want you're interested in changing your schedule good question okay um yeah if you're not comfortable with the electives or high your schedu is working out um at towards the end of the F first quarter you can like go to the office and request a change in your schedule electives the counseling office is a place to do that and typically we try to not wait too long and if you know pretty early on that you're unhappy with something want to talk about it because we don't want you stuck in something that you're not you're not enjoying um but say earlier the better when it comes to changing schedules for sure yes long inter so each class is 40 minutes and you get three minutes to transition from class to class so that means going to your locker having to fill up your water bottle going to the bathroom you want to finish that between the three minutes that you already have since the teachers only have 48 minutes to give you all the need to do all on that day does anybody yell at you if you um don't get to class time like that that just seems like a really really short time like do you do that like is it possible like what happened um so the teachers do not yell at you if you're um it also kind of depends on how far it is into the year but either way teachers don't yell at you they'll just honestly I don't think they say anything um you just go in class it depends how late I guess like if you're like couple minutes late because you had to get water but but yeah there was a line um they're not going to yell at you you're just gonna go in and get back to what is and I my water bottle um I don't but I mean you could good question so I think that uh as they kind of noted three minutes between classes but majority of the classes are in one hallway but then you know if you're going from electives from if you have PE and you have to make it back to the sixth grade hallway that might be a time right oh I can't I don't have time to stop at that period the period before I should stop and use the bathroom grab reps things like that so I do think there's some planning that can happen and that's something we you know we can do with the teachers we can the counseling office can do that you just need help kind of getting getting used to things so so we have to see um what teachers are available um and what time thoughts are a available um based on um staff that we share so because um there's a middle school and a high school elective teachers share um the all the students in the school so we have to see what graduation requirements are needed we also have to see what times are available for the sixth grade you know for the sixth graders like when their core classes are available we also did a shift we instead of just having a half year every other day of PE it's a whole year so that shifted so there's a lot of like the availability of teachers and the availability of like time through the schedule but I can we will have art and and and chorus and Legos and computer science discoveries so we're going to have those courses yes related to the question about is it all so it's you know it's art sixth grade art and computer compter programing compter is that just sixth gr or is it other kids who they did guitar last semester and not they want to try computer programming so be a mix grade of only sixth grade only sixth grade for sixth grade electives it's sixth grade students yeah and then for high school you get you would get mixed grades but for electives because of the way the schedule is blocked there are sixth grade electives seventh grade electives and eighth grade electives the only the only change for that would be Bandon course because that's a really difficult thing because it's a you know Ensemble you know it's a group of students trying to play together so we have to do that but for other for other electives it's individual yes can you talk about the phone policy in Middle School sure no um yes I'm GNA have um Miss Leandra um I do want to make a plug for this though this is I I'm um I've have read the anxious generation I absolutely please read that book it's probably one of the most important books that you will read um raising a child today my biggest advice to anyone who has a middle school because we know we want our children to be able to contact us if they've missed the bus or when they're done with practice we know that we want them to be able to text us and and call us they do not need a smartphone they do not need a smartphone I had a flip phone does anybody remember the era of the flip phones that is all they need they do not I know this may seem radical they do not need and I'm gonna just say it they do not need the garbage that comes through social media they just don't need it they do not need it I am all about the flip phones and send them to school with the flip phones if if you want to if you wanna you know kind of navigate social media with but it's it's our children are too precious they're just too precious just quickly on that we are um there is going to be some information coming out we are working on um trying with the the school committees and the the the sub committee policy and the U technology subcommittee working on what might be an actual policy for cell phones in our handbook right we have procedures right and protocols and right now middle school students they are not supposed to have their cell phones on them when they are um or using them at all during the the daytime sixth graders are actually really good about that sixth graders for the for the most part have their cell phones in their backpacks in their lockers we don't really have to worry too much about the sixth graders um so you guys are doing an awesome job with that really good you notice that um hoodies are really a big popular item for many reasons right one of them is because that really cool pocket and uh so it then becomes a bit of a challenge to navigate especially as the students are getting up to eth grade so we're really trying to take a look at what is the best best thing for our for our school for our learning because there's there's also two sides to that story we have a lot of great apps that the teachers especially in high school use for um for some tools right in their classroom for some resources so we're really working on an actual policy we don't have that yet we do have protocols and procedures that we follow in our handbook that's outlined right now well we are going to be looking for parent input we've just put together kind of kind of spearheading asking the subcommittees of the school committee what they would like to do as far as next steps um we actually had at our refresh refresh day that's a real social emotional um support day for our school we actually had a a a optional uh cell phone free lunch and we got some really great feedback from the students on that so we're pull pulling all of that together and um we will definitely um I know Mr um superintendent ganam had pushed out to the whole District kind of this toolkit that the Attorney General is kind of sharing with all um districts so take a look at that if you haven't already I believe yes we have it on our uh our our presentation here we're going to also send this out to all of you so you have the so this is a QR code right here so you can take a look at that toolkit so be informed to kind of some options what other districts have done so far because there are there are both sides to this right um but the social media piece we've seen a great impact um throughout all communities and we are also having a presentation that will be um yes on the 16th um superintendent gam has also put together this presentation it will be virtual so you can you can access this from home um and this will really kind of teach us a little bit more about that social media piece about cyber bullying it's a really great presentation I believe the elementary schools may have already had some portion of that and this will be another followup for you so more to come on actual policies but we do have procedures that we follow and I have to say sixth grade teachers are great about you know kind of reinforcing the need to be present um and sixth graders have done an outstanding job this year about really being present and not using their cell phones um in school yeah do you have a question no um kind also yeah well we're going to ask for for all of that input and I'm I'm sure the school commit will actually be sending out formal surveys you know in time just because we want your input right there's there's we need to also teach how how to use these resources right they are resources they are tools we all have them um and I wish we could get flip phones more I I know how the stores go right we we all we we know and being a parent of the sixth grader myself if he didn't have a phone I'm not going to know when to pick him up from practice we understand these struggles we got to navigate this together we got to understand when it's appropriate and we got to teach them we're in the business of education so we got to do that together right we're Partners in this so so please more to come on that so great question and and thanks um you know for being a part of that conversation we really value your input on that okay as far as safety goes you guys resource officer here no we do not but we have right we do have a safety director Rich Cameron our assistant principal um he's director of safety with um for the district we also have a very good relationship um very proactive relationship with the boy and PD and we can call them and we we do call them whenever we need them and they're here at a moment's notice yes my question is for the students um what was your favorite project that you've done so far this my favorite project was um pretty recently in science um we were tasked like drawing out a fossil like a site where paleontologists had found a lot of fossils um like it was very enjoyable and a good it was honestly a good good way to like learn about how fossil are found like where they are any other questions yes are the school hours I know it starts when does it end um it's actually um the late Bell is like 7:33 so they have to be in the door but um not arriving at the school at 7:30 like we open the doors at 7:15 okay and they should be in their classroom seated by 7:35 and then the last bell rings at 74 24 14 and they'll load the buses or get picked up at 2 you know after that so coming up I I believe there are a combined between Berlin boyon I believe at this time at the last I checked it was a total of um 88 combin and so we have that would be broken up so it would be 22 um students that can fluctuate a little bit depending on potting in how they're grouped so no more than yes when the buses arrive in the afternoon that is an excellent question and I feel you because I was always worried about the buses so what happens is the buses so we have Administration goes out there's bus Duty and parent pickup Duty and the bell will ring and you'll collect your things and when the bell rings we know we already know that the buses are going to be outside waiting for us and and we have um someone from Administration out there and everybody wears a walkie-talkie so it say you forgot something in your locker you could you could run back and say I can you hold the bus we can go we need the bus help and we need the bus held and they'll say hold the bus okay thank you all so much there are cookies and um all and water and all of us to ask answer questions thank you thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] you
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Pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the reps nationisible and justice for all. [Music] Louisa, would you do a roll call, please? Yes. Terry present. Kate here. Here. Richard here. Julie here. Check. Check. [Music] I shouldn't have to move that much. The board welcomes public participation and ask that speakers please limit their comments to 3 minutes. Speakers may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them. The board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with Danbury public school system. Thank [Music] you. Now, at this portion of the board, we give the public the opportunity to come before the board with any concerns. Is there anyone that would like to come and share their concerns with the board and did not sign our signup sheet?
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I'm um chair of the community relations committee I want to thank you for joining us this evening I'm going to turn the mic over now to Dr casiro Who's going to give you a presentation or our budget for the 25 26 school year thank you thank you Kate um so if anybody paid for the cheap seats um the the the prime seats are now available you could move forward um so I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight there's only a handful in the room um but it's important um the reason why we're doing the uh doing another budget um opportunity to kind of review what our ask was is because your advocacy is super important um for those of you don't know my name I'm Cara casmo Hi how are you I'm the superintendent um this is my first year so welcome I'm happy to see a few new faces that I may not have seen before um if you are in need of translation services we do have some folks here that can help support um you can sit in the back and we can be able to um get some additional information and support for for language um so I'd like to thank the board members for being here tonight um it's a little bit rainy Bluster could be halting some of our um our attendance tonight um and also the cabinet staff um and some of our members um of our DPS team so I'm going to go through uh the budget some of you may have seen this but I think tonight is more about sort of dialogue around the ask and our need and why why it's so important so as with our budgets in the past and with many school budgets um we base our funding we base our alignments we base our priorities on our district plan and uh for the last couple of years um our district through the collaboration of the community our stakeholders and our staff have determined that these six buckets um are where we want to focus our efforts and so we've developed strategic goals for teaching and learning staff development Talent acquisition School climate meaningful collaboration that's how we engage families which is why I'm glad you came out tonight um and resource ation and so when all of these things are priorities and when we align our budgets to those priorities we have something called coherence and sometimes um in years past and in different systems and organizations that I have known um folks have a lot of priorities we have a lot of goals and things that we want to do but the resources aren't necessarily aligned to that and so especially when there's limited resources it's very important to be strategic with how we back into those priorities and we say if all else fails these are the four or five things that we're going to work on this year and try to do them really well and support the people who who need to do that work um with the right resources and tools that they need so this year was my first year um as a superintendent but also uh Mike Weaver Mike Weaver waver he's our CFO U Mike is our fifth CFO in just a very few short many years um and we're hoping he stays but uh We've developed a a good working relationship and we developed a fresh process to um to the budget development one that had a little more um building based voice with our principles um and the people who are closest to the work and that is the best way to develop your budget is to hear what the needs are um you know in real time on the street um but then also um you know feeding in what's coming down from legislation what's happening in in the community what is our Outlook going to be what else do we have to anticipate in terms of our enrollment demographic um building repairs so all those things come together together to form um a budget and we had a lot of help and stakeholder involvement in that this year and uh probably more so than in the past years that I've been here so that was that was a great uh Focus for us um okay stop here okay um for those of you who are unfamiliar with our actual numbers we are up over 12,000 um students this number the Little Star there um we that number changes almost on a daily basis here we have a lot of students that come and go um so that number can be a little bit um a little bit erratic from time to time but for the general purposes over the last five or six years last 10 years we've been on a steady increase um over time we have two Early Child year centers 13 elementary schools three middle schools one high school seem to be two campuses which I'm sure you've heard about two alternative programs and our demographics at the bottom we now are at 38% of our students are multilingual Learners we have the highest percentage in the state State um 49% this Statistics is not up there but 49% of the students enrolling in our school system are second language Learners so they are en rolling at a higher rate than the overall so that number U will likely go up as well um we're at 57% economically disadvantage we also believe that number is a little bit higher because not everything is reported and then our students in disabil with disability number is going up we've been hovering around that 14% Mark for quite a while we're now up um to 15% um but also some of the needs that we're seeing are a little more severe uh in terms of the support that's needed so again just another way to look at our enrollment over time and um we have a double star on 25 26 we're still um registering students uh coming in we're um getting a handle on how our kindergarten um change over last year will affect the enrollment this year and whether or not those kindergarten uh students that um were held up with the uh age change which was about 200 of them whether or not they will enter try to enter as first graders or they will re-enter as kindergarten so we'll we'll know a little bit more when the spring uh through the end of uh early summer uh and over the summer uh this is when folks start to to start registering so again another look at our multilangual Learners you can see these kind of steady increase uh we're up to 4,630 um projected for an next year and kids keep it registering we continue to be a very popular place um special education as well you can see how our numbers have changed have changed over time um and we held steady for quite a while but we are now seeing that that increase so some of our issues our key issues um in terms of our drivers we need to meet uh as any budget any any organization meet our meet our contractual uh obligations um we're concerned about recruiting and retaining staff that's a big um important need as as many folks around the state even in the country struggle with Staffing their programs you know so two those things affect school systems and so it's important to remain competitive and to make sure that we're offering contracts and benefits um in some cases conditions that are attractive to our to our folks so we're constantly thinking about ways to do that um we've got several contracts coming up um in this this summer so we'll be negotiating about five of our bargaining unit contracts so there's a lot of work ahead um we have some onetime ARA funds so we're looking to replace some of those we're opening a new school school site I should say over at thhs on the west campus um which is a very costly budget driver but very much a necessity we have a a large High School enrollment um kind of bursting at the seams there waiting to to move on to this new site we're very excited about that um part of that DHS West move is uh requires a need to add a lot of plusses to our our Fleet um probably between 20 and 28 buses overall um those buses are anywhere between $70,000 and $80,000 a piece um and we'll be traversing across the city uh likely rering a lot of our school start times next year as well and of course we've got to continue to keep our schools safe make sure that they're secure um and other costs that we have as I mentioned before our growing sped costs tuition and out of District placements uh those tuition and out of District placement rates um are of great uh discussion right now in the legislative session because of the cost the skyrocketing cost of those placements and the tuitions and then and really there's no um no system in place to put a cap on those things so districts are really um at a you know held to whatever the rates are and finding facilities for students who are in need so that's something that's that uh it's not just affecting Vamp it's more of a Statewide concern um as I mentioned before remaining competitive and attracting staff is um going to be a key U Move for Danbury and again not just Danbury folks across the state too are all having those same conversations um we've uh are fairly competitive with with a lot of folks but in order to remain competitive we need to keep up and we need to make sure that we we don't lose ground um staff teachers in particular have options um one of the things that we're also trying to do is look at one of our contracts which is our our par educator contract our par educators are vital to our school Community um they serve as intervention Specialists they serve as uh ESL support in the classroom um for students who require services and are entitled to those Services um and they also very much so support our special education program allowing many of our students to stay in District to stay in House close to us um with some additional supports that we provide um we struggled to uh retain and attract in this area I think we our we were paying our starting rate was around $16 an hour um so you know there's a lot of options out there at $16 an hour not here for the level of work that required so um we're looking at that and we want to make sure that um we're able to staff our schools appropriately particularly coming this fall as we open up and our our school system grows we want to make sure that our classrooms are full um with par Educators who really do make a difference um it's been a root cause in this District uh this year in particular not having enough Paris we had to use agency staff to support the schools you pay a premium rate when when you do that um and it's just not the same level of of care or service and there's that relationship component um just is not there when you have C you know rotating staff that come in uh to cover as opposed to kind of really invest in the community so we're looking forward to that um urban districts in general um face greater challenges right sometimes uh we our classes a little bit larger sometimes we have uh very complex student profiles that we deal with and so when you have some of the some of these conditions and you combine that uh with some other challenges um you know it tends to make other places more attractive I will say that tamry public school system our goal if you haven't heard me say it in other presentations is to become the best Urban District in the state of Connecticut it's something that we can absolutely do we have incredible staff they're very dedicated we just need a few more supports in place to make that happen and that's what we're working on and that's focus and a driver in the budget so um this year we you know we did a lot of trimming in different areas based on on budget last year and some of that has proven to be um in some cases more expensive sometimes when you cut back in certain areas or you don't have enough staff in certain areas you can become operationally inefficient right your ability to get work done and to service in a way that is is Meaningful can be a little bit diminished and so um and having to use agencies um and so forth um yes the class is covered but are we getting the same return on that investment for the person uh in the classroom so um those are very important things we've had increased asses this year um we've had sub costs that um have gone up and some of that impacts learning so when you have a hot large percentage of substitutes in the building the the student Behavior can be a little bit more challenging at times it's not quite the same and so we're looking to really round all of these things [Music] out we reduced about 68 positions last year um you know you may have read in the paper that we only physically laid off about two folks but um we accomplished that um feat actually by um not filling some positions and eliminating positions where people had fated we just didn't backfill so we did lose quite a bit last year even though the headlines might have only been um that two staff were were eliminated so um that was physical layoffs so we lost some teachers coaches support staff counselors media Specialists operation staffs and administrators um we did get a one-time infusion from the city um which we were very thankful for uh our mayor worked very hard to um secure additional arpa funds even though they're onetime funds for us uh and super collaborative last year as we were kind of going through it uh with the budget so they did the city really did all that they could good to support uh to support us um and have been very open um there's a very open dialogue around funding um because of the relationship that is built so I am hopeful so this slide got a lot of attention uh particularly with parents so sometimes when you see a big budget you're not quite sure how all this what this means for for your child or what this means in the classroom and so one of our chap schools helped me do a little bit of sleuthing and um do some compare a lot of this is available on on public it's publicly available data um but when you lay out um we always compare ourselves to Norwalk and Stanford and some other school systems have similar profiles and demographics uh Norwalk is really close and size so we're we pretty much nearr the size of Norwalk and so um and we've had many staff members that have worked in danber Gone in Norwalk and and back and forth sometimes we trade staff so we have a lot of relationships with the folks there and we laid out we have a Danbury elementary school I'm not going to say which one it is it's 400 64 students and the Norwalk elementary school 465 and you can see the difference in the Staffing that supports the school um you know in a in a in a town that's the same size similar similar profile so we're working really hard to bolster the student supports um and increase particularly around uh you know reading Improvement math Improvement literacy coaches and things like that we have um literacy quotes and math quotes in the district but there's only a handful and they share and they they work across all 13 elementary schools so while they're not necessarily um you know parked in one of the schools dedicated all day long to students U they do go from building to building to help support um but it's it's very sparse so we're looking to bolster that and again phenomenal staff we just need a few more to close the gap on the work that we're doing um this is just a little chart to show how the 7.5 million is allocated for the one-time funds we have set aside uh money for technology uh replacement infrastructure this is coming at a very good time too as we're opening up a a satellite campus at the high school um the instructional Improvement so that is some of that is um some of the work that's needed to help open up the campus that not necessarily covered in the in the in the bond package um as magnet school that's a a fee a number to offset some of the tuition that was reduced uh through State Legislature and legislation over time and uh 1.3 was for the DHS staff enrollment so last year you know when in order to meet High School graduation requirements we have to staff at a certain level for the number of students that are there um so that was a number that we uh needed in terms of staff for for the high school to be able to staff appropriate for this school year um the existing staff we brought back um as part of that reduction we did have media Specialists and instructional coaches in that original reduction um and when the one time money came in it was an opportunity to um to to delay that uh for for this coming year and then we of course you've heard about the audit we had a lot of um audit activity and so having some extra supports in there to help handle the the volume of that uh as well as some supplies for students so here just another way to look at the budget drivers so you can see that the of Danberry is the largest largest budget drivers up there you can see that we've about 6.3 million in staff benefits about 700,000 we anticipating to operate the school informal utilities Transportation so those are all those buses that we that we need to add to the fleet um to transport students um we have technology and then school lunch the school lunch is interesting because normally our school lunch program for many years has been sort of self- sustaining so the money that comes in for school lunch also pays for um kind of a break even on the staff that we have um because we're opening a new satellite location a new site we cannot take the staff at DHS and just move them over that staff must remain and we have to supplement the staff and school lunch on the DHS West Campus a little bit of a budget driver there oh let me go through the contractual increases so we have about uh 4.5 million in contractual increases a lot of those contracts will be negotiated this this uh coming summer um restoration of the positions uh as I mentioned before um other positions non Academy fed ml needs to support students um competitive par Staffing model so that is a a number um to increase the PA contract and also bring more pairs on at the K3 level um I didn't talk about this I think in some other presentations but I want to tell you why that's so important so pair of professionals having a pair of professionals second set of hands working when targeted intervention in the classroom K1 and two particularly K and one is vital to making sure students end up reading on grade level by the time they're in grade three and having at at the time intervention is most valuable at the point where the intervention need is at its narrowest point so when we can we can Shore up gaps in student learning in K in one then we prevent those larger gaps from growing over time where there's there's not that level of support um and we don't want to send students up to the Middle School who are still struggling to read or struggling to do their math so um having those pair of professionals those hands in the classroom um K And1 is vital we also see a wide variety of learner profiles that come in some students with uh formal preschool experience many students who do not um students who speak English many students who do not and so there's a wide range of need for that kindergarten teacher to to um to instruct children at and so those par professionals um are vital and they're pretty common in most schools we had them at one point maybe about 10 years ago through a grant and we lost them and it was uh it was devastating so we're hoping to get those back oh I did it again um multilingual Learners uh 1.1 benefits about 4.4 so those are increas in health insurance costs and also cost of bringing on new staff is in that number some it improvements and then the other is really just a amalgamation of smaller increases across the system that are um that have gone up um but combined together under under father so the budget request for this year is1 194 million half or so with an increase of about $ 34.4 million and a 21% uh increase and that is a Whopper for sure and um you know the there's an elephant in the room that I want to talk about briefly and that is around recent news around our Audits and having some surpluses in the last couple um years where we've had to catch up on some of our Audits and so just very briefly you know um we've had some questions around you know um you know are we budgeting appropriately are we handling our finances appropriately and that's something that we take very seriously um as I mentioned before we've had a sort of a cycle of of financial turnover in terms of leadership but also um you know we we are looking at our budget in different ways and we're putting controls in place that uh likely should have been been there when during the time that that these uh numbers have surfaced so we are looking at this uh very carefully we're taking it very seriously um the audit results as you know we had we did have a surplus um in the most recent finding um but what we're dedicated to committed to is um a new open communication ongoing communication with the city so um since since I've taken over since Mike has taken over um we've had a lot of dialogue with our city leaders which is good um a lot of financial conversations with our city leaders and and right now there's crisscross collaboration um to to get that to a place where everyone feels comfortable with it um we are in terms of our internal controls that's something that um Mike Weaver and I are working on now with the finance team they've been buried in audits audit catchup for the last um couple like the minute they hit the door and they signed their contracts the finance team has been doing nothing but but audit work um so we're looking really forward to um kind of riding the ship in this area putting practices and controls in place um that make sure that our financial decisions our projections and our numbers are sound we continue to collaborate with the city and have an open dialogue in this area um this is just another way to look at the budget uh we did this last year and folks seem to like the left to right um out look I'm standing right in everybody's way as you can look at this um but this just lays out categorically the salaries the benefits um you know different types of categories that when you build budgets um so you can see where those lines hit um this is available on our website if you want to take more time to peruse it it's it's a little complex to look at um but the total numbers um you know line up to the 194 and you can see where those fall and the drivers in the blue are across the top left to right and so I won't go too much into the weeds but you can see that there's a large number of staff that this is the staff that's will be um heading up to needed for the opening of the satellite campus um on the west end of town this is DHS West you may have heard it called DCA or Danbury CIS or the Danbury Career Academy it's been out they had a few different names out there um but it is now DHS West Campus and then we'll have the DHS M campus so we need some leadership special education counselors department heads media Specialists special education teachers um Special A teachers t-a teachers bilingual psychologists nurses social workers counselors um speech and services um par Educators not just for special ed but instructional par Educators multilingual par Educators we need folks to help support our our Tech um we need 12 custodians sounds like a lot of custodians but it's a pretty big square square footage of a a footprint of a building um this building houses not just the high school but will house the Board of Ed and we're bringing three sites over combined into this new building so we'll also be able to get out of some of the leases that that we currently hold for some Consolidated location which be great um for savings on one end but also great for team building with uh the leadership team that's kind of spread across across the city and you can see there's some other things in here health benefits Building Maintenance costs and and just really the cost to operate the school so the enrollment for next year uh will we'll start with our um right now the current students that are in the academy model program are in grade 10 and they're all of at D high school and next year we'll have 10th and 11th graders we're going to allow our 12th graders to stay at gbury high school and finish out their senior year with the exception of CNA who have they have a full-fledged program and that will come over so it's just a small number of students uh that will come over but we have threey that are DHS West the scientific innovation amend medicine emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship and clean energy and Green Design so in total we'll have about 800 students over there to open the school and then the next year we'll add the 12th grade class to that as well so it'll be fully subscribed over the next two years for that school um this is just one of the drivers the contractual increases so the total is 4.5 we'll know more closely what that looks like when we settle those contracts this summer and this is the slide indic the positions that we'd like to restore in the budget for next year instructional coaches which are vital um that goes up against those uh the slide that I showed you earlier uh and and the need to provide those additional supports um this is to backfill the assistant superintendent for teaching learning which was my previous job this was very much needed U moving forward um make media Specialists um last year we we uh took two Elementary assistant principles offline they remained in the district um but we need to to backfill those most elementary schools across the state have an assistant and some of ours our schools are quite large um a security coordinator that was also limited last year and uh that is very much needed Safety and Security is is a primary Mike C has been doing a great job filling in the gaps but is certainly running all over the the school system trying to keep up um administrative support so these are support positions for um some some are in central office some are in curriculum uh where we lost some of those coaches which help um teachers to break down curriculum to make curriculum more accessible for our second language Learners also another vital position and then Associated benefits with those positions here's just a a list of other non Academy SP or ml positions so other drivers um we are desperate need for recruiting I think I counted close to 200 positions I think that we're going to have to open up uh the school year with between all of the new positions at the danber high school academy filling the current openings that we have now and replacing any staff that leave between now and the end of the summer which we always have some turnover um as well as the hiring of some of the parent Educators that we'd like to hire so there's a tremendous surge of of hiring and rehiring and bringing folks uh on board but particularly what's driving that is the opening of the of this of the new campus and so the timing of that is kind of everything all at once and so we're going to be starting a push um on that towards um sort of end of April but also once we get our allocation from the city we'll know exactly which positions we can hire we'll have to make some decisions on that um but we have to open up that that Academy um because those kids need to need to move over we need to get them on a t by High School uh they're bursted at the scams there um a senior accountant to help with some of our finance is part of our controls and systems and we need some additional help there student support Specialists those are your folks that are dealing um very directly with students who need tiered intervention so students who's really struggling or really behind or off grade level our students support Specialists work with them in an more intense way to help catch them up to grade level and so um I could probably use maybe about 10 or 12 more easy um but we have four in the budget here um Elementry teachers we have some sub schools in some Pockets that are kind of bursting we need to add across a grade level in a couple of our schools um that number changes a little bit over time depending on enrollment um it's a little bit that one fluctuates from time to time and then we um had a small amount in here to do some magnet uh recruiting and student Outreach uh for our AIS Magnet School to help balance our ratios and then those are the associated benefits that go along with those positions and this breaks out the driver for the comp competitive Paras Staffing model so overall with all of the par professionals that we have in the district we would predict that by um creating a more competitive per hour wage that we would U meet about $2.3 million roughly across that bargaining unit and then we it is our hope that we can add an additional 45 more so that would be one per at least per kindergarten class across our across our 13 schools um and then the benefits for those new positions would be 1.2 million and as I mentioned before special education is growing here in Danbury um it necessitates um adding a few more special education teachers along with some of the services that go along with that um the social worker and psychologist those are not just they don't just service special education students um they serve as all students but in particular when when those numbers go up um there's definitely an increased need in those areas um there's the benefits contracted Services out of District tuitions which are on the rise and sped supplies and equipment and then Transportation um a lot of times we have uh the need to have specialized Transportation um this is sometimes hard to project they come up through the IEP process during the course of the year and they get added in at after the budget has already been processed same is true with some of our audit District uh and Contract Services so some of those are IEP driven they legal mandates um and they're costs that are occurred post budget and so what happens is we usually will try to budget for those similarly the next year in anticipation that we may experience a similar a similar increase and for our ml population uh we we have some some needs so for a few additional bilingual teachers par Educators um a second language learner multi langage Le department head um we have very much grown and exploded the number of teachers at the K5 area so there's some need for some supervision and organization um in that area uh we have to uh would love to add homeschool Ag and we lost those in in our budget uh we had a wonderful grant called the leap Grant um that allowed us to pay for school a on to school a and would provide Direct Services to the families hey why isn't your child coming to school what can I do to support you and most often in the native language which has been a barrier for us so uh they're vent positions we hope to bring them back um it was it was a position that the principles are begging begging to come back so that came out really strong in our conversations again and they're in the parent contract so and then lastly this was the slide that indicates some of our health increases that we're anticipating Dental uh life uh insurance and workers compensation and we have a very small it network security budget and this is a little bit of an anomaly this year because we had some grants we did some offsets were able to offload some of the cost into some other grants as well as the ARA onetime funds so this is a this is a number that will go up in future years but for this year uh we have another source uh thank thankfully to utilize and then this is sort of the miscellaneous uh accumulation of other budget drivers so building repairs and maintenance Transportation adjustments um we have an increase in the number of homeless students in Danberry and their transport they have specific Transportation needs that sometimes Falls outside of the the normal bus runs um alarms security infrastructure some utility increases a little bit in staff development and just again a little hodg podge of smaller increases in mentals across across many contracts and here's a just a visual of how the budget breaks down in terms of proportionality with the drivers so you can see that the acmy in the blue takes up a pretty significant chunk of the of the as for this year um as well as the the Staffing model the competitive pair Staffing model Restorations benefits contractual increases and so forth so the total budget again is 194 the increase is 215 and about 5% of the budget is dedicated to the academy however um I will say that you know the budget increase if we if we were fully funded and I know that that's a that would have been a stretch um our increase this year from last year to this year if we were fully funded would be 7.24% so sort of in the ballpark with maybe where other some other towns are are projecting um we'd love to get that down in future years but we do we are opening Academy and there there quite a bit of needs um that we have ahead of us so but also some very exciting things in Horizon for students um if I had more time I'd give you the whole song and dance about the academy how wonderful that's going to be um so that you understand how important it is for us to to open that model up and and how that would be transformational for for our students um at this time I'll take some questions and while you're while you're thinking about raising your hand um I will say we did have a couple of questions that did come in through the survey people kind of prepopulated um so I can try to uh answer some of these now and um if any other questions come up we be happy to answer those so we got a question and this is coming in kind of left and right from everybody from our staff it's like how what's going on with the with the federal government and how is Danberry responding to um all this information that's coming out and I think like everybody else we were writing a roller coaster of of information coming out about about the changes that were happening um and things that were supposed to stop or start and then as soon as the federal government would put something out state of Connecticut would kind of clap back with their response about oh put the brakes on it um you know this this is this can't happen and there's we're going to you know there's a pause on this and then we get another another notice um so we're I've kind of taken myself and my team off the roller coaster of that because it's you know can really be distracting so we're really just watching and monitoring and we're going to wait to see how a lot of this plays out we'll be responsive to to information that comes in real time the biggest problem for us would be any type of cotton Federal funding so directly we receive about uh between $8 and $9 million of direct federal funds to Danberry so things like Title One idea uh title three title two title four um and many other grants in between and so if we were to incur a loss there some of our direct exposure could be in that area um in conversations uh with with other folks today um the loss to damber in general could be any can be closer to 20 or $30 million right um and we don't know how how um how any of our ECS money that's that's the thing that I have in question how is any of the other money that we receive from the state impacted by anything federally that's happening so that sort of remains to be seen and it's not a question that I can answer for anybody we're all waiting for the same information right now there's been no disruption to our services so that's what I can tell you is that we haven't seen A disruption uh to to us in terms of our funding that doesn't mean that things can't change down the line and we certainly hope that it does not um but like many like many of you we're riding the wave of information that's coming out um you know most of the information that we do in our that we uh follow and are beholding to is at the state level so um the state department we do curriculum locally but we're Guided by the state on what some things like assessments and where those standards um should be so even though the Department of Education is going away um the the directly direct effect on us is not necessarily around curriculum and decision- making it's it could be more around the financial aspect of things which remains to be seen okay so I that's a big nothing answer I gave you no information other than to say that we're in this same sort of waiting period that everybody else's and we're monitoring it closely and we'll be responsive as as as needed um somebody had a question about how the budget uh impacts class size and so it's a great question and I'm going to interpret that to say we don't get our budget you know how that impact class size because I wasn't sure not sure who asked this but um so anytime you have to make decisions around Staffing it can definitely impact class size and so we we work really hard to keep our class sizes manageable particularly because we have complex learner profiles in our schools and so the more complex those are the little B more difficult it is for for some of our teachers and so we we really want to work to keep our numbers our numbers down so when we don't um get the amount of Staffing or we have to kind of really squeeze and become super efficient those numbers can go up um so so the budget definitely can impact class size um the next question was where are we going where are the ongoing facilities and maintenance efforts in the district so uh we have a now have a capital Improvement plan that we are now communicating with the city and so there are things that we do internally to fix insides of the school and then there's certain things that that that our city Partners um help us out with and so uh We've identified um you know we we definitely have things that we have to fix um we're you know some of our buildings are are are getting older and so repairs are and maintenance uh have to become a regular occurrence and so some of the budget that we have here as one of the drivers is an increase in some of the lines around maintenance so that the parts that um that we work on that we can be responsive to those things um and then we have an ongoing di dialogue with the city um which is been um definitely increased and better in the last maybe year or two um with dialogue around what our needs are and so I'm I'm confident that we have someone in place who's dedicated to trying to fix some of our Biggers systemic issues we uh some of the arpa funds so the city received $12 million in arpa funds and they gave 7 and half to to us directly and then they spent the other money they spent on the schools um and so they picked off they're picking off some of our large like Ellsworth Avenue School the roof is being repaired what were some of the other projects this summer security security vle so there's there's other things so that money went directly towards um did what Siri did you have did I miss one I could hear the Pavilion oh the pav The Pavilion we have a beautiful Pavilion uh at Denbury High School um in the back so if you have been haven't been up there you walk across the Skywalk you can see it our students are using that um during their lunch waves uh right through the winter they s they sit out there but it's it's very nice it's lovely um and it allows a great collaboration space for students and a place they can enjoy themselves um but yes so uh we are definitely working on that that's something that's that's in process and you know as budgets allow both on the city side and the school side we'll continue to to make those repairs um and to keep our schools upgraded so that we have you know 21st Century worldclass Learning facilities for our students um is that my phone I was hoping somebody over here was going to say no it's mine sry about that [Music] his ears must have been burning that was Antonio I don't R I got a call so um I'll happy to answer any other questions yeah sure sir um with a reduction of student population High School by about 800 this year and more the following year can you tell us how uh much of a reduction you're going to have in the teaching staff the administrative positions the support positions and the overall savings the question the operation of the original C history sure so we are moving a lot of Staff over to the new site so a lot of the staff that um that were on the page were the Staffing is are your support staff so you're n new some new secretaries new custodians new um safety Advocates New Paris because you can't pull them from one site to the other and so all we're doing is thinning out d High School to more appropriate levels of where they should be so the staff we're not losing any staff we're adding staff CU we're opening a second site but what we're doing is we're allowing you know right now if many of our staff are going they have they don't have a home room they on with their backpacks are going to several classes during the day um so what this will do would allow people to have a home room it will allow some of our the student population to thin out um some of our classes up there are upwards of some of our classes have students in there so we'll be peeling some students off but really we're just right sizing but what are the actual reductions of the number of teachers who are going to be again with that school and the other administ right so I think it be about 70 staff members to overd about 70 yeah and and and the reduction of the total operational cost of the high school so high school the staff if you if you factor in the reduction of the Staffing at the building factoring the reduction of the Staffing so this so yeah it's not it's not broken out specifically cuz we're not we're not losing any I mean you it's $21 million for uh the new high school including staff it's 10 mil I'm sorry 10 million y oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm looking at overall 10 mil that includes sta that correct okay most of that which is which is which is a lot of new staff operational staff so how much is the staff saving now the older so so it's one campus so this I understand that given us yeah we can certainly provide a break a breakout of who's who remains left at D High School in terms of the number of staff is that what you're asking well I think you told us $1 million at the new High School in round figures y including Transportation including everything y all including the staff that is at that facil correct so you have did you say how many teachers were moving about 70 okay so how much is the Staffing cost at the old high school reduced teachers from this year last year and and other professional I would imagine you have uh one L nurse Perhaps Perhaps so some some of those some of those are so Dany high school right now is bursting at the seeds and so the Staffing so we probably needed an extra nurse a long time ago so those nurses would yeah would stay there we need new nurses same thing with counselors we we're going to be adding a few more counselors over but um you know our counselor ratios were not where we would want them to be so it's so it you know in terms of savings it's really about spreading the students out spacewise and in in more appropriate teaching and learning conditions um special I'll give you an example when you have a par professional or par educator um supporting multil language Learners in a classroom at denrey high school we may be moving you know a handful of students out need those services but there're still students in in the school that still need those services so many staff will not come over they have to stay at D high school and some of the staff that we listed there are the replacement so it's so it's not necessarily that we're losing staff or that number is going down we're just making more appropriate student to teacher ratios at deny high school so we the whole we we're building this building the satellite location because we have outgrown denberry high school we can no longer put another addition on uh it's not safe um to do that if you ever walk through the hallways at uh changing of the Bell it's like Grand cenal Station and you can get squeezed out and boxed out against the walls so we're trying to make you know safe conditions for the students so you know it's not necessarily that we're losing staff we're moving some staff over because the number of students but a lot of the auxiliary staff at the school will stay right good point custodians and square footage alone so you know none of the custodians that are at DHS will be going over to the new set and need a whole another set of custodians so there's no savings there same thing with the school lunch that's an increase cuz we can't we still need the school lunch staff that's serving now um to n a deny High School might you know might be one or two people that go over but we need more school on staff yes hi thank [Music] you question [Music] that sure so reach and Endeavor this is an alternative we have a program um that's part of uh Denver High School part of the middle school so we have students who get placed um in this program for for different reasons whether administrative place it could be an explosion sorry TI one Title One um and so the question is uh with all this movement we'll reach an Endeavor get a new home reach an endeavor um are in a building that we are looking to at some point vacate um and put them in a in a different location so um the goal we were hoping to be able to move reach and Endeavor to possibly the vacated Beaver Brook administrative Center um but the costs were very prohibited to to fix and upgrade Beaver Brook um to the place where it is um good for students that are 18 there are different rules U there's ADA compliance there are certain specifications so we're still looking um for a place for reaching Rebound in the future but there's not going to be movement in the fall for them yes I'm I have two children and element and middle school right here graduating this year uh my question is firstly uh about checks and balances right so I know recently with the ongoing changes and uh Government Federal and State changes have there ever been uh when was the recent audit in the finances and recent AIT of new programs implemented like um for instance the lunch program I are they checking to see if the kids are going eating the lunch is surveys that have been put out new program launch effective in effective exactly where the numbers are data analytics regarding um such programs or newly implemented program yeah so good question so that we're we're still in the process of of conducting audits those are the financial audits with the city and the board and in terms of school lunch so right now we have something called a request for proposal we have an RFP out right now we currently have a sedexo as our as our provider um we are we have been doing some work around um bringing in new ideas and programs we have a farm to school initiative um so we're trying to introduce new foods we're talking the kids during this during these process to ask how they like the food lunch I found myself having to make breakfast lunch and dinner and this is taxing on working moms you know of course Ava is not sufficient I know this is a new um Obama initiative with health launch so I'm not against or opposed of the program I'm just wondering what the school initiatives and what type of uh data analytics went out have have even noticed that the kids are not eating CU I know not just one it's probably one out of many well you rais a good point um Mike is in charge of school lunch as well I'm not going to put him on the spot but only to acknowledge the fact that we just had a conversation about quality food nutrition what we're offering in for breakfast I'm a big proponent of no sugar I said I'm not the nutritionist but the the sugar and the carbs and and versus you know making sure the kids have the protein and how we making sure that they that they're eating all the right things um as well as everything else so there's a you know there's a cost balance to all this stuff um but there's also you know foods that will make the student take the meal to begin with which is always a struggle um so we are looking at all of that and there is an a request for um there's a RFP out so we have an opportunity to entertain um different vendors as well to meet some of the things that we that we've talked about um it could be that sedexo is the one that we that we continue to to go on with maybe but with some changes in mind but I do like the idea of doing more surveys um particularly with the kids cuz I I have heard that before um and I I have seen some things as well so but we're we're trying to make some changes around fresh food farm to table vegetables and healthy Organics so we've just started that we've got um two or three schools now that are in it as well and uh our high school just got brought on board with farm to table so we're trying to make some moves in that area it's a personal passion of mine um so as a parent I completely agree and understand with with your comment the west campus that that's new to me and so I'm just trying to make operation with students that I'm assuming that it's a satellite because you can't builds that and so if you have students who are engaged in Academy in 10 grade and going back and forth mention the buses I wonder if there's any opportun to collaborate help around City without having such a huge um frankly that's more bused that I have to be St to go to work yeah it's a great point from time to time we have talked about using heart in fact in the model itself so um for those of you who don't know anything about the model what time what time is it do I have time to to dive in a little bit on this oh okay um so the model includes opportunities down the road for students you know who are very motivated um to do internships job shoting experiences and we we have started the conversation on how can we use our public transportation ones that exist and work with heart to get kids bus passes so they can go to the places that they need to go without having you know a huge yellow bus come and pick up 10 kids to go to you know bu rer or somewhere for an experience so so are on the same page you're welcome hi my name is jacn Cera and I actually have several questions um the first one is uh I would like to know what's happening with the uh Staffing at the uh School based Health Center at the high school uh the person left back in November and from what I know they still have not been replaced and that means that the children counseling are not getting it um so that's the okay Kell you want to give an update from from way in the cheat seats back [Music] there super so the has experienced some staffing challenges at actually two of our locations we have redeployed staff from one location to out supp and working with to try to continue um additionality [Music] make sure that each one of our loc we have time for one more and then we're going to we have to transition to the board and you can certainly email me those and I can follow up with you sure um the next one is down we have a very large population of multi langage Learners however the testing is very low and I just want to know what is the reason why so most of our multilanguage Learners they just need more time you know when they come to us and we we received we have multilanguage Learners come to us in all different levels some we get have interrupted education right so they may not have been in school for a short time or a long period of time we we experience that um we have students that come very fluent in their native language from other locations um so we we service are a Continuum and a wide range of multilanguage Learners here um as I mentioned before 49% of new enroles the deny public schools are multilanguage Learners and so um you know we even have them you know when we look at our graduation rates our high school graduation rates as another indicator um you know they tend to fall out of that 4year rate okay but they do come back and they that we have them on a six-year rate so they do finish with us they just take a little bit more time and so when they come to us and they're not on grade level and they're learning a language you know the focus is really about acclamation language acquisition and development so they can access the curriculum if they if they cannot access the curriculum those test course they're meaningless so we have to you know our work is to make sure that we have the appropriate supports in place so that we can um I'm less concerned about raising the test board as I am making sure that an individual child is growing if they grow every single year those test scores will take care of itself a little bit further down the line than for a typical speaking student right but if we're not identifying the children that need the additional supports of the testing how are they receiv support we we know who they are we know who they are we need more supports we our students are receiving supports we need we do need more of that we need more touch points um during the school day so that and that's where that Staffing around Elementary in particular is very important so we bolster math Specialists literacy Specialists additional um bilingual important classroom to provide both native language support and systemic ELD support throughout the day well thank you very much we're going to do a quick transition and um if anybody has any other questions feel free to email and we'll get answers out to you thank you so much [Music]
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We're going to allow the planning board and the council to ask their questions first. Then we're going to open it up to the public. Uh the first speaker that we're going to recognize is Brendan Judge. He is an attorney representing some real residents and he's asked because he has another commitment if he could speak first and we're going to extend that courtesy to him. And then uh really the only thing is we're going to try to stick to a threeinut question period for everybody because there's a lot of people. Everybody's going to want to ask a question. So if you ask your question, we'd ask you not to ask a second question until everybody else has had an opportunity to ask their first question. And finally, we are on YouTube. And uh you may notice on the news, you see these rowdy meetings taking place, these town halls across the nation.
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Emerson will be playing Richfield at 1 and Cliffside Park will be playing an yet unnamed opponent at 4 p.m. so April 12th Ben lit day thank you any other committee reports I'll just touch on building and grounds um I want to thank uh the entire uh uh High School staff for being patient uh with the high school Lobby modification it is open we're not completely done uh we do have uh some outside work that needs to be uh completed and we do have some interior uh work uh to put back all our great memorabilia in in the high school a committee has been formed uh and we'll be working on that so I do want to thank everybody on that at this time uh this is the best part of the evening we asked for a presentation from Valentina on what's going on at the high school how's your principal treating you these days he's amazing okay just asking I'll turn it over to you for your report all right so next week we're having our spirit week which I'm really excited about all the students get excited to dress up um and then we're also going to have our pet rally hopefully at the weather um this gu and then uh we also have our fundraiser going on that is going towards the Franciscan um the food pantry yes in Fairview and it's like a a quarter wars in the way and it's going pretty well we're trying to Market it to the students and like post about it on social media because it's a good way of getting them involved with um community service and stuff so it's pretty great and then um as said the spring sports are starting to do their scrimmages and it's a good way of getting like the pap R is a good way of getting students to go to the games as well so thank you anything else Valentina that's all I'm amazed in the last few months I had the opportunity with the lobby project going on just to visit the site Teddy and I and uh it's amazing what goes on in that high school yeah a are in the lobby now yeah it's a great place now yeah thank you so much okay Mr Alano anything on your end oh just three resolutions Mr capano um again we spoke about number 41 that's the final resolution that will go to the county and state I the board is kind enough to approve it so again that's resolution 41 it was tentative it is now final resolution 42 we are renewing our food service contract with pomptonian that is resolution 42 and resolution 44 we are going to be purchasing 400 Chromebooks including licensing is that correct Mr Saban at a c up a approximately $300 per Chromebook again including licensing for a total cost of approximately $123,000 from Dell Technologies who are State contracted that is resolution 44 Mr savastano thanks for all your help with that we're purchasing them early to get them on get the uh Chromebooks I think they'll be in maybe the next three or four weeks to kind of Kickstart 2526 so Mr savastano thank you for all your help with that anything else Mr that's pretty much it Mr capano at this time open it up to the public any comments in reference to this evening's agenda please come up and state your name hey how are you good evening Mark M uh just checking on the status or crowding where are we with our design professionals well this evening the Board of Education interviewed EnV Architects if I'm not mistaken Mr Alano corre uh they're based out of angle Cliffs uh our in-house Engineers are land Associates uh the board wanted to try to uh look into another firm this firm is currently working with a lot of districts in Northern Bergen County uh Loi and uh Wallington Westwood Etc we interviewed them and we're going to uh at our next month's work session make a decision uh which way we're moving forward we also want to have discussion with Steve Fogerty our attorney if we're going to if we need to procure uh RFP for Professional Services for Engineering Services is to do a physical need assessment this evening we explained to him our wish list explained to him where we want to go we also explained uh the board sat down and took into consideration what a referendum entails the process of it and all of that so we went all through all of that and by uh i' probably say our May meeting we should have an appointment of a a firm to do our physical need assessment to come back to the board and say this is what we can do at the high school this is where we can expand this is where we can reconfigure inside the high school also so it's a General physical need assessment that's going to be done by May by May where we're going to appoint the engineer of record after uh possibly a procurement process whatever Steven fogy recommends and then uh they'll start the process and what's nice about it they'll have the summer to go through the building go work with our administrators and then put a team together to compile what we can do to try to achieve a referendum that Entry Way was that a grant or was that taxpayer for dollars which Entry Way the one that was just constructed in a Lobby that was capital reserve money that was saved and budgeted so it's part of the overall last year budget and you've seen there and you've walked through I was there considerable amount of time yeah and IED entry I'm sorry the board again the overcrowding issue right it's been going out for years right everybody was aware of this situation corre correct and everybody thought it was a good idea to put that money towards that and not take that and put it towards the overcrowding issue when we did our physical need assessment that part of the building needed an overhaul as the ceilings were primarily lower we had some asbest in the ceilings that needed to be rectified and the ceilings on the floor the floor tiles needed to be rectified and what we did is after we spent x amount of dollars to enhance the gym uh we felt that that uh entrance would be a good fit to it and I understand your opinion may not uh uh be uh to that liking but the board felt that was the route to go Aesthetics is more important it's not more important it's something that needed to be done because like I indicated to you before let me speak before you smirk at me okay you are smirking at me Mr mher and you have a tendency to do that let me speak give me that opportunity we spoke in previous meetings that we wanted to rehab that uh Lobby to make it adequate and code efficient also we had some issues in there with piping Etc we needed to add cameras security and all of that and we decided to do that and we presented a nice Lobby that's going to flow and it's going to flow into the academics of the school have a great night you too Mr Moher anybody else from the public have any comments or questions anybody from the board at this time Mr alfano I'll make a motion to approve this evening's uh agenda do we have a second yes is that Mr roll call Mr Alano Mrs AB Brook yes Mr kapan yes Mr Garcia here yes Mr Nadu uh Dr pontan yes Mr ranco yes mrakia yes so move Mr capano thank you I'd like to wish everybody a great rest of the night and once again enjoy your evening thank you can we get a motion to adjourn this evening's meeting Carl rank Court do we have a second second Anis thank you so much everyone
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not 70 kids 70 ADM at each one of uh um each one of those levels how will that play out across our schools just depends um we may see some schools uh if you look at Simington as example with um uh with L not Loro but com's Ranch and with railes uh Ranch they may see uh in influx this this summer that we're not anticipating if you look at Ranch they may see an influx from North Creek whales Ranch which is across the street from or excuse me where we Farms which across the street from Wales Ranch you get those two mixed up that's be South uh that would impact um potentially Ellsworth but I don't think it's going to impact Ellsworth come uh the end of the summer because I don't believe they're going to have a whole lot of houses that are ready for for kids moving in that their impact may be closer to uh something that would happen in maybe December obviously all the both those subdivisions down there all three of those subdivisions have the potential impact the middle school so this number make we may come back to you in this in the fall and and say hey good news it's better than we thought it was but based on all the rejections this is what we'd anticipate uh that reduction is worth a million three so right out of the gate we're down a million three that we have to find based on what we're doing if we give the pay raise of 1.9% 1.9% was chosen because that's what the classified staff received in um January and tried to stay consistent across the district for all staff that increase it was actually if you look at your notes from last time 446 I just read rounded it to 450 um as we move forward the health premium increase we talked about is a 14% increase um and that's uh what it will cost uh if the district picks it up which is what the recommendation uh that'll cost us 290 we have a number between 270 290 I took the high number so what that means all in is we're short a little over 2 mil now the good news we have it covered so the presentation tonight is going to show you that we do have have the capacity to cover it again there may be some things that change in the next couple months but they will only change to the positive so whatever we do moving forward and one we anticipate bringing you which we have to bring you a uh the initial budget in June and then have it finalized by July that we will have a balanced budget because we'll be able to C uh uh go ahead and take care of this what would be projected as a deficit any questions because I'm going to go through this so please stop me if you do so salary increase this is out for discussion we talked about it with uh sta uh with leadership this morning um and so and I'll explain what we mean here we added a little bit of pieces we talked about adding a 1.9% increase there are two options or two ways to do that so the first way is you give the 1.9% to everybody what that is is that means the salary schedule is not compressed because 1.99% of 53,000 $70 is going to be less than if I was making $65,000 okay the increase is the same 1.9 but the dollar amount is different therefore those employees that have been with us the longest will benefit from this increase the other way to look at it is say I'm going to take 1.9% off $ 53,723 but because of the way it's being applied those employees that have been here the longest $1,000 of 65,000 percentage wise is less than $1,000 for someone making 5370 so in this particular case you're going to compress the salary schedule just a little bit and your veteran employees are not going to um be receive the same benefit as in option number one so the recommendation and the conversation that we've had is that we would go with option number one in order to benefit and keep um our veteran staff we would also look to round things off we would and to make sure that if you remember last year we had a conversation about not letting people jump over other people when they first come in we would go ahead and increase the uh base salary from 5370 to 54,000 so it's not quite a thousand so you keep a little bit of a gap and that's again you're not compressing the salary schedule um if I'll stop it right there for any questions because if this is the notion of what we believe is the right way to go based on leadership and if the board um I'm not looking for a vote but I'm looking for at least a conversation if that's what you're saying is the right way to go then we would mirror the next three or four slides we would just go ahead and and tell you what the numbers are so are there any comments questions uh relative to this this first part of the of the budget no I think we've we tried I know that it was the salary schedule was compressed a while back and we've really tried hard to make that not and and I think that's what that's what leadership tried to keep in mind because they know where you're coming from but I I just want to make sure I want to think for your speak for you so sorry for cting y sh no that's okay I just don't want to get back to that I get it I mean I I like the numbers of option to of course um but if we're g to try to keep our people so I I like I think we should go with option one I mean like I said I like the numbers of option two of course if we have to cut budget but um if we could keep option one that would be best that's what I think and and I will tell you that the when I say we covered the two million the covering was based on option one okay so it wasn't it wasn't based on option two so so I took the high I reserve the to the right to change my mind right but I I took the high road on on purpose so or the high number not the high road I want to see what the rest of the lies say if you're saying we already have it covered I do like option one that does show our commitment to our students education instead of just cutting down to the cheapest teacher we can get I don't think that's fair to our our our our teachers or fair to our students so I mean as far as continuing on History Contin on tradition and support our students I think option one is the best way to go okay so based on that what you're going to see is if we go to exempt support okay as a reminder our our support staff gets their increase in January this small group of people do not get an increase I think we have in the ballpark of seven to 10 people that that meet this criteria just historically we've said we'll give their increase at the same time so they would mirror that same piece uh their 12-month employees uh in in uh pseudo administrative positions within support staff therefore uh their salary on 12 months is very close to a teacher so that's why you're seeing the salary schedule increase by 9:30 very similar what a teacher would do that's because that's what they make okay so that would be those numbers if we go ahead and do it with uh administrative staff uh it's the same concept the only difference that you'll see if we gave the 1.9% % it's a $1,500 uh at this point I'm just recommending the base salary go up by 1,000 okay and then this one is a little bit different and the recommendation is actually option two we froze oh wait you need to go back you lost me yeah that one right what do you mean the base salary so there an option to what say this again explain this again so if we do 1.9% raise to administrators in option one they get 1.9 irrespective of what they make in the other um scenario if you apply the 1.9 to the to the base salary of what the bottom of the salary schedule just like with teachers it's a $1,500 raise because that's the 1.9% of that so we would still go with number one but I didn't over on the note to the left rather than taking the $1,500 and adding that to the salary increase I just put a th000 in uh to to that salary increase so I didn't really truly change the salary schedule by 1 n that's not the recommendation the recommendation is just to say that their salary schedule that if I'm new coming into the district to see what my starting salary would be as a principal um it would just represent a $1,000 increase instead of a $1,500 okay okay all right you got me now um I'm picking up what you're laying down all right let's see um for extracurricular last year we froze them the recommendation is to freeze them again um I will tell you that the 100,000 is not built in so if you say no you want to give them the raise that's fine but I'll be going back out to find another $100,000 okay just so just so we're clear um our stiens I would say probably and and and the stiens are are very broad-based if you remember there's the page that we do takes care of all sorts of different things but as an Essence the majority of them tend to be coaching stiens and I would say we're very competitive with neighboring districts on coaching stiens which is why we've Frozen for a couple or last year and why I would recommend freezing again I think we're we're not out of the ballpark uh compared to maybe some of the other salary schedules that we had uh especially when I got here um and so uh the recommendation there would be to freeze them again uh just due to the the cost at some point we have to to to squeeze the belt um so you're saying option two yes option two on this one why You' flip it why wouldn't you just put that because I didn't because you're trying to confuse us that's why you're trying to play m games with me now every once in a while okay um I do put this up so people see this because this is the other piece that is a reminder of what's been done since 19 okay when we look at staff from certified staff at a 30.8% increase over that time frame at 4.4 on average down to your Administration which was 22.9 and a 3.27 average so we've done a really good job uh since 2019 of trying to become competitive and trying to be uh moving forward uh with our staff St and trying to meet the needs of our staff again we're trying to protect and help our staff and our students and that's what we' attempted to do and this is no different I will let you know that those numbers do not include the est's funding so when we talked about the 1% stien that we gave them the 6% stien over the last four years and the three extra days that we paid that's not calculated in the 30% so if you took those stiping and calculated like for certified staff it's probably means we've been closer to 40% okay um we have done the 2% growth St I will just tell you that the first year it worked when we came off of covid the last two years due to student enrollment it hasn't worked I'm not going to bring that forward as a recommendation to you guys this year however if we came back in July and August and we saw substantial growth then I would come back to you guys and say based on the growth um in order to help maintain it I might recommend that we would we would put that 2% in if we don't meet it it doesn't cost us anything it was just a way to try to incentivize but the loss was was so significant the last two years that even with an incentivizing it we're not maintaining what we need to do to have 2% growth okay so that's the salary increase if we go to health uh premium increase uh you guys have approved what the rates are at our last board meeting what this is just saying is the recommendation would be that the district would pick up the core uh medical plan increase so what that means is we buy up a plan we buy a plan for all of our employees that are full-time employees that are eligible for the plan it is a base plan if you would like to buy up we give you two different options where you as a person can buy up if you need to cover your family then you're on the hook to cover your family if you want to do a high deductible plan we give you the base amount then you have to pick up the difference so the recommendation is to say we're going to go ahead and pick up that cost again for all employee so if you remember on a few slides back that means that's $290,000 there's a slight increase to dental for Delta denta but not for our TDA that is picked up by the employee that is not picked up by the district I just put there so everybody's aware of that we increased our match for the health savings plan by $46 a month for next year um to be in line with the increase for uh for the premium and then we would maintain what we've had in the past with life insurance at $200,000 $50,000 coverage for full-time employees and $200,000 for administrators we made that change a couple years back okay so that's the health piece so the big piece is the 290 again very similar to um what we did with uh salary increases just as a reminder we are now up to for each employee that we have to cover so for each of the full-time employees that we are covering their health insurance it is costing us $7,150 per employee and I just say that because sometimes that goes unnoticed and it's slowly creeped up if we're going to go ahead and take our increases for that since 20 because I couldn't figure out what was going on the first the year before I got in here that's why it starts at 20 on this one and instead of 19 we have picked up 33.4% over the past six years at a cost of a little over three4 of a million dollars and again I think it's the right thing to do so I don't want this to be perceived that I don't think it's the right thing to do but I also want people to realize that there is a cost associated with increasing medical premiums and that we've made a commitment to our people especially our full-time people to absorb that cost whether that's available in future years we'll deal with in future years um but I just wanted to make sure people see that when you take a look at that benefit package and all that piece that's in there there is some employee match so that people don't understand or need to understand is when we hire full-time employee there's actually a 20 what is the number 20 point 20.12% cost to that employee that we pick up as an employer so when we sit and say what's it cost for an employee to work for us and the base is 53 that's not what we use when we calculate numbers you'll see in the second numbers that we project out at 70,000 by the time you get all the things that we owe that cost to go ahead for a full-time employee as a teacher will use because it's simpler as a teacher is a $70,000 um chunk of change so I just put that out as a reminder um it doesn't flow real well here so I apologize but unemployment insurance this has nothing to do with employee has everything to do with the district over the years we have to pay for unemployment insurance um it's a small amount for each employee uh we have a healthy Reserve there therefore this year we're just saying instead of using the m&o to pay for that Employment Insurance we would just use the reserve that we have that can only be used for employment and take care of it so we save the M budget 40,000 so again I also show that to you to show that we're looking at every place possible to find every dollar possible questions yes did you ever reach out to Joe bashard yes I did and uh uh I listened to her she had a 45 minute presentation from that individual I listen to it uh what I would suggest is I there's there's a procurement issue to begin with because their evaluation of our um Health Plan there's probably a half a dozen people that can do that same thing so we do have a procurement issue with them uh the second issue that I have a little bit more concerns with is just the timing since we are are sitting in um the end of March into April and we have um open enrollment starting mid to late April there's not enough time to make that switch what I will commit to the board as we look at next year now not just with that individual um and I talked to Jill as well as watched the presentation by the individual uh it's an individual out of Texas that's trying uh to that has a a plan um from what I can tell based on that that webinar it's very similar to to what we already have with the as Bates of the world and and chyos there may be some savings based on what their pool is uh that would be we would have to check uh we also adaa uh has a state program there's been a number of different things done in the last couple years including some potential bills run that give school districts the opportunity to take it as a state program there's a report that's been released that was released to the legislature that I read uh the state program is better than our program Hansen's more expensive than our program we are listen we have a couple people that we be being on a webinar I I don't know if it's beginning end of this week or it's next week so we can learn more so what we'll do in the fall is talk to the the individual that Jill talked to look at what adoa has talk to again the chyos and the um uh asate and some of the others and do a full analysis again for next year uh it's just a little late in the game with open enrollment to try to make a change at this late and try to get everything up and running I don't know that there's a savings um but we will do more investigation on that okay so staff reduction this is the line share where we get there with the anticipated savings we would see 1.1 in savings okay so no employee layoffs uh we're not looking to have any six fth positions and and the whole law the whole mathematical computation for how we would reduce people is based on teacher ratios it's a little tougher at the elementary schools because if you only have two teachers in the grade level and you have um 45 kids you're not having 45 kids in one classroom so your classrooms may be a little bit lower than Staffing ratios but that's the problem here when we get to three we have a little bit more latitude and we're making some adjustments the way we came up with those numbers so that everybody knows is we just rolled all the kids up so first to second second to third Etc and then for kindergarten we just made a guesstimate based on the number of kids we had this year it could be a little bit lower next year it could be the same um kindergarten is always a problem as long as we're going to be on current year funding you're not going to know what kindergarten is and so you have to do the best you can with the adjustments obviously with Kinder Roundup and some of the things we're doing we have an idea but until as they say you see the whites of their eyes in August we won't know what those numbers are to see how the spreading out is just sometimes there's questions about where we get from where we get administration we'll look at a two uh $235,000 reduction Elementary teaching 350 Middle School 140 High School 280 support report staff 135 when you translate that into actual schools and departments district office will give up 245,000 uh El uh Ellsworth is 310 uh Simington is 140 the middle school is 165 and the high school is 280 some of you may say well what's the difference between teaching positions on the one side and CMS uh teaching positions and their total amount that's because there's a a movement of some support staff so that support staff um broken out on the the left side is now spread into the different schools on the right side okay so that's the line chare where we're getting it that's where our commitment is not to lay people off any questions at this point because this is the line share of where we're getting where we need to go okay some efficiencies one of the things we're going to look at uh we believe Bob's done an analysis of what would happen if we shut off uh Heating and Cooling in certain rooms uh can we condense down some of our rooms and and find ones that are not being used and if we don't have S or ourselves clean them there's a double savings on that we've gone conservative on this we're also anticipating SRP is anticipating a rate hike in November so we've factored in the rate hike we don't know what it is but we factored in a rate hike uh just to to run our numbers uh we've gone conservative with the $75,000 savings it may be more based on our initial numbers but there's tooo many moving parts uh we're working to see what are those classrooms uh as we speak the principles were shown this today and they're going to be uh looking at their own sites to see there's some ways that we could go ahead and close down some some classrooms uh we're not talking about classrooms that have kids but we do have some extra space so that maybe adults don't all get their own classroom uh uh area and and that's what we're looking taking a look at um many mobils we have been you've noticed that we have been uh bringing to you on a regular basis trying to get rid of some of the excess stuff we have and so we've done a very good job Karen and the business department has done a good job to to get rid of the things that we no longer need following State Statute so we believe that we now have room to to uh Place uh the equipment we need that we're still trying to get rid of in other storage and we can get rid of the mini mobils which are costing us about 8,000 a year give me an example of a mini mobile um if you go if you come out here and you look back there you'll see that we have a container a big mobile container that that holds all sorts of stuff and we would look to clean that up put it in some of the other places and then and then not pay the rent on that storage basically storage unit they just call them mini mobs maintenance contract we we we're in a much better spot with our HVAC units and and some of the uh changes that we've made over the last uh couple times with esos so we believe we can reduce verg's contract and still be able to cover up or or cover all the issues we have with Main maintance in primarily hbac units there's others besides that but that's the primary in the fuel allowance reduction based on Trend data we will leave that between the carryover and what we spend we can reduce down the fuel 50,000 some ways well how can we do that because we're driving so much you tell me we have transportation problems we've reduced the number of buses that we're moving because that's what we've had to do uh even if we do something like with the middle school and we have this new Middle School league then we're going to talk about less miles so some ways we're we're run or less miles so we can go ahead and again conservatively try to save 50,000 on our fuel um on our fuel purchases next year now I'm telling you this right now and depending on where the economy goes if all of a sudden gas prices go through the roof I might be coming to you with a different problem and a different solution uh in November because all of a sudden uh grass gas prices are greater than we anticipate okay that will give us 183,000 in savings if we look at curriculum we'll look to adjust uh CT and special education so that they would pick up more costs which would open up uh capacity within the mol budget so we would look at 125,000 for CTE uh and 75,000 in special ed the high-tech and the software are just nominal savings but we're just trying to squeeze wherever we can the desert choices classroom uh we are seeing increase in our special needs but not necessarily that meet that criteria for deser choice es based on the kids we have in the system right now so we believe we can close one of the is it one out of three rooms Jen I'm say one out of three rooms so that would go ahead and and see a savings based on the contract we have with them right now of 244,000 so the combination in the curriculum area would be a $458,000 savings okay extracurricular uh would change leagues which we've talked about with middle school I will tell you there is one uh adjustment from I think Laura's presentation PR previously uh Florence is going through some issues with budget just like everybody else um they are not maintaining tackle football therefore this league will not have tackle football so any purchasing we needed to do for equipment which we had a solution for we no longer have to do um so there's no additional cost so that there we hadn't got to the point of where the money was coming from we had some initial plants but um over spring break the at the last meeting they had uh Florence indicated that they were not going to tackle football and so AJ ourselves and Florence are fine with that coolage so um we are recommending eliminating the swim program the cost is is cost prohibitive for the number of athletes that are in there currently with graduation uh we have three kids that that that would be coming back on that team and so at $20,000 um because that's the rental fee and in large part at the AJ pool um it's just getting to the point where it's it's not uh it's cost prohibitive so we' recommend a closing there if something changed and we had more kids coming out which is why we have the next one so we have a lot of kids that girls that want to do flag football so that's why that program is growing so we would go ahead and move forward with that I will tell you though at some point in time based on size of the school there's only so many things we can do and so at some point we may have to look at others uh very uh with a fine tooth comb depending on if we don't grow it all um even with this program you may see um um I was coaching track when they brought him in as volleyball I lost all my high jumpers and long jumpers because they went to boys volleyball so if we have girls flag football I don't know if it's going to have an impact on uh volleyball but it could have an impact on volleyball so we we kind of have to watch that but that's growing flag football interest is growing so we would recommend moving forward with that we would recommend not over seating our Lawns with the exception of baseball and softball for serious uh for for um issues related to uh um injuries and stuff um but that savings is a little conservative it's actually could be potentially higher than that uh but that means you're not going to see green grass in front of some of the schools um and so uh if we move forward with the bond and if a bond passes some of these things may change but for right now we' recommend not to oversee winter Lawns questions when is the girls flag football season is it during girls volleyball yes it's during to fall okay okay then the other thing we've had this conversation in the past we would look at instead of pulling a thousand or excuse me a million dollar contingency we would only build an $800,000 contingency so that's going to help us get where we need to get to okay so what you're looking at again if you do the numbers that's where you see that that's why I say that we have the $2 million shortfall covered some of these numbers could say change we our contracts are due uh by uh we'll know by April 7th if three people decide not to come back that we are not aware of at this point in time uh principles have been advised to talk to myself and Josh to say let's have a conversation about that position is there something different that we can do with that position answer may be no but we're going to look at it so that's where you may see a few changes here or there we may go ahead and overcut and give ourselves more savings because that may be necessary depending on what happens at the federal level and do we want to try to protect staff there so there's any number of things that could happen but the bottom line is is we move forward if you're comfortable with what I'm presenting then we can cover what we anticipate the the problem to be um and what we would start like an April board meeting we we bring you new salary schedules and then based on the new salary schedules we then reduce we would then present the uh uh agendas to the contracts we might delay that a little bit depending dep on what's happening at the state level this is predicated on basically a 2% increase from the state level um and that's what we anticipated getting it is the state and so something may change um but we would start to bring stuff forward so as I've told you last year and so I know with a couple of you new is is based on this presentation if there's everything that says yeah looks fine then you're not necessarily going to get this presentation back later on you're going to get pieces of the puzzle that now fit in the puzzle based on this so that's where I say where saying the 1.9% increase so what that means is we bring you the salary schedules and reflected changes and then we go ahead and bring you the names of the people for the raises are getting we have to remember though once you approve or not approve it but once you tell me that this is direction to go if all of a sudden when we bring the names forward or the salary schedules in the month and you say no that's okay that's your right but that creates a problem because now I have to change those numbers and the closer we get to the budget the tough tougher it is to figure out that out um when we do it so sometimes I think we don't always remember the combination of the two so if this is what we're moving forward with then what we'll bring forward to you are just all of those ancillary pieces that are tied now tied to that so any other questions I know it's a lot of information but um when is the state projected to pass their budget some people are projecting not until June um I think that this week is the last week for bills to be be heard uh they have one more week next week with uh appr Appropriations so you're sitting the first week of April so are they going to twidle their thumbs for the next two months or are they going to start to work on it there's a lot of posturing politically that's taking place right now so hopefully the posturing will will get out of the way and they'll move a little bit quicker um but that'll be the big key um and so I I I think they the governor and and uh leadership from the House and Senate have not really started conver ation about um the budget yet from everything I've talked people I've talked to so it's going to be mid mid to Mid June and that's where we'll try to figure out so how do we do we bring you guys the actual pay raises we'll bring in the salary schedule but then the pay raises what do we do with that in case now if there's a problem with that just know everybody's going to have a problem not just us because everybody's approving increases right now so okay thank you we'll go ahead and do the last agenda you guys have any other questions do you guys have any no okay okay so we'll move on to 5.2 discussion and consider consideration of changes to the policy per a asba policy advisory 109-81 18 it's our first read so I would just ask you guys to take a look at it if you have any questions we'll bring it for second read I will tell you remember if you remember asba talked about they're making some modifications to all the different sections we already have section B section A is a short section we have to figure out how we're going to bring you guys some of the future ones because there may be substantial number of changes if you get into section g uh I and J they're very big so I'm not quite sure how we're going to move forward I have to see what the changes are um but just anticipate that what they're doing with these changes is is very similar to the trust they're condensing some things down um they're so you're seeing a lot of deletions but it doesn't mean they're deleting it maybe that they took three policies and and put them into one because people were complaining about the length but they have to show you all the changes so um I think section B is 150 pages long um and so your first Read's going to be in in April but we're trying to figure out what's the best way to bring It Forward if they're going to do all the rest of the sections um over the next couple months um it's going to get a little confusing in terms of of management issue so I'll have a better solution but this is the first one and and uh you can take a look at it you have questions please ask me um but then you'll do a a second read and a vote in uh uh in April okay any questions on this before we dive into it on our own okay okay so I will take a request for future agenda items okay well then I'm going to make a motion to adjourn at 658 second all in favor I I don't forget to vote you guys okay
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We start like to start the meeting with the pledge of allegiance. And I've asked Jim and Alice Schop from the Maricopa Pantry to lead us in the pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.
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Okay. So, we move on down the agenda. The consent calendar. Uh Kate, would you do the consent calendar? I'll make a motion that the board of education approve the consent calendar including exhibits 25-42 through 25-44 and purpose of those listed. Motion made by Kate on the consent calendar. Could I hear a second? Second motion second by Julie. Julie.
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But I think this is our opportunity to show what how we are behaving in Bel. We're respectful. We let the speaker speak. We don't interrupt her. and we should be able to get through this uh in a few minutes. Now, I'll turn this over to Mayor Guzo, who will open the meeting in compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. In compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act, notice of this special meeting of the Belor and Council and Planning and Zoning Board has been given by placing a notice on the public bulletin board, Facebook, the municipal website, and publishing said notice in the Asbury Park Press. I also have a statement to make this evening in regard to the fair share housing plan being presented to the council. I want to advise the council, the planning board, and the public that my son-in-law is employed by a firm that serves as an in as the engineering firm of one of the participants in the fair share housing plan.
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Next item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. Do I have any motions or revisions? Motion to approve as written. Second. Lisa, we have a motion. Jonte Rosschild. I. Ben Owens. I. Carolyn Lopez. I Patty Coutrey. I All right, Dr. Lman, superintendent's report. Thank you, Miss Catra. Um, before we begin this evening's report, I'd like to pause to honor a woman whose legacy is woven into the history of this community. Alma Frell, former teacher, administrator, and superintendent, passed away last night. She devoted her life to education and to Maricopa, shaping not only our school district, but generations of students, many of whom now serve as community and civic leaders. Alma led with quiet strength and deep care during a time of tremendous growth in our city. Her story is rooted in the early days of Maricopa, a time of hay rides, car carport dances, and handwritten lesson plans.
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Any questions? All those in favor of the consent. I I motion so [Music] car since the uh donation was a part of the consent calendar um when we accept the consent calendar we accept the donation okay and then we don't have to we would like uh daddy to go out to um the uh of the person the group that submitted their donation uh you know really thanking them for their donation and uh how we appreciate. Do we have any educational representatives? Now I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent [Music] I'm sorry. Come on. Why didn't you say something? [Music] Yes. Thank you. Hello. Hi. [Music] Um, hello. We are representatives from Dbury High School. Uh, I'm Leticia Conn. I am the board of governor's treasurer. I'm Deali Vicota of the board of governor's president. So, currently at De High School, uh, we are in the middle of the SATs for juniors and they're currently testing.
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Therefore, in the interest of avoiding any issues, I'm going to remove myself from the hearing, the presentation tonight, and any further consideration of the plan going forward. uh there is a committee that will be handling that on on the on the on mayor and council on council. Um and I respect and you know appreciate and I know they'll do the right thing.
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And yet, her values remain visible in our classrooms today. Service, connection, and a belief in the power of education to change lives. Alma's legacy lives on through her family and the countless lives she touched. There were so many board meetings that she attended um certainly in my tenure to honor the Rotary students of the month. Um and she shared heartfelt essays about these these young people who were winning the you know who were receiving the awards and she was so proud to know them through their service um and just that connection she had with the future. Um, so the countless lives she touched. I invite you now to join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of Alma Frell. As we reflect on Alma Farerrell's legacy and the foundation she helped build, we also look ahead with hope and pride to the students who are carrying that legacy forward, many of whom we're going to honor tonight.
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Um, juniors also have completed the NGSS exam, which is a science test they take their junior year. Um, ML students completed their last week testing a few a week and a half ago. And then along with Q3 ending this Friday and teachers putting in grades. And then we have a spring musical coming up on April 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Um, it's called Hairspray. the theater department have been working really hard seeing after school to perfect their performance and I've seen peaks in there and they're doing really amazing. And then everyone's every student's favorite spring break is also coming up um April 14th if I'm correct. All right, we also have spring sports. They've begun and people are very excited. Uh we have the 30th Ograde Granny Rally on April 26th and 30th. So, a bunch of schools come from the area and it's a really big deal and really enjoyed event.
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