So to say that the quote unquote money is quote unquote just sitting there belittles the practice of what it is that we are doing. We are doing sound fiscal practices that I'm hearing the mayor and Mr. membercow saying they are doing on the city side as well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We are statutoily allowed to do what it is that we are doing. Now to go to the discussion as to what is it quote being used. The reason why we had the balance as we did at the beginning of FY25 was because of the ESSER funding and because of the fact that one of the outcomes of ESSER was to, as we all know, to address the learning loss and things that came to light in school districts out of the pandemic that weren't being addressed even before the pandemic. But an outset of it was that they wanted school districts to then therefore use the ESSER funding to help build up their reserves to have available to them when the ESSER funding goes away.
There's a bunch of that stuff that goes that way. Ultimately on the math side, um, what we might end up doing because it's got like kind of kid ground support is a is a chess team. So Kathy Ell's has been taking one lunch a week um, and inviting kids down and they're just playing chess. I walked by them today and they were over there like going, you know. Yeah, it was finding Bobby Fisher with our fifth and sixth graders. It was awesome. Right. Because you got like the invention convention and then you What happened with that? This wood thing. What happened with what? The teams who sent to the invention convention. It's not yet, right? The state competition hasn't happened. No. May. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. May. It's May. Yeah. June 4th. I knew it was going to happen. June. The national the one or the national one is in June.
If we're uh paying them to be here every day and requiring them to Well, we have to offer them now. We do have to offer them um the ability to buy into the insurance. So, that's changed a little bit. So, we are doing that. So that I think that kind of softens it a little bit and and makes it okay to do. Before there were no benefits associated with it, but now we are um they we are obligated to offer them they can buy into pay into the insurance. What is the process to become a daily? Do they have to interview? Is it like a position that we interview for? Yes, it is. Yeah, we do a regular interview for it and we want to make sure it's a good match and you know, we certainly we like when people have a bachelor's degree. Um, so we're interviewing for these positions.
Um our core is our K5 literacy program that we've rolled out over the past two school years. Um last school year we implemented K3 and then um continued into grades four five uh this school year. Uh we are seeing tremendous growth with our students in the area of ELA. Um and we are seeing some improvements as well in the area of mathematics that we believe is a direct um direct effect of the implementation of that program. Um those increases are across all students. Um they're across our English language learner students, special education students. Um and we are just so excited and proud of the work in progress that we're seeing. I want to thank our uh curriculum team, uh our leadership team, our teachers, and our students and families. It has truly been a team effort. I think one of the strengths of the roll out of this program is we were afforded through um uh ESSER funding to be able to do a significant uh purchase of supplies, equipments and materials.
I'm sure that's what you need as well, right? So, I'm I'm wondering how have we addressed have we addressed this in the current budget? How many positions would address this? Well, I was just going to say the the the part that struck me in that particular slide was not necessarily the the FTEs at the top for general ed teachers, but the specialist line, which is really those providing the uh support both on a coaching side, but also the intervention. That's where I know Dr. Cameron talked about it. A an attempt to add student support specialists and I think we talked about that at one of the meetings. I think it was fourth fourth, right? Yeah. So, I think what you saw is in the preparation of the budget that was requested was the restoration of some of the positions that we lost uh such as the instructional supports such as parent educators to support at the kindergarten level other resources to help our teachers and students to become more successful.
So you'll see it um so that you kind of know, you know, how special that is going to be handled um as it relates to the to the charter. And we have we pay for it. Yeah. We have a Google sheet. So we track all the services. So like with the psychologist just went up there. Uh it's shared um districtwide with the staff. If it's speech pathology, psychologist, the special ed director, they put down their time and then at the end of the year, we invoice the school. um it's very minimal, but we invoice them for any services that we provided, you know, based on the hourly rate of those providers. And then we do the same thing with the budget um interims. They have those same requirements and they have us a person that a CPA that handles that, but then I also have to review it.
Dr. Fuentes, it is recommended the board review and approve board bylaw 9223, filling vacancies for a first reading. This is updating language um to include AB 1326 uh which requires um if we were to have a vacancy to make sure we post um the appointment opportunity on our website all the various communications that need to go out to the community to keep them informed of that available seat. Thank you. Comments or could I have a motion for approval? Move to approve. Second. That's right. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Opposed? None. Motion is approved. Let's go down to B. Business services Roman numeral one. Received by the board of education of the surplus property advisory committee. Final report on findings and recommendations. Dr. Fuentes. Thank you. It is recommended the board receive the 7-Eleven committee report. The board's not required to take action, but you're going to accept their report this evening, which we do have a presentation.
It's the same as the one that we went over in October and November but I did the changes. I so we have as I showed you the list before um this is uh the teacher staff salary what we've paid so far um as of the end of March for supplies and so as of the end um I inflated this just a little to um take it to the end of the year the 15 uh000 right now it's it's somewhere around 11 or 12 so I figured um I would I would add on last year was 22ish. So we're right round in the ballpark. So total for this year estimated would be um 119 um or 120 if you round up from the 99.82. Um this is the obviously that 63 u 6,300 is what we get every month from first but scholarships. Um, and then if you add up all nine students and what they paid each month, either the 275 or the 325, at the end of the year in May, when it's all said and done, we'll have um received $17,775 in um in tuition.
We do that at the outset without any education because I'm not negotiating with the voters. I want to see where they start. And where we start is at a 58% yes compared to 30% no. In a pretest like this, we like to see items in the 55 to 60% range. So, it falls in that range uh for a great amount of viability. Now, I'm not here saying that I think it's going to pass with 58% of the vote, but this type of survey research shows us that um certainly if it was below 50% that would be a problem. And I see plenty of surveys, particularly for schools that sort of reach that. But in this case, you see that the definitely yes at 24% compared to the definitely no at 14%, it's about a 10-point advantage. The probably yes at 33% to the probably no at about 17%, it's about a 2 to1.
the so the second domain was IEP development and some of these um are were I want to go a little deeper and giving a little more context to some of the findings but the first is all of the IEPs that they reviewed and remember part of the review process was reviewing about 30 of our IEPs from across the district. So that was a good sampling um of our total IEP um of the IEPs with within the district. They found that we do have the required components of IEPs. We knew going into this evaluation process that compliance was not on our radar as an area of concern. The district a few years ago transitioned from the co-op and moved into um bringing special education services inhouse. And when that was done, there was a complete compliance audit done of special education services. So this was much more of a focus on what is the instructional implications.
after, you know, a um presentation and when one of our presenters will say any comments or any questions, you know, if there was somebody in the audience, they'd say, "Yeah, I have a question." And ask the question, not not wait till the end of for public comment or anything. And you know, it it it worked. I mean, um I feel like we still have done that. And I've certainly sat at meetings where someone has been back there saying hi and we invite them up because our committee of the holes are are casual and conversational. This is more about bringing our meetings in line with our policy or changing our policy to be in line with our meetings. So I am my favorite option is is at the beginning and end and all that we would really need to do is change the sign-in sheet and say do you want to speak at the beginning or the end?
They're learning the math in both English and Spanish. So double time. It's apples and oranges. You can't compare the two. Um, also a couple reminders. Math is taught in Spanish in K2. It switches over to English in third grade. In addition, K2, there's an audio feature where the test is read to the students. In third grade, they now have to read it on their own. Research also shows us that third grade is where that transition um happens where students are learning to read and it starts to shift over where they are reading to learn and understand. So third grade there's a lot of policy and information in and research specifically when it comes to third grade specifically because of these different data points. We also know research shows us that learning a second language takes 5 to seven years. So, let's look at that research and notice that when students start to hit that sixth grade level, we're seeing exactly what research shows us, that spikes upwards.
So, we're we're encouraged and looking forward to showing what we can do. So, for those who don't know what I read is, it's a state test that assesses students foundational reading skills. It's given to predominantly third graders. Um they they they're allowed multiple attempts for this test. On our first attempt this year, we hit 59.7% pass, which is a nice, it's almost double what we got last year. So that's 49 students that passed the test on the first try. We will continue looking at their small groups, target interventions. We will regroup, find those deficits that uh they're they're needing extra support in. We are projected by the end of the school year to hit 79 to 89% pass rate which is a nice increase from the previous uh two years. Now like I said this test is predominantly for third graders. However, second graders are able to take the test.
School bus revolving uh for those families who pay a bus fee. This is where it is. Um you know, last year you could see we anticipated uh spending a million dollars out of those funds. This year we're reducing it to 300,000 which is traditionally where we've been but but we needed to do it last year to balance the budget. Then school choice. Uh we'll talk about this later. uh school choice are funds that come into a district uh for students who live in another community who attend schools in the Asham public schools and it's $5,000 a student. Now, if a student has an IEP or uh ELLL services, English language services, we do get some monies from that sending community to offset the additional needs. Um, you can see we're relying on upon that for a million dollars next year. That number will continue to go down.
This is exactly what it is that we are doing at the end of FY26. 27% of the balances that we have available out of those accounts that you bring up are going to be gone. Okay. And we're hearing from the mayor, and I don't disagree with the mayor on the fact that FY27 is going to be worse. So, if we were to use the full 1.8 million just to get us to level funding and stuff, that gives us to a projected balance available to us for 63026 of about $600,000 combined in all those accounts because we're ending the year with two projected projected now of FY 63026. if you go to that chart of 2.5 million. So reducing it by the 1.9 million because it's 1.88 million for the level C with the the budget that's being presented. So 1.9 from 2.5 that's $600,000 when if you look at the plans that we have for use in FY25 2.2 million of those accounts are to be used to offset FY25.
June 4th. We heard from the last. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll let you know after they win the national competition. We're speaking we're speaking positivity into it. So, after they win the national competition, we'll bring them back and announce that. Yeah, there's a there's a couple of those where there's some neat like kind of, you know, academic competition sorts of things. Um, I mean, the tricky part, you know, you got to be ready to kind of be in it because, you know, they got all kinds of rules and stuff that you got to follow. You got to prep the kids for how it's going to go. So, looking into a couple of those as well. You got a lot of energy over there, Tom. You got to these kids. I listen, my my age demographic is three three to 12. You got to keep up with them, you know.
They have regular hours and I mean, how how are those not We don't normal positions. We don't pay them through our payroll. They get paid through payroll. Okay. Well, I would imagine they get paid through Yeah. through payroll. They do cards. They do time cards and potentially 1099 employees. Oh, okay. Okay. That's what I was thinking it was. Thank you. Not sure about the 109. No, they're not contractors. They're they're paid through payroll. So, and they're eligible for benefits and right. They can pay into the insurance. Yes. And they have now that we have CT paid sick leave, they're entitled to CT CT paid sick leave hours as well. and they come in every day. They they can't just say, "No, I don't feel like coming in today." No, they're here for Yeah. And we have some who have just opted to do maybe three days a week.
So we purchased everything all components of the program. Um we were also able to purchase a professional development package that includes uh coaching by both our internal staff as well as some of the program program staff to come in and give us feedback. Um, in addition, we are also the recipients of uh a partnership with the Connecticut State Department of Education uh to receive additional training through the Hill uh literacy. Um, and that really talks about the science of reading or really making sure our teachers and educators understand how students learn to read so that they can make beyond the- moment instructional decisions and swaps. So, for those or switches or changes, I should say um in instruction. Um so I just want to um reference for those of you and many of you were there attended the presentation uh of the curriculum committee earlier this evening.
um as we're going through the budget process right now, there will have to be decisions that are made um regarding the are we able to add those positions in. So, it's certainly um our goal to support our schools as much as possible uh with with the resources that we receive. I had one more question if you don't mind. I when we had implemented I think it was the reading program it was like K through three but we had gone actually purchased four and five and we sheld it for a year. We've implemented that. Yes, that's correct. And what about did we purchase were we were we looking to do six, seven, eight? I know we had talked about that would have been a dream. Did we do that? Right now we've done K5. Okay. Just K to 5 in both reading and math. So the information you saw on ARC this evening is regarding reading, but we have made changes to the curriculum in math as well as Okay.
The county requires me to review it and send them a form. So, there's the same amount of oversight in terms of um the budget, the attendance. Uh actually, I got that today. They started their attendance. Um so, then um I have it rewritten. It goes down to the county. So, it's just like they're like Wasuma or OCI or OES. It's just a different site per se by um them being chartered under our district. You'll also see a lot of language in theou for special education. That's obviously the finances involved in that are important, but there's also things that are going to be in there as far as obligations of notifications because there's child find issues and like Glenn mentioned, students sometimes will go to his school and then they come to us in junior high. So, we need to make sure that if there are any students that are struggling with anything that could be identified under special education that we're having good communication about that.