Um, and so I think that's going to take money back out of our classrooms. And it's we're we're either gonna strip it down to the studs and build it up or we're going to continue to um plug holes in the dam with our fingers and do the best that we can until they pop back open again. And um and so I'm not trying to be doom and gloom, but I also think the people that were there on the tour see it's not even a fiveyear from now thing. Five years from now is now. It's there are things that we really need to address. And you hate using your money to plug a hole >> when it could be used for something much better than >> Well, yeah. And and I think once again going back to the car analogy, if you got this car with 500,000 miles on it, you need to at some point decide, am I going to am I just going to, you know, fix the whatever, like the fuel filter on it now, or am I is it time to, you know, get a whole new engine, get a new car and and replace things on a bigger level?
But we do it because we care about these babies and all it matters is how do we strengthen them so eventually it pours into their caregivers and their families and then we have a beautiful crayon. So thank you both for sharing and I just hope that these conversations like this this is a shining star. You get it A+ star today. This is a shining example of what conversations should be happening. I mean, the centralized that's such an out of sight like out of box thinking and that's what should be happening. Get wild with your thoughts. Do what you can do for your schools to make sure that these movements are happening. I I understand it. We might not get to our goal by the end of 5 years. So we're going to have to do it again. But if we're meeting those little milestones, then eventually we'll get there.
>> That that's on me. I should have I was I didn't tell Jen to get it in there. Aaron gave that to me and so uh it didn't get to there until later. So I apologize it didn't get in. Yep. We'll give that to both towns as well, too. Just so everyone knows, we'll give it to both uh April and to Jeff. Yep. Um so you have also in uh everything you have a uh budget report. Um you will notice I think the biggest thing to notice is both of the elementary schools appear to be in a negative um whereas Tonto is in a very positive situation. This has to do with some of how uh health insurance was allocated in the past and we sort of carried over when we were sort of moving from 25 to 26. Um for 27, I'm readjusting just as I did the budget.
If you can be out there to support that, unfortunately similar problems tonight. I have a group of folks and I will not be able to make it. If you can make that uh in help provide a good showing kind of our show as well. >> Oh, it is. >> Yeah. >> What time is it? >> It's a bit it's a busy busy time really. And it only gets busier as we we move through the a month and then not.
>> Yes. because they have already committed more than $750,000 increasing million though, >> right? As long as they've increased our budget by more than $750,000 and met the minimum budget requirement, they can do that. >> Okay. And I think, yeah, a lot of the uh the legislature intended it to be a a property tax relief and and I can't argue that the council hasn't done their job to try and um you know, support the education. Um but >> Okay. Um, so I would call upon Mark or Matt to make a motion. >> Okay. Uh, I can do that. Uh moved that the finance committee recommends to the full board of education and operating budget for the fiscal year 2026 2027 in the amount of $99,849,080 as appropriated by the town council representing a three reduction of $300,000 from the board of education recommended budget. And the changes for that $300,000 reduction are linked in an attachment I'm hoping that Mark will second it.
So you'll see our our expenditures per year and you'll see the total 5-year cost is 103,000. Um, and you'll see on average what we're spending each year. We're going to go into where the funding's coming from next. So, if you want to go ahead and scroll down there, please. Um, so you'll see the ESSER funds for 2122 and those were the CO relief funds that we received. Um, we we expended about 468,000 there in ESSER relief funds and the remaining uh 981,000 were from the impact aid fund. So, the actual cost of maintaining the district's one to one device model, um, same thing. that's in that sheet. And that really is just a general recap of those two things that I went over. Gives you a good summary of what that looks like. We typically every year ask for 300,000 a year to maintain the current Chromebook um and technology deployment that we have.
And I think that's where we're at. We're in a state of deferred maintenance. And once again, not to be doom and gloom because people are working their tails off around here, but that's the reality of where we're at. >> All right. Thank you. Uh now as as I mentioned earlier even though we do call to the public at the end of this uh since this is on the agenda and uh we would like input if anybody would like to leave a comment with us please address the board right now and uh just uh state who you are and give a paper to Mary so she can add you add you into the uh regular minutes and we'd love to hear what the public has to say. >> All right. Good evening, Sada Chudnoff, parent, volunteer, registered voter, and a homeowner. Um, this is my expectation of the board.
But if we're not, then it's going to take longer and these conversations are what what happens and sparks that. So I appreciate you and I appreciate both of you for coming up here and being so vulnerable and open and talking. All right. So, the next question was given that we are below target on oral reading fluency and reference to interim measure 4.2 and also early reading composite, which is interim measure 4.3, is there a shared underlying cause such as instructional time, curriculum fidelity, or student attendance that the current strategy is not directly addressing? So, our current strategies do address those underlying causes that we've identified and been talking about tonight, including the need to accelerate teacher expertise in the science of reading and also in instructional planning and preparation, facilitation. We also need to continue to explore and provide support to our K-3 teachers with lesson planning using our curriculum resources and implementing that tiered support for students and teachers.
I'm readjusting all of those allocations, so they will allocate properly. At the end of the day, um you know, we really have one big pool of money, right? And it all comes from the same place. But, um I'm trying to be true. Um the other thing I want you to to be really clear about is that I have um manually encumbered um all of the salaries here. So, you will see in the notes, um 12-month employees have four payrolls remaining. I met with Patty and made sure that I was clear on exactly how many payrolls remain um remaining. Um and there's a factor of 0.154 built into the encumbrance for that based on sort of the salary projections. Um school year employees, so teachers predominantly, but paras and a few other folks, um have eight payrolls. So, their payroll, we sort of accrue payroll for them and continue paying them over the summer.
I I will mention just um again that um the board the board of education marches in the memorial day parade don't make it wanted your child or children to march with us that's that's fine too but uh we'll be doing that the Memorial Day parade I believe the step off is >> uh 10 o'clock is when it starts but lining up 9:30 >> okay step off is at 10 9:30 for Those of you that maybe would love love to have you >> okay let's move on to the consent agenda the approval of minutes any changes modifications thoughts on u on the consent agenda hearing none then I'll take a motion to accept the the agenda thank you Alan second thank you Michelle any discussion All those in favor of accepting the consent agenda is provided to >> Amy votes. Yes. >> Thank you, Amy. >> I knew you were there.
>> I will second that. Can Can we discuss >> and then it's open for discussion? >> Okay, >> I guess I'll go then. Uh yeah, Jeeoff, I really appreciate um that sentiment. I I did not come to this meeting with the idea that every line item would get finalized either by the finance committee or or by the full board. I would love the uh you know I I think even when we had that vote in January, I said, "Okay, there's a couple of more line items here and there. Maybe we can offset this and that." And so I will jump back in in the next nine days or or even the next three or four days and try to, you know, help my colleagues uh see what I'm seeing if I see anything there. You know, it's it's as I spoke at the town council meeting, I I do fully support this full budget.
And that includes any ESS devices that we may have to purchase um or student devices, but it's student devices only. We're not including uh staff equipment here. Um all right. So, moving on from there, data showing uh we oh data showing how many devices are repaired, reissued, replaced, and disposed of each year. So, there's the same thing going back to the replacement that same table we listed above. Some of this is duplicate, I think, in in those numbers, but um again, those are included in that sheet we just went over, which are the total replacement costs and what we pay per year in addition to the table that breaks out the current fees that are that are standing. All right, go ahead and scroll down a little bit more there. All right, so whether the current device fees structure is proportionate to actual district costs or whether families are carrying the an unfair share of the burden.
Whatever you guys decide to do and go forward with, my expectation is that you guys are out there in the public supporting it and saying to the voters, this is why the reason we're doing this call, we you're a very important voice and we hope to see you guys all out there. Um, a couple suggestions to help things go smoothly. rolling out a better web page with what the asks and costs are. Uh we hear a lot about school waste, fraud, and abuse. Like you guys are all pocketing the money, which we know is not true, but um detailing what the previous bond was spent on. Maybe some photos on a very easy to find link on the web page would be very helpful. We can point people directly there. uh the status of our SFB requests, have they been denied, approved, what has come through, what that progress looks like, a pledge that you guys will continue to work with SFB to get additional funding.
And then in terms of the direct question about is student attendance maybe cause, we did We appreciated that question and looked into it and our saw that our average daily attendance in K-3 is the highest of all of our grade levels and each grade level averages at least 81%. So, we were able to Just as a side note, I think that's a fun funny fact because a lot of the younger kids that I talked to, they all talk about how much they love school. They're like, I can't wait to go back to school. And that's like almost at every school. Right. So, I find that Yeah. kind of interesting because that's what I'm hearing from these kids. They're like, "Oh, we can't wait to go to school." So, I love that. Um what are some non-negotiable adult behaviors that must be happening in every K-3 classroom right now to accelerate reading outcomes and where are we seeing the greatest gaps in those behaviors?
Their pay cycle basically goes from September through August. So, I know it seems a little confusing, so you have to look at both separately. So, I've gone through very tediously gone through all uh every sort of grouping of salaries and tried to apply those factors. Um it should slightly over-encumber. So, so I tried to be conservative. So, I'd rather over-encumber and assume we have less than assume we have more. So, we do have some teachers who receive 22 paychecks. And that means that their pay is a little more front-loaded. So, with all of that in mind, um I I think this is a pretty reasonable conservative assessment. Um I have encumbered a few other things like legal manually just to make sure that, you know, we're we're giving as accurate a representation as possible. Otherwise, encumbrances, you know, typically fall in the system. I think as I shared before, and I think we have some new members, uh because we use Harper's payroll, it's separate from our accounting system, it does not encumber payroll.
>> Okay. Now, we're going to get into a um I would say litany of uh different motions and um I'm going to move to the chair, Mr. Sh make the motion because that doesn't require a second by rules of Robert's Robert's rules. So, um I'll go to you, Mr. Sher, you can make the motion and maybe um after the motion, you can give a little bit of a a brief synopsis of what we're voting on. Okay. this. Um, first policy, I move that we adopt the amended FMLA policy and Jordan, this is yours. >> Right. Okay. So, the FMLA policy is just extending the qualification to like the broadening the qualification or eligibility to qualify for FMLA. There's no actual financial impact to the district. FMLA is just job protection while you're out. So, this is not the CT FMLA. It's just the federal federal leaves.
So to me now, it's not additional cuts. It's the wants versus needs. It's the priorities of what we're doing. Um, I get that most of those adjustments are just reallocations and and balancing things out. Um, Emilia, would it be possible I think it would be very helpful for me maybe for others to have side byside um the changes that were made from the board of ed adopted budget, right? We had an Excel spreadsheet of here's here's what we changed out of that budget, right? here's what we had to cut from the 1.2 that was passed after Dr. Solen's recommended budget and then here's these changes, right? Subject to the $300,000 decrease because that would be part of my goal. I think we took what one elementary teacher out of that budget reduction in January, right? So, like those are the things that I'm thinking about the next nine days is where are their line items where we could put things like that back in.
So, what I wanted to list here was what our actual costs are for devices. And I went back and looked at all the purchases. You will see in that main folder, I have uh proposals and invoice copies of all of those. So, if you want to go back and look at those from directly from those vendors and those direct expenditures, they're all in there. Um, and they're individual PDFs broken out by year. So, you'll see different years listed in that um that Google Drive share. So, I want to talk specifically about the current year. you'll see a change in the current year and there's two items there towards the bottom um where it says warranty and tax. What we did for the 25 26 year for the new fleet going into next year we purchase Chromebooks with an additional warranty. Now what that warranty will do is is we'll repair that device due to intentional or accidental damage or any warranty issues that come up within four years of that devices's lifespan.
So maybe we pull less of that bond money out, and um you know, after we get this bond and override passed because we're going to work really hard to do that. Please don't ice us out. continue to invite all of us up here to work with you guys and work on those parent caretaker and uh guardian relationships. Thank you. Thanks. >> Thank you. Some some great comment there. >> And John John, we have to we have to decide on this tonight. Yes. >> Um >> unless we have a emergency. Yeah, we we have basically until the first part of June. So, if you feel like more information is needed, I mean, we could table and call another um another special meeting if if we need to um before the 1st of June. I would just Yeah, if we need to do that, we need to.
Um we kind of keep reiterating the same things, but really being intentional in our planning, the use of our instructional materials, and utilizing time. Utilizing the time that we have for our instructional blocks, and investing the time in preparing for our students as teachers. Our current strategies in addressing the gaps that we've identified, again, we need to accelerate that teacher expertise in being prepared in teaching reading. All right. So, this question is about that second third grade AI reading tutor called Amira. So, only 5% of students using Amira are hitting that 30-minute weekly target. Given that all second and third grade teachers were trained by January 13th, why is usage usage still this low? And at what point do we escalate beyond coaching reminders? So, while there are several reasons that current usage is low, our focus really is on specific actions that will increase implementation and determine when escalation beyond just the coaching reminders is needed.