>> Yes, I have a a few this evening. Um I said everyone's mentioned at the end of the year lot going on and uh I thought Dr. said it best. I mean thank the the teachers for you know keeping the pedal down. It's been a long year but you're only a fourth grader once. You're only fifth grader once. Field day only happens once a year. and they put their energy forward to make this I mean I have a couple elementary school students and I know they're extremely excited with all the things that are taking place. Um, want to thank uh uh it's a girls on the run season just finished and it's a program that I mentioned it uh last year actually than coachi over at Lake Street and there's several other coaches in the district that need to be thanked but it's a program that I last year was a different excitement for me than than when you see what they learned and what they're taught.
The the foundations will end up being um I believe the finished floor of the garage is at um uh 182.5, which would mean the the footings would be around 178.5. Um once we have the final foundation plan and the footing design, we will enter all those footings into the cut and fill and get a more accurate volume. Yeah. But for the intent of this, what we did is we took the building footprint, which was at uh, elevation of 182.5, and I uh, I dropped the subgrade 2 ft to account for the thickness of the slab as well as thickness of some footings. Okay, but you don't know yet whether you're going to have spread footings or pilings. Um, we do with there's some been there's been some initial geotech investigation and McPhail can can chime in, but uh, we believe the soil profile here has somewhere between uh, 3 to 7 ft of fill material.
Amplify is our CKLA representative in the district for their third and final visit of the year. Uh supporting each of our elementary schools and celebrating what we know has been a truly exceptional first year of implementation of our core knowledge language arts program. You saw that you've heard it a couple of times this evening. I mean a couple of times throughout the year. And I really have to take an opportunity to thank Mrs. Pavo for her leadership uh with this uh really it's been when I think about it it's been a three-year effort and the time and the planning and the work that has gone into it uh has really made a difference in the successful implementation of a resource and I thank Mrs. pavo, but I also thank the schoolbased folks that are out there doing the hard work of the implementation. And you saw a couple of photos this evening that I loved of some of our educators out there.
And I think there's a this there's a little bit of a transition point here, too, from where you have a teacher who oversees birth to three and does all of this and more Right. in terms of >> another person you have there. exclusively dedicated to birth to three, which You want to talk about a niche? Like those people are Bill Lowers for the state home visit coordination. Like that is wildly different with a insane insane amount of bureaucracy tied to it through the state level. Mhm. So, it's interesting that we have that teacher leader doing that. And does all of those meetings. It's not It's It's not the department chair, and it's not that person. It's not her and this is like such a unique position. And then I wouldn't be shocked if we have to make changes to this after time once we've put our feet on the ground a little bit with it and seen how it's going.
When I worked at the middle school and we had that application process, some years there were students who did not get accepted to those programs. >> And for a good reason, not like they were arrested or something. Okay. I'm just saying it was for >> Sometimes it's just room. Well, no, but that's my point. And so, what this article was talking about, in case you hadn't seen it, it basically said Montville Monty up in Massachusetts was an example." And what they did was, due to the lack of space in the technical high schools in Massachusetts, they created what they called an annex. It's almost like an expanded an expansion almost almost like what we're doing at I'm thinking similar to what we're doing at for pre-K. Um anyway, I'm just putting this out there as something that's on my mind because I I think it I think it's really unfortunate if a kid would benefit a lot from technical high school, may very well not be interested in going to college, and then they don't get accepted because of a lack of space when it's I I look at it like, "Why?" It doesn't seem right to me to have the Connecticut education system designed to go to college, and those kids all get a seat in a public school, but not necessarily a tech school when they they may know at relatively early age that they don't want to do I was talking to one kid, and this is probably really unusual situation.
They have bocce teams. Um so uh so I just wanted to put that out there. So, thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Not to repeat what everyone said, but the student of the month Mr. Kovach uh the Eastwick team, but I'd also like to congratulate uh Ms. Dora DeMarco, president of the high school. Uh, she was honored at the Freddy the Porter scholarship dinner, which was a great success. And also Ms. Amy Sabani and Angela Kovach, they were honored at the Garfield's um community award beefsteak dinner. Did I say it right? Yeah, okay. By uh the Oz the chairman Stewart runs it. And uh thank you for bearing with us tonight. It was a little crazy. And do I have a motion to adjourn? I'd like to motion. The rest said? Mr. Taylor.
And so we were able to use Stronger Connections money to fund those initial year one cost-sharing, but that support will continue then long after the grant uh expires. And so those are just some of the updates in the world of social-emotional learning that we're working on. All right. So as we move into next year, as as I mentioned, it's been a lot of planning and preparation, and we're moving into implementation. We want to support our schools who are receiving new programming to be consistent across the district. And then we want to also continue to support our positive behavior intervention and support system Mr. Bear was discussing. Also, uh we have a new literacy resource that we talked about at last month's board meeting, and that will be rolling out. Already started the training, um and it's going to be really important that we partner with our educational services team to make sure that our all of our teachers, our general teachers, and our specialist teachers know how to support our students um who have various needs across the district.
>> 78 minutes. 78 minutes. >> [laughter] >> Down to 3. That's fine. We got to keep track of our minutes. Um but For the personalized professional >> personalized. One of those other learnings one of those other sessions is determined from our professional learning committee or from the building level. Right, 78 of that 78 minutes 40 is like whole group discussion, whole group PD, and the remainder of that time, so 38 minutes, uh would generally, I don't think we stick to exactly that clock. >> Well, yeah, you you never do anything for the teachers. >> Half and half is uh like directed versus then their own personal time. Okay. And then your question about first period attendance, this goes to the data we're seeing this year, which is um when students make it to school and make it to first period, the first period of the day, they make it to all of their other classes and they generally make it on time.
When we're all done with this, is there a way that we could get an assessment of how many fewer roles we have going into next year than what we had this year? I'm just making a number up just for easy math and conversation. Just say we had 2,000 full employees and then next year we're going to have 1,950 full employees just to have a number. When we do the more refined version of the budget workshop in August, we'll have those numbers projected at that time. >> Questions? Comments? I think we're ready to move forward. Thank you, Mr. Bruniger. Thank you. Uh our next portion is our budget workshop part two, the operations fund. Again, this is an early early early look. Uh normally we don't do this until August. Um we're doing this a little earlier as we are facing some headwinds. The first few slides you're going to see are going to be repeat slides from Dr.
>> Yeah, she doesn't have to worry about >> Yeah, there you go. >> Yeah, I was like that's Yeah, you got You kind of have some things you're going to put me busy with. >> Yes. >> At least you won't have to worry about bargaining contract next year. >> Exactly. >> Good job. >> Well, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Welcome. Anything else from anyone? Any comments, concerns? >> No. >> Good of the cause? >> Mhm. >> Good things happening. >> Thank you again to the students. Nice job. >> Yeah. >> I think we should Yeah, I want to get out of the way. It's work, guys. >> It is, yeah. >> Oh, wait.
It might not have the same impact on every girl or runner but a small impact on a certain girl or runner can can really be lifechanging. I think it's one of those it's very impactful and the lessons that are taught. So, I want to thank uh the school system for continuing the girls on the run and all the coaches that are involved. Um we I know we many retirees on the uh agenda the last couple months and I hope to just thank them uh personally tomorrow at the breakfast and um oh uh Danielle if you help me with this one for a second. You know, we we were chatting in the corner. We both have students at Colonel Wheeler and so exciting to see Mr. Rodriguez received administrator of the year. Uh his uh fireside chats and it's all it's all so authentic. It's one of those it's just one of those moments we are sharing it.
Um, and we think by the just the general cuts and fills and by the time we get down to uh, virgin material, we should have standard spread footings on the entire building footprint and we should not need any types of piles or ground improvements. Okay. All right. So, what's going to happen to the material that comes out of the foundation holes? Again, what you're seeing on your screen does show excavation coming out of the building footprint. If you can the area in kind of pink Yeah. above the blue right there. Yeah. That all is a is a cut within the proposed garage footprint. And then you're going to put some sort of gravel over it. Uh, >> Some sort of import? Correct. Yeah, so the way that we looked at this site is uh, because we didn't want to reuse too much of the existing soil is all of the material that we excavate out will likely just get uh, hauled off site to the appropriate disposal facility and then all the material in blue is going to be imported material that we bring in, which will be clean gravel material.
Uh they're dressing up themselves. They're they're definitely uh they're embracing the resource. They're create like teachers always are. You put a curriculum in their hands and they take it to the next level. It's not about the curriculum. It's about the teacher and the implementation of that curriculum. And I thought that was really clear. You saw those lanterns. One of the um students had a lantern. I saw those lanterns out in the school. Again, that's what the teacher brought the teachers I should say, brought into the classroom. Um so that's really exciting to watch uh that happen. uh interviewing. I'm I'm going to talk about HR in a bit, but uh MCCAST testing is still underway across the district. So, as I said, teaching and learning goes on. There are still assessments happening on a daily basis in all of our schools. The senior capstone presentations are taking place this week at Dartmouth High School.
I'm sure some things will be great. And I just don't want to I want to start off with what's you know, our best educated uh plan and try and hire for that, but then not adjust job description based on the person who currently holds the job, but based on what the needs are. Is this the teacher's union? I'm sorry. Is this the teacher's union? Yeah. Well, are you going to have issues with the by-laws later with you know, if it doesn't align? No, that's a management right, but um you know, I've already talked to the teacher's union about this position and had positive feedback about it being a full-time teacher without the teacher like the classroom teaching responsibilities and the time to facilitate this. Um cuz there is there's a fair amount here, but you're you also don't have teaching responsibility. Um so, you're full-time down in in that wing supporting this this crew.
Guy who's 25, he started as a plumber at age 12 cuz his dad was a plumber. That was the path he was taking. And for him, if if he went to a technical school or wanted to and wasn't admitted, it's like, "Wow, this is just crazy." That particular situation, which may very well be an anomaly, but I know that we offer public education to everybody, and I just feel like it would be really unfortunate um kids are not able Have an opportunity. to have that opportunity if they have a pretty good idea. And we can't do all things for all people, I get that. But uh it's just something that's on my mind that if there were any way to ever You're good at working the stuff in over time. I very much appreciate that. So, I'm just putting it out there. Um I'll send you the article and you can take a look at it.
So that's going to be a major priority as we move into next year. And then the professional learning [clears throat] focus additional professional learning focus that came up through our guiding coalition, and then also teacher feedback is an increased need to um have more training around co-planning and co-teaching, and then differentiation strategies for um students with diverse needs. And thankfully, our multilingual department has already done a lot of work around co-teaching and co-planning, so our department will be uh collaborating with them and building off of their work so that we can have a a consistent approach across the district in terms of how we approach co-teaching and co-planning.
When students are late, it tends to be the first period of the day or their first period of the day. And when they miss, they missed most frequently the first period of the day. Um so, this year we have been teachers have been following up when students are missing a single class period across the entire window of the day. That's a lot of work and a lot of time for teachers to follow up. >> So, what we're talking and remember, we have the next month we need to work through plans, but preliminarily, what we're looking at is that uh teachers would hyper-focus on their first period of the day and really be looking at student trends across that first period, would be communicating a lot with the first period of the day, and then the rest of the day be just looking for general trends, not every single single absence, right?
Bozeman's presentation at the last board meeting. Two reasons for this. One, for folks who may not have seen Dr. Bozeman's presentation so we can explain to those folks why we believe we're facing headwinds. And then for those who were a part of that presentation, just a reminder. It It's really a big story for us that these headwinds are real and we need to be prepared for them. So, looking at 2027 budget reductions, biggest part, reduction in revenue with the declining net net asset value and increase in the cap losses. Future loss of local income tax funds. Again, there we received just over between 2.2 and 2.4 million dollars a year in local income tax funds. And then modest per pupil funding increases combined with declining birth rates, cost increases of course inflationary pressures. It was announced this week. Inflation right now is at 3.8%. We have a competitive labor market and then cost shifts coming to the district from the state.
It's like we're so proud to have or so just privileged not proud privileged to have our students attend uh his school with his leadership and it's no It is nothing against any other leader, but but he has a a really pure authentic way of connecting and it's just so it's so noticeable to parents. We thank him for that. I'm sure Daniel has something more to say there. That's it for me. Thank you. Oh, one one more. Sorry. Uh Officer Polling and uh the um uh those of our crosswalk at this time of year to to remember to remember those car lines and the crosswalks. I my my thank you to him and them is that that's that when you pull into that school in the morning, you feel community and you walk in, they're waving, directing traffic, yelling at plenty of people, which is good.
Okay. Um, I I one of our concerns is during construction you going to have a lot of exposed soil, whether it's clean or dirty, you don't know. And you're doing construction and along comes a thunderstorm and you got a ton of water raining down out of the sky and now you've got a ton of water eroding your site, whether it's clean or dirty, um and where is that going? How's that not leaving the site? That's our concern. Yep, and I understood and it's a great point. Um and I will just say that uh you know, that concern is also a concern of both EPA and NDEP and they're both covered in one there's will be I'm sure you guys know there's a storm water uh pollution prevention plan which is required as a mandate by EPA which at some point you guys will get a copy of of that once the um job further further uh progresses.