New Britain Board of Education - 6/7/21

001[Music] [Applause] the new britain board of education providing students with a high quality education okay good evening everybody this is the most people i've seen in this room in more than a year uh i'm going to welcome you to the june board of ed meeting and uh start uh with calling this meetup meeting to order and uh ask uh board member sanders if you could lead us in the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you [Music] you can follow the role here here here mr anthony king here here miss diana reyes here okay and if we can start with a moment of meditation okay and now do we have anybody for public participation hello jim hello chairman jay uh john participation okay thank you go ahead

002john all right uh good evening uh chairman dave um my support of that my name is john ford uh chair of uber and pride i'm calling out this evening regarding the approval of the declaration of june 2021 is pride month uh obviously i am supportive of this uh resolution uh board members joey lester and i have been working on this for some time uh i will make one note for the rapper that i do i do hope that there is greater collaboration between uh between pride and the word of that uh moving forward as this uh as there was not um complete collaboration all the way through uh hopefully we can uh build on that relationship moving forward but this is a story for the district uh the first time that uh the first time

003that you guys are going to be destined in christmas and it's a great step forward so i look forward to working uh with you uh chairman jay and uh superintendent uh superintendent sarah thank you for coming to the flag raising this morning uh this morning it shows a great dedication and partnership uh before between the school district the city pride and everyone so thank you uh superintendent for your commitment uh to lgbt plus issues uh thank you thank you anybody else nope okay great uh so let's move on to the first uh issue here is a resolution and uh you want to reduce this resolution declared in june 2021 as pride month is a time to celebrate the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer community while remembering the struggle and sacrifices made by the advocates

004and allies who worked and continue working to create a more inclusive society despite state law abandoning discrimination harassment and intimidation towards lgbtq plus people inequities including homelessness poverty mental health issues and substance abuse continue to persist among our youngest and most vulnerable youth findings from the national institute of health published in 2017 highlight numerous health care disparities plus youth face including their increased risk of stis anxiety depression and suicide a 2020 school climate survey released by the gay lesbian straight education network found that 87 percent of middle and high school students often hear negative remarks about transgender people in school and more than 70 percent of lgbtq plus middle and high school students were verbally harassed in the past year because of their sexual orientation there is a need to focus on localized efforts that

005support lgbtq plus youth including student and school resources that focus on positive behavioral interventions and support resources on school climate that address harassment and parent engagement as well as tools promoting student health and wellness by recognizing pride month we affirm our commitment to support other policies practices and curricula that honor and respect lgbtq plus students staff and their families and all people in community including a commitment to review and consider board policy specific to transgender and gender non-conforming students the consolidated school district of new britain commits to ensuring equitable access equal treatment and full inclusion of all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity the new brain board of education designates june 2021 as pride month to inspire equity create alliances and celebrate diversity [Applause] are there any other members of the board who

006would like to discuss those [Music] um i'd just like to thank mr listro for taking the time to put this together and i was very happy to sign on in support of this i think that new britain has done a lot of great work in the past five to ten years moving forward on some of these issues but the work is ever ongoing uh this figures cited in this resolution are painfully real and there are students in our schools in our lives our friends family members people we love and care about who often deal with harassment and feeling unincluded on a daily basis um and it's often very much hidden and so i i'm glad that as a board of ed we can come together and support this and work to include all of our

007students thank you any other board members hey i just wanted to thank um joe listero obviously and um but also john ford because i really just thought this was a wonderful and he tied it together um with a wonderful event this morning that was attended by so many and he uh did mention that nancy sarah was there as well it was a phenomenal event well attended i thought and really just something that we could continue to partner not only with new britain pride but continue to partner as allies and support our community as a whole um and i just can't stress that enough you know just being able to say i can partner with you and i'm not looking at how you identify with looking at you the person i think it was just a

008phenomenal event both this morning and being able to hear that proclamation was just really it was heartwarming so thank you so much to everyone that that contributed to it any other board members okay yeah i just want to add that um as we um discuss this i think something really important um from uh you know that that this resolution specific to the board of ed commits to actual actions and any time that we talk about resolutions i'm a person that says i'm not a big fan of necessarily resolutions and statements because they are often very performative and just um you know something uh put out there to to look good without action behind them so i think that my my favorite part about this is the the fact that we state that we commit and

009reaffirm to supporting policies and practices and curricula that honor um all of our students and so i really look forward to continuing that work there any other board members who like to speak hearing none um all in favor say aye aye any opposed any extensions the resolution carries let's move on to um we now have a bunch of student recognitions which helps to explain the large crowd in the room so these are always fun so um dr ortiz you're going to do the first after our t's are you doing first do you want to take it right from here or do you want to just i'll take it from there okay i'm sure okay you have it i do do you want to go to the podium sure so regarding the student recognitions the program

010was developed to give local boards of education the opportunity to recognize student achievement and potential and for the board itself to be recognized as a community leader school principals select the names of two middle school students from their buildings who demonstrate distinguished leadership in school activities and daily life as defined by the criteria developed by a subcommittee of caves board of directors nominated students should nominated students should exhibit the following leadership skills willingness to take on challenges capability to make difficult decisions concern for others ability to work with others willingness to commit to a project diplomacy ability to understand issues clearly and ability to honor a commitment tonight the board of education proudly recognizes the following 2021 cave student leadership award recipients from deloreto elementary middle school and that's xiomara cruz and isais rodriguez sanchez

011congratulations [Applause] too many people in here are you okay take them off for a minute that's right thank you thank you [Music] [Applause] i knew congratulations thank you we expect to see you about an education something that's right that's right okay design look at the picture too right behind me yes so here yes dana white joining us here [Laughter] we're going to explain it yeah oh i just bring my script i get nervous i think this is time it's freestyle i can't yes you can improv i'll do some interpreting um i received a phone call from mr eric barbieri the director of new britain parks and recreation and he invited the art teachers and students to submit designs for a float that would be displayed in the 2021 new britain memorial day parade mr barbieri

012recommended some ideas incorporating city landmarks and uh bees bee hives the susquetennial logo and a birthday cake celebrating the 150th anniversary city anniversary of the city into the float design two winning designs were selected and combined together to make one incredible float representing new britain although mother nature unfortunately stood in the way of the parade the board of education proudly recognizes the following talented students and teachers of new britain for their outstanding artistic achievement so from satellite career academy teacher kerry walsh and student nigele easterling this is her design [Music] is it nausea this is her design uh i don't believe she's here but this was her design then from pulaski middle school under teacher kelly nadalney christopher nunez this is his design so then they took the two designs and they put them together

013and they built the float so although we didn't get to see it for the memorial day parade it should be at the 150 celebration perfect in downtown new britain so i hope you can all come out and see it okay oh okay pivot to the right oh i see mom yeah thank you thank you and your invited guests i'll leave this right here for you if you want to you want to read that first oh sure yeah bob's here nice to see hi good evening uh my name is robert perrone senior i am the drug awareness chairman from new britain lodge of elks 957 and every year we run a drug awareness contest for grades three four and five which is a poster contest in grades six seven and eight which is an essay contest

014and i have been lodged chairman for the past 20 or so years and in those 20 years new britain students have continually excelled in their posters and essays at the state level our association is made up of 33 elks lodges in connecticut our northwest district has eight so when a student competes in a poster or essay contest they're competing against 32 other lodges and written students have done wonderfully over the past many years and this evening we are here to award in certificates and gift cards to the winners of this year's contest from the britain schools you want me to read the names okay we'll start with grade three and this student took first place in the state for grade three and a one with a certificate will be presented with a 125 gift card

015and that student is navia lopez [Applause] now i would like to add that all these winners are from the smalley academy and that's how that's how outstanding their posters were this year let me take that for you over here yeah okay um in grade four the student took third place and will receive a fifty dollar gift card as long as along with a certificate and that student is elanay cartagena [Applause] you guys want to stand there and get the picture we have our art teacher miss emerson this is her last year in new britain congratulations now we'll go through a grade five and i'd like to add also that there's four cash prizes for the winners at the state level the first place cash price is 125 down to forty dollars for fourth place in

016addition one poster and one essay is chosen as best in state of all the posters and essays submitted one is chosen best in state and that comes along with a 200 gift card and i am proud and honored to announce that this fifth grade student poster has been selected as best in state and will receive a 200 gift card just marry morales we're going to take the show on the road we'll get in the car later this next student placed second in grade five and we'll receive a 100 dollar gift card and that student is carol martinez [Music] [Applause] oh and we'll receive a 25 gift card sally hassan [Applause] where'd it go group photo at the end as well okay all right do you want to just stand over here it's almost over we'll

017take the picture after if the students did not finish in the money categories of place one through four they were awarded an honorable mention certificate for making it to the state level and this fourth student of the fifth grade has received an honorable mention and that student is barbara quinones mercado [Applause] okay that completes completes the poster contest for grades three four and five moving on to the poster contest our go-to middle school is hell's academy who has consistently shown that their students he miss me oh okay i'm sorry um i must have uh not placed this last student on the student has received mention certificate of achievement from the smallwood elementary ali amir al-taari [Music] andrea have elmer's tape with us too all right i'm going to ask before we go to the middle

018school can we have all of the elementary students who won an award we're going to take a picture right over here come on with me we're going to go over here and parents if you want to come down closer to take a picture close up you can do that as well perfect you want to see over here honey do you want to come come over here if you want to you want to come closer and take a picture of us one two three perfect thank you oh don't walk away are you good yeah yeah okay here's the thing all right oh we have a bathroom bag now for the presentation of the essay contest and this year's theme for both poster and essay is drug abuse no excuse and the reason why topics are chosen

019with out narrowing it down to a specific idea is they want to see what kind of input the students have in their posters and essays when they're given a broad title to work with and the students as you can see in the britain and the bolster contest were just tremendous and again all these students that are going to receive awards are from hell's academy starting with grade six this first student the essay has been chosen as best in state and will receive a two hundred dollar gift card oxana licek thank you great job just stand over here we're going to do a little picture this next student in grade six has placed second in the state and will receive a 100 dollar gift card melanie said pull the ball [Applause] please [Applause] the next student

020received a fourth place finish with a 25 gift card gabriella jablonsko [Applause] and this next student finished with an honorable mention certificate julia grissolek [Applause] so nice job good job [Applause] moving on to grade seven this student received the third place finish and will receive a 50 gift card zachary boyce run jack is also performing for juneteenth uh on the african drums so he'll be there at the new brit museum of american art for the closing ceremonies the next three students of grave seven received honorable mentions jacob set olivia dupont [Applause] thank you so much and aidan zeus [Applause] so dad can take her photos grade eight the student placed third and will receive a fifty dollar gift card mara kane [Laughter] the student finished up with a fourth place and a 25 gift card

021ariana gonzalez [Applause] congratulations [Music] and the next student received an honorable mention at the state level michelle spiwak [Applause] and this last student uh received a large certificate of achievement for participating in our program uh unfortunately did not make any place on the state level but we issued certificates at the lodge level for all participants and that student is jolena omedo um that concludes our presentation of the poster and essay i would just like to thank the superintendent her staff the principals teachers and students so small the academy and health academy for participating every year and for the superintendent's support getting our message out that it's okay not to do drugs and uh thank you very much thank you for coming [Music] and uh photo and parents let's do like a few in the front

022matt you're supposed to be guiding me here i'm clueless oh you in the front few in the back okay i could have said that you guys come back here so how about we do five in the front three in the back so i don't want to say shorter but uh sarah would you like to be in front of me i think my shoes all right if you if you're standing behind someone's head in the background find that slot right between him right right here what's his name right there we go all right perfect sir ready yeah one two three right here at this camera please got it now now your parents thank you very much thank you great job okay so now we're going to move on to new business chairman parents and kids go

023into the hallway if you don't want to stay for all the business meetings join us okay so now we will move on to new business we have two items of new business that we're going to take early so that we can let some folks go home motion to go into executive session for a discussion of a legal settlement between daily leon v the city of new britain second with the board superintendent sarah and the city's attorney uh john daikin attorney daikin and mr kane kevin kane hopefully this won't take too long and we can get back to the next item on the agenda which i know a bunch of you are here you have the vote okay oh yes all in favor of uh going into executive session hi hi all right now we're going

024to objective session okay it is 6 51 and we are reconvening after executive session uh mr mercer uh motion to approve a legal settlement in the matter of day leon be the city of new britain in the amount of one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars second okay we have a second in motion any discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed two any abstentions okay the motion carries uh now let's move on to administrative appointments commercial uh i notion that we approved the following administrative appointments uh lisa lisa for director assistant uh district assistant coordinator of physical education health and wellness pk through eight david delfon uh defonzo uh sorry district assistant coordinator of athletics physical education health and wellness grades 9 through 12. sylvia mayo molina district assistant coordinator of bilingual esl

025dual language and world language kimberly hurt district supervisor of special education bridges at chamberlain elementary school and holmes elementary school kimberly billy district supervisor of special education bridges at slade middle school latonya lawrence district supervisor of special education bridges at new britain high school krista krist assistant principal at chamberlain elementary school edgar garcia assistant principal at d loretta elementary and middle school and janice magris assistant principal at slade middle school any congratulations and i'm just going to say one thing for the camera i've never been so excited to uh the the interviews were amazing really showed who you were as people um we're really excited and i could just see how everyone fits in the puzzle in terms of strength and and and coming together so i couldn't be more thrilled that i have to

026thank my admins who did all the pre-work of doing all the interview and thank you for entering i know that's not easy but we're excited to have you on board very excited oh okay all okay [Applause] okay so uh we are now on into a superintendent's report it feels very boring compared to what we just went through um have a good evening everyone thank you very much congratulations thank you this feels more normal now right yeah um so we there has been so much going on in the district district over the last couple of weeks um and hopefully some of the board reports people will talk about some of the events maryland's been to a few uh great events it's really nice to be in person with the kids again even if it's with masks

027and we're without food but it's just been the energy is is really good so that part's been fun parallel to that is our work on the american recovery plan dollars which total about 50 million dollars and um so what i wanted to give you now is a timeline and an overview of the work that we've done i won't go bullet by bullet but suffice it to say we'd had a meeting probably may uh was probably may 14th on a friday with the state department of education all other superintendents just kind of giving us the landscape of what's what's coming for this money very similar to sr2 with four priorities this is a bit different arp the one significant difference is the fifth priority which is around safe and healthy schools so of that 50 million

028dollars and i heard lamont speaking to it a little bit i think yesterday um on one of his news or press conferences um it's around building a safe and healthy school that's that's really the newest and the only thing i'm giving you right now is the priority areas that we're looking for with the safe and healthy schools because you have already gotten a preview of what we're doing for academics what we're doing for social emotional and the other four priorities but the timeline also includes an invitation that you'll be receiving tomorrow um to join us when we review with multiple stakeholders on i think it's june 17th my committee chairs will be reviewing with you the uh needs assessment that they went through with their committee i do have committee chairs on each and they

029have multiple stakeholders on each of the committees question oh okay so you will be receiving an invitation on june 17th to join us will be a town hall it will be virtual there will be multiple people on that call we'll also be recording it in the event that you can't make it for the 17th but it's um it is about um just really getting your feedback on what we've proposed the areas that i want to just talk very briefly about is um it's on page two the building safe and healthy school priorities so mr dion and mr kane head up that committee and um the first and most important that they want to take care of with a good portion of the 50 million dollars let me put it in context also esser ii we

030received uh 23 kevin where are you but i think it's 23 million right and so that leaves and again we want to extend us or two we want to continue that in the next school year well that leaves us with quite quite a few millions to what can we do to to improve the physical environment of our schools so the first thing we're looking at are those environmental concerns we are looking for an environmental consultant to assess our ceilings piping and flooring for asbestos to really go through and be thorough um kevin dean's probably on the call i'm going to paraphrase him but you've got to start with the bones right you've got to make sure because even we want the air conditioning in the buildings but what we don't want to find out is

031after we open up and we try to do vents and all of that for the air conditioning we find out that we're stumbling on to asbestos so the first thing is to do that environmental scan know exactly what we're dealing with around this um and then our second priority right after is to air condition our buildings we recognize that our buildings are going to be renovated over the years we're talking several years right and so um right now a minimum or two years with chamberlain before we could even discuss the next renovation most of our elementary schools are not air-conditioned and we have hvac issues in some of our middle schools and the high school as well so we have to take care of those issues as well so air conditioning and heat are priorities

032window replacement um i know that we talked in kevin king i see you here but it was mostly at the middle schools we were talking about the window replacements correct correct right bathroom renovations we all know i mean these are a lot of them are and it's not that they're not well made they're 1950s but it's time for a facelift and a redo and then painting of of all of our buildings and we we're hopeful that number one doesn't cost all the money because we really want number two and number three we really do um so those are our priority areas that we're looking at um for that yeah i believe they invited you to be a part of the committee and again it's i know if you can't just let us know we take

033minutes anyway all of our minutes are available for anyone to look at all the committees as they meet um and work their way through their squat analysis so that's that any questions on that before i move on the other thing i just wanted to say and i know matt has put it out there our new written living legends project this is spearheaded by the recovery office jen wright with the two new facilitators um we are we are looking to do living legends and we are having our students do interviewing of people or naming people that live in new britain have made a significant contribution to the new britain community and and they're still alive um our students will conduct brief interviews with the nominees and then create a visual mural representing the individual's life and

034accomplishments this will all be done during our summer programming the creations will be on display at our summer showcase on august 6th but also we're looking to put it we're looking for around 100 distinguished people to honor as a way to give back to our community and it will be on display actually at the 150 um celebration of new britain so that's kind of exciting um and uh really good for our students to to look for and find the gems in new britain um also it just uh meryl and i were fortunate to be at the scholarship award night and there's so many wonderful wonderful scholarships given out we did want to recognize rosalind smith who is our valedictorian and abigail olsen they received the walter j kenny scholarship which is a full ride to

035the college of their choice four years i know and i get the mothers were the mothers were there they were crying harder than the kids um because they recognized and and they recognized just what how life-changing that will be and uh both and you know it was nice to see two young women up there receiving that award both will be going um and again it's restricted and it's really based on academics but merit and and their willingness to give to the community etc and both of them are going to be going into bioengineering uh one's biomedical engineering the other one is bioengineering uh rosalind's going to be attending north carolina agricultural and tech state university and abigail is going to university of rhode island uh majoring in biomedical so it was a great night um

036and last but not least very excited that we will be having a new traditional we will be having a traditional graduation ceremony um we'll be excited to see all of you there on june 19th i i'm it's good and bad we have juneteenth going on at the same time too so you know it's that um but so that will be on uh at veterans stadium you can read through the details of our students our students are really excited we did have our senior prom on friday night as well it was beautiful uh it was supposed to have been at walnut hill but the weather wasn't cooperating with us again so uh and i have to just kudos to meg shea antoine billy uh smedley was involved with this they came they they just made that

037gym look beautiful and you know you think of just an attitude of gratitude with our students two years ago if you said you're going to be going to a gymnasium for your prom they would have been what but everyone was so happy to be in the gymnasium because they were all together we had the food trucks out back it was it was just a lovely lovely event so that that's about all i have to say they had on their most amazing outfits oh beautiful please don't just wear regular tuxedos anymore and the shoes and the oh my god they're matching the dresses it's so creative yeah amazing it was it was just really nice and they had they had high top tables outside so the kids could just peruse the food trucks and eat outdoors

038and it was a nice float they had the red carpet on the way in too which was kind of cool so it was nice it's been a good couple of weeks that's it all right committee reports okay we have a lot of items on our agenda this last time which you would find on the consent agenda a lot of job description a lot of job descriptions changes for some so we have quite a few items here um which i hope we don't have to go over tonight we're just going to vote them in but you guys do whatever pleases you that's it okay um finance along with andy was quite the long night of spending money we did take in ten thousand dollars for a story um story grant yeah right storytelling i think on

039summer seas like a lot of programs and some some new jobs and curriculum yeah we also have um quite a few things on the agenda a lot of kind of purchases and renewing licenses and items like that um but i want to point out something like the like the learn zillion six through eight illustrative uh mathematics um right so some of these things have kind of a sticker shock of a lot of money on them but since we have those esser funds we're able to take these um little luxuries and it's like uh one of my mom's sayings cheap things turn out expensive right so because we don't have a lot of money in our budget year to year we cannot typically do like five year subscriptions or whatever to the to the math resource

040to the ela resource and it's actually much more expensive to do the year by year thing that we can afford than to get a multi-year contract so it just feels so good to be able to to do those things that actually save us money but require money on the you know on the front end um and like updating classroom libraries there's a lot going into that as well and that's really amazing versus you know teachers having to share cards of books um yeah i just get excited because it's something that i know i see in other districts and things that our kids very much deserve so yeah there's a lot on there and it's all got money tied to it and it's all wonderful um because we tabled stuff yeah so nick was not available

041mr mercier was not um available but we did not have anything that was pressing that day so um we tabled a few things to talk about them further and uh mr anything not from wellness this month uh yes the wellness committee met last week we were looking through the school meals survey results that just came in uh one thing to note on them there was an overwhelming response for more halal foods and that is the direction the lowest committee has been going in recreating or creating a halal menu specific for the students that request that and we are preparing to do a food show that would highlight the different options available for students who want to print a lot of food that will happen later this summer and one other thing i do want to

042say thank you to mr chadio from wilson's there was about 70 pounds of lettuce that was grown at a slave in middle school that um harvested well we harvested but he took process and got out to the schools on friday so students were able to enjoy some school grown lettuce with their pieces you may even have it tonight i'm surprised okay um what's going on i was good i was trying something yeah um muslim dietary restrictions yes a lot a lot of similarities okay yes very much thank you okay um i think that does all of our committees how about board reports board members have reports oh oh i did something that's important on saturday um a couple of a few retired teachers and some of their friends got together and we asked people to

043donate books and someone donated a thousand dollars and so mrs constantine uh went to bars and nobody's where i was picking out wow hand picking books beautiful books for the kids and we and then nancy came and brought books teachers from slade donated books and she started receiving books by fedex and some people just donated didn't even give their name or anything so we went over to stanley quarters park and we separated the books based on grade level and then we took all the new books and put them together and what we did was we gave five books out to each student four grade level books and one that could choose one brand new book and we had put notices around i dropped off a notice at the library the librarian said can you tell

044students to come to the library and um but we went we went to the playground at stanley quarter i shouldn't say we she did and my friend sue and she was like the piper people would be there playing with their kids she would go down and get them and their parents would have to follow and they came up and we individually had teachers uh you know go to with each child help them pick out the appropriate books for the grade level and then let them pick a new book on their own some cute little kid got his book and he goes i want to take a picture for you and i said oh you must know i'm a grandmother elijah we took a picture together but um it was really really nice and she had

045um theresa i keep referring to sue because she really did all the work sue constantine she had a list of activities that the parents can do with the students with their children and then she put together a little box with some money into change and a few coins in it and they would every time they read to a relative they were supposed to put some money into their little containers so and uh we had a lot of books and we had some left over so nancy offered that when they send the food trucks around this year that whatever books we have left over they could hand out books then so so it was it was hot it was very hot but it was well worth it really enjoyed it and then the second thing was

046that oic gave out the awards for unsung heroes and my husband was one of the unsung heroes how do i i just [Applause] so i just he was saying wonderful things about the family but i never i didn't but anyway there were other people mark finance was there um james jones received an award so there were quite a few people it was really nice and it was at the old liberty square and they had tents out front and look real nice and nice breeze and the food was excellent it was good yeah very good any other board reports yes um speaking of the public library that a couple of weeks ago they did a book walk which they've done multiple different iterations of and there are a number of students there so i just you

047know another great opportunity uh for our students and i i like all the partnership that we can do i know that for them this past year not being like not being able to get into the schools and read to the kids and all that it's been tough but i encourage any families they're open now for you know families to come in their little arts and crafts bags that they prepare that the kids can take home have been a lifesaver but we have a really amazing children's department and the teen room is also fantastic with what they offer and what they have so definitely worth checking out okay really quick like tonight made my heart sick being able to see those kids in person getting their award and just happy you know like at first i

048was a little anxious but then i was like this is what it's about like they're here they're in person getting their awards it just made me super happy that's the fun stuff it is that's why we're here yeah okay oh no i was just going to second exactly what nick had said and just say that they are looking forward to being open a little bit longer soon to be open to their usual time pre-covet of like until eight o'clock and no one is more excited about that than me um not only because then my daughter will be out of my hair for a few more hours but because the kids absolutely love going to the children's department you guys know my daughter um but at the children's department they do have those bags if you

049call them ahead of time they'll actually put them in a bag for you you just let them know when you're coming and they'll make them ready for you and that's and even for book pickups and everything else so i just can't stress it enough for everyone to be able to use them as a resource and they're right there still working with their full beautiful staff so it's just amazing to be able to see and also you know just the bounce ideas off of them for literacy with kids which is always important any other board members let's move on to our school uniform entire survey update who's doing that mr panetta this gets an honor since that time we had some more responsive commands so those numbers that the policy committee saw might be a little

050different in terms of overall numbers but for this one they had requested that we break it out into different demographic types and we did that based on power school data supporting ethnicity gender and in grade level and you can see in the overall results of 3086 we have more than 50 of the student population responses by the way 3086 maintain 1068 eliminate and 1459 have a modified policy where they can choose which policy they want to follow so those are the overall results you can see on the second page there the sub the subgroup data of different reporting metrics or the parents or both this was put mainly to the parents the kids could have participated um and then the admins and secretaries and teachers also helped fill in the blanks by talking to the

051parents and seeing you know what their option was this was in that overall survey with reopening back to school the uniform and the wellness committee stuff so dropped into one so there's the data is there any questions it looks like it's obviously tilted more heavily towards maintain and if you combine to maintain the modified obviously it's a big big advantage in that direction yes um this was when they were asked this it was just asked to choose one of these three options yeah the text at the top of the page was exactly what was on the survey and we had a link to the actual policy as well i just wanted to say in terms of maintaining my granddaughter who's going to be in 10th grade next year so it would be my first year

052at the high school because she was home this year and seeing the little outfits that they have for the kids now with these little half shirts i wish they had uniforms i'm telling you that's going to be a battle every day but i'm going you can't go to school like that so i i'm going to miss those uniforms not a good way to start the day off okay just one other question for uh for the policy committee to potentially have a little more insight um with this do we have a record of those who like said modify eliminate to potentially reach out to them to ask for like some more narrative uh feedback as far as if they were looking for modifications or if they were looking like what what their recommendations or comments might

053be we could pull the data of those who selected that maybe an option will be to create an open-ended google form where they can submit comments based on that we can do a mass email to them but that's what you're looking for i i think that speaking as the chair of the policy committee i'd like to get that perspective because you know you take those two groups together it's not the point half but it's close right and i'd just like to be able to drill down and see because if the majority want us to maintain and the next majority wants some small modifications or have some feedback on it that can help steer us towards a more universally accepted policy i think that'd be a good thing for us to possibly have um for our

054next policy committee meeting in a couple weeks would that be feasible yeah so you want just the modified group modify it and eliminate like what their feedback is uh so like from the eliminate why what are their concerns know and same same with modified like what are their concerns what are their suggestions obviously we can't please everybody right but i think getting a little bit more i feel like the maintain is a pretty solid like we're happy with it the way it is but if there's some room around the edges to maybe make it a little bit more universally accepted among our families i think that might help i just i time is is important right and i only because our families if we do choose the root of they have to know like we

055need to let them know summertime is when they start to you know look for the clothing or whatever so that's what i was saying for our next policy committee and then hammer out so if you don't think when they said c says the adoption of a modified uniform that allows parents to caregiver to either follow the uniform policy or not you don't think that's enough of information i think that it may the problem with that is if you go with a modified policy where you can either follow it or not that's the same thing as having no policy or do you think it's modified what oh sorry what is the the definition of modifying modified was basically a hybrid policy which we can either choose to follow so it was like i could wear a

056different colored hoodie because it's cold out it wasn't that kind of modified it was i can or i don't have to yeah and i i think the thing is is with that really if you're saying to them you if we have a policy but you don't have to follow it then that's not really a policy it's kind of like a mask isn't it kind of like a mask isn't it you have the option of from what the cdc yeah i mean it's it's not a very i'm not saying it's a good one but yeah well and the problem is is like in a school setting how would an administrator enforce a policy that explicitly says it's optional you don't have to follow it i think if a policy like that would just be setting our

057administrators and our teachers up for potential headaches and rather see if we can find a policy that is clear that addresses some of the concerns because i i view those as them having concerns with the existing policy which might make them want to not follow it but if we can address those concerns and get a policy that is more acceptable to everybody that might be a win-win if you put the word hoodie in there it will be acceptable to every student wow yeah so your next policy committee is the 21st i will get this out by the end of this week and use call next week to collect data and then we'll have it i'll send it over to kristin within your packets thank you okay i think that qualitative data will be very valuable

058because yes the majority is key but really almost half either wants to change or you know so that's also a large number of people but either way you know i'm just pushing for a much more inclusive wording with you know including our own knowledge um the policies that uh are more equitable and don't more target um girls than boys don't target um urban fashion more than um you know other styles that also might be unsightly but just aren't listed so that's i think it'll be good information it's interesting the most important that doesn't surprise me okay we exhausted this topic all right let's move on to the consent agenda does anybody want to take anything off of the consent agenda ams s okay that's personnel transactions and s s let's learn to double alphabet here

059s okay are there any other items that anyone else wants to take off the consent agenda okay going once twice okay um so we will deal with those two separately um but the consent agenda we have consent on let's move on to new business um we will do a consent agenda okay um motion to approve the personnel uh sorry pull up the exact warning of it [Music] transactions and extracurricular assignments okay do you have a second in motion do you want someone want to talk about it uh no actually my son was hired as a psa slave so i just need them okay any other concerns about that item all in favor say aye aye any opposed and we have one abstention in the other abstentions okay gail ebstein okay let's move on to item

060b no that was that was g okay all the way on like i know and i can't figure it out this is summer approving summer motion to approve uh summer authority second hopefully i find it soon for those who aren't familiar with this this is where we give the superintendent authority to do things uh while we're not meeting over the summertime um yeah and the the only reason i wanted to put this out there is it's just a very to make it clear what this is we do have some newer members on the on the board and during the summer there's often a lot of hiring that new staff that needs to be hired things like that and so what this does it um and there's also a great deal of purchasing that happens over

061the summer etc we don't typically meet as regularly over the summer and so this is giving the superintendent authorization to uh approve free and purchase orders in excess of our normal amount that requires board approval and also to um i believe it also has yeah it's also the authority to the superintendent to like designate that if she's out of town designate that to the chief financial or assistant superintendent um all of the things that are done under summer authority are reported out to the board uh throughout throughout the summer and you know and typically in the cases of bid waivers purchase orders things like that it's done and consults in consultation with the board president so it's not like it's done entirely in a vacuum but this is something that we've done many many many

062years it's common practice for the board okay and i did have a question from how did it change i remember last year and the year before it changed from previous years where there was not as much authority i could not take that policy we are at rio grande high school in the library i if you recall um prior to my tenure um the former superintendent i guess there was more um restrictions right more discussion around the hires um yeah did you recall that discussion yeah there was a cap on the hiring well we had a cap on the hiring at that time anything over sixty five thousand dollars that was and and kevin teased the encyclopedia brown vector so i mean it was 65 right anything over the 65 000 again but what we would

063do too is if we had one that and again i i will say 65 two years later we are looking for shortage areas and and we we need to pay to get the people here that we want to keep here and i feel that way um i i'm very conservative i feel very conservative and i i will always reach out to leadership to say i'm doing this you know if you want to talk um we just we don't typically not call and inform everyone what we're doing that's the part of conversation i do remember which was that that figure is just not comparable um especially for the shortage areas and the problem is that if we're still hiring in the summer it is those shortage areas so you know most most things people are hiring

064you know they put out their positions in the spring people fill them and so what runs into the summer and close to the school year tends to be those shortage areas we i just look at tonight i mean the administrators that we brought in because and thank you to the talent office for really just helping us set these up early getting people in we're aggressively interviewing progressively interviewing and uh and it will maintain we'll maintain that throughout the summer because of the huge amounts of hiring that we have to do that aren't just going to be the shortage areas this summer right but all the administrator positions we marielle i'm looking to you but i'm pretty sure we we have everything done oh one ap that's a third ap right we have one ap that

065we still have to hire for i just know past practice didn't necessarily go well right it was before your time so yes i just think caution that we do it every year it comes on the agenda okay okay so we have a second in motion is there any further discussion seeing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed opposed okay and uh any abstentions motion carries and now let's move on to new business motion to approve the superintendent's budget request for the 2021-2022 fiscal year mr queen stepped out of the room this is the one time it's actually the right motion guys yeah motion to table this matter second second this is like kevin you snooze you lose from the moment okay so all in favor of tabling the motion and he opposed okay

066promotion stable motion to approve the revised 2020-2021 district calendar second and mr partners want to speak to right originally as no longer but this is 2021 right well yeah we haven't made a mistake it should be twenty one twenty yeah yeah well we haven't changed yeah [Music] monday tuesday wednesday we are gonna we're proposing to give james down half days on monday's tuesday what do they possibly have to pack oh the renovation the entire classroom aren't they packed up still come come to the elementary novel yeah no they are not right we don't want people pack up until last new school really well no i i mean things came out during even though you were doing covet things have been yeah unpacked and being used [Music] okay so anything any questions discussion about uh revising

067the district calendar okay all in favor say aye aye any opposed any extensions okay motion to remove the approval of the superintendent's budget request for 2021 2022 from the table and take it back up as business second all right mr kane okay we are just all in favor of uh taking it off the table um aye aye aye are you opposed okay okay questions yes no yes [Music] you didn't memorize it's it two of your eyes [Applause] foreign [Applause] yeah sure [Music] yeah you know what i mean we're fortunate this weekend is very hot weekend it's a great time to stay in read a book for real budget books i'm sure i'm sure you all read it you know um okay one thing i gave you a powerpoint slide it's 45 pages long don't be

068alarmed when i can go through 45 pages unless you want to go through 45 pages so you can take vote right now and say no really on page 23 it gives you like a it's an appendix these are some slides i gave you guys in the past all the data's there so you're going to see them it's in your budget book too so like page 23 goes to appendix it talks about more detail staffing which you saw in your transmittal letter it gives you all the per people expenditure reports that we out there three or four copies of that it explains excess cost special education and as you all recall this is the second year of receiving so next year is the third year special ed excess cost is a grant that is supposed to

069flow directly to board of education it has always been flown directly to the city so if you read it it's a it's more of a contra expenditure so when you spend when you send students outside the district and you spend a dollar for that child anything over four and a half times your expenditure so if your expenses let's say thirteen thousand dollars so anything over 58 500 is reimbursable up to 100 percent we don't get 100 from the state but if we spend a hundred thousand dollars we do the net difference 41.5 and the state usually comes back about 70 cents 75 cents on the dollar that money flows back to the board of education it's called a contra it's a it's a revenue that reduces your expenditure so when people services spend 10 million

070dollars on um on tuition it's a lot lower than anyway three million dollars comes back and reduces that expenditure of seven million dollars so when you look at your budget we no longer budget that full amount we budget a net amount the gross amount is the 100 and that amount is reduced by 30 30 yes the other thing too is i gave you guys uh you know the um table of contents which i wish i so just make it easier for you if you go through your budget looking look at the table of contents you really can follow the budget and one thing with the table of contents it really just flows really quickly for everybody of course i didn't take my favorite content seriously so one of the things too when you look at

071a table of contents it gives you ftes and when you look at your fts that's really that's pages four through ten so if you look at your budget books you go on page four you're going to see fts by union it's just summarized really quick and dirty it gives you a combined fte so if you look at page four is showing admins there's seven admins local 51 is the administrative union there's 55 people in local 51 and it shows that next year's budget 35 are reflecting the general fund and 20 under grant funds when we talk about the general fund the general fund is called the local budget we always call it local budget i call it general fund it really is the general fund budget but for school purposes we always call it the

072local budget 2407 is the paris 1186 is the clerical the maintenance custodians office workers nurses 818 is a supervised union there's only 10 people in there and we have a number of non-union employees most non-union employees do follow a union so for instance bsas follow 2407 union which basically follow the rules within 24 7. so if the um para union pays so much for health insurance bsa is paid the same so we have people that follow unions we have number of people that follow the 18 unions like the dean and there's some others out there too if you turn the page on page five through nine five page five through eight this really just gives you a breakdown so we talk about ourselves being an object whole budget every everything we have in our budget

073has an object code so for instance if you look at an administrator their object code is 51101 that's on page 5. preschool teaches 5103. so if you look you'll see that the combined positions are one general fund is the other and the differential flaws in grant funds so of course when you go to page eight at the bottom of page eight you're going to see that this really ties into the bottom of page five no difference i mean it's really it just gives you a better breakdown if you look at page nine and ten this is something we did a few years back once we started getting alliance money we started budgeting we started selling alliance grant funds because such a huge number of positions are being funded by alliance alliance we started showing them

074as part of what's grant funded so we broke it down this year because we investor two i just i decided to show the sr2 positions the one-way alliance really gives you guys an illustration that's what's really happening so when you look at this year's budget and you see 239 new net positions 161 really fall unless or two okay i guess chris is ahead of me on this one okay uh so what you're seeing here um i didn't think you turned it okay so kristin go back up uh go back a few pages can you can you go back to page three keep going back okay you know on page three you know page two are you really just telling page two just to talk about the culvert you know this year was covered 19 we

075had a lot of issues in this in the schools and in society as a whole um it affected students you know remote learning you know one of the things we saw in effect especially staff student one thing we were about learning and we started seeing a decrease and that's the question we're going to find out later on what is our decrease in students since i've been here in new britain this is my ninth year our student population enrollment has always been somewhere around ten thousand ninety three to ten thousand three hundred this year our october first number was nine thousand six twenty eight i'm not really sure we lost four or five percent of our students i think with the covert 19 he was doing some type of moving the kids out we didn't lose

076some to the magnet schools but we didn't lose 500 kids in the magnet schools we might increase by 30 or 40 kids or whatever so we know that's not a fact and we know that coming up this year i have i believe those numbers are going to jump back up maybe not the ten thousand one hundred but it's gonna be much higher so we do know we lost some students somewhere on the way i'm sure we'll find them um you know one thing too is this year we saw transportation if you remember last year we had a huge surplus in transportation it wasn't really huge just because we stopped transporting kids to school and we sort of made a deal with the transportation companies through vermont to make people hold this year the same thing

077happened with transportation um they kind of asked you to keep the transportation whole we did cut down buses this year but we did run a full transportation this year but for those mid days so we were transferring kids monday and tuesday and thursday and friday but you have to remember on those wednesdays we still had kids being transported to special programs we still had the kids that were being transferred to goodwin tech our own kids that's our responsibility we pay that and we still have kids being transferred to the correct magnet school going to britain our kids that's our responsibility so this year we did see some savings now one of the things the big thing going on right now is the federal recovery act fund as we all know it is sr1 sr2 and

078so3 and they kind of blend with each other um ester one um we're using technology improvements cognitivity it's really almost a digital divide that we always talk about we this year we spend about 2.6 million 2.6 million dollars um next year where we dedicate the other 2.5 to 26 to continue working with the city new britain to expand wi-fi and that's something that your board did recently esther 2 is 22 billion 902 what you can see in this budget is a much higher number so we look at esti-2 as a yes it has 27 month life let's call it starts around july 1st we know it started a little before that it ends up september 30th um 2023. when you look at this budget book you're going to see and you're probably precise you're going

079to see 14.3 14.4 million dollars being appropriated for assets now when you look at grant funds with esser that's a it really has a three-year you know as a two year plus life so we're planning to spend 14.4 million dollars 14.3 but i can tell you we probably won't be spending 4 14.3 in the first year anyway because we know we're going through a hiring thing we believe we're going to hire majority of those positions but like anything if we don't hire those positions there's always surplus and we just keep regenerating so3 is going to pick up the differential that's what the superintendent talked about earlier ester three is really an ex extension investor two so let's use sr2 as an example let's say we do spend 14.3 million dollars on so2 this year and

080you're all saying yourself well that one leaves us eight million dollars a foul a year the plan is that's when if things are working esther three will kick in and pick up that differential for the second year and that's the three will pick up for the third year now one thing nice about vsr grants it allows you to go back and fix it what i mean fix it if things aren't sticking you know one of the things that came up recently um we hired the 15 lpn nurses wonder board members i don't know which one yesterday it was it was a good question how long is this for and jackie maddie says i don't know it's probably for at least a year it might be two years well in this case that might be something

081only stays a year and then something else comes in and takes over for us so that's what i'm saying you know with with the esser funds they're going to keep extending um recently an administrator asked me he says wow you know what happens when esther um what if you don't spend it well to be honest with you it's it's it's really prudent that we do spend it because it's a drawdown grant so when we look at sf3 we talk about almost 15 million dollars i don't think uncle sam's going to mine in three years if we don't spend it that's our that's on us so as a board and an administration we need to make you know one number we'll have to spend it well but we have to spend it you know we can't

082sit there and debate it and we can't um but by september 2024 it needs to be fully expended we can't come and do some type of improvements and say geez we can't get the contractor in there and you know we can do it now no we have to have it completed so you have to basically have the job done in comfort you know when people think incumbent you need to have the job done it needs to be completed you may not pay them until october or november just because you're cutting the check but you have to have it done next one now when you look at the budget book this is a general fund summary [Music] and you know as you can see um it's we're you know we're flat funded this year okay and

083i know people don't like the words black funded but i'm going to be quickly honestly i'm not a republican i'm not democrat flat funding is flat funding i can't come to a better terminality but it's classified initiative but thank god we have some monies coming from yesters uh that really makes a big difference so it's a relief and we're gonna do okay with it when you look at your budget book you're going to see on page 50 through 54. i actually give you guys comparison um 50 is just a covered page 51 is really the first page it gives you a comparison of what the adopted budget was well this is your adopted budget tonight what's your adopted budget is tonight in the general fund versus last year and that's what you're really seeing you're

084just seeing the summary differential so if you look at that you're gonna see a line on a budget and you're gonna see the differential and all i'm doing right here is i'm summarizing by categories our categories are 100 salaries 200 fringes purchases 300 and then it goes all the ways down so you're really seeing the general fund budget the increase is 575 57 000 in salaries 85 infringes and then it has all these pluses and minuses down below and it equals zero next slide person okay so your next slide really just really gives you an eight year history on our budget and how we were funded seven out of eight years we got the same budget and one year we had an increase so over an eight-year period our budget increased cumulative increase is point

085zero two five percent support percent next slide [Music] so on this year's budget which is very similar budgets we really make it up through the grant funds this year's budget book represents an increase of 22 million 384 378 and it's fully from grant one of things you're going to see here in title 1 what happened last year with schools closing and all that we actually um the state allowed everybody to carry money over and we couldn't spend it this year because one of the problems we had this year it was hard hiring people i think we all realized that you know we had a number of positions we just you know it was hard to fill positions i mean a lot of positions were hard to throw i mean we had things this year but

086even like with um subservices like kelly services where you know a teacher would be out and we'd call kelly and unfortunately people weren't coming to work and you couldn't get the subs so teachers and parents that were working with so we had a lot of surplus administrators but kelly services where we used to spend i think two years ago i think it was like 1.9 million dollars right we budget one point six i think this year maybe we spent eight hundred thousand nine hundred thousand dollars i mean you just couldn't find them so then so title one is a we're gonna ask for an extension i title one you're supposed to spend 85 percent of title one in year one and the remaining fifteen percent in the year two and that things happened here we

087weren't able to expend it all we spent probably about fifty five percent so it's gonna be a we're gonna ask for an extension in september and then every three years they give you away we're not sure they're gonna give us a waiver but they don't give us a waiver i'll figure it out um because we do have you know we do have funding available title one is 2.4 million dollars what you're seeing let's talk about two million dollar waiver that also includes a fifteen percent that we always carry over anyway esther two asset two is 22 million 902 450 this budget reflects 14 million 340. like i mentioned earlier we're probably not going to spend 14 million 340. that's okay we might spend 11 million dollars i know when you know us talking superintendent and

088sanja sanford on that you know kind of the goal was to make sure we had more than half appropriated to be expended next year knowingly we're not going to spend it off we know it's going to be very difficult to spend the 14 million dollars and you remember too we talk about hiring people we don't always hire people on the day we really want to hire it might be a month later it might be two months later and when people leave it takes a while to replace them alliance that's an increase to 3.9 million dollars you're seeing commissioner network out there an online commissioner never out there this is year two of the money when we were doing the budget book last year the plan was still being worked out so i didn't put in

089the budget but it's not it's not new money other grant funds is a differential six thousand dollars so the total increase is 22 million 384 378 next slide kristen and it's 100 it supports 100 of our budget next slide to be honest with you it looks just like a slide before you it's just a summary of the general fund budget adding the grant fund budget and the change dollars at the end 22 million 384 378 it's the same dollar round kevin do you want to stop and see if they have a question oh yes anybody has questions i just have a comment yes for the last five years i've been on board every year we go over and we say what will make you what will it take to make us whole 40 million dollars

090actually more than that yeah let's clarify the alliance grant 2341 that's the one that was allegedly have changed hours though and every year we should be getting yeah we're supposed to be yeah the alliance graham i understand it's supposed to be like a it's like a tentative second make home it's like 11 years first year was five percent and the years nine you know two through 10 was only 10 in the last year is 5 so when we first got the alliance grant increase i think in year one was like 1.9 million dollars and it became 3.9 and supposed to be 3.9 for a number of years and then go back to what it was supposed to be supposed to be phased in right but it's not considered it's considered separate from the ecs no

091it is ecs so what you see in ecs every year ecs before we head the line ecs foods yes for clarification does that money pass through the city or does it come directly to the border it's sort of well yeah it passes to the city as a grant but it gets deposited in our state and federal grant fund it comes directly to us but it does go to them as a check because we can't receive the money so when they receive like our grant fund is really with them but it's our grants um same thing with our general fund the city's got kind of owns our cash book so when we cut checks it goes against the city but it's really sitting on our side they receive the ground that's what it ends up and

092you know and they're very good at it but the people in my operation know what's coming in and the city is very good at recognizing what's coming in but at the same time my people are good enough to recognizing if it doesn't show up on our side sometimes there's a human error out there so we always catch it and there right now it runs really well so the city does receive it for us just like title one all that money goes to the city but it specifically says title one and the city knows that title one is education right as i understood it was meant to be a catch up on ecs but as it's coming in it comes in kind of well it's a little different you know alliance is different in that it

093was done for the poorest school district so what the what the what the state did with ecs alliance is ecs there's no doubt about is ecs will the state decide with the the poorer school district they didn't want to go through any politics with with a city or a town with a board of education the state said you know we don't want to get involved in this so when we give you those extra dollars through ecs for you communities it's mandate it has to flow to you with other communities it's not exactly mandated but it's supposed to go to you so that that's only differential it's more mandated and and the city does know the city does know when they look at their ecs funding they know 72 million 450 710 is thursday and originally

094of the ecs money for the city of britain like 10 years ago 12 years ago before my time was just under 74 million dollars and still said it's still the same 74 million dollars because it's a two percent set-aside that we always request so the poorest school district can request that two percent set aside and it's been two percent set aside has been here since i've been here and even before i came here so that's why you see in the city size 72.4 million and then we have an ecs grant that shows up um but the alliance is part of it it is part of the whole thing okay um so next slide okay that's yeah the next slide is the same as the other slide just combines everything chris wants to give me that

095slide okay this is net changes by my fun so here i'm just showing really quick and durable if you look on the left hand side you see 239 net new positions you see local general fund you see their column you see title one you see yes or two you see alliance and you see other only reason i'm showing title one right now is usually title one has a few extra positions or less positions but because we're carrying um dollars over i want to show you what that really does so you're seeing 239 net new positions 16 fall and local 23 a title one tester two is 161 alliance is 41 and other grants negative two so every year we always we're always moving things around when i look at the budget document every year i

096have to move positions um you know it's not it's not really playing god or anything this is i have to move things over look at the what what what can we afford to each grant actually look at the grant and say can this position go to this grant we're not eliminating anything but we always have to move positions around um so that's what you see here next slide this slide right here which you saw earlier um really just gives you the total increase in the budget we're seeing a grand total we have 239 new staff positions net news position the salaries and net differential and salaries so if you actually look at pages 51 through 54 you will see on um on page 51 the differential in the combined budget 15 million once you look

097at right at the bottom you see 15 million 164. so these numbers come right from that slide that's the grand total so the grand total is salaries is 15 million 164 fringes is 3.7 it gives you a total personnel cost same thing with the local budget general fund budget you have 16 net new positions total cost is 577. well i don't really say total cost the net increase is 577. because we we we move people over we move people in so that increase in that budget is 577. the fringes and insurance are at 85 000. total personnel costs 662 and because we have a zero budget increase down the low under non-personnel you can see later on and we look at the budget you'll see that that decreased net total by 662. so we're looking

098at so1 as a good example 161 positions 9.4 million dollars is salaries you have to remember to ask one 101 of those positions are the 77 tas the teacher assistance so we approve the teacher assistant positions they were going to pay between 37 and 40 000 i just picked the number for the budget i budget all them at 38 000 i'm not really too concerned because you know we're going to hire them and we're going to have surplus and you know whatever um when you look at fringes and insurances you know for years when i looked at a new position i would just say what am i gonna budget for for health insurance and you know some people used to sell you a budget of family because you're supposed to build your budget i always

099used to look at it early on when i got here i used to budget couple and the reason for that is when i looked at the health insurance i was at a thousand people being covered who took coverage and it cost me you know fifteen million dollars and a couple covers about fifteen thousand dollars so bingo well i started realizing a few years ago that not everybody here takes health insurance so i had to throw my rationale out door and say geez you know i have a thousand people taking health insurance only 70 percent take it so the other 400 don't take it so really the the pretty darn close cost for every new employee is close to single might be slightly higher so for illustration purposes when i add a new position in the

100budget i put them on a single because i do know not everybody's going to take coverage because if you're 26 or under 26 and you you still have some type of connection with your parents hey it's cheap to be covered by them why should i why should i pay 15 20 on my own pocket they have coverage my parents have great coverage if you get married and usually that decision as a you know when you get married and so forth is who has better coverage who's cheaper what yeah so you have a combination we also have employees in the school district that are married to somebody in the school district so only one person has coverage or they should only have coverage so this here just gives you a breakdown of all the costs and

101at the bottom you see non-personnel costs so we're looking at the total increase is 22 384 which is all grants 3.5 million dollars in non-personnel let's say 18.9 is personnel which is salary and benefits next slide now i really want to see the yes or two positions because that's where we're you know this whole thing this whole budget is really built around this or two um it you know not only is it quilts around us too but it really stands out and everybody you know i want to show that separately versus the other stuff but here's 161 fts that are showing up in essence ii you have three assistant principal positions that recently have been approving right thank you some of them have been filled tonight we have four cti positions which are district-wide 20

102instructional coaches two facilitators district wide three speech pathologists and one occupational therapist many of these positions you you approved had the last personnel and number one the personnel prior to that at the same time in the manager level i call manage your supervisors this these are people that are in 818 or follow 18 supervisor of custodians three partnership manager in brent high school which is very similar the partnership manager that we are in partnership right now is two positions here and a project manager for people services clerical staff accountant finance payroll system finance two talent assistants and two secretaries partnership and academics each we have 101 para bsa tas as you can see there's no really bsas here but we always called the essays um 24 key pairs that were approved by the board 55

103teacher assistants for regular ed and 55 teacher assistance for bilingual 20 27 55 and 22. you wrote it right oh okay also just recently at the last i believe last personnel committee and probably tonight uh there was 16 health medical physicians one ft nurse a district-wide floater um jackie madder supervisor you know she really is the floater within the beam that you know if there's two schools about a nurse i don't know how she does it but she calms herself she goes this way and that way and so well you know so right now that's a good thing because now they have a person that can move at the same time too and when somebody questions that you have a person that can actually take that job and then fill that position again and then

10415 lpn's um school building sites and that was the thing that was discussion with the board did we need those is that's going to go on and it's needed for next year and it might be needed for year after next slide this you have seen in the past please stop and pause for a second i just see quizzical questions comments oh yeah please just curious the 15 lpn lpns what are we have the isolation rooms and we have to have those in place and manned um they're separate from the nurse's suite it's what we've had all year for any student who has symptoms of covid they have to go to a separate space and we met them with lpns do they just just again is it something where an lpm is needed for manning that

105is it they they do have to have medical they have to have medical background so yes um we struggled getting those this year i'm looking because i know that we every again everyone in the state of connecticut was looking for the same positions and so we did struggle but um donna can you speak to that from mark well presently we have um we started out with certified nursing assistants in those positions um they were hard to come by and when we when we hired them that we did it through delta t an agency they would last a short period of time and end up leaving and going to another position um so we ended up going to the ltns that tend to be a little more stable in terms of staying in the position and

106then we're able to utilize them as well to assist the um the nurse in the office because clearly the the the room there isn't um busy all the time um it's you know supposed to be in case someone has symptoms and gets sick so during the downtime the lpn has the ability to assist the nurse in the office with any duties that are needed in the building but it does need to be a medical medical person manning banning the office is that sorry is that for the state or i'm just curious because cheshire we have we don't it's not a medical person it's it was important to our our unions that there was someone that was qualified in that in that space that was that was one of the uh during the original planning of

107it um some of that medical experience and uh local 51 actually both said they wanted someone who could detect know what it is when you look at these lpns too i mean they are needed but we also realize with the lpns might not be able to hire all of them that's one of the things we're going to find out what can we film what can we not throw that may happen it won't be enough and if that's the case then it's going to be a planned plan b they may have to go to a service to find people that meet some type of criteria and bring them in so those are those are things that may change all the time is that a full-time position yes okay just like you know it's like one thing

108i you know i don't know about cheshire and miss mercier your school district what you have for um nurses um you know i grew up in new britain but i i moved the sims i wanted to begin the finance director but i do recall in sinsbury you know i mean it's a wealthier school district they had more nurses um in their schools than what we probably have um they didn't have that shortage you know that i think a lot of schools had two they might have a nurse an lpn and their size is running bigger than us but they always had two staff in many of the schools um when i came to britain we have wonders not to say that's not sufficient but there's always a backup so um a friend of mine school

109have a nurse isn't there some that are even shared yes yeah so yeah yeah you take ralph roosevelt yeah it's shared between programs right so i mean that's one thing too you don't really have the um the backup as much other school systems because they do have more funds they may have more people working in that school so this way it actually brings us to a better equation where you do have a qualified medical professional sitting there maybe he or she is doing something else but there's a need you know i'm sure jackie maddie can move people around you know yeah she also mentioned that the paperwork that's involved for the people that are in that room because you have to keep the paperwork so it helps with that too yeah i have a question

110um you were saying there's a shortage of substitute lpn what are the substitute lpns being paid i didn't get the question what's it what are the substitute lpns being paid that's true i'm not sure yeah i don't know the lpns that are in in this budget are you know the annual cost will be 47 000 i think 241 291 step one is thirty six thousand one cents an hour so we have we have them in our contract we do have lpns and nurses on the contract we really the lpns are usually used for the one-on-one so when a student comes into new britain that really needs a dedicated nurse that's when jackie maddie brings in an lpn at a temporary basis temporary could be they could be hit two three years following a student around

111and if that student leaves they may follow another student around so she uses lpns for those needs she doesn't bring it on an hour and for those okay so the reason i asked when i i know a couple of nurses did not ask them to put the word out that we were looking for a substitute but i didn't know how much paid they have had so some they have different days of the week off and so if they were suffering for the day what would they get an hour oh yeah i don't know what their rate is um i mean yeah i can't remember we're looking for what's the rate of pay for a substitute lpn annie is recruiting for us um is 61 an hour for the lpn [Music] but then again they have

112the rest on us you know if you're not a good employee you know it's it's much easier so uh yeah yeah they don't send me that one tomorrow yeah exactly no thanks to that any other questions on this okay so the next eight slides slides 13 through 21. okay now this this slide right here okay this is a slide you've seen before this is just really the um something i've shown the last couple of years um it's giving the total picture out there showing you the combined general fund grant funds it just gives you a breakdown and you're seeing in this year 1657 new positions down below last year when i compare i look at last year's adopted budget so i just want to be honest with you during these years sometimes we end up

113adding positions based on need so the adopted budget last year was 14 18. we probably had it you know 20 24 positions throughout the year with other grants and so forth so you know so tonight when we talk about the 239 net new positions that's 239 from last year's adopted budget this actually just shows you the differential so you're seeing up above it's broken down between certified and non-certified so are certified would be somebody who has their certification for teaching even though i have my certification of the business manager i'm not considered certified so i fall down below it's my life story so you have a administrators you have certified teachers and down below you have manager supervisors clerical para blah blah blah custodial maintenance health and other and others really capture a lot of

114captures of deans it captures the fsl's we can go onto it so yeah it captures the differential the next eight pages is just really the budget analysis something you've seen before it's the budget analysis based on a combined budget you know if i give you the budget analysis for a general thought it'd be it'd be like two pages worth but here if you if you look at pages 51 through 54 you're gonna see certified salaries nine million two forty one one on page 51. that's it that's the differential this provides you right there dollars the exact analysis backing into that 9241. 89 net new positions for teachers with 6 million four thirty five twenty one the contractor increased if you all recall teachers agreed to a one percent increase in their wages for next year

115so if i was making fifty thousand dollars this year i'm making fifty thousand five hundred next year so that's the dollar amount seven seventy four five ninety every year we go through retirements and you know there's always a savings we really don't know the retirement uh retirements until we come to like you know april may march they keep falling in that's the that's the net savings on retirement yes ms mercer was what they agreed to one percent no step or one percent plus i thought one percent no step yeah oh yeah yeah they were one percent just no sir yeah we had eight net new positions for administrators um for 991.09 at the same time we didn't lose an administrator so um the person that's actually retiring our athletic director his pay was much higher

116than the two assistants so of course that gets netted out so is it this pay was no we're paying on 130 135 how'd you do the math um just worked out that way the contractor increases for anybody to consider administrator was 215. we have extra earnings in the budget um that increase will 1 minute at 146. really estro 2 is picking up 1.2 million to 1 million 250 912 that's exactly so the other is slight decrease for all the other local and grants stipends we have an increase in stipends of 292 552 and the essa grants are picking up 307 so really there's really a net net decrease in stipends about 14 000 dollars and that's their picks up 307 unless we get to 292 293 turn the page non-certified salaries if you look at

117page 51 you'll see that the net increase in salaries was 15 million 163 if you do the math you take the 15 163 subtract out the certified salaries at nine billion two forty one you're gonna come up to five million nine twenty two i do this in rank order the largest dollars up front smaller dollars below 77 teacher assistance two million nine twenty 26 38 000 a piece 15 lpns one nurse and we did add an lpn during the year to meet a student's need that's the 18th 813 494 then yet increase in management supervisors that's the 6 6 46 i'm not going to go through all of them but you'll see anything i put in right is really the uh is a is a subtraction so you might see a plus and you see

118a minus that means the minus is taken going away the next page you're going to see 24 key pairs at 24 600 a piece that's the 590 400. you've seen an increase in clerical positions of 12. of these are lower level positions that's 524 you're seeing six custodians down below 306 510 you turn the page you're seeing three family school liaisons we added three family school liaisons early this year so i don't want to be making that we did this is something new that just happened over the summer there was i think there was two and there's a one that was in september or vice versa those are the three people there unnegotiated salaries what's that well 1186 has been unsettled for a number of years so i when i look at the budget i

119take all those people i um gross up the money that we owe over time i grossed up at a low rate that maybe should be higher and that's really a different differential between this year and next year it's just a net change yes in terms of contracts to be negotiated more outstanding contractors well eleven eight okay so everything um 11 is 86 expired it's it's three years next year will start four years all the contracts mean you usually need to go through there has to be some type of meeting with the minds that didn't work that people you know go through arbitration yeah and all that stuff um it's there but it's not there so what are we doing anything no nothing next one she had a question i didn't know if you wanted to

120respond i didn't i don't know the answer to that question yeah i mean i know um this manny's is actually a director [Music] about you know let's get together let's come to an agreement and at one time it was true have been but it just never got that far you know it just kind of um they didn't ratify they went to vote we we'd agreed as leadership i mean both administration and the uh leadership of the union agreed they took it for a vote and their members voted it down so then we had to come back and guess where we are now yes and just to speak more generally um 1186 doesn't fall under the teacher negotiation act which has very strict timelines so you can never have your teachers out of a contract so

121under the teacher negotiation act as a you're familiar with i'm sure from your years but um for those who may not know on the board the teacher negotiation act you have a certain time period in which you can negotiate if you cannot get a negotiated settlement within that time period it automatically goes to mediation you have a set window in which to mediate and if you can't mediate by the end of that window it has to go to binding arbitration and that's it you don't have the option with 1186 they don't fall under that and so negotiations can go on i believe uh and i believe it was the same set of negotiations last time i was part of a negotiation we thought we'd come towards a middle ground but then i believe a couple

122times the negotiator on the side of 1186 changed who their representation was from the union which makes the process slow down they have to get the new person back up to speed so there's been several things sort of preventing this to get to fruition and then as superintendent sarah said the last time they had something tentative the union voted it down which puts us back to you know it's to their disadvantage right yeah but we have a lot of unhappy people that's that's three three years without a contract going on forward that's why you that's where you go to arbitration right you know when people think arbitration is a bad thing it's not it's not bad i mean an arbitration is actually to make a crush and arbitration will correct so people are going to

123be entitled to something um but we're not there yet mr mercier is correct um when i first got here 1186 was unsettled for a couple years maybe three years maybe three years and it just got dragged down and once they settle i mean the contract already expired you know so you know so this is the second time around it i don't know before i might so this is this is an idol yes this is not as uh i i'm very uncomfortable with that especially with all they had to do for covet and everything to have a large group of people that we call essential employees to be working without a contract for three years i just don't think that's right yeah so does that mean they have not gotten a race and all that time

124i think we'll get right back yeah but at the same time it's combination of two things if you if you're in a union and you know my union you stay with the old contract so if your health insurance payment is a lot lower than what mine is you've already settled at a higher rate but also the increased my health that's what they pay um so yeah you're correct it's not subtle but that's where you bring it together with if you meet together or you go through that station and let me be honest there's nothing wrong with arbitration oh no yeah right so you're taking a big chance so well the other thing i was i was going to suggest is because of all they have to do for coping and everything we thank the teachers

125we thank the secretaries we have special days for doing that you know every year but we should do something for that group of people i mean they did all of that moving stuff around claiming and they weren't dressed so we should have some kind of celebration for them so we did we don't have a contract house but we did i mean what we did we did for the entire staff every week there was something they had the pizza for lunch and then we do have a luncheon for them um a nice actually end of the summer uh cookout that we do with them it and again wouldn't want to sit here too long but i think a little bit of this and in my opinion is you've got multiple groups coming together under one union

126you have custodians you have maintenance we have nursing secretaries and four four very distinct well two are kind of the same but distinct groups who have needs and it's a lot of people to to get the leadership to to get everyone to buy in so to echo exactly um what you just said annie i just needed to tell you that um my day started with the um events downtown for the pride flag racing the rest of the morning prior to my two of my four children heard like you know just being perfectly honest i don't know what everybody else does out there i don't know what happens whatever the case may be but people who are hurt who are reminded that they are essential are the support staff side by side and i'm sorry pizza

127is not going to cut it they have not it's like it's salt i understand i understand i understand i'm respectful to every side because i don't know enough to speak eloquently about it never been a teacher so i never had to worry about teachers union but i'm looking at the fact that three years to a normal person may not sound like a law and you can't sugarcoat it and say it's okay you're still under a contract they are missing out on their raises and what they were offered was no raise and an increase in medical insurance so i understand it i i was it was just a reaction because i had um two people who are 1186 who i just don't happen to go to church so first i heard about it under jesus roof

128and then i had to figure out exactly what they were talking about and with no one to turn to i just said let me just go find out knock down the door and said just tell me what is stalling this process it cannot be that people are going without racist and being reminded that they are essential i understand i understand i'm just saying if you're targeting over here it still doesn't show how much is being spent for the arbitrator that still hasn't been selected on one side and it also doesn't speak to okay i understand this unnegotiated for unsettled contracts is that amount reflecting the 1186 only or is there anything else that we should know about unnegotiated salaries for unsettled contracts that's really that's really eliminated what i was trying to explain earlier i'm

129always very conservative when i when i do anything contracts yeah and the reason why i don't put a number in there that you can back into because i know it's not um and it's purposeful i know sometimes when you look at our budget we may have surplus so you never earmark something you know even when i was a sims financial other place you never earmark something so somebody says this is my money i know what it is because you know you're going to get what you get and then the day whatever it is i'll figure it out so it's more just there for a budgeting thing but you can you can't back in if that if i had to talk to a board about it it would have to be like a second session you

130would have to swear i'm not going to talk about it and i can tell you what it is but it's very conservative now if you if we're you know i'll move on really quick with the rest of this slide unless you um there's four bsa positions 128 for pupil service assistant positions other changes that's just a catch-all guys and when i look at the budget at the end of the day when i when i reconcile everything i'm not going to try free up to 61 947. um reduction in custodial maintenance security extra earnings stipends that's the 108 996 if you all recall back in july or so we did a budget transfer july or august budget transfer uh we reduced um a hundred thousand dollars on um overtime you know one was 50 000 subservices

131and one was fifty thousand dollars in overtime for custodians maintenance that's where a hundred thousand the other was stipends and stuff um this budget reflects reduction of 12 ppt pairs that's the exact cost for this year 369 957 that's what you see there where they go next slide 12 people you're saying this is a reduction in staff that's negative 12 correct yeah where'd they go they just well yeah okay so when we look at when we look at our pair of positions we have 200 plus parasites this year people services here due to cover 19 a lot of positions weren't able to be filled because people you know not everybody wants to work this year um so even though they're off the position sometimes they get open so this year we had a lot of

132unfilled positions you know probably 25 i'm just making it up 25 or so so nobody's losing their jobs they're paris there were pairs that were ppt pairs but they're pairs they're they're all the same they're just people that just basically tell me you know i'm going to be a ppp pair they were eliminated but nobody was eliminated so you don't look at a reduction in staffing there's no reduction in staffing if anything we've increased our staffing quite a bit you know um the pairs you know bsas we increased the bsh we placed in teacher assistance which a lot of pairs may find attractive and it pays them more so we we we've made it more attractive for people to um to move on within the organization so you're saying that even though it says a

133negative 12 ppt peris yes that does not mean that it was a loss of staff now what the people were not don't lose their jobs they were renamed there were 12 people we eliminated those 12 positions but we had openings vacancies in the instructional carers so these people moved over to the instructional paradise or we had four new physicians that were pupil services assistants some of them apply for those positions and receive those positions so they just moved into either vacancies or new positions and we eliminated those um categories so essentially eight eight individuals were reassigned directly with children but that's the least deficit of one like what does that mean hold on we just started at 12 you've got eight and then eight there's eight and four there we go yep is the negative

13412 right over here and i'm looking to just kind of figure out where they're going do you have a do you have a slide where the don't get me wrong it just looks like no no i mean so every every year when we look at a budget we actually changed that to be made to move ahead um so when people's services looked at the operation they started saying how can we work smart they also realize with the openings they had they wanted to make changes so people aren't really losing their position you're a para you might have been impaired like years ago we had computer papers and um they were in the school system and jeff prokhoff said it works in certain schools it didn't work in other schools and jeff felt it wasn't it

135wasn't fiscally responsible so he came forward to the superintendent i was part of it too and had discussion he went to the board and said i want to change this i i'm not finding the value in any computer parents there were a couple of really good ones i know those are okay so when jeff hired a couple of technicians technical positions he actually took a couple of the real high flyers and they moved over to mis with a better job with uh more mobility upwards but we made that change people service is doing the same thing so when we're not losing positions we've actually created more position but that's what management does you have to make changes and move to progress into the future and that's all they're doing no no again a year from

136now or two years from now if they're all still here somebody else may come in and say you know maybe we want to move back to something different you know so there's always going to be changes well would the ending of the grant determine that no were they hired under the grant is that what it was no no most okay so really for the most part everybody in the school district we look at grants it doesn't matter if kevin kane's paid out of grant or not esther ii is the only thing that's the first time we have an exception with esther ii usually we try to protect positions the best we can so actually two we don't really know what's going to happen to 161 positions so those positions right now they're guaranteed for two

137years um and may turn to three years and then we try to find openings so every year we have positions i'm an alliance i'm in title one i'm in general fund for the most part we're all the same if we come to a point in time that we don't have enough funding then the decision is going to come from the administration that's going to go to the board which they did you know 10 years ago and say we have to eliminate positions and you're going to sit there and say how can you eliminate 20 positions because there's no money to pay but right now we're not in that point right now they just want to do a reorganization um to bring better products you know they look they've been studying this for over the last

138year or so so this isn't something that just came up this year they've been talking about this for over a year about what they want to do and this is the year they brought it forward creating efficiencies yeah no no and i get that part i was just looking at the fact that there was the copic recovery money is that what's considered the sr2 yeah so so what you're seeing here so two is 161 position what they're doing over there has nothing to do with us or two the only thing for s or two that's doing anything for pupil services we're hiring 24 key pairs that is in there that's the only thing that's affecting them 24 key pairs if you go back to the so2 slide with the positions you'll see them you'll see

139the 55 teaching assistants the 22 teaching assistants and you see 24 key fairs okay so only those 24 key pairs are the ones that are coming back under the colby recovery money yes and those are things to you know if funding is not here a couple years ago but you never know in two three years from now if funding is not available there may be a discussion internally that says hey you know we need more key pairs and let's say we don't have enough funding it may be a decision they may eliminate positions to keep some positions that's what that can always happen to me pairs are instrumental so i i get it kevin click that except there's a mouse well and then so we usually whether it's budget and actually later in the year

140i would anticipate seeing it we always see fluctuations in paris because paris you may need more because some ppt's happen and you know it's legally mandated and there it is or you may see less because now somebody doesn't need it and then same thing right or outplaced or whatever and then usually there there's something in the district that that person may be qualified and moved over to so that that's actually one of the areas we see the most fluctuation in anyway okay next slide yes okay um next slide is fringes and insurance health insurance budget increases the new positions made up 1.8 million dollars for esther you'll see a one million seven eighty nine three nineteen the 54 net increase uh for other positions is 573. we also realize a decrease in premiums this year

141one percent so that's what you're seeing negative 264 285 and we also had a change in employee coverage we lost 12 couples and we lost one family so last year we did the budget we had 13 more people receiving coverage at that point in time so i actually look at the numbers and i find out what the difference is fica medicare you know we always know medicare and it's not how much fica medicare is 1.45 and all employees are in medicare and our payroll increase by a number of dollars and that's the 217 thousand dollars retirement murders many of our teachers are trb teacher rtr and um admins at trb people like myself pears it could be anybody anybody that's not a certified staff is under murs merce has been going up a lot so

142when you look at pension plans um some communities pension plans aren't funded well the state of connecticut pension plans aren't funded well but one thing the state did on the mers is it's the merge plans run by the state they're actually ratcheted up to contributions um so when i first got here um eight years ago i think we were paying some about 10 10 11 for our contribution towards every employee is now 19 so what you're seeing here is the emerge contribution for next year the increase is 1.668332 um the increase in payroll because of all the new positions we had is 5.6 million dollars hit that by 19.2 percent 19.02 that shows that 1.6 million dollars 1 million 90 000 is just based on increased payroll increased positions but our increase in murders if

143we stayed the same would have been 577-377 so these two numbers actually tie into our increase next slide instructional services we have an increase of 1 million 421 it all sits in the yes or 2 grand it's the community partner program programs for after school with the community partners outside bcba services with people services which discussed at the last meeting bus monitors we have an increase of 168 it's really because of special programs we're running and there's a need from people services certain buses have to have monitors in service costs that's 1 million 910 this is 1 million 716 is the ed advanced contracts now when i explained to you earlier when i show you the increase in commission network dollars this year and i said it's year two because i didn't pick up last

144year as year one this is basically what it is uh it's just being flopped out and now it's year two and now you're seeing it one thing with the advanced contracts they were being picked up a hundred percent through the commissioner network high school dropped out a small piece was being picked by the brett high school the other three grants they get reduced you know i think every year so instead of if you look at and say like you look at the smaller part i'm just going to make this let's say smally was picking up 500 000 um last year this year would be 3.75 so the differential is going to the alliance grant and that's that's what you're seeing down below and then i should give you a slightly you know other in-services through

145the commissioner network 164 and local another grants is just uh to catch all is 29 868 other services medical is 133 it's really people services is actuals next slide repairs and maintenance we talked about this in january we're trying to spend at least a dollar per square foot in our buildings i know our school our building square foot is it's just under one 1.8 1.8 i feel like one point you know i think the square foot is 1.8 square foot it's like one it's like one point seven something it just makes it one one million eight hundred thousand dollars a year so that's what that's doing so it's one extra dollars the rentals um pope john paul which is chamberlain 132 burn street uh with a dell ed and central registration is 60 and other

146changes negative 21. yes do you have down somewhere like additional busing i'm sorry for chamberlain when we when we renovate chamberlain we kind of yes and i've actually you know that's the thing too so rich rich valeria is working on that he knows um so yeah so you're correct um you're gonna see in the busing we're going up a little i'm blessing but you know it's always uh it's a flexible number next slide hey transportation okay so transportation we're seeing increase in 861 thousand dollars we're actually seeing regular editing as a decrease of 193 home to school negative 474 summer school 43 after school activities through esther ii we're seeing an increase so so2 is has additional money uh mr valerio i'm gonna give him i'm gonna give a shout out to him he's done

147it he's done it he's done an amazing job filling mr helmet away at deployment really have i mean he's done he's an incredible job very diligent um so and you know transportation is something that we we always look at um he's on it um right now this is his best guess estimate he came back to me later on i had made some more changes um special ed out placement we're seeing a huge increase in special outplacement home school 947 and summer school 106. and both of them you see the contractor increases first student contractor increase this next year is 2.5 percent and especially is 3 percent so that's part of the so-called increase that's still shown up there outside tuition is a big one and you know um i handed to people services next year

148i might be saying something differently next year people services has seen a huge decrease in uh and outside tuition our placement and this budget has a huge decrease in um outside tuition let's say about 1.4 million dollars we know magnus schools went up just under 200 000 and right now people service outplacement is 1.6 um we may be doing something different i mean they've actually brought a lot of kids back in um this year when i was doing the budget i was talking to superintendents i'm really conservative this year i'm going to be as low as possible some of these numbers um so they may be not thanking me tomorrow but that's one thing too when i looked at this year's budget i said you know a lot of times we generate we generate surplus

149and a lot of time surplus is generated from positions because even though we have an open position sometimes positions aren't filled all the time i think we found that out so even though we may have a hundred teachers um and we know we're budgeting uh i don't know a million dollars that's a little wealth on teachers um we find out that you know they're only filled 95 percent of the time 96 percent of time so we're always generating surplus so i looked at the um out placement for uh people services and a great job i was very conservative i did the same thing with um talent and you know we used to start budgeting more and more for outside self-services i'm gonna take a chance then i'm gonna budget a conservative number went back to

150the 1.6 million dollars that i we used three or four years ago we were up that 1.9 i'm sure when they come to me i'm during the year and say geez we just spent 2 million dollars i'm gonna say we'll figure it out i'm not worried about it because there's always something you have to look at next slide custodial supplies that's a decrease of 266 and really the main reason for that is this year's budget we increased it by quite a bit because the code was 19. so you know we increased dishes budget by um 316 thousand dollars we used to always budget three hundred thousand dollars so what i'm doing i ended up going back over the last several years and saying you know we've always spent more than three hundred thousand dollars but

151get the we get the year before we average about 350. so that's where we're budgeting 350 which is lower in the last lower than this year but 15 000 higher than we did in the past instructional supplies majorities has come from messer2 299 000 and other grants and local make up the differential okay next slide and i think that's what you have here i mean the budget in front of you is 125.7 uh let's request it and it's the same thing as adopted budget for last year it's zero if you look at the next slide after that um that they expect you to look at this is the appendix i was talking about the famous appendix you know so if you have any questions on any of this stuff that's attached to it uh but

152it's things you've seen in the past um so that's it questions how did you smile through the whole thing i'm just scared i don't know i'm so happy too because it's over right like it's like christmas for him when he delivers yes ma'am i i take this take it this assumes that the mayor's budget is adopted as proposed and all of that yeah yeah this is yeah this is yeah and it is yeah i think it wasn't well maybe it hasn't has been adopted yet i saw something that wasn't coming up another meeting was yeah what they was talking i wasn't sure i think last week okay yeah so you know and one thing too is like you know but if it isn't no okay so we technically have already had a second in motion

153to approve the request right so we have a second in motion are there questions comment comments whatever yes go ahead i just want to say thank you kevin i know that this is not um easy and um yeah making you know basically making ends meet in in a district whose funding is just you know one of one of the lowest in the state and we know it and we're celebrating that we're getting um these additional covet funds and to gail's point earlier you know it's always what would make us whole and that's there so it's fantastic but we're also not starting at baseline right we know that those funds are there because it's not like things weren't right there there's an enormous amount of reconciliation that has to happen with our students in every aspect

154of of their education and um you know we're still one of the lowest funded and those who get more money than us are also getting grant funds from um the federal government to do more and catch their students up as well so thank you and that's it i will say he he is it's a huge job and and you know i think the hardest thing for all of us has been to shift from being very poor to what do you mean we don't have to choose one or the other we can have it we can have it both right and and we feel like like this is not right we shouldn't be able to do this because we've been living in poverty for so long that it and we're just bringing ourselves up to maybe

155some of the other alliance districts in terms of what they have so thank you kevin okay all right so we have a seconded motion uh without any further questions or comments i'm looking around um all in favor say aye aye any opposed gina any extensions okay nine to one all right so on to next item [Music] okay personnel approved new position request for 3.0 elementary school teachers for jefferson north end and smith elementary schools okay discussion just a quick question for mr kane these are indeed in addition to the budget that we just approved or were these included in that budget i'm sorry the three new positions elementary teachers yes so do we need to approve these positions then if they're in our adopted budget are they getting higher than this year [Music] this was

156when we went through we we check our numbers all the time we check class sizes and again we are a little more generous in keeping some of our kindergartens at 14 15 and 16 like other districts do so we said we're going to give one to each so we can maintain low numbers cool yeah okay well that's the photo just for the final thing okay we have a certain mission all in favor say aye aye any opposed any abstentions okay motion carries let's move on to the next one item d okay d approve revised job description for equity and climate specialist and why have any questions about that i do i'm curious so we're changing it from connecticut teacher certification to preferred and then 0.92 preferred maryland do you want to take them [Music] when

157we looked at other districts and you may have seen it yourself and there are a lot of districts that are putting human capital behind equity positions having just a teaching certification can also be limiting so we want to make sure that we're looking at all candidates people who've been trained in equitable practices people who have worked in other positions that have had these responsibilities so while we're looking for people in the education field of course we may also want to look at people who have worked in the education field but not as a certified educator per se so it just allows us to look at a wider variety of candidates and making sure we have the best fit for our district so you this is the this was recently posted correct so we'll have to

158repost it read you have to go back out right isn't this job already it's been out there people have to repost it yes okay but they probably didn't get enough candidates right if that wouldn't be your reason [Music] so we didn't get enough applicants that were like qualifying for it okay further questions or discussion on this item all in favor say aye hold on sorry i'm still just just trying to connect and i and i understand the um you know broadening of the pool and that maybe there are people who do other stuff in a district that doesn't require certification because you do still need minimum 10 years experience but when i look at things like like the fourth bullet on the responsibilities collaborate with school-based pupil service and instructional teams in the development and

159implementation of programs and curricula aligned to the district's goals i just have a hard time how you know how someone without a certification can can work on implementing curricula and aligning that so yeah i don't know like how how is this person going to have any of those gaps filled what what does an ideal candidate who maybe is not a certified teacher look like that can do that [Music] is a um it allows us to look at a variety of different people with diverse backgrounds should be certainly just um on also having a platform so it allows us right so can you repeat some of the examples you said of people who may be qualified but don't have a certification absolutely [Music] years um a special education teacher for years they should definitely have qualifications

160as described in the job description because an educational center but not just a certified educator could this also enable you to hire somebody who's been a certified educator in a different state i can't hear you someone who's been a certified educator from a different state yes or someone who may not have completed their uh teaching uh certificate but have been working either backfield or some type of counselling yeah like i said my one concern is you know for example that bullet like curriculum is an a very intricate thing and you know everyone who went to school thinks they know everything about schools and it just doesn't work that way right you require a lot of training to truly understand curriculum alignment and that just seems like a hard thing if it's part of the equity

161work unless we're talking that this equity work is more like you know workshops on you know whatever um courageous conversation with that that's different but that just seems like such an important duty that i can't see somebody without a certification being able to do that but so yeah and i think we can also share with you the candidates [Music] consultant work [Music] good coach good teacher doesn't necessarily need the instructional approach right they have to be the best fit the best you know training to be able to interact with people for this important work in a way that okay um you okay is there further discussion on this item all right hearing no further discussion um all in favor say aye aye aye hesitantly i okay it's not like a check minus yeah okay so

162let's just to be clear all in favor say aye aye say no okay so we got gail any others any abstentions okay let's move on to the next item a motion to approve a bid for the replacement of four boilers in the amount of nine hundred thirteen thousand dollars six hundred or nine hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred eighty dollars to connecticut combustion any discussion on this item if i'm reading this correctly i believe connected combustion was the low bidder and that was the correct that was the correct amount mr dion correct yes you went through an invitation today we advertised on the connected website for current we did a mandatory walkthrough we had three vendors show up we had two that actually did on our may 21st mid opening and but was the lowest

163um he all two one alternate two alternate one is an abatement which we leave [Music] it again i believe i can summarize what he was saying he's talking about the two alternates and so alternate one is an abatement of the tank where i believe you just fill it in place but leave it in there the other alternative two is where you remove the tank that's a more expensive process um and this the bid award that we that's up for approval is assuming that we might have to go with alternate two which is removing all the oil tanks um and hopefully it will be less than that did i summarize correctly mr nan that is correct thank you that sounds much better too okay any discussion on this item all in favor say aye aye any

164pose any abstentions okay yes next a motion to approve a purchase order bid waiver and contract approval between the consolidated school district district and uh the white i believe it's the ywca and the amount of 25 200 [Music] any discussion on this okay seeing no discussion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any extensions questions yes okay information people services contractor special ed services this is information sharing so we need to do with this okay so those two contracts are in your package if you have any other to business [Music] you