2026-3-2 Board of Education Meeting

001Good evening everyone. Um, welcome to March I can't believe it's March 2nd budget hearing. Mr. Angley, can you please take attendance? Thank you. >> Joe Abdullah >> here. >> Victoria Salem >> here. >> Stephanie Kick >> here. >> Jesse Leeman >> here. >> Angela Murulo >> here. >> Alex McNotton >> here. Justin Angley here. Jen Pod >> here. >> Jane Sergeant, >> I think she's on. >> Pete Tagley. Uh >> oh. >> All right. >> He's coming. >> And Mary is here. And Christine. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I hand it over to Dr. Schultz. Well, thank you and good evening everyone and thank you so much for coming to uh our budget presentation tonight. I'm at a slight handicap. There are some folks in the audience who are aggravated out of the gate because

002they're here and not at a basketball game. Don't feel um embarrassed if you're checking the score. The last update that Shupog is in the championship game against Anowag over at I think Thomas High. And the last update we had from Angel is we were up by two points with five seconds left. So I think the >> Yeah. Yeah. So, when I'm talking about all the good things we deliver, I hope to be able to deliver another championship to you in about two minutes, but we'll see. I won't count my chickens on that. So, um, tonight I want to talk about our upcoming, um, budget. Uh, and a budget, of course, the first thing you think when you hear about a a budget is dollars and cents, and that's obviously part of the nuts and bolts

003of it, but really a budget has a more soulful component than that. A budget is like a mirror that tells an organization or a school who it is, what its values are, what its priorities are, where it's going. So when we look at this budget, we have to spend time when we look at the story of this budget in a few minutes reflecting on our values and priorities. And they were set by a team in this district, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But the budget has to reflect those and they have to, we know, secure the resources to meet the needs of our students. Um, oh, Ben, do you have the slideshow? >> Because you can go to the next. Um, and along with meeting the needs of our students, the budget

004has to secure the resources we need to help our students forward. But it has to embody fiscal responsibility and it has to confer value in the eyes of our taxpayers and it has to align with our identity and our footprint. >> Okay, Ben. >> Shap one. >> Chap one. All right. Could be the first time a superintendent got applause at a budget hearing. >> Civic had the winning shot. >> It's on the backs of the basketball team, but so be it. >> All right, that's wonderful news. And we're proud of our kids. Uh, and wins are nice, but I'm proud of them for other reasons. I'll talk about that more later. So, uh, I said our budget at the first instance is a reflection of our identity and footprint. So we consider at the outset

005who we are in terms of our demographics and those needs and our current enrollment and what the enrollment trends are and we consider our faculty and staff and whether we're adequately staffed. And with respect to our current picture of students and staff, we are in a period of relative stability. So those are not big drivers in this budget. Although there will be a slight uh change we're making in how we're deploying staff next year in our plans. I'll go over that later. But overall there is a great stability in our identity and footprint as far as enrollment and faculty staffing goes. So we can turn to then our core values. And I said that our budget has to reflect and has to be a mirror of our priorities and values. And this district's priorities and

006values were set a few years ago by a really well-intentioned and hardworking team of stakeholders from across the district. parents, teachers, students, board members, community members, and they gathered and they participated in creating a strategic plan, which is our way forward. And our priorities and our values are laid out in that plan. And they are expressed by our choices and actions. And when I talk about the choices we're making in this budget, the things that we're asking for, the projects that we're going to move forward, I'll be able to tell you how they all flow from the fountain of that strategic plan. And under that plan, our stakeholders reflected long and hard and they decided that this region, region 12, will deliver powerful learning to our students, best practices in the area of teaching and

007learning that build critical thinkers, who are empathetic, who engage with the community, who can innovate, who move their ideas forward, and that we're going to develop the right techniques and methods to make to help that bloom in our kids. This the plan says that we're going to develop strong connections with families and with our community. It says that we're going to build and maintain and enhance a climate of belonging. A climate of belonging is one where everyone feels accepted. They feel like they belong in the space and they feel safe. The plan promises that we will innovate and come up with creative solutions across all the aspects and facets of our operation. And these are the values then that drive who we are, have driven who we are, and will drive this budget that I'm

008about to talk to you about today. But there's a bigger story in this budget, too. And for me, I like to get at what I think is the most soulful part of any budget. The story of this budget will tease out a partnership, a longstanding partnership between the schools and its community. the story of taxpayers who routinely say yes to our requests for the good of our students historically, methodically, nearly constantly say yes to the needs of our students. So therefore, it's also the story of our gratitude. the gratitude we feel for the support from our communities and the hard work we feel bound to do, impelled to do to deploy all the resources you've given us for the good of our students. It's the story of a budget that will confer value in the

009eyes of our communities by getting what we need for our students at reasonable cost to our taxpayers. So this is a partnership then in support of our strategic plan. It's the story of a year we'll see in a minute of no big asks but full of big returns. A story of students and teachers doing great things standing on the shoulders of the support that the board and the towns have previously provided. So, I think I want to talk for a minute, Ben, about what you have provided and how they're going to be used to build the foundation that will drive where we're going this year. Think for a second about all the prior impactful investments that this board and our community have supplied over the last several cycles. Math intervention at Chapag, a full-time social

010worker for our district, development of Link Crew at Chap. For folks who don't know, Link Crew is a research validated peer-to-peer program that helps students connect to climate, feel like they belong, and acclimate to a place when they might otherwise feel uncomfortable by getting help from student peers who are trained to do that under faculty supervision. We developed that with support from this board in our towns. You gave us a new statemandated reading program led very aly by Miss Snowden rooted in the science of reading helping us build literacy in our elementary students under the widest possible understanding of that word literacy. That's the ARC reading program. You supported that. You supported a teaching and learning initiative that might be the most powerful lever we're using right now called Leaders of their own learning. and

011we had a an acclaimed speaker come in and deliver a keynote address to us about it. And ever since then, we've been building on his work each year to help teachers help students become leaders of their own learning, become involved in what they're doing, have their hearts and minds in their work rather than just be compliant. And we can move that forward now too and will. We have a refurbished planetarium with incredible digital capabilities and the personnel to support it because of what we've gotten in the past. And we have three armed security officers in our elementary schools and a full-time security uh presence at Chipog to help our students feel and stay safe. And if you've supported and you have all those investments, one question you might have up front is, what are the

012returns on those investments? What results are we delivering with what you've given us? And it's time for me to stop and just share a few points of pride about our schools. US News and World Report ranks Shap in the top 20% of Connecticut high schools. Niche.com ranks region 12 as in the top 20% of Connecticut districts. Region 12 teachers ranked 10th in the state by niche. That's the top 8%. Over the last several years, all of our elementary schools received one status or another as a school of distinction under all these different ranking programs. And overall, our district has a grade of A from Niche. and they specially emphasize the fact that we have a small tight-knit community that focuses on personalization and we can cite results in terms of external measures too. Our percentage

013of students meeting SAT benchmarks and ELA and math exceed the state level by far and the levels of all our sending towns and all the regions around us. This is not to say that this is not a growth area for us. As long as we have any students not meeting benchmark, we're going to be dedicating ourselves to moving that forward. And the child is more every human being is more nuanced and more than the measure of a standardized test score. But these are one measure, one external measure of what we're doing, an external check on how teaching and learning is going. And for the investment that you all have provided, we are delivering that return. and the percentage of students meeting ESPback goals um which is the test taken in elementary and middle school not

014the SAT but the ESPback um uh surpassed the levels achieved in 10 of our sending 10 of the 12 sending and surrounding regional towns. So by that measure we have a lot to to be grateful for and proud of. And there's more of course than all of that. There's the kind of students that we're building and what they're learning to love, what they're learning to do. Every time a student plays a conerto, paints a painting, does a new science experiment, writes an essay, thinks critically about something, weighs in on an historical idea, something amazing is happening. And that's to be protected and guarded. And we have metrics of those kinds of things, too. I say here, I want to remind us that we're developing Renaissance people. You see the artwork around us, but we've had

015in the past year three state champions from Chipog, six Berkshire League champions, multiple sportsman like sportsmanship, excuse me, award winners, multiple halo award winners. Do you know what the halos are? The halos are the high school equivalent of like the Tony's or the Oscars, that kind of thing. And we had students win for best costume, best lighting, prop and sound design, best female and male actors in a musical, best male actor in a comedy. And we had multiple individual and team state and national CDE awards in Agra Science. Did we not Mr. Creines? Yes, we did. So all of that shows that um the return on your investment is palpable and I'm so glad for that. And I just want to stop and say I've always thought when you think about what it really takes

016to make this world go round and how we get through life together and the crises that we get through together and manage what could be an otherwise hostile environment. If you want doctors and hospitals and lawyers and courts and engineers and businesses and artists and musicians and trades people, first you have to have this. First, you have to have the school and the teachers who work with our students. And it's through again your investment, your support that we've been able to develop these kind of kids and get to where we are. Okay. So, the next part of the story is you've built a foundation for us. That's the case I tried to just make. Now, I want to make the case for what we're going to do with that foundation and at a very reasonable

017cost. So those investments allow us to do big things with low cost. And the metaphor I love is we are looking for the little rudder that turns the big ship. And that's what all these projects are. So based on the strength of the foundation that you've provided, we're going to continue with gusto with leaders of their own learning to improve the quality of instruction here and make sure that every student learns to take ownership through choice and in engagement, ownership of their own passions for learning and their own capabilities. We're going to develop a middle school version of Link Crew to give them the same benefits of connection and belonging that the high school kids have. We're going to launch new dual enrollment courses at Chapag. That means dual enrollment, students are going to be

018able to earn more college credit. In this case, through Yukon ECE courses in a couple of exciting areas like personal financial literacy and two new music courses in ear training and a course that has to do with um popular music and diversity in America. And we have a a really exciting new social studies course, contemporary social issues in sports. we can continue the college and career accelerator which is a partnership that we built with ed advance and that allows students when it comes to scale it's not to scale yet but when it comes to scale a student could leave shap with a high school diploma and an associates degree um that's pretty exciting and right now what they're doing is taking several courses growing growing this right now in engineering type and manufacturing type um

019course work that will help them as they move forward to college or the workforce. And that's at no additional expense because of the relationships we've built. We continue uh we're going to continue adding our teachers voices to the strategic plan. Through our teaching and learning council led by Miss Snowden and through the board's support and taxpayer support, these teachers can work on big global issues like developing and enhancing our curriculum, writing our curriculum, developing our vision of the learner, and coming up with the best ways to connect to new teaching and learning practices. We're revitalizing senior project at Chapag and one of the most exciting ways is helping them develop better relationships with community technical adviserss because we had fallen into a place where kids and this speaks well to our teachers wanted to connect

020with people in house and that was comfortable but maybe didn't stretch them as much as connecting with outside experts might and maybe didn't build the same kind of connections with the community that we hope for. We are developing and implementing a K12 vision of the learner which is a blueprint for and a statement of and a promise to all of you about the skills and dispositions that a child will have when they leave us that are relevant to their life the day after they leave to what they're going to do next and to their participation in a local and a global community. We're going to um intensify our elementary connection to STEM education, which is really exciting. STEM education is more important than ever. And there is a sequence called Project Lead the Way that

021can run all the way up through high school. And this is something where students can use do hands-on work to solve engineering type problems. And we're going to invest in um some engineering kits for our students. I'll tell you about that later. In the elementary schools, we're going to continue the world language program that we started with your prior support in the elementary schools. And we're going to add physical therapy and occupational therapy to our in-house suite of services. We already have folks doing great work in PT and OT, but they had been classified and accounted for as independent contractors up until now. And we just had advice from council that due to the nature of the work they're doing and the degree to which they focus only on this school, they're better conceived legally

022as employees than as independent contractors. So you're going to see a shift in the way we classify those folks and they will show up on our FTE balance, but it's budget neutral because we're just changing the line item from where we're drawing their compensation. We're going to continue all of the following powerful teaching and learning initiatives. primary partners where the elementary student stu uh students, excuse me, get to come up to Shap and be together in the presence of each other rather than being separated and for those segments connect with expertise here in this building and have a great experience in different types of subjects. Past rotations have been in STEM, have been in the arts and that will in agri science. We're going to keep doing that. We're going to continue fifth grade Agra

023Science Day where students can visit and take advantage of our Aggracience features. We've got math professional development that we're going to continue to grow on that will train teachers to help kids become independent math learners by encountering novel problems and learning how to solve them rather than needing direct support all the time. We're going to continue our math intervention work that you've supported us in before. We're going to continue the Ark reading program. We're going to continue flock Theater in our elementary schools, which is an incredibly powerful experience for our our littles. They take the stuff they're learning in their reading curriculum, all that great stuff designed to build their literacy, and then they migrate it over into an experience where they turn it into a play and a puppet show with experts from the

024outside who help them do that, have fun, make it come to life, but also cement the ideas that were launched in the classroom. We're going to continue our support for the model UN trip and we're going to leverage continue to leverage all the new technology that you let us invest in over the past several cycles to do exciting things like use max and advanced software so kids can operate in sound design and music design and in Photoshop and in CAD CAM and in robotics. We're going to continue all of that. That positions me to be able to say tonight to our board that this budget will give us what we need to move our strategic plan forward and support our kids and move them towards excellence. And at the same time, I can look at

025our taxpayers and say we're doing it with fiscal responsibility. This year's budget in to help us forward does include some modest additional requests to help us build on the foundation I just described. The project lead the way kits that I talked about a moment ago for our elementary students across all three schools in grades three, four, and five will cost approximately $15,000. We have new instructional software that are letting teachers design something called breakout room lessons where students engage with curriculum and they solve problems in math or science or history and the solution to those problems becomes the key or the clue to escape from the breakout room. It's very exciting. Um, we need textbooks for the new ECE courses that I talked about a few moments ago, $6,000. We need new basketball uniforms. They

026get worn out. They get tattered. We buy them in cycles as they run as they get worn down. Um this year, next year, we're looking to buy new uh boys basketball uniforms. The last uniforms we bought were for the girls basketball team. And that helps kids with a sense of climate and belonging and pride and who they are, that they look well and decent when they're supported by us when they're out competing and representing our school. and we're going to support our choir's trip to Radio City Music Hall, which is an amazing experience for our kids. Um, music is a performing art. Um, some folks worry that we haven't spent enough time and energy or money on the arts around here. I cannot abide that. Um, we're going to get performance opportunities for our kids,

027and there's none better than standing on the stage at Radio City Music Hall and having a New York City audience watch you sing. So, we're going to support that. additional items requested in this budget funding for our teaching and learning council to complete our curriculum maps. this board um and our stakeholders um want that project to be completed and I can tell you that under Miss Snowden's leadership, we've made incredible strides um quantum leaps and we want to bring that home now and we're going to invest in doing that to get our curriculum maps done by helping with the teaching and learning council doing that work to make sure that that project gets finished. We've also talked as a board about the importance of maintaining the barn and at times have undergone self-studies of improvement

028about whether we were cleaning the barn sufficiently to keep it the way we want it to be. And so that's been on our minds and we uh need some automated equipment to helping us clean the barn. And that costs $5,000. Um we need some training for our faculty to use assisted technology for our students. Um it's not a big cost but it's a high return. There's platforms now, things like that are called diffit and notebook LLM that will let a teacher take a text that they really want students to engage with in terms of the content, but modify it for each kid's needs in terms of Lexile or reading level where meet them where they are at that moment. Very powerful tools like that. And we're getting our teachers trained on how to do that.

029And there's a cost for it, but it's a cost that we should embrace. Um, and then we're we're also doing a self-study on improvement of counseling services at Chapag. And one thing revealed in that study was that we're not leveraging technology as well as we could to help empower students make choices when they're moving towards college and career. And we're going to move away from Navvian to something called school links that's more powerful with more features, more user friendly for our kids. And there's a small cost attached to that. I told you before that we were basically um stable in terms of staffing and that's true. But here's a point that I should make. We're reducing um one section of FTE at Washington Primary School because we have two sections right now of third grade

030that will not be we will only need one section for fourth for them next year. So, we're going from two sections to one and that will realize a savings of one FTE, but that's not driven by the budget. It's a fact of our enrollment and our enrollment needs. And then the other staff change I explained earlier, you'll see a 1.25, what looks like a 1.25 increase for adding OT and PT services, but that has no budgetary impact because we're merely changing the way we're accounting for how those folks are compensated. Our towns always want to know. And when I talk to our selectmen who are who are very, by the way, very good advocates for their constituents and very concerned about making sure that they not only support the schools, but that they take care

031of pe the folks in their towns. They're always reminding me, Don, are you looking for grants when you can find them to help offset costs? And our team takes a look at any of the grants that we could possibly be um qualified for. And it's not so easy in our towns because many grants are means tested based on need. And it's hard for us to get as much as some other folks based upon our ability to pay. Nevertheless, our team scour those grants, leaves no stone unturned, and we will have $30,000 from Title One to support a two-year sequence of training for our counselors to help them forward under our improvement and self-study plan. There's an additional $60,000 in titles one and two that will fund a lot of the staff professional professional development that

032I've been talking about. There's 363,000 from IDEA grants. IDEA is the individual individuals, excuse me, um with disabilities education act. So, special ed um ed funding to support services um and um placements for special ed students, including services we have to provide to folks who live in the region but attend private school and $55,000 from Perkins Fund grants and private donations for a Bobcat skid steer to support our aggra science operations. And when I was talking to a few folks about this earlier this morning, I said, "If you're anything like me, maybe you had to ask, "What the heck is that? Do you know what a Anybody know what a Bobcat skid steer is?" Maybe you all do. Tyler, you're laughing. You think that I should know this, right? Um, it turns out to be

033one of those things that beep when they drive around Home Depot and they pick up pallets and they move them. And that's important for our operations and important for our students to learn how to use, but also they're going to learn how to work on them and repair them, which is maybe the most powerful part of it. Okay. And also people want to know, you know, you talk a lot about fiscal responsibility. Are you doing that? Are you cashing that in through your actions and your choices? And I want you all to consider something for a second in support of my contention that I'm now prepared to defend that we hyperfocus on keeping track of our pennies because they know we know they add up to dollars. And I've had incredible support and guidance from

034our director of finance who helps me understand these things and even clips my wings when needed if I need to be brought back on track about this responsibility which I'm grateful for actually. And when those pennies add up to dollars, those dollars meet our needs more efficiently without us having to ask you for more money. Think for a second about the space you're in right now, which is very nice, very nicely transformed. And I also might be a very nice metaphor for the point I'm trying to make. This library learning learning commons was completely transformed and it was financed by money left over after scouring our budget all year long for savings. And we found after doing that exercise $519,000 for this space through hyper vigilance and an austere mindset. And this space needed the

035work after the time that it the furniture here did not o owe us a penny, believe me. And the last time it was refurbished was a very long time ago. It was not an aesthetic want. It was a functional need. And if those needs were moved forward by some superintendent, one of my predecessors or me, moved forward formally in the budget, that would have kicked the budget up by more than 2% with what we were asking from our taxpayers. but instead we made it happen within our current means. That's a mindset that we adopt all the time. This is one big obvious shining example of it. There are smaller new examples that don't have that aren't as exciting, but that uh give you a window onto how we help helps these pennies aggregate to dollars.

036Just the other day, I was talking to our facilities director and he was diligent in figuring out how a project that initially would have involved two different contractors, two different fees, all to get the same kind of thing done was collapsed through his clever negotiation, his clever reconception of the project and resulted in a big savings um working with Nicole in a big savings that now is available to us to do something important with. Okay. So, building our budget, what's the process very quickly that we go through? Departments and school principles attended meetings to discuss their needs with me and with Nicole. And after those meetings and after their submissions, I work with the business office who help me determine um our upcoming costs, contractual payroll costs, benefit costs, other operational expenses, and requests were

037submitted to me across all our operations totaling 29,573 $573,738. And after review and consideration of those requests, reductions were made by me totaling $189,000 and cost savings were realized totaling $255,000. And in that exercise, I can tell you, and that's why I promised before, that we're set to give our kids what they need. No cuts were made to instructional or enrichment programs that impact our students. some of the bigger drivers and there'll be a budget workshop next week where we can look if we want to actually at what those cuts were. But we delayed um a decision a need to pave the repave the lower driveway here at Chap saving $90,000. And we had a jump in our teaching and learning curriculum budget some years ago to let us pay for the ARC reading program

038that I told you about. And the plan when that when that increase happened was always to bring that line item down to actual cost once that reading expense went away. So we were able to now that we've had that investment made go back down to our historic needs and our actual needs in teaching and learning letting us save another $41,000. So here's the slide maybe some of you have been waiting for. That leads us in order to do what I said we're going to do. In order to take care of our kids, in order to move our strategic plan forward, make sure that our kids have the best and that they can move towards excellence and do it in a way that's fiscally responsible. I'm proposing a budget in the amount of 29,128,139, which is

039a gross increase of 3.11% over last year. But when you adjust by adding or subtracting our uh anticipated Agra Science revenue of 1,845,000, then you get the bottom line of 27 million, which represents an actual increase of 2.96% to our towns. Um the this slide that you're looking at, um Ben, I'm ready to go to the next. Sorry. This slide shows some of the big drivers that led to some of the increases. Staff salaries are up 3.35%. Employee benefits are up 7.67%. Special education costs rooted in services, outplacements, and those kinds of things are up 23.78%. Capital facilities improvement is up by a large number, but I'll break that down in a minute to tell you why that's palatable and necessary. That's the total of increases. Yet, we're only requesting not that total, but $879,000

040more. That means we found some additional savings. And that's outlined on the next slide. This shows the impact of uh areas of cost savings. In technology, we're down 28%, transportation down 2.6%, copier down 10%. Superintendent's office is down 4%. I don't take those fancy trips like a lot of my colleagues do. I'm here with the working men and women. I want everybody to understand that debt service is down. And we between Don and Nicole, they got on Frontier of Verizon and beat them down and and realized that incredible savings in our telephone service were down 30%. We're down we those are savings of $255,000 and they mitigate the number of increases that I talked about before. Some of the reasons are um for technology. Um last year's budget included replacement of several devices that are

041now in a a three or four year replacement cycle and they're not we're not going to have a cost for them this year. Um in terms of transportation, we combined a bus run. Our new 5-year copy release has better terms and we eliminated Frontier to get the results on those phone lines. Our debt service is just down over time and that's all good news. Here's our capital facilities budget request. These are projects that are urgent and that we consider need to be done in this year, but they're not all items that are paid for in the budget. Some of it is these projects are funded through the budget but some of them come from the CNR fund which is the capital non-recurring fund and some of them are funded by the 2% fund and um

042and you can look on this slide and you what you're seeing on this slide is uh on the far side the location where work is going to be done then next to that you see what kind of work is going to be done and they're all things where our physical plant needs immediate attention and then the remaining column show you how much of the cost will come from the actual budget requests that I'm making, how much will come from other funding sources that don't impact the budget tonight. And there and then the total cost and this is um obviously this slideshow will be posted online. Ben, you can do that, right? So you don't need to take notes on this. You'll be able to see it and have it and talk about it at the

043budget workshop next week. Okay. And then on the horizon, there are just exciting things to think about that aren't part of this budget. But we look forward and we have to have vision if we want to stay sharp and and and stay in the in the vanguard of the region like I think we are. We're thinking about art room renovations at Chipog because it's getting kind of old and dingy in there. We need a cafeteria renovation at Chipog and we're looking into that. We know the board has been collaborating with a wonderfully inclusive, very functional committee that's been talking between our three towns about who we are and where we're going and what recommendations the board will follow to see where where where we go in terms of how we conceive of our phys physical

044configuration. And that project is in force. And then we have a 10-year capital plan that we build out that shows kind of like the same stuff that you saw saw on this la the last slide that I had up a minute ago except each for every every um um every year of the next 10 years. Okay. Okay. Then now this slide will also be of interest and I'm almost done. I know I'm a little bit over time. Um this breaks down our budget request by town. So, what you're looking at on this chart is you see on the all the way over on the on the left hand side um for the for this budget cycle the membership percentage based on October one enrollment. You see the next down in the next row is the

045net assessment for this budget year as oppo and also the net um assessment for the prior budget year and that shows you what the increase is to each town based upon the budget that I'm proposing. So Bridgewater is at 26.5% of the budget, Roxberry at 29.2% and Washington at 44.1% of the budget. The related dollar amounts appear underneath that. And the increase to each town over last year is the last row. For Bridgewater, $674,000, Roxbury, $35,000, Washington 75,000. That net assessment is after agracience revenue and tuition in credits. The final impact to our towns has to take into account that we just completed our audit, which isn't always done in time for this budget talk, but this year it was. And based upon the audit, we know what we can release to each town based

046upon additional tuition in revenue that we collected and additional budget surplus that we found. So, um we are able to distribute to each town the numbers listed on this slide from those surplus funds and that additional tuition income. Uh and um we can distribute $162,000 to Bridgewater, 195 to Roxbury, and 326 to Washington. And so on the prior slide, you saw the increase to our taxpayers. We're mindful of the impact on on that of that, and we're happy to be able to um offer this offset to each town. uh showing the net cost to each town over in the far right column after that offset is applied the increase in Bridgewater at 512,000 and then um Roxbury and Washington their situation is also laid out. Um, I just want to close by saying a sincere

047thank you to our board and to our community. I have a phrase that I often say. Some of you are may be sick of hearing it, but I hope not because I mean it earnestly. And I think it's a powerful idea. And the phrase is every school is a reflection of the community that it serves. And I know folks who work in other schools who don't enjoy the same kind of input and support and dedication that we have here. And we're grateful for it. And for our board and our community members when through your presence and your intentions and your effort and your volunteer work and your money, you support the schools. you get the kinds of projects and trajectory that I laid out before and you show that you have the will to be

048a community that supports schools and that reflects in the schools that you in fact have. Thank you for coming. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, Don. >> And thank you, Don and Nicole, and everybody at central office for all of your hard work. I know that you put a lot of effort into it. So, we appreciate it. So, thank you. And I believe now we have a motion to adjourn this meeting so that we can um have another meeting after this. So, can I have a motion to adjurnn? >> Can I have a second? >> Second. >> All in favor? >> Anyone opposed? Great. Okay. So, we move on to the next one. Welcome to the next meeting to our March 2nd meeting 7 uh 134. >> Uh Mr.

049Angley, >> yes. >> Can we have a call for attendance? >> Joe Abdullah >> here. >> Victoria Salon >> here. >> Stephanie Colnik here. >> Jesse Leeman here. >> Angela Mackieo >> here. >> Alex McN. >> Justin Angley here. Jennifer say something here. Jane Sergeant >> here. Pete Tagley >> here, >> Mary Weber, >> and Christine Widig. >> Thank you. Uh, next we have, which we love, um, the recognition of our visual arts students. Okay, somebody before this evening said to me, um, I bet making snow day calls is the worst part of your job. That's what they said. But now comes one of the best parts of my job. Now comes the time I get to celebrate the work of our students. And um, it's a wonderful thing. So, we're here to celebrate tonight

050um, work that our students have done in the fine arts. I like to say when I go to a concert here or and or when I see artwork and I believe this, there's no greater gift we can give our kids than to teach them to play a musical instrument or to sing or to engage in the fine arts. So, we're going to see some um celebrations here of some wonderful work. And I hope all the folks are here to get to get their due. Um is Odin Cochran here? Okay. But um I can tell you about Odin's work. If the principles want to come up and join, they can. That's up to you. Principles want to come up here to rec for your when your kids. Um now, first graders explored, let's see, I think

051I think that's it. First graders explored the meaning of portraiture, discovering that portraits can include both people and animals. Odin created his own unique giraffe portrait using a mix of primary and secondary colors. He then applied oil pastels to design a foliage background using a wack resistant wax resistant technique to add texture and contrast to his artwork. So that's amazing and congratulations to him for us. he was so so excited about. He wouldn't stop talking about it all last week, but I think with the snow days and and the moving of the meeting, he couldn't make it today, but he was very excited to receive this. >> Oh, and I should have said Odin's from Booth Free School and from Burnham. Is Susanna Lenise here? >> Yes. >> Come on up, Susanna. Yeah, that's to

052your credit. That's to your credit that you don't think you want the spotlight, but you deserve it. So, let me say a few words. Okay, Susanna of second graders here. Stay here for one second. I only look like Shrek. I'm not really an ogre. I'm not scary. Don't worry. Second graders study the um the artwork of Henri Matise, focusing on his bold use of complimentary colors in the Goldfish series. Inspired by one of his paintings, Susanna carefully drew and painted her piece using tempera and acrylic paint markers to add detail. That's remarkable. Wonderful work. You should be very proud of that. >> And then from Washington Primary School, is Lily Anna Jasinto here? Come right on up, Lily. All right, stay here while we celebrate your painting for a second, please. Congratulations. Um, kindergarteners learned

053about self-portraits, discovering that they can be realistic or abstract, and don't always have to look exactly like the artists. Stop the presses. Maybe I could do a self-portrait if that's if they doesn't. Okay, I'm going to After exploring the bold line, shapes, and colors in the work of Sandra Silverwag, Liliana was inspired to create her own expressive portrait. She carefully used oil pastels for strong outlines and added vibrant color with chalk pastels to complete her piece. Wonderful work. Congratulations. uh at Chapa Grade 8 Middle School, Kiki Bowman. Is Kiki here? Come on up, Kiki. Congratulations. Let's say a few things about your wonderful work. In an eighth grade unit focused on how artists create mood in a work of art, Kiki painted this self-portrait to express a calm It's right over there behind Alex. uh

054to express a calm, positive energy through thoughtful choices in color, body language, props, and lighting. She successfully conveys a relaxed and inviting mood. And Kiki, this is wonderful and all well and good, but you better still play the trumpet. All right, congratulations. Wonderful. >> And then for Shap, grade 12 AP art, Tula Mccran. Hi, Tula. >> As part of her AP art research project, exploring how lighting affects a work of art, senior Tula Mccran investigated the reflection of light on water and the way surface texture can enhance movement and energy. She used loose oil pastel brush strokes and vibrant color choices to amplify the lighting and overall mood of the piece. Congratulations. And last but not least from Shap Grade Nine, Connor Karu. Connor, how are you? Okay. At the start of the semester, graphic

055design and computer illustration students completed a skilluer project. Um, landscape or seascape. Sounds really fascinating. It sounds like you had to learn a lot of complicated stuff, Connor. Right. Connor quickly stood out for going above and beyond expectations. He thoughtfully combined multiple complex shapes with precision and creativity, resulting in a detailed, polished final image that showcased both strong technical skill and artistic vision. Congratulations. And congratulations to all our artists. Um, >> wow. Do we usually, Miss Pody, take a chance? >> I think it would be just take a quick break just to look at all the amazing um artwork. That would be wonderful. Thank you. Such beautiful artwork. Thank you all for our students for sharing their amazing talents with us. Best part of our meetings, that's for sure. Moving on to public comment for

056agenda agenda items. Is there anybody that would like to talk about any agenda items? >> Go for it, Eric. >> I know. >> How's everyone doing? I put my glasses on. Sorry. All right. I just have two quick things. I got a a letter I wrote and then I just have some quick numbers. I I'll read quick so I stay within the 3 minutes. Um, all right. Good evening. My name is Eric Gazelle. I'm the new first elect of Bridgewwater. Um, I'm learning a lot a great deal in my new role here, especially about the complexities of region 12. I want to begin by saying how appreciative I am of the work all of you do. Um, as both a town official and a citizen, I'm generally proud proud of the excellent education we provide

057to the youngest members of our three communities. Bridgewater is the smallest of the three towns. We have six 1622 residents. Roxberry has 2260. Washington 3646. As you know, in 2014, we faced uh concerning projections about our own elementary school. We took creative and aggressive action to turn a tide with a multitude of solutions to appeal to young families. We're now stabilized uh and thriving. We worked together. We got creative and along with the aggra science program, we saw real improvement. Burnham especially struggled with low enrollment and we saw real improvement. Uh in 2014 we took serious proactive steps to attract young families. Those efforts paid off. We're now stable and thriving. Today we're facing a different kind of challenge. Regent's budget is now 70% of Bridgewater's entire town budget. For comparison, Roxberry is 60% Washington

05853% of their overall budget. Uh last year Bridgewater's percentage of students increased which pushed our mill rate up a point to 19. uh significantly higher than our other partner towns. We don't have an issue paying our fair share of the percentage. It's not why I'm here. When the region was formed in 1967, Washington was to supply about 50% of the students with Roxbury and Bridgewater splitting the remaining 50. Those assumptions were based on population. While overall town populations have remained fairly steady, the distribution of students across the three towns has changed dramatically. According to Peter Prada's last report, in 10 years the town with the largest population in Grand List, Washington is projected to have 33% of the elementary school students. Roxbury 36, Bridgewater 31. For Bridgewater taxpayers, this shift hits us in two ways.

059We're paying for our increased share of students, which we're fine with. We get it. We're also absorbing the financial impact of declining student numbers in other towns. We all, including me and everyone in Bridgewater, want to continue offering the very best education possible. I Bridgewater by no means want to cut any educational services that are needed to continue region 12 as the great region it is. But to do that sustainably, we need to think about long-term costs and and consider potential solutions in Bridgewater. Are there ways to increase revenue without placing additional burdens on taxpayers? Are there creative cost savings measures that protect the quality of our schools? I/We Bridgewater were open to any and all uh suggestions. I'm here tonight because many of my Bridgewater residents are struggling. In my short time as first

060selectman, uh I've been surprised by the level of need in our community. Our food pantry used more often than I ever knew or expected. The free food offered at a senior center disappears every week. Seniors on fixed incomes already facing rising cost of living tell us they're reaching their limit. As the smallest town in the district, taking on a larger portion of the region 12 budget simply isn't sustainable for us. I have met with Don and Nicole in January to discuss these concerns and I appreciate the time they gave us. At that time and again today, I'm asking for a flat budget for the coming year. This will give us all time together to understand the trends, explore solutions, and plan for the future of our region. I truly look forward to working with the

061board of ed, the administration, the intermunicipal committee uh of region 12 on the best path forward for region 12 and all of our students. So I thank you for our time, your time, your willingness to listen and for everything you do for the children of our three counts. And then I have one more thing and this is more for the I guess the intermunicipal committee which I'm part of now and stuff. I just want to make sure everybody knows there were and I did talk I finally got I got Peter Potter on the phone today thanks to Don. Three of these appendixes the math just doesn't work. So, um, on appendix F, like the last item, I'm not going to read all these out. So, 10 + 10 + 10 + 11 + 11 +

06210 + 8 does not equal 82. It equals 70 if you do the math. Um, there's also M and L, which have the same thing. So, again, these weren't used in Don's um report that he gave us last month or anything with the pie charts and stuff, but there's number in here that they just don't add up was my only concern. I didn't figure it out until Friday when I was sitting late in the office scratching my head going through stuff. So, um I don't know what it means. I don't know what the solution is. I appreciate region 12. When I got in touch with them, they immediately got back to me. Um we got in touch with Peter Potter. It's kind of a I guess copy and paste and his formula Excel spreadsheet, which

063hey, stuff happens. I get it. But, um I don't know. No, nobody noticed that and just caught my attention. That's all on Friday. So, I appreciate your time. And then if anybody has any questions about anything I said or or concerns or suggestions, call me at my office. Just Google me. I'm there Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 5:00. I live at 101 Milford Road East in Bridgewater. I'm there all the time if I'm out of work. So, uh again, I appreciate all that you do and I look forward to moving this region forward. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Any other public comments. Okay, moving on. Consent agenda. Alex, >> I've got it in front of me and I find >> excuse me, I've got it in front of me and I find no corrections

064or additions, deletions of any kind. >> Fantastic. I think Mary does. >> Sorry. >> It's okay. We seem to be pointing out lots of mistakes. my presentation of uh for the Agra Science Committee. Um Mike Rottman is going to be the person that's uh that's going to be the chef for the uh farmtot dinner. >> His last name is spelled R O T M- an R O D M. >> Thank you. >> That's it. >> Okay. So then we will approve the agenda with the >> with that change. That's fine. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. All in favor? >> I. >> So Stephanie made the motion. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So it has been. Thank you. Mendon. Thank you, Debbie. Okay. So, moving on to the board chair's report. So, I'm

065going to keep it light since um other than uh congratulating our uh basket the boys basketball team for winning, I wanted to um Lexi Thomas, who is a senior, she drops off the Spartan Times off at the senior center um and it's her senior project and so she took it over. It's the um her uh newspaper and last year her brother started it for his senior project and I was reading it today and I was thinking and I thoroughly enjoyed it and I thought well this is what I should just talk about because it really is so informative and it's positive and I loved it and I said and I texted her and I said can you bring 11 more? So, she dropped off 11 more so that I could share them with all of

066you because I just think what she writes about was really something that we should all just be uh enjoying and reading and informative. She talks about um she interviewed uh Chris Dennis, which I thought was really interesting. She um it was an article about whether or not you should um do school lunch versus home lunch which I thought was a very riveting um article which I thought was interesting. Scholarships 101 which I thought was interesting. Um she talked about the prep, solve, succeed, which is the um SAT course which I thought again all of it was really fascinating and um there's a section about the sports um and again I just really loved it and I thought it was something that we all should um enjoy. So take one and pass it along. I think

067everybody should have a light read. >> Half one way, half the other way. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Um, >> I'd like to have one every time it comes up. >> Well, I will I will talk with her. She was the one keeping me informed about the game. >> Great. >> So, um, pass it along and she is informing. So, I think the goal is to move it along so somebody will do it next year. So, she has been um coaching the next person. And I'm not going to say who, but there is somebody that she's coaching that will be taking it on for next year for their senior project. And I just think it's a really great um uh tradition that I hope just continues and I love it. So I think that

068it's something that um I hope just continues. >> Thank you. >> And I love it. So I think that's really great. Yes, Joe. >> So this is available in like a newspaper type. >> She goes and drops them off. She puts them in her trunk. old school. Sorry. >> So, this is dispersed in a couple of different areas, right? >> Yeah. She I She's She I She's dropping them off in all three towns. Um she brings them to the senior center. >> Um and she put old school. She puts them in her trunk and she goes and she drops off at different areas. So, >> I know I've seen it in the bank in the deep one of the banks in the depot. Yeah. Yeah. >> But wasn't isn't there like a newspaper type thing

069on the lawn of the town hall that >> that I believe was the Gunneries. Okay. >> Um the which I think is a really great idea that uh Joe that you're on to something that maybe we should talk about investing in something like that. >> I'm loving that. >> Should probably be available in each town. Should be available in the town. >> I think that's a really good idea. Um especially if this is something that's going to be passed on for uh >> and I think it would I think that's a really good idea. >> Should be a tradition. >> I love it. Absolutely. >> I really love it. So >> I I think it's great that Payton brought it back. >> I think it's great. >> Did an awesome job with that. >> Absolutely.

070>> And for Lexi to carry on with that. >> I know the I love it and I love that um somebody else is going to be she's coaching somebody else to do it next year. So and I again I just think it's a really great thing. I get excited when she drops them off. Uh the seniors love it. We put it on the coffee table in the center of the room and people come and they grab it. So I just think it's a really wonderful read and so I think it's really wonderful to share. Um, but it does uh also make me think a little bit about a project that work on something that I have said that I wanted to do and I've been kicking the can down the road myself just because I

071thought I was very um jazzed up in the beginning of the year and had a lot on my plate. So Jesse and I and Don and Nicole have been working on communication um throughout the district from the board of ed perspective. Um and so um we're working on the board of ed page for the website. Is that right? >> So um we're getting somebody to work on the region 12 website. There's going to be a board of ed page that we will share information and then we're going to do a flyer so that we can decide what kind of information and communication information that we're going to share um uh with different topics. We're sort of in the process of working on that now. Uh we're going to meet this week. I forgot what day

072is it? T tomorrow. Thank you. 3:30 I think. Yes. Um to decide what kind of topics we're going to share. Um and it's hopefully going to be really soon. But um and then especially with budget time coming up, we're kind of getting to the close to that. So it'll be shared through three towns through the eblast and also uh region 12wide. So, we're working on that um with uh YouTube clips and information about students. If you want to share a little bit too, Jesse, I encourage you. Well, we're just kind of brainstorming at the moment. So, because I asked his help because I I have way too much on my brain. >> No, I think there a lot of good ideas have been expressed. Nicole came up with a great structure and just to try

073to put it into the laps of the town residents. Whether you're, you know, someone connected to the school, it's because you've got kids in the school, whether you're a town resident interested in knowing what your taxpayer dollars are doing. Yeah. >> You get something disseminated through the town on a monthly basis and so you can keep up with things more easily. >> So, the goal is is try to decide how that uh the how the schedule will work. if it's gonna it's we think we're going to do monthly, but I think during budget time I think it would be more important to do that more frequently since we meet frequently. Um it seems like all the time during budget time um so we're going to kind of pin it down a little bit more. So

074that's a little bit more um that's exciting too. But that's it for me. >> Okay. Thanks, Jen. And before I start my report, I'd just like to make a comment to reassure our stakeholders and everyone present here tonight. I was a became aware when I was talking out of the corner of my peripheral vision that an image flashed on the board that um I saw enough of it to know that it was abhorrent. >> I'm sorry that it darkened our doorstep. I don't want to give it much oxygen, but at the same time, I want to make a statement reaffirming who we are and what our mission is. I said earlier that our mission involves um a place of belonging, safety, and inclusion. And nothing could be more antithetical to that than the clip that

075we saw, which runs counter to every fiber of our being. And I want to assure anyone who who saw it, student, teacher, parent, community member, board member, that it has nothing to do with who we are, that we categorically reject that kind of mindset as history has. And that I learned from Mr. Allen that we were zoombombed and I will pursue every available act I um pathway I can to investigate what happened. We have pretty good steps to ensure that people don't meander into our board zoom. Sometimes they get around our security and somebody chose to come on and share that abhorentt image. Um and I'm sorry that it happened. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Thank you. As for the rest of my uh report, um as I said to the board earlier today, we've

076been in a sort of a light news cycle in my Friday updates, but that's going to kick up a little bit now, I think, as we get into this part of the year. A couple of points of news. Um uh they just had FFA week at Chapag which is a big thing where the A students do team building and activities and they make breakfast for the faculty and they go on trips and some of it got a little bit rescheduled because of those snow days but they're going to finish finish the activities this week and next. and they did things like um they went to an arcade laser tag center in Bethl and they provided a faculty breakfast snack bar and they're going to hold some crafting activities. It's a really nice way for them

077to connect with Shap. We know that our team won the championship tonight. Our elementary schools are participating in Jump Rope for Heart and they've raised over $3,000 already. And next is the annual March Readathon, uh where um it kicks off an entire month of class reading activities where they do fun things at school and at home to build student literacy. And you'll all note if you look at the um supplemental update I just sent you, you're invited, if you so desire, to participate in a panel for career day because you've all got impressive um backgrounds and experiences and skills that you might share with our students. And there's a link to a Google form to see if you can do this on March 13th from 8:15 to 11:30 where they're going to schedule panels for

078our um students to visit different types of career options. So, please please consider that. Uh, in terms of personnel, I have a couple of points to make. We have an appointment. Lois Silver is going to be a PAR educator at a Booth Free School. Uh, and we have resignation. Uh, Zosia Olnac was an aggra science operations assistant helping with barn maintenance. Uh, she resigned effective January 3rd. And Carrie Sher, guidance secretary at Chipog Valley School, resigned effective February 20th. And I have a field trip notification for you, which is that our fifth graders would like to go to Old Sturbridge Village, as you know, is a wonderful recreation of an historic um village and the kids can get a lot um of what it was like to live uh in the 18th and 19th century

079at that place. So, we would like board support for that. Since it's out of state, we notify you and later there's going to be a request for you to support the senior trip to Boston, which is out of state and overnight. Uh that's an action item at the end which is something that they do every year. It's fun for them. They learn a lot. They do historic things. They do fun things. And it's a great way for them to have a last fling together as a class. And those are my updates. >> Thank you, Don. >> Treasures report. Alex, >> I'm going to hold off on it and give it it under my FNO report. >> Okay. Committee reports aggra science Mary >> nothing's changed since the last meeting. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Curriculum.

080>> So we just had a short meeting um earlier tonight. We discussed two things. Um communication um just brainstorming ways to have consistent messaging uh between schools. And then we talked about um the sequence of of the math pathways and and how you go from one course to the next to the next. We also had a brief discussion on physics in ninth grade. >> Thank you. Ed advance Joe. >> Uh nothing new. Our next meeting is this Thursday. >> Okay. Finance and operations. Back to Alex. >> Yes. We had a meeting this morning at uh 10 a.m. Last week's meeting obviously was cancelled because of the snow. Um several issues that we went over. First, we went over uh uh the financials. um making adjustments so that it's apples to apples. We at the exact

081same spot now that we were a year ago at this time uh of uh 15.8% uh budget still available. Is that correct? Yeah. And there are some line items that went over uh things about uh health insurance for employees. Some of it's been moved from one line item to another, but it's basically it's it's budget zero effect. Um, we uh let me just look at my notes here. We are finally away from Frontier for our phone service. It uh uh I think that it was it was a battle to get rid of them, but they're long gone now. And uh you could see that uh I think we're down what 30%. Was that the number Don you had? >> 30%. Um and uh uh let me just see what else we've got here. Um we

082went uh over with the audit last year's audit has finally been completed and the highlights are um that the number that we'd said before of $684,18 will be returned back to the towns. Um uh there is going to be a slight adjustment on each town because uh uh last year they took the breakout percentage of the year of that year the year before rather than the year before that. So there's a slight adjustment but it's it's it's $15,000 going from one town to another. Um, one of the things I was happy to hear is our pension is is is we're covered in our pension of over 94% coverage. Um, which is a very s significant amount. A lot of towns are are well below that. Uh, some of the bigger towns of the state are

083down in the 20s and percent and stuff. Um we talked about uh um our strategic plan um the partnership between the uh this was in the budget review. Uh Don gave us a shorter version of what you saw tonight. Um and uh with without numbers of course, just sort of the the prelude to the numbers and uh I I would go back and look at his presentation tonight again if you have any questions on that. And um I think that is it. There was some discussion about how to make the budget uh uh uh open to towns in different segments of the towns. I believe the uh selectmen are coming tomorrow to have lunch here and uh or at the central office and discuss the budget and then they'll be meeting with the different finance

084committees of the different towns. And one of the things I brought up was I was curious if we could even go further, but I don't want to put too much strain on Don and Nicole to have to give the same show multiple times. I'd like to make it somehow that there's a time that anybody that has interest can come look at the budget, discuss it, and get any clarification that they may need. And that is it for me unless anybody has any questions. >> Uh Alex, isn't that isn't that where our our uh present presentation that um Donna is going to give next time a community uh presentation that anybody can come and and and give the workshop to come and and and and listen and decide, you know, make comments about things. Isn't that

085correct? >> Yeah. The budget workshop is a time where people can delve down into the nuts and bolts and and um deeper into the line items and ask questions and make and have dialogue about that. Yes. >> It's on the 9th. There's one on the 9th and one on the 16th. It's at the bottom of your um It's on right here >> on the bottom of your Yeah. Okay. Yep. Thank you, Alex. Labor negotiations. Vicki, nothing new to report. >> Okay, thank you. Policy, >> nothing new. Our next meeting is next Monday the 9th. >> Thanks, Justin. And uh nothing for me to report on long range planning. So that is it. Uh old business, we have nothing to report for new business. Consider for approval the senior class trip to Boston on April 24th

086through the 26th, 2026. Can I is um have a motion? >> Motion. >> Can I have a second? Second. Uh is there any discussion or questions? >> That's what I was wondering. Um uh all in favor? >> Is there anyone opposed? Extensions. They're going to Boston. Awesome. I would love to go actually. Uh, next is to appoint new members for the Agra Science Advisory Committee. Mary, >> uh, Mike, >> there are four members of the communities that um, we've suggest that they've suggested. One is is Tyson Averil who is owns uh, Averil Farm. uh Alice Daly who's on uh the executive direct director of Little Bridges, Howie Bronson who owns and and has operated Maple Bank Farm for years in Roxbury, Tim Armster, the manager at Toplands. Uh and uh Colin Campbell, the owner of

087Campbell Services in Bridgewater. And um our committee has endorsed all of them. The other people that are going to be on that committee are from the other towns and the other towns have already endorsed them and and gave them a position on this committee. So, we only have to um we only have to actually endorsed the uh the five from here. >> That's exactly right. And what we're working on right now is many of you might know there is a statute governing the advisory committee and it provides that members should be appointed from each town and that they should be local experts who can advise technically advise and support the program and all the people on the list that you just heard Mary read from about are uh local and dedicated and have significant expertise

088in their fields and would be able to help our program help advise and answer problems of practice. And then there are also folks who are appointed from many of our ascending towns. Um, uh, David Jalen was appointed by the board of ed and Sherman. Diana Paprowski by the board of education in New Town. You don't need to, this isn't something that you need to memorize, but I'll just have it on the record so there's no confusion. Samantha Galbreth appointed by the board of education in Danbury. Hans Reelik from the board of education in Bethl. and Nick Pter uh and um Alice Wilkinson from from New Milford. So we have a really uh well- constructed committee in line with the statute folks from all different places very a lot of diversity all the towns are represented

089and all of them are calculated to lead to some really productive meetings and really support our culture our climate and help us move forward and get better at what we're doing. uh we we're now going to have a a standardized agenda and then from what we've done at the at the last meeting uh that I thought was wonderful they broke into groups and worked with uh the people that have expertise in in different areas went and spoke with those people about what we need what they can do um etc. And I thought that was a much better way of having an advisory committee meeting than what we had had before. >> How big is the advisory committee? >> How many people total? >> Uh 1, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.

090>> Oh, that's a reasonable amount. Okay. >> Okay. So, can I have a motion for Tyson Averil, Alice Daly, Howie Bronson, Tim Armbster, and Colin Ka uh Campbell? >> And this is for a three-year term. >> Three-year term. >> Motion. >> Second. All in favor? >> I. >> Anyone opposed? Abstensions. Well, we welcome all five. So, thank you. That's exciting. Very exciting. Thank you. Thanks, Mary. Okay, >> we all knew somebody on that committee. >> That was great. >> Uh Nicole, the annual fiscal audit. >> You're all very lucky. You get a meeting where numbers start and numbers end. So >> great book ends. >> Um I'm going to go over the audit which is um as Don had said has now been completed. No, I'm just going to do um some highlights. It was

091in the packet. I don't know if anybody took a look at it over the weekend. Um, and I just want to say if after you do take a look at it after this meeting, if you want to look at it more in depth, if you have any questions, you can always email or call me. Um, there's a lot of information and obviously and I'm just going to jump around to some of the highlights that I think you might be most interested in. Um, the first is that the audit's clean. There were no findings this year. Um, there were no exceptions taken. So, that's that's good news for us. Um, if you are going to read part of this. If you're if you just kind of want to dip your toes in to see what the

092audit's all about, I would recommend that you read um the management's discussion analysis, we call it the MDNA. It's on pages 4 to 11 of the audit. Um and that is internally prepared after we get um all of the balance sheets and financial fund statements from the auditor. We prepare that report internally and it's a nice overview of everything that's in the audit kind of more from a layman's perspective than the GAP accounting princ principles which are a little bit trickier to digest. Um and from that page um one of the things that it explains is that our financials throughout this audit are presented in two ways. They're presented as governmentwide financial statements and also as fund financial statements. The governmentwide financial statements look at us more as if we're a privately held company and

093they talk about um our net position and what our ending year balances are and whether or not we were profitable. Where for us we concentrate more on our fund financial statements which tells you what the health of each of our funds are and how our budget was um spent for the year which is the fund financial statements have more relevance to what we do on a daily basis. But GAP require and the state of educ the department of education requires that the auditors do also look at um governmentwide from a gap perspective. So if um anyone's following along I'm on page six um this is still part of the MDNA. It's a nice um place to start. So um what this is going to show is um our June 30th. It's a it's a snapshot

094of our fin financial analysis as a whole and it shows our numbers on June 30th of 25 compared to our numbers on June 30th of 24. And one thing that might jump out at you at this audit is that our cash position is um four mill four plus million dollars better at the end of June 30th than it was of 25 than it was in 24. And the reason for that is because last year the state of the department of ed released our final aggra science construction grant and a little over $5 million. So what that did is we took that cash in and then we also used that cash to to reduce one of our liabilities which was $3.5 million. So that's why our cash position ended last year um better than the prior

095year is that number is wholly driven by the ad grant being released. You're always going to see prepaid expenses in our audit. And you may think, what is this prepaid expense that kind of rolls from year to year? It's because we buy our oil a year in advance. And we do that in order to lock the price. So um one of the things that um I was happy about is that our oil is locked um for next year already. We've already purchased our oil for next year. So any um unrest that may be going on in the world isn't going to affect the oil prices we pay next year. We did lock our diesel at 2.79 and our heating oil at 2.74. um for next fiscal year. So this prepaid expense is actually with reference

096to the oil we bought last year for this year's oil. But I just mentioned we did also already buy for next year. Um if you look at our total liabilities, you can see they decreased about 30% by about $5 million. That's the same reason the ad grant uh paid off the bond. So that reduced that outstanding bond liability. those two numbers jumping like that from year to year is usual we usually are um the numbers stay more stable. So you may look at this and if you were to go back and look at a different years a you may think what happened here but that's what happened was the construction grant got released um if you turn to page eight um kind of keeping along that same train of thought you can see on this

097page um under the June 30th column of 2025. You can see the capital grants and contributions. You can see there the $5.6 million that um I was talking about that was affecting the prior page. And then as you can see, it helps our net position because we took in that grant funding and also released the liability of the bond. Our net position increased year-toear considerably. So, with that, I'm gonna jump all the way to um all the way to page 12, a whole four pages. So, I promise there's we're going to go through a lot of pages pretty soon. Um, one of the things that you're going to see throughout these financial statements, which is somewhat perplexing, is reference to OPED. What that stands for is other post-employment benefits. that is really more of a

098GAP or a Gazsby accounting principle where um we have a liability on our balance sheet for um p the teachers pension of the state of Connecticut. So while it's not a cash liability to us, accounting principles require that we carry it as a liability on our balance sheet. So it's a very large number. It's not a large number that we have to have cash reserves for unless something were to change in the law about the way the pension's administered. So there's lots and lots many many pages in this book are dedicated to that number and why the number is what it is and how it affects us but it actually doesn't. So if you go to read about all of that just understand it's part of the GAP procedure that's required but it's not cash

099that we're required to have on hand and it's not an actual cash liability. It's a paper balance sheet entry. Um if on page 12 that um as you're look if you're looking through any of the balance sheets on page 12 um you can see that um sometimes we have in our liability account this um entry for unearned revenue and I've gotten a a question before what's unearned revenue because people sometimes think it's someone didn't pay their tuition bill or what unearned revenue is is it's grant funding we've received that we haven't yet expended as of June 30th. So it may be that we received title one funding for a professional development that occurred in June and we've got the funding from title one but we didn't get the bill yet and the bill is going

100to come due in July. So the unearned revenue is just revenue we're holding that is due to an expense that hasn't been realized yet because of the timing of the fiscal year rolling over and on page 16 talks about um our funds and our fund balances. And this is the area that I think we want to focus on. If you want to look at our financial health more than looking at the gap prepared balance sheets. So on page 16 it talks about our funds and um we do fund accounting. We have several funds that each fund represents an actual dedicated cash bank account. So we have the general fund which is the first on this page and the general fund is our operating budget and that's where the towns the revenue from the towns come

101in and where the expenses our ordinary expenses go out. That's what's linked to our budget. We also have a few other major funds. The debt service fund, the capital reserve fund, the capital project fund and the building fund. Um, when the legislature two years ago changed the 2% fund so that it's now called the educational expenditures fund, it's no longer considered a major fund from accounting purposes. So, if you're looking on this page under major funds and you're looking for that funding, you won't see it. So, um I will show you where it is a little bit later on a different page, but that's a a deviation from the way we used to keep it because when it was in the capital reserve fund, we would see the balance there and we would say, "Okay,

102we have X dollars in the capital reserve fund." You can no longer see it because of the way the accounting principles are making it um be handled. And the reason for that is Gazsby doesn't believe that the legislature defined the uses of those funds in such a way where they could be restricted. So they're now unrestricted funds because they don't have a specified purpose. So we can no longer call them a major fund even though we have them in a segregated bank account for that per for purpose that we would have major funds for in the past. So, where you may think balances are going down, I'm going to show you where that money is on a different line item. Um, our non- major funds, I'll show you um later on in the in the

103audit where you can find out what those are. There are student activity accounts, some of our scholarship funds. Our non- major funds are funds that we have fiduciary responsibility for that run through the business office that we manage on a day-to-day basis, but we don't actually own the funds. They belong to someone else, so they're restricted. And the other thing about this page 16, sometimes people, you may look at it and you see all of these amounts in quotes and you I mean um not quotes in parenthesis and you might think, "Oh my god, that's a negative balance." It's not actually a negative balance. It's not trying to convey a deficit. It's trying to convey a change over the course of the year. So something could have a $10 million balance. You could see something

104in um parenthesis that says 200,000. And it doesn't mean it went from 10 million to a negative200. It means $200,000 changed from that $10 million balance. Um, Alex on page 18, Alex was talking about our pension fund. Pages 18 and 19 give really good detail about our pension fund. Um, as he mentioned, it is 94.02% funded, which is um, a great position. There's currently $9.3 million in the fund. Um and on page 19 you can see um the income that we've made on the fund this year and also what we've paid out in pension benefits. So as our employer contribution was 288,000. Um the fair value of our investments increased by 672,000. We received interest in de dividends of 226,000. So that the total additions to our fund, our pension fund for the year was

105$1.145 million. and we paid out just under 550,000. This is when we're going to get through lots of pages. So, pages 20 to 49 are all of the notes to the financial statements. They're important. They go into detail about the actual statements. Um, some of them just talk generally about accounting principles. Some of them are specific to us. um a couple of the ones that might be of interest to you that are specific to us. Uh page 32 lists our outstanding debt. Page 35 shows how our investments in our pension plan are allocated and also what assumptions are made um to get to the 94.02% funded. And page 41 does the same thing as page 35, but for the state of Connecticut teachers pension as it relates to our retirees. And that pension is 62.68.

10668% funded. Am I losing anybody? Um the only other note that I want to talk about with with all the notes um on page 49, I do get asked this question on occasion. Um, note 15 speaks to litigation contingencies, and these are both general statements that you'll find in every um, financial statement. There's a section on litigation that says we're a defendant in various lawsuits. We aren't. Um, it's just a general kind of catch-all statement that if we were, they don't know the outcomes of them. What would be listed there is if we did have a lawsuit, they would list the details and how much we might be exposed to and what our risk would be. We don't have any, but they put this catch all um in here to capture just a general statement

107about it. But if any don't get nervous, we are not actually a defendant in any lawsuits. Um page 50 is the page that we care about the most. So page 50 is um our operating budget, what we actually expend expended in each category of expenditures, what we actually received in each category revenue, and where our fund balance for the general operating fund was at the end of the year, which this is where it shows the fund balance of $684,000. And that's what's being returned to our towns. you can go through each category and see where we had surpluses and where we had um deficits and how we got to the fund balance at the end of the year and that's will be dispersed to our towns. So flagging page 50 is probably um if you're

108going to get questions, that's the page to look at. And the only other two pages I'll mention is if you are interested in details on the pension and the 94% funding, there's um many details about our certified p our non-certified pension on page 54. And again, they do um teachers pension on page. Bear with me for a sec. is the teachers pension. It has many details. It goes back 10 years for the teachers pension. And then um a little bit earlier I mentioned the funds that we're the fiduciary for. There are minor funds. They're not in our major funds. If you want to see those broken out as each minor fund, you can see those on page 58. Any questions? I tried to say it fast. I just I just want to say thank you

109because you're speaking a completely different language than the rest of us and I'm I'm I'm in total awe of you. >> Thanks. >> Really, thank you so much for all that you do for our district and um I I don't understand any of this, but thank God you do because you're amazing. Thank you. >> Thank you. here. Here >> the technical aspects of that audit are just off off the charts and so she's got she's got the right stuff to handle it. So >> I know that's why we love her. >> We love you. Amazing. >> Can I say one more quick thing? I forgot in my update before. >> Sure. >> Um I So you're probably all sick of hearing from me about snow. I wrote a note to parents tonight joking that half

110of them are probably gonna get a restraining order against me if I call them or write to them again. But it seems like I do have another date with Johnny B in the morning. I don't know where it's going to lead, but um we've had seven snow days and people I've I've communicated with parents that we'll start talking about how to make those up and I had even had a preliminary chat with Jen about it. But I took a look at the calendar the board adopted last year and what the contingencies are for how to handle snow days. And the note that you all approved last year applying to now is that snow days are to be added through June 26. So we've we're we haven't hit that yet. Any additional days required will be

111taken from April uh break and um and any additional days required in excess of that will be taken from the remaining days in June. So right now I hope we don't have another snow day tomorrow. But if we did that would be day eight. I think that would bring us still we still would not hit um June 26. Although we'd be coming close that might put us at the 24th or so. we have a little more time and I hope no more snow days that we can just honor what we said we were going to do and have those days in June. I know the later you go into June folks get nervous about being here but we have to convey that we're serious about delivering our product to our kids and we did make

112space for this contingency knowing it's New England that there's enough room for some snow days. I think it's probably been a long time since we've had seven or eight but that's that's what the calendar says. But but do we but do we do we have to go till the 26th or can we consider talking about taking away from April vacation prior to going to the 26th? >> Well, that's that's a question. I'd say the problem there is people rely on what we say in the calendar and a lot of folks already have like tickets and flights, >> but they're going to still have their tickets. So, I'm like I think that's just the reality of of what it is, right? Well, if they're teachers, it's not so simple. Who have those plans and then we

113have a day of school and they just um aren't there and they don't have vacation days as such to take. >> Okay. >> I think we have to go by what we stated on that calendar. >> Is that what we is that last year's? Okay. >> Can I ask a question? >> Yeah. >> We have 100 state law says 180 days for a full year. We have 182 days. Can we take those last two days as part of our six days? >> Um I think seven days boards of education can consider forgiving days. Doesn't mean you should or that you would, but I think you could. >> I'll double check that. Yeah. >> Aren't so and I could be wrong. My understanding just as a parent was that those built-in days like if you had

114182 or 183 days, those extra days were just that extra days that if you didn't have snow days, yes, you went 183 days. But if you did have snow days, you kind of took from that um that extra pile and then didn't owe anything. >> Yeah, the surplus. >> The culture is different everywhere. I mean, this is my first experience really thinking about it in region 12. I feel like our history here has been to really honor the fact that the kids need the the instructional hours, the instructional times, and we want to deliver them. Certainly, it's what we paid for contractually from our teachers. And I know I sound like Dolores Umbridge right now from uh Harry Potter, and I probably won't win any friends among students, but I think the best thing is

115to say that we have high expectations for what we're going to do. We want all our time with our kids. And if it got to be the Fourth of July, we couldn't do that either. But right now we seem to have, you know, a little bit of room left and I think we can we can weather it. >> Stephanie, >> um, have the additional snow days altered like eighth grade graduation or senior graduation or are we going to keep those days so you can't you can't move graduation anymore? >> A while ago, >> even though we add days, we'll just >> graduation has to stay locked in. They just won't ever come back. >> Yeah. >> State passed the law a couple years ago. This used to be a thing because boards of ed would

116announce graduation like in April and by then it's hard for grandma to get plane tickets from Minnesota and whatnot. So to allow for planning, they finally said, "Okay, you can announce it earlier and you can keep it even if snow days happen as long as you um have it posted at the beginning of the year, which we do." So legally, we can say we can stand by our graduation date. The challenging thing is we're still supposed to offer morally, legally, educationally, um, makeup days for seniors after that graduation day. And I can tell you that that's been a fairly even despite the amazing personality that you see before you here today and the way I try to deploy it with our kids, I don't think I got many to come back after graduation day, even

117though we had activities and events and everything planned for them. So for the seniors, it's very challenging. And for the the rest of the kids, too, there's something about that graduation day. They want to feel like things are over, but teachers work very hard to give them exciting things to do those last days of summer so that we stand by our mission. Christine. >> So, I know I conveyed this separately, but I do think we should look into if the state declared a state of emergency for any of these weather events, we should look into whether or not that means we need to add those at the end of the year because there's some interpretations within the community that suggest we don't. if it was a state of emergency, those days are sort of forgiven

118in a way. I don't know if that's true. I'm just suggesting that we get an answer to that question or dispel that myth if it is a myth. But the other thing >> I'll find that out Christine >> um that I will point out is I get that we want to give the kids all their hours, all their days. But again, as a parent, and all of us have seen this, the very end of school, there isn't a huge amount of instruction happening in those final days. So, let's be very balanced when we look at this because it it does matter. Well, that that's fair enough, Christine, and it's true that, you know, given human nature, when you get towards the end of something, um the nature of what's happening might not be might not

119have the same exact degree of rigor as before, but when you get up into the case of Shap, especially the high school, they are up against literally final exams and final presentations during those last days. So, for them, it's, you know, it's a ball of wax. They could compress it and this board could I'm sure has some power to forgive some days because we already have more than the state minimum. But I I haven't interpreted that to be the will of the board. I I can do more research on it or figure out where this board stands on it and I can find out about your state of emergency question. I'll find out. Yeah. >> Okay. I think uh Don you can ask when that email came in. I was with Sylvie Sylvia and she

120said that when Oxford had all of those floods last year they I guess had Oxford was declared a state of emergency and they looked into that and they were told you couldn't do it but absolutely >> yeah you know this is a thing in other nearby states and also some states allow districts to still do remote learning in lie of a snow day which Connecticut will not have. So, right now, I don't know how many degrees of freedom we're going to have, but I'll find out for you all. Okay. And next board meeting, maybe we can talk about it a little bit. >> Thank you. >> Y >> Okay. Uh, can I have a motion to go into executive session? Second. >> All in favor? >> Thank you. Do we need Nicole? >> No. >>

121What? I have packets with budget details if anybody wants to details before the workshop. >> Thank you. >> That was no bueno. >> We have to make a motion to adjourn the meeting. >> Motion. >> Wait. >> Second. >> Secretary, do you have it? >> Who's this? You have the secretary. All right. I second. Let's go. >> Who wants to make a motion to adjourn the meeting? Second. All in favor?