001good afternoon welcome to the March 24th Board of Education meeting um Justin can you please take attendance sure Joe abdella Greg [Music] Cava Victoria Salon Stephanie kick Angela Machi rulu Alex MCN Justin Onley here Jen pody here Jane Sergeant Pete Tagle Mary Weber and Christine W dig um can uh take a moment for public comment on agenda items okay moving on I am leaving um early this evening because I have another meeting I need to attend so I'm going to ask for a motion to move new business um to after the consent agenda and then when I leave Angela will take over hey Jennifer oh I I got to the raised hand uh for public comment a little late okay go ahead John John Bon Udo Washington um I would be remiss if I didn't
002con congratulate the boys basketball team for winning the first ever chog um State title so I'd like to speak to uh to the budget um two meetings ago on March 10th during public budget hearing a singular gentleman delivered comments regarding region 12 taxpayers subsidizing out of District student costs as well as constructive criticism surrounding the outof district tuitions charged these are questions that many many people have repeatedly asked since the leadup to the a science School proposal in 2015 as a solution to keep shog up and running unfortunately and quite frankly the this fifth facility has done nothing to increase the three Elementary School populations so tonight I asked a similar question in uh involving filling empty seats on the plane at no additional cost or rather subsidizing spending to keep region 12 afloat here
003are some statistics from the region 12 site concerning this year's budget so there has been a 15.63 5year school budget increase from 2020 2021 to 2025 26 A 6% increase in the past 2 years or rated by the interim superintendent in 2020 the total IND District population was 560 students today remains flat at the at a projected 558 over that same time period the out of District population has grown to 240 students with a combined total region 12 population projected at 798 students this means that almost 30% of the student popul population resides somewhere other than Bridgewater Roxbury and Washington in the proposed 2526 budget here are some of the item drivers directly associated with the increase in the out of District populations spending for additional Paras interventionists and substitutes has greatly increased a full-time
004social worker has been added for $81,400 I'm not certain how this region got along for 53 years without one technology increased 31% printing in electronics up 29.6% custodial up 11.5% textbooks up 26.91 per. how much of this aggregate is needed to support out of District students a science budget is up 19.24% will a tuition Revenue increase enough to cover this jump or will the Region's taxpayers be subsidizing this almost 20% increase with a greater portion of uh an act students day spent in The Core Curriculum certainly there are additional costs associated with the mainstream education with their mainstream education Sherman sends about 30 five students and the last time it was published uh pays around 15,000 per student much less than their much less with their a students and under one half of our cosper
005student even when using the state's uh quaser student formula an unprecedented total staff salary increase of uh 4.5 85% with superintendent salary at said at 283,000 perhaps the highest superintendent salary in in litfield County start John just John just one more second I'm just gonna give you three more minutes because you've been speaking for five and I just want to be able to keep it should be three minutes one more minute okay consider the 2526 student population of 798 to Peter proud's 2034 future projection of 8 810 a whopping 12 student increase try as we might it appears that IND District plane seat reservations are dwindling and a mere 12 student increase in 10 years appears to be a mediocre windfall when one considers the past five years compounded annual budget trajectory at this pace
006region 12 will double its budget in 20 years thank you okay thank you so as I was saying before um I want to move make a motion to move the new business uh to the after the consent agenda so can I have a motion please second all in favor anyone opposed thank you so moving on to the consent agenda has everybody looked at it are there any um any changes anybody move on thank you moving on to new business to discuss the 2025 26 budget um first we are going to to um discuss any questions that we may have before we move on to the motion uh two motions so is there anybody that would like to say anything about the current budget no further discussion Mary I would just like to thank U bori
007and Nicole was it's a fabulous budget and I can see no reason why anybody should object to it thank you thank you Mary I think as we look at a budget from year to year and obviously it es and flows and changes from year to year and I think that we can project about what we think the future is going to hold but I'm just going to work in the present moment right now and I think that the budget that we have in front of us is something that is h a smart thoughtful budget and I think that the board collectively is working forward to do a lot of hard work and to make decisions um I think that with our elementary school committee and with a lot of the other uh work that's being
008done I think we will um continue to move forward with a lot of positivity and um and thoughtfulness so thank you um so moving on to motion to set and approve the school budget District's budget for the 201 5 26 year in the amount of 28,2 48 850,000 dollars sorry my glasses are not can see that is that a 2.44% increase uh over this year's budget can I have a second thank you all in favor anyone oppos anyone abstaining great motion passes this looks better next motion to set an annual district meeting date for May 5th 2025 and a possible referendum date for May 6 2025 I have a motion second Vicki second all in favor anyone oppose stain motion passes thank you okay thank you okay moving on to reports and recognition as chairman
009had to Le superintendent's report okay thank you and also I'd like to congratulate the boys basketball and I know we're going to be celebrating them at a future meeting and some of our other teams as well they did an outstanding job had a great season I know you just came from the party pizza party so we will be uh recognizing them soon I know that I had sent in my Sunday highlights uh information from the federal government regarding the Department of Education I know there are a lot of questions and uncertainties and it even came up at some of our uh meetings that Nicole and I had with um Boards of Finance so there were two letters in there I hope you had a chance to review them so at least it does for now
010um give us some plan that they will be funding um a lot of those areas that are important to schools um I did get this afterward I wanted to pass it out this is just a statement from caps which is the superintendent group it's just a position statement that's saying they're going to Advocate as best they can always for students um and to continue to work with the State Department of Education in doing that so I wanted you to just have that it did go out publicly as well but I wanted you to have a chance to read that because I didn't send it to you I we also had some appointments Sandra house a par educator a new par educator at WPS uh Ken Seager the JV softball coach at Chapo Valley and we
011also have uh two field trip notifications one is to uh New York City to United Nations and that is for grade 12 students on April 2nd and uh the Bronx uh zoo trip for sixth graders on June 4th that was it for my treasur report Alex uh not lot has happened since last week I called Nicole today she said every the ship is still on course and uh the fno meeting uh will pass on that too because we haven't had a meeting since uh the third of the month science Mary I have a little bit more to report than I normally do um we had a meeting on March 10th and um we had a review of the a data and some of the things that we we we found out was um we have
012classes the class size range from 15 in a class to six in a class and sending School data um I just want to read to you uh this is the total that we have in the agroscience program from each town bethl has six students Brookfield seven danb 35 New Fairfield 15 New Milford 29 gaylordsville has one uh New Town has 13 Sherman has 13 uh and shap shog has 47 for 166 that's um I thought that was information information that you would like to hear um we also discussed the uh we had a discussion regarding the re ization of the a advisory committee which we all talked to you about before to make it more productive and to make to increase professional connections with the community and um uh to make it more positive and
013we also discuss should we have bylaws um we can we also have a continuing ADV um conversation about fundrais amazing but that's about it thank you curriculum in education uh we just had a meeting um like 30 minutes ago it ended um so bunch of stuff so Chris Dennis social studies teacher came and gave us an overview of the 8th grade textbook selection it's very heavy a lot of stuff in here um so for the next meeting we'll have to put um this on the agenda just so we can approve it then we spent the rest of the time with Emily Rue and Emily Jud giving us an update on the the reading program um so couple of quick things um there it's working very well um what they're finding is that combines the program
014that we use combines well with youly and PTY so that would be prek one and two then the other positive thing is that it the arc program a really good job at filling in the gaps um where students knowledge may be lacking so as an example um a third grader may be missing a foundational skill that's usually taught in first grade so this program makes it very easy for the teacher to you know identify that skill and then help the student get that um deficiency corrected and it also works in the opposite way if you have a student who is um you know really moving reading at a high level um they're also able to be um given extra extra um reading instruction the rest of the meeting we were able to look at some
015samples um that the kindergarten through fifth grade had already worked on and it was it was so much fun that we decided that we should have um a writing showcase kind like we have an art showcase here I mean the work that that these teachers are doing is is phenomenal um and this program seems to be absolutely amazing and then to back that up with we've got some numbers um so here from Miss Snowden we have data uh that shows the growth um for all students for irla what does that stand for so that is growing up 66 years of average growth per student dibles growth in every sub test at every grade average growth of 17.5 points and for our STAR testing the average percental rank Grew From 4 to 8 points which stays
016consistent in the percentile rank um so basically it means we're doing very well it Advance J uh the latest March meeting uh we received an updated budget um for uh the report between October and February which uh record a $1.6 million loss which is typical for the current climate um those increases were in Food Service special education and Personnel Services there was also uh an improvement in March uh with a gain of 350,000 and 17 programs were operating at a positive balance we were also um given a uh slide of the budget strategies they were looking to accomplish in the 25 26 year which will unfortunately be possibly increasing health insurance deductibles and and hopefully securing more funding for the college uh career accelerator program um and also cut some losses at their workspace location
017the new budget will be approved in our May in-person meeting and also our um executive director attended the state hearings this morning and uh made a few statements and U basically incurred with everyone that know knows that the current Administration changes are obviously going to implement new um program new New Direction and programs and funding and that's all I have negotiations Greg is not here over Alex for finance Alex you have nothing and policy committee uh nothing new our next meeting is April 28 planning Jen probably know your old business anyone I have a little bit of old so last year we floated and talked about um the Bridgewater fair and uh two days ago the vendor person at the fair reached out out and asked if who wanted a boot for the region so
018um I told her that I would bring it up I sent it an email to Jen and to Don but I thought we could all just maybe start thinking about it for the future meeting but the fair is obviously um coming up in August so we do have a little bit of time uh a has a booth but this would more be kind of a region 12 Booth to promote the region to all of the visitors that come from outside of the region and we could give out pamphlets and pencils and whatever else we have and then I thought that we could even think about maybe each of the classes using it as a fundraiser because we would sta it with students and AD obviously but if say the sophomore class wanted to sell candles
019or whatever they sell that it's something that we should think about and I think I said there's no charge to us for something we should prob think about a future me and Don was going to reach out to the uh the class advisers and see if they had and you con girls play dat we have a motion to adjourn all we have great motion where