Budget Workshop

001So at least it's a productive ethical engagement of the global society through proven and innovative learning experiences supported by a strong community whose decision-making is based in the best interest of all students. Um we're starting our meeting tonight with a combined discussion with our Southbury and Middlebury Boards of Finance. We'd like to welcome um everyone from Middlebury and Southbury who are here. Um we'll break at 7:30 for the public hearing. Um and I just thought it might be great to go around the table and so we know who you are and the public knows who's sitting here, if you don't mind. John Michael, Southbury Board of Finance. Tom Connor, Southbury Board of Finance. Michael Carrington, Southbury Board of Finance. Jenna Comare, Middlebury First Selectman. Sharon Aitchison, Board of Ed, Southbury. Heather Dwyer, Board of Ed,

002Southbury. Dan Welsh, Board of Ed, Southbury. Josh Smith, Superintendent. Mary Ann Zow, I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm very excited to be coming. Mary Ann Zow, Board of Ed. Heather Rogers, Board of Ed. Sue Saracino, Town of Southbury. Jeff Olson, Board of Ed, Middlebury. Joe Martino, Finance Department. Karen Assistant Superintendent. Jen Mikeley, Board of Ed, Middlebury. All right. We are going to start our meeting with you, but um thank you for submitting your questions ahead of time. Um Mr. Smith is going to be starting a presentation with answering some of your questions and giving some background, and then we will um turn it over to you guys to ask questions that you might have. Oh, and Sally Romano is online. So she's remote. And we are streaming um on this uh on the website as well.

003Uh so taking you through quickly, I can go faster or slower pace um or side Thank you all for coming. We started this a while ago in the attempt to just be transparent and make sure that uh we have opportunities to explain questions that people may have about our budget. The first thing we usually start with is a little bit of a turnout. And nothing there's a lot of ways to define this, but uh this is my highlight a few things. Uh you know, the school district is really proud of the service it provides to the community. I think some things that you should be proud of is that our high school graduation rates are among the highest in the state. Um our theater program um won a whole lot of awards, and I think

004based on the recent show we'll win some more. Uh our college acceptance rate is very high. Uh we're really proud of the electric car club that started a few years ago, and even with uh our new chassis that's been uh acquired second hand, we're um running at Lime Rock. Um students here build electric car and race it in the robotics club that uh competes regionally. Uh proud of the culinary class. I think we gave a tour a lot of you last year, and the ability to offer that program here at the high school. Uh we have a comprehensive athletic program here at the high school, too. So the idea is that the students of this community can find a way to be connected to this high school. Whatever your interest, whatever your passion, uh whatever

005you're after, we have a place for you here. Uh our uh AP exams, which uh arguably the biggest predictor uh of high school or college success, uh we rank uh fairly high in the state, and 91.8% of our students who take the exam uh get a three or higher, which means that they've passed a college level course when they're in high school. Uh as a as a comparison uh comparison, the state tracks the overall number of students who said participates in that uh AP exam and passes with three or higher. So it's a percent whether you take the exam or not. It's a percent of your high school that gets a three or higher. Uh and for uh comparison, the national average of high schools is 22% of high schools. Massachusetts has the highest in

006the nation at 32%. Uh Connecticut is at 29, and uh we did 15 here at 55.8. So uh vastly outperform the highest states in the nation. This isn't necessarily tracked um by district in a way that any comparisons other than state and national level. Uh College is interesting. You know, we used to say these are the students uh these are the colleges our students go to. I think in changing landscape, we now look at the colleges our students get accepted to. The decision to go to college is very personal. Uh but over the last couple of years, uh the top of the slide, you can probably read it in your handout if I'm blocking here. Uh these are uh colleges that our students have gotten into. I put the bottom. One of the really interesting

007things in Connecticut is if you get a GPA of 2.75 or higher, you get automatic acceptance in the state universities. Uh and so that's uh had the desired effect of keeping students in state and encouraging students to attend Connecticut public uh public colleges. Uh so we started a little bit down with kind of the uh what all this budget pays for. Uh we're able to lock in electric rates. One of the things we're very happy about is we locked in oil rates. Uh this budget could look a little uglier if you had not locked in oil rates. Uh so that's it. The difference of locking in that oil rate compared to today's prices would equate to about $140,000 um based on the amount of fuel we buy. Uh so that's a significant uh savings there.

008Here's kind of the the line item breakdown based on our object codes. I'll go through some of these in more detail. Uh one of the biggest drivers in the overall budget, I'll talk about it on the next slide, too. But you'll see uh the percent change in each of those object codes. But really the story this year is that we're talking about three lines uh that drive the overall budget increase. You see the salary account, the benefit account, and the transportation account. That transportation account is both of our general education and our special education population. Uh we renegotiated the contract earlier this year. Uh and so these most of that is driven by labor costs. Uh or drivers, to appreciate them more. The town school down, but that's drivers. Uh in the region, we take

009in multiple revenue sources. The towns uh are shown in our budget as revenue sources. Um that is two lines, one of the largest lines. Um there are other revenue sources. In um 2020, I think you had a newer slide, we shifted from budgeting a uh net budget to a gross budget. That shift breaks out all of this revenue um and kind of gives you a better line of sight to our uh where the money comes from. The climate uh as it looks like here. Uh Here's how that kind of breaks down. Uh and the reason I talked about the net and gross for the first time, at least since I've been since we've done the gross and net budget breakout, the fact that our revenue was flat and not has has not grown creates this

010inverse effect where the town's increases based on the gross budget at 5.3%, although our overall budget increase because of the way the revenue gets is a 5.48. So the the technical number is a 5.48, but from a town budgeting standpoint, it's the 5.3. Both of those numbers are also irrelevant because what really matters is the ADM, or the average daily membership, and the percent of the overall budget that gets applied to the towns. Uh that breakdown is on the bottom there. Uh that percent distribution is calculated annually based on our October 1 student enrollment numbers. Uh and the next slide. This slide tells the tale of that number. Uh so the green is Middlebury, the red is Southbury. Um if you are above the line, uh it means you inherited the ADM shift. It means

011that enrollment in that given year to below the line means your enrollment shifts away from town into the other town. The challenge here is we go out for decimal points, which guarantees a shift in every year. One of the things that I I want to put on the table for us to discuss in the future is we're going to do a school construction bond. If this, for example, was the year that some of that debt service hit that line, and there was a disproportion, you'll see that several years 0.8, uh 1992, 2004, 2021, and 2026 have what look like outlier shifts. And that outlier shift coincides with the debt service hitting. It's going to disproportionately affect towns. So whether or not we um red circle the debt service, and we agree on a um allocation,

012um or we start to look at how we do this allocation, and maybe do two decimal points or one decimal point. Um I'm new to the conversation, but I just want to be transparent in that uh the potential fund that could exacerbate that shift. If it's a year like the 20 uh 2002 or uh 2010 11 where there's minimal shifting, it's not a big deal, but one town could have an amplified shift. Uh and really from a uh budget standpoint, now this is your sandbox, not mine, but that ADM shift uh impacts how it hits the towns. So, South Windsor has had a couple of years where it's working their favor and this year uh the ADM shift kind of goes the other way. Uh Here's a uh long-term uh look back of annual budget

013increases. If you put that line in there at uh the it's hard to compare the numbers on the left of that line and the numbers on the right because uh you shifted from the net budget to the gross budget and we broke out the red uh the revenue. So, the lines to the left uh I I don't know what their revenue assumptions were and how that impacted those numbers. Uh but on the right you now have a page of how to break that out. Uh this is uh the current pension or this is an illustration of uh pension funding that is uh the regional state level. Can you speak to a little bit, Mr. Martino? Current Yeah, current trends for municipalities around the state under average funding balance they have. Um you see it's approximately

01470 74% is the average across the state of funding This is the uh this is a snapshot of our Moody's rating and it kind of gives uh our clients folks kind of an idea of where we score. We're a double A2 by Moody's. And if you do look uh for like our long-term liability scores through the pension line, we actually get scored a triple A. Um some of the other funding areas uh one is actually our our our fund balance remaining. You'll see in a later slide. Uh obviously our fund balance is a lot harder to grow. Um once they become like 2% a year to the fund balance and obviously we just don't like budget a reserve fund every year like I know some of the towns do. That's just a snapshot of our

015Moody's rating. The pension itself uh our pension is currently funded at 73%. As I said, the state average is 74. The investment return that we capture, our projection is 6.75 and that's near actually the state average for plans our size. We did sunset the pension in 2019 to new members coming in. And that's a snapshot of our membership. 70 active employees in our pension system, 15 that are vested and 121 from uh the manufactured Uh our pension is only for non-certified staff. All of our certified teaching staff is part of the state teacher pension plan, not something that the budget covers. So, if you look at our pension numbers and our number of employees, you'll see that doesn't add up because it's only the non-certified staff that are in our pension. Uh one of the

016things as uh Joe just talked about in the reserves, uh as a school district our reserves can usually be smaller than the towns. Regional school districts are different in that we have reserves um and we have no ability should the uh school budget not be enough to cover expenses. There is can't go to towns uh like a normal like a municipal school district that would be backstopped by town account. Uh we would have to go to referendum. If we that's the only way for us to appropriate we were like ran out of money or that happened. Uh so, our reserves as a percent of our overall budget you'll see here and Region 15 is the largest regional school district. Uh and you can see our budget is almost double um every other regional school district

017because our size is just half of every regional school district. Uh and then but our reserves are the lowest reserves of the school district. Prior to 2019, we had very low reserves. So, even that 2% uh in 2018 that was like 0.1. Uh so, we worked really hard to grow that uh and have a safety net to some extent. The disruption to the towns should the school board run out of uh viable funding and have to do a special uh referendum would be extremely complicated. Do you have questions? Oh, you good? Uh Some pressures that you'll that you'll see in this budget uh wage rate pressures uh both for certified and non-certified. This isn't a Region 15 thing. I'm sure the towns are facing this, too. Uh Transportation costs are rising. I'm going to talk

018a little bit about special education costs, and health costs. Uh and then the state of Connecticut funding to South Windsor and Middlebury in the school district has flattened off. We've seen lately some slight increases, uh but we've seen a lot more demand for resources than we have. Uh Mr. Caron has asked a little bit about tracking uh school budgets to indicate trending indicators. So, we we started to look at how we could do that. Uh and it's complicated. Uh so, we did a little bit of uh just mill rate and state averages. There's really no direct correlation between pupil per pupil spending uh and state mill rate averages. You can see that the this is based on state numbers. Uh but the increase in per pupil spending over the last few years uh and the

019mill rates. And some interesting things as we started looking, uh the lowest mill rate in the state of Connecticut is the town of Washington at 10.85. The highest Hartford at 60 almost 69. Their per pupil is almost exactly the same. Uh so, you know, if you're trying to find uh like a correlation between mill rates and per pupil that didn't work. We looked a little bit about the to the CPI and GDP. Um we looked at the average mill rate and the average per pupil spending and to see if there was any type of uh correlation. Uh I didn't really see any direct pattern or trend. This is a fairly high level um look at this type of data. Uh But as I'll explain in the next two slides, the biggest drivers of of our

020budget are not necessarily tied to any inflationary number. Uh Healthcare trends um I would say are one of the biggest drivers of our budget. Uh right now Region 15 has the self-insurance that we've had for at least a decade now. We revisit that on a pretty regular basis to see how we compare it to the other options, whether there's a collaborative that we should be looking at or there is a state insurance plan. Uh so, we compare how we perform compared to those plans. And at least in the last 7 to 10 years, we've outperformed those plans. Um we do have a self-insured reserve fund that uh the town of Middlebury shares with us to backstop the self-insured process. Uh there was a recent survey done uh that 70 school districts in Connecticut responded to

021out of the 169. Um but this is the main part. The average increase of the 70 districts that responded was 44% increase in health insurance costs. Yeah, it's current. Uh but then you look into it kind of like did the mean, median, and mode cuz the 44 is a little bit alarming, uh but the range is 4% to 46%. So, there are school districts right now looking at 46% insurance. A lot of them are smaller school districts um and it's driven by their claim rates. Uh I put down there on the lower right that is the trend since 2021 of the health insurance rates in Connecticut sorry, in Region 15. Uh and you can see that even this year, which is our high water mark since 2021, um we're still kind of at the median

022of how these other districts are certainly. So, we're not an outlier. Uh This is the chart that keeps me up at night. Uh So, based on the trend I saw this year, I started to do analysis and I am not an insurance actuary, so full disclaimer. This is an oversimplified chart that any insurance uh actuaries watching I'd be happy to have a conversation and you can make my model better, but in in simple terms I took three districts. The mid-size district is Region 15. Uh and then these are actual budgets from two other districts, one smaller than us and one one of the larger ones in the state. Those are their actual insurance amounts from their published budget of last year. If you apply apply this year's growth rate in insurance, this year's growth rate

023in salaries um along with the starting salary rates, you can see that uh in about a decade or a little more than a decade at this rate in insurance, we will pay more for insurance than we do for the for our staff. Um this is not a Region 15 problem. This is not a state problem. This is bigger than it's not a public health issue. This is a huge problem. Uh talked about it with our legislators on a every day. We talked about that this has to change. You look at right now just driving over here I had alerts of um two cities that are looking at deficits in their education budget of more than $10 million. And some of that is driven by these costs. This This is a problem that we're aware of.

024We can't fix it on our own. I do think based on the health insurance trend that you saw on the previous slide, um, we're slowing the pace to the extent we can and we're outperforming the averages, but this this is my canary in the coal mine and this is the biggest threat to education that we have right now. Uh, some of the pieces that also impact that when we try to do kind of an average or index comparison, if you look at staffing for example, uh, it's we don't move at a linear pace. Like last year we added a culinary program. That was a decision we made so that more students could access it and a teacher to that. It wasn't a So, our salary line had an additional person there. So, you can't look

025at salary as just kind of a trend over time. You have to take into account what changes Over the last few years we've made a lot of shifts to bring in some programs in-house. That means that instead of sending students to private providers for education or services that we couldn't offer, we bring them here. It saves some money, but there's costs to that. So, there's an opportunity cost in that. I bring them in-house, we may hire two staff members, but we save the cost of sending them somewhere else and we can do it more efficient. I'll show you a little bit about that on the next slide. Uh, and then the labor contracts maybe are the most clean when you look at salary increases, but it's not tracked to a national index. It's usually about

026being regionally competitive. I'm grateful that both towns have their finance members as part of that process so they could understand what market competitive meant. Market competitiveness meant. And then the work the board did to negotiate those contracts. Uh, the social security was a question that was asked. We only pay social security on our non-certified. So, we continue to pay increase in social security. It does track with the non-certified salary accounts. It won't track with the overall line because our certified staff are not paying the social security. They're paying the teachers retirement plan. There's a conversation about bringing some of those services in-house and that opportunity cost. Um, so if you look over time and I specifically would ask look at 2017-18 and 2025-26. We have 30 students in both years in both years uh outplaced.

027That means we sent them to specific schools to meet their needs. The cost, however, in 2017 was $1.9 million. The cost for the same number of students in 2026 was $6 million. That is a 300% increase in cost. Now, they're not apples to apples. They're not the same students. They didn't go to the same schools. Transportation needs weren't the same. But no matter how you slice it, that is a huge increase that is not tied to any inflationary number or index that I'm aware of. But that increase is why that would have been more had we not brought in some of those programs. So, by bringing programs in-house, even if we hired two staff members instead of $50,000 to build a program, um, it's still way more efficient than sending students out because I can't

028control the cost of the schools outside. Hartford did pass legislation last year where they're going to try and put some market caps on these programs. I think they're going to affect in 2028. Um, so we'll see if that starts to stem the tide, but you can see that that's that's $6 million out of a $90 million budget. So, it's a significant piece. And the increase is far reaching. Um, we work really hard to to make sure the number of students we're sending is less than if we can provide. It's also structurally better for families here and connecting to their schools in their community. But that is a huge driver of our budget. Josh, yes. Let me I may have missed it. The blue bars number of students. So, undoubtedly this cost per student is rising

029precipitously. What are the key drivers of that? Uh, transportation is a big one. Uh, you know, a lot of the the there's not a lot of specialty schools. So, you may have to travel a distance to get there. That transportation is very specific. Um, the cost of the schools themselves have gone up. Some of that is regulatory, but some of that is just the cost of high-skilled labor has increased tremendously. Some of that again, I don't know um, all of the reasons that some of the programs have gone up substantially. Insurance costs or medical costs are the same kinds of pressures we're facing, but um, the other piece that that's happened not directly to that question, but in that red line in 2020, the state also we used to be required to educate the students

030that received special services to age 21. Now we educate them to age 22. So, there's another year of schooling that And it's a number also in the blue elective things like the non-WAG program or No, so this doesn't include the non-WAG piece. This is kind of very specific students with special needs that can't be serviced by a traditional public school program. Yeah, good question though. Yeah. Uh, some of my peers we we track uh most budgets around town. So, uh this is the running average of most Fairfield County and Turkey districts. I don't have the New Haven County ones. There's different ways to slice this, but I had some available so I'll share them with you. Uh, everybody's on a different journey. So, it's hard to compare these numbers as pure. Uh, for example, you

031saw like health insurance, one of these districts had two students that aged out of very expensive outplacement facilities to save kind of $600,000 year to year. So, like that would be factored in in these numbers. Some of these numbers have really significant health care increases, but I would say the volatility in most of these programs are tied to those two lines and whether which which side of it you're on, whether you're absorbing some of the costs of emerging or whether you have something that's coming out. Uh, so that's kind of our working average. These were the specific questions that came to us. So, I smart I put a link in here when we emailed this presentation to you about 5:30. But at 7:00 we did a pretty comprehensive outline of enrollment, staffing. It has your

032class size averages. It has administrative head count. It has all of the things you want. Uh, so you can I can send that to you. You know what, Mr. Martin, we can go back. Yeah, we didn't have Uh, and that So, all of these slides are referenced to other slides that are in here. So, they're all in the presentation. The pension assumptions, uh the justifications of the health care plan. If you want to go into more detail, we can. The main driver of that is claims and you know, whether or not we've had a couple of good years or a couple of challenging years. The increase in tuition, that is the slide that I just showed a few minutes ago. Uh, we updated so the January monthly financial report that's in the budget book did

033not include encumbrance of the equipment project at Longmeadow. So, now that has been encumbered and our current year-end balance is sitting at about 8/10 of a percent. Uh, social security we answered. The unspent funds, they we have two things to do with that. There's something within that needs to be fixed and we may look to do that. Or we put it into that reserve account that we showed here in the slide that we were giving reference to here but earlier. That's the one with the 2% account that we tried to build over time. Um, in the superintendent's uh there's a technology line that's going from up about 15,000. This year we implemented data warehouse and the licensing costs we didn't have to budget as a past so that's the main driver of that line. It's

034basically all those licensing fees. And that is Robin's not talking to you. And that's the main questions or thoughts or anything on that. Do you need deeper? Maybe we have to take My turn. Okay. What really shocked really shocked the health insurance stuff. You know, in terms of anything going up. And I'm going [clears throat] outside again. I mean, at one point in time we gave up self insurance and we shopped outside. In what degree have you aggressively shopped the health insurance? We we have looked at renewals of the what we hired internally at self insurance. And the state plan is is higher than what we're paying now for our plan costs. So, yeah, we have looked. The state plan is now higher? The state plan, if we moved to the state plan for example,

035the cost would be would be higher than what we're currently paying for our self insured plan. And because the the state model is a PPO plan which is still a co-pay plan, you do also run the risk of migration of people back into your plan too with private costs. Because a lot of you are on HSA plans, state model plan is a PPO plan. So, you can have people who may elect currently elect your plan to come back on. Districts have seen almost staying here eroded because people will not elect to come back on to you. Comparisons of percentages are hugely impacted by where you start. Yeah. Uh do you know offhand what a family a family plan for the region is? 38,000. Which is happens to be $5,000 less than the plan town is

036in. Yeah. So, I guess we can't complain too much about that increase cuz you're still 15% below what we are. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple insurances are pretty expensive. If your claim experience isn't great, obviously it impacts your whole great deal. Our issue is stop-loss coverage on our plan. We're going to actually look to bid that out, that piece. Um we shop our plan. Currently, Anthem Anthem has our stop-loss coverage. It's like catastrophic above 125,000 claim. So, we're looking to possibly shop that out. There's different carriers that will provide that coverage. There may be some savings there. We're still >> [clears throat] >> And when you insource stuff, I mean do you do you I mean with this kind of health insurance increases on I mean I mean We're we're very very hesitant to take on employees.

037Because um because all that stuff goes by your number of employees. That's right. So, when you insource things, are you taking that into you know into account when you add employees or um it feels like a kind of time where it's very difficult to add employees, period. I mean, right now, if we're adding employees that have some type of opportunity cost out this chart, um you know, I had 300% increase even some health insurance costs is still worth the long term. I mean if and ironically, at least in the market we're in now, even with health insurance costs going up 5% or 14%, this is going up at a much faster pace. So, you know, usually we have a little more control there. Staffing is also, you know, no guarantee that they're going to take

038health insurance. Um whether family or single, so it's a factor that I think when we look at especially the in-house uh piece, the cost for consultants, the cost for outsourcing, um I mean we end up paying that fee just through the outsourced company, you know, that fee. They're they're passing it on to us anyway. So, um it's a factor. We have that conversation on a pretty regular basis. Um we we negotiated three contracts in the last 2 years, uh where health insurance is a part of that conversation as well. Can you quantify savings by serving more kids in-house in special ed and having some familiarity with that? Has that been a smooth process and you're running into education lawyers and is it that kind of process also expensive? Um it's hard to quantify because every

039student's unique, every program's unique, you know, um one of the benefits and challenges of being in a district this size is a lot of larger districts actually have the ability to have more in-house programs because you know, these are extremely specific programs. So, if we build one, we're not going to build it for one student one year. Um if you're talking about an elementary level program, we may not have the need to have that at the time. Um so, that's one of our challenges. But um I we can we can uh project some of those costs and what we we know what we pay uh in in the short-term annual basis. Over time it gets harder. So, you know, like uh 2 years ago we built a program at Long Meadow. Like we knew what

040we saved by bringing that student in-house because we had kind of immediate costs. Um we built we were at MES last year. 2 years 2 years ago also. Um and put some significant dollars in there. You know, I think we installed some climate control, put in some uh room structures. Um but our ability to have a house students in Middlebury, uh allowed them to stay in their own town. We didn't have to send them to the PES where the other program is. And it had two of those students who were going to the out-of-place facilities. We know what those facility costs would have been that year, but we don't track like over time what that long-term savings would have been. Yes, well, I'm I was So, if you have X number of students that went

041out-of-district before you did this, and now you have Y number of students that go out-of-district now, and the average cost out of that the special ed outside stuff is expensive, and I know a little bit about that. But you can't quantify in your uh budget what that means? So, kind of like a cost-of-living model? Uh First. Yeah. I mean, I think it gets there's probably some ways for us to look at that. I guess it gets pretty complicated when you start to track where students would have been say 3 years ago, you know, and then cost out over time and then track it. Like the schools may not have any students at those schools and track tuition rates or transportation rates. Again, there's probably some way for us to do it, but we don't do

042that with like the the oil rates, for example. We don't go back and say what would it have been last year if we didn't lock in oil rates. Uh you know, like so like that is a good question. Like what's the cost of what would the budget have been had we made up those savings? I think it's uh you know, I mean it's it's a Yeah. Technically, you could do it. It's not something I'm >> [snorts] >> Actually, I would be interested to pop that the budget. We did it like in jump like Right now, we know that PES brings about 130,000. Yeah. So, I think you think the special you're talking probably at least north of $100,000 because your tuition growth from those providers grows. We've had times we've handed a $10,000 increase on

043an $80,000 uh tuition rate. So, I do think you see a lot more growth quicker than even our health insurance and our wage rates are going up in-house. So, I do think it's those programs are at least $100,000 plus of savings by bringing them in-house. Even though it's kind of quick to finance that. Um I guess I had a little bit of a question about the ADM lottery that stands. That's something that's always kind of confused me. I was interested, you know, you talked a little bit about taking away some of the volatility of that and standardizing that. Is that something other districts have done? I guess as a fresh hold, I'm not even sure where does ADM come from? Is it state? Is that part of our bylaws? Like how do we figure this

044out? How do we fix it? So, it's a combination. So, being a regionalized district creates a need for you. Right? And and that is basically the proportional share of each district. And that gets uh reevaluated uh every year on October October 1st student enrollment snapshot. Then we calculate that ADM based on the formula that we agreed to uh kind of in the Actually, we we haven't actually found where the four decimal points like there's no documents we can find, but that goes back as far as the five budgets, but I can't find um any document that says that. Uh we surveyed I think every regional district um that we've talked to them all now. They all do it differently. Um so, there's no statewide regulation as to how you do it. Whatever you do, you

045all the towns need to agree to, and it has to remain consistent as long as all of you can't can't be arbitrary every year based on what you want it to be. Um but you know, the the trade-off uh is if you reduce the numbers, it does create that when it does shift, the impact is big. Right? So, if it's a 1% if it's we just did whole numbers, uh you might not have an increase very often, but when you did, it would be significant. Uh most district go to places. Yeah, yeah, that's Yeah. Region 12 I was there for up to places. No one goes up. The year of the grant. Everything is October 1st. It would be less of an impact this year. Right, cuz we're over percentage. Yeah. So, you can see

046like the the the years that, you know, are significant. Like I think what actually I was talking to Mr. Martino earlier, like we haven't run this scenario, and if you did it like two decimal points versus four, and what that would mean kind of in budgets. You know, but to model that out a little bit. Uh Something with three-year average. Two districts do a running 3 years. So, again, that would smooth the impact back and forth. Uh running 3 years, you get some predictability. Uh and one year is not going to create a spike like that. Uh so, if you do the three-year average, which again, from our world, predictability is is easier to budget for. And you can see the the pain coming, which is uh you know, we try to be transparent and

047smart about how we layer in bond debt if we're going to do a major construction project. And I do think like if the 2021 year is the year that the first bond debt it takes a big increase and then adds on top of that. How soon could you make those changes, and how would that go down? Well, I think we could as long as we're uh we're kind of fairly indicative on that decision. Like we'll put whatever You know, there's there's really no impact on us and how we do this. This is really just how we bill you. You know, and so as long as the towns agree to it, I don't think that there is like I mean, you couldn't do it for this year, I think, but you could have the conversation starting

048next year if you wanted to do it. So, I'd want to check with our our attorneys to make sure that was okay, but I mean, I don't think there's anything preventing it. It's really a decision between you guys. So, five It's probably 10 years now ago. Um We He did this. We changed it. Two towns agreed to change it from a retroactive adjustment to a retroactive basis. But that made sense. Um so, there is a history of our working together coming out with something. Um certainly to be smoother would benefit us all. Yeah. Yeah. And on a on a very long basis, it'll all work out. Right. So, uh I think it would make sense if we got a you guys got you us together somehow modeled of what that is. Yeah. might happen Definitely.

049and smoothing it out would would make sense. for all of us cuz this volatility is not good for any of us. No. I mean, it makes makes your budgets harder to work out to move a million dollars back for 13 towns. I think that's complicated. So, can we leave leave it to you guys? >> Yeah. Yeah, we definitely can. Uh >> Let's go on and we'll try to figure out something that works for everybody. >> Yeah, you set up a little working group or something to meet once or twice. I don't know how, you know, but That sounds great. >> [clears throat] >> Sure. Yeah. Um I I I might I acknowledge >> [clears throat] >> that the first question uh there was a presentation um setting the presentation uh in January on the head

050per head count administrative non-administrative Yeah, that's what I was looking for. Uh on the last page uh I guess we should have studied it more in depth. Uh we did not. I did not anyway. Um it Is there any chance you can bring that up, Chairman, now and take a look at that presentation? >> Sure. Look It's cuz that's 74% of the budget we always had. You're not going to move this needle unless you make some hard choices about head count, period. I have a feeling the town's budget is what your percentage is at. Yeah, I was going to say it's only their percentage. Great. Yeah. Once you get past wages and benefits, you eat the whole pie. I'll share with you the town has is engaging a an expert to do a benchmarking study

051for other communities our size to rationalize the way we do our local government compared to other communities. towards head count. Yes. And we have the same head problem you do. Yeah. And so does your I don't think there's a school district in at least in Connecticut, those are the only ones I know about really, um that's not having a conversation about health insurance. >> Could you take us through the the head count implications and try not to lose us in the details cuz I know you can dance us around the table. Oh, I understand that. But there's some broad um average class size, number of administrators. So, uh Here's your Here's your November enrollment as far as the breakdown of of the current school year. Uh average class size is This is aggregate um at

052each school. So, we It's not by classroom, but it's the average um across. And then the enrollment change um each of those schools. Um I'm happy to go as detailed as you want in here, but this is a year-to-year mapping for each of the elementary schools based on These are the non-classroom positions. These are all of the full-time equivalents? Yes, all FTE. Yeah. And usually when you see those fractional people, that they're split between buildings. So, like an MES teacher may spend part of their time at MES elementary and part of it at Gainfield elementary, which is why you see those fractions there. So, that's virtually no no change in full-time equivalents. Right. for these four schools. >> I'm just certain. Next schools. Yep. Uh These are in the non-certified. So, that slide you just

053saw was certified staff. This is the non-certified staff. Special ed assistant. 11 to 14. That's the four difference. Yes. Yep. In the MES, you have the same thing? else reason So, some of that growth is on that chart when I said we were bringing out in-house That's at the discretion of the parents. So, some of that might be and some of it might be tied to special education students who were assigned either they moved here and already had a paraeducator assigned to them. Uh or uh they required services. They developed needs that their services are required here at the preschool paraeducator. You Does that have something to do with keeping more kids in Yeah, it could. body relevant to the tuition transportation. So, if there's two reasons. One is we developed programs that we're bringing

054in-house that requires paraeducator support and the other is a student has developed has been identified in need of support who we've assigned to. They were Well, the number of students in the blue are Those are students that are out. So, those students do not have any paraeducator assigned to them. Those are just out No, they said those are those are students who we cannot provide services to. They're so specific in need that they do not attend Region 15 schools. We send them to We're required by law to provide education to them, but we can't provide services. Some of the residentially placed also need that. Full-time. Two. That's the out. You don't have the in. And the number of special education students in? Uh you know, I didn't It's not in this I I do have

055that slide. I didn't put it in here. Um but the special education students are about 640, I think we have in the district. 18%? About Yeah, about 17 or 18% is our identified number. Not all of those students have paraeducators, though. I think the the comparison of that to to this chart might go a long way to answering the question about savings document savings of keeping them in-house cuz we're going from 120 120,000 per per student about student population in uh 23-24 to almost 200,000 today out tuition. So, you're You ought to try to bring them in-house. And we're It would be good to show everybody that I mean, sense. Cuz the in-house went Chairman. was more but was significantly less than 120 to 200. Right. Well, that's that's why I was asking that cost

056avoidance question. >> Well, that's So, that's all part of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you look at the staffing growth over the last 6 years, that that the vast majority of that is paraeducators. I believe there's 46 in the last 7 years or so. Uh and it's funny, I had that number in there and I was like, oh, they're like we're at too granular because it's not a direct correlation and that some of those paraeducators are tied to the insourcing of the programs we created, but not all. Some of them are because um a child came in at age three or four that needed like they they were resident here and they had a paraeducator assigned or maybe in first grade, we've identified them with special needs and assigned a paraeducator to them. So,

057it's not always cuz we're bringing programs in, but it is sometimes. Um The school along with this eventually will get to the superintendent's staff. Can I Eventually. So, you said before that we are the largest regional school district. So, does that mean that we also have the largest percentage of special education students? Um well, for number, yes. Percentage, no. Okay. So, I think the state average is about 19 or 20%. Uh identified as special education and we're kind of right at that state average as a percent. But as pure number, we have more than any other school district. Excuse What's this? So, this is just middle and high school. Again, this is These are all certified. So, these are teachers or other uh staff in certified positions. Um and how they're being broken down across

058the schools. You have the total number there on the bottom of that. So, high school is the same? Yep. Yeah. Same numbers. Certified staff. Non-certified? So, the non-certified below, there's your year-to-year change at the Four is again special ed. Yep. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Here are your staffing totals. I don't know if this is This is the chart that you were looking for. I know you when you said superintendent's staff, I guess this is technically superintendent's staff. I don't know. Uh But these are basically all of the uh staff in district now, I guess. I don't want to get overly technical, but like uh athletic coaches aren't in here and substitute teachers aren't in here, but other than that That's not central office staff. Only, I mean that's No, that's No, that's what I'm

059saying. Just see the year. What's the year-over-year change on it? The year-over-year change, do you have that? Question. Yeah, there you go. And And here's a breakdown, maybe this is what you're looking for. >> This is. So, you go up one. Uh no, it's So, here you have staff year-to-year, it's uh 639 to 647. And then the breakdown on the bottom uh is where those What accounts for that number? I know. 360. So, we have one teacher, six paras, and two central office people, right? District data manager and assistant The total is the nine. Yep, and actually facilities and security supervisor, while it's in the budget, it's currently open. It's unfilled. And we're still still Yeah. And the paras are teachers. Yeah, the learning center teacher at the special education. Yes. Yes. And the number

060of students went down 17. Yeah. So, that I mean that is right, that's the question I'm sure that everybody gets. How that with the declining enrollment half a percent now? Yeah, that's half a percent, right? Of course, both can be involved. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, I mean the whole thing I'm trying to be honest here. All of them are staff. All of them All of them So, all of that's hiring with it. And that's, you know, especially with escalating costs for all. So, we're All the hiring of the the parent educator staff. A lot of kids are moving in the district. Their IEP mandates them to have a a one-on-one para, so that's that is by federal law. The IEP is written, so that is that's a title one. How many people do you have

061there? Yeah. The learning center teacher, to your question before, so that learning center teacher, two of those parent educators were directly tied to that learning center. That brought two students back. Here's where it gets a little more complicated. It also allowed us to not send others another student out. So, that's where your cost direct savings and you know, bringing students back from an out-of-place facility and indirect savings by not sending another out. So, like is it worth it in that case? Uh again, I mean one or two year projection, we can give you a kind of the cost avoidance. It's hard to say. It's a wild, but I mean I don't know if you assume each of those facilities would have been at least 100,000. That's 300,000 and we brought in, you know, for 150,000.

062Uh so, the program for that. I mean, is the parent educator piece common to almost all schools? 100%. And right now, I think the number I saw last week was there's 5,000 open positions across the state uh they're unable to fill. So, that is uh Yes, we have a Oh, we had a uh At the time of this report in January, we had 20 open positions. You filled them? I think Yeah, we're down to like 12 or 13. I just I think slide before this had the total staff. And your total certified staff, your total para staff. Your para staff is almost 45%. Oh. Of your total staff, but that's been Yeah, so I mean No, I'm saying It wasn't federally mandated to fully mandate some There is There have to be criteria. It's not

063like it just gets mandated. You have to meet criteria to both just demonstrate a need for a para educator, the amount of service hours you get from the para educator, and then to maintain that para educator. But yes, once the decision is made, it's federally mandated. But It's under federal protection. IDEA, federal protection Act 1971. The in-house uh specialists who total is 630. No. No. So, the in-house, so if you assume that I guess that's not the math because that I did quick math about a teacher and a para educator, but they would serve more than one student in some cases. The teacher would Yeah. You you know, kind of Mr. Martino would say superintendent math. You know, if you figure that the salary of a para educator and a teacher and some benefits, uh

064then uh Uh So, we one Bulwark. Yeah, 120 is the number. And you need 150 para educators. And that's by So, state mandate and the the individual plan that is created for each student. You got to have 154 special ed students. Like for the 121 students. 150 Yes, the 154. Like we don't have discretion. I couldn't If you said, "I want you to cut 10 educators." Like we don't have discretion. They're not Once we decide and when I say we, it's a team of professionals that go through criteria to determine the need. Once that need is determined, there's no longer discretion. It's not funded by the state. You got to get Okay. Since 1971, the federal government said, "Here are protections for students with special needs and here are the services required and we're going

065to fund it." And since 1971, they've never funded it at 100% and their funding's been reduced uh at a pretty regular basis. Uh health care and special education reimbursement are the two conversations we have with Hartford. There's a You guys know this too. There's a shift from state and federal organizations to local municipalities and we've actually had our staff That shift has been happening like at an at an accelerated rate. I feel like over the last 10 years. Back again, the uh the one goes to Rochambeau, was it? Or one teacher Oh, never mind. I pick on one teacher. I don't mean to do that. >> Yeah, yeah. I don't know who they are. Is that clear? The R.M.S. learning center teacher. Yes. Is that a classroom teacher or is The certified special education teacher,

066yes. The certified Is that a classroom teacher? Yes, the equivalent. Or is it a Is it part of the a supplemental program where kids with uh learning The learning assistants go in addition to the classroom. It's It's their classroom. It's what? It's their classroom. It's It's a Assume it's a classroom teacher. It's a plain old classroom teacher. Yes. It's a very specific program. So, like I wouldn't That's That's what I'm not trying to be too specific. Yeah. Specific program. For kids with that some learning deficits that need help. Is that what it is? Specific child, yes. Is that Is that that Is that the part of being in-sourcing? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Something is kind of chump change. It's not compared to this. Right. Um uh always my interest

067is What's What's your policy with the waste removal? Like what's your Like what What's your contract with the Oh. with the waste company? Uh we have a we have a three-year agreement and then obviously the the tipping fees go up. So, the obviously the hauling rate is fixed, but as the tipping charge Oh, this And is it based on tonnage? Yeah. And have you thought about any kind of creative ways to decrease tonnage? We've looked at some. Uh the separating is complicated for like the organic waste, all sorts of things. We work with them on that. We did do uh last year I think we had uh people from uh State of South Carolina Yeah, so we spent a day going through our cafeterias and we really don't generate that much food waste. Actually, I

068was surprised as well when we started looking into it. Um Yeah, we do a pretty good job on how we do our school lunches and things like that. So, there's really not a lot of food waste as far as tonnage goes. So, we have some and we generate serve over 1,000 lunches a day. So, uh there's some, but not as much as I would have anticipated and not as much as the State of South Carolina folks uh thought we would be doing. So, uh There's also not a lot of trash haulers around anymore. Most of them merge. Well, there's there's only a few of them. Yeah, it's it's not a lot of business. They have two other their blocks and I we bid out and only received one bid. >> Yeah, there there are more

069trash haulers for food waste than there are for trash, but isn't it The challenge for us is separating it. It's just It's It's a It's a lot of gesture than a bottle. It's a lot of labor hours to kind of separate the waste because you have companies that bid cuz the kids will just throw stuff anywhere, I guess. And I think we have time for one more question. Mr. Carrington had his hand up, but I want to get to you. I'm hearing this a lot from the community. I realize this budget has nothing to do with PE and PE at all, but did you feel any sense of urgency or pressure to keep the budget low knowing we're going to be asking voters to approve a massive amount of money? So, did you feel that

070pressure? Why or why not? Was that reflected in the Yes and yes. Okay. Uh That's right. And right. So, uh there are the two biggest uh risks, if you will, financially that we're that we're taking and it's the There is what uh we refer to as turnover savings. The idea that, you know, at the end of this year if some teachers are going to retire, we're going to hire some new teachers uh and that the assumption being that the new teachers will start less than teachers retiring. Which before there were teacher shortages and uh the way that our salary structure works, uh you have guaranteed some turnover. So, So went back to the years and that's where some of our here on balance comes. So we hedge some of that number and we also based

071on this slide actually right here in the fact that some of our parent educator positions have been unfilled because they're really it's hard to fill those positions. So if we're sitting with a few of 10 positions on a regular basis open, hedge some of the budgeted salary. So that's 550,000 to balance those two lines. So this budget would be over six if you do that. And that's where you know, when you say uh yes, we're very conscious of the fact that we're asking for referendum on a school of two schools. We're conscious of the fact that some of the costs in here we can't control. Uh but if we don't and that's that insurance number that keeps us awake at night. Like I can't control that, right? So we're we kind of this is all

072about risk management. Uh we're building a budget 18 months in advance. When we built this, we didn't know what oil prices or gas prices were going to be. Uh so it's always a balance. If we take too much risk and we don't have a lot of reserves. If this comes to next January and we're running low on the ability to manage this budget, that's where we freeze the egg reserve and make bad decisions. So uh yes, it's that's a long way to give you the yes and the answer. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yep. One more One more question. >> One more. Okay, one more. Uh I'm looking at the sheet with the percentage changes. Uh >> [clears throat] >> anything over 4.5% There's nothing. There's that You can play it. Yeah. You know what? Correct.

073Very clear. Yes. But transportation, 7.3%. What's Is that if you change the routes? >> Yeah. We actually had to go through negotiations of the contract because labor rates of the bus drivers First Student is is private transportation from from the district. But they have a teamster contract that they work on there and labor rates got adjusted to the drivers. So it was an issue of meeting First Student and what the labor rates were. So even though we did an extension with them for a couple more years. So it's a 5% increase next year. Union labor labor negotiation that Yeah, even though they're not our employees directly, obviously all that kind of fits in the same pie. If they didn't meet the union kind of in the middle with some additional dollars, we we have a

074risk of losing drivers and it could have been a much larger problem. to Mr. Carothers. Of course, uh question four. You also said the First Student if you pass all those costs on to us, we can't Yeah. sustain it. So even though that number is 7%, it would have been much higher if all of the labor contract got passed on to us. So you know kudos to First Student. They absorbed more of that. They didn't pass it all on to us. At least next couple years. Right. I just want to say thank you for your time and your questions. Really appreciate it. Um I'd love to for this to go on longer, but we have a public hearing and a board member discussion. Um and I know a couple board members have a tight deadline

075that they have to leave here by, so I want to be respectful of board members' time. But thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you. You know where we live. Yes. Um we're going to Do you want to put Yes. Um All right. So do we have any I don't want to Yeah, I think we're going to be okay. Okay. Um may I have a motion to include a five-minute recess? So moved. Have a second? Second. All those in favor I value I doing this five-minute recess? Yes. So yes. Okay, great. All right, we'll be back in five minutes, guys. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yep. Awesome. Okay. Good evening. Like Perfect. Okay, we're going to finance the budget for like you're sitting there, you've come up to everything. Just appreciate it. Sorry. Good luck

076to you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. You make a wrong call. Change the salary. Thank you. It has come to my attention all of the sudden. Look at this model right here. >> All right. Yeah. Sally, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Is that the first heat show of the budget? Is that The first. I thought it was Thursday. I think it was Thursday. Fees. I you you you guys taking no action. Yeah. I am not able to make the first. But that it don't I would not cut purchase fees. That's There's concert, concert, Holy Thursday. April 4th. And Good Friday is off. So, it's the only day we got. And I'm foregoing a dinner with my friend. Is it We're going to school on Good Friday? Yes. No. We don't No. >> [laughter] >>

077I'm sorry. I I do want to get started be nominated. Yeah. Um I do want to get started um on the public hearing part and our school discussions. I know some board members have to um get going. So, we are you do have a first portion of our evening devoted to the public hearing where um board of education will recognize citizens of Middlebury and Southbury and citizens are asked to state their name, their town of residence, and to limit their comments to 3 minutes. There's one person in the audience and I think she's a superintendent's intern, right? All right. I'm assuming you don't want anything there, but no one else in the audience, so I haven't been too worried about this public hearing, but you're not going to say anything or you want to or

078you're good. All right, so no one has come to the public hearing um um to speak, so we're going to move on to the rest of our agenda. And we have a um a discussion on the proposed uh school budget. So, we have tonight and our meeting on Monday, April 6th to discuss um board board members stand on the proposed budget. Um I know some people um have to uh can't stay uh too late tonight. Um my idea was that, you know, each board member would be able to say their piece um you know, of what uh budget number or percentage that they're looking for. Um and you know, go around the table, see where everyone stands, uh get a pulse um for everyone and you know, if everyone agrees to accept this, it could

079be a very fast meeting. Monday will be easy, it'll be great. Right? Right. So, Sally's still remote. Um leave it up to Sally to come to speak now or I can start with Sharon. I'd prefer to go last if that's okay. Oh, one second, Sally. Is there a reason we can't hear her? I think she's on mute. Sometimes you can't like when I'm online like I can't unmute myself. Can you hear me now? Yeah, you're unmuted now. Okay. Um I'd actually prefer to listen and [clears throat] and not speak first if that's okay. No. Let me let me just see if she wants to do it next week. I'm just texting her to see um and I don't want her to miss. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to call Sally. I guess something was over.

080Yeah. Oh, and she hung UP ON ME. WOW. She's like, I'm not going to talk. Hey Sally, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Um All right, I'm sorry I'm calling on you first and we're having technical difficulties. Um but just wanted to Yep. Sure. Okay. Yep. All right. Okay, so you're here. I'm just going to keep you on my speaker. Yes, please. Okay. All right, so start with um Yep. Start with Sharon. I really have no comments. I think from tonight what was most striking to me was the last one second to last question which you answered, which I was very interested in, but pretty much um and assuming that that was the case. I think that given the referendum, I think you guys were very careful with this year's budget. I mean,

081you're always careful with this year's budget, but I think more so given some of the volatility, some of the other components that are going out to the community. So, I do really respect um kind of your thought and what you put in relative to this. Um I voiced a couple comments on Monday. I'm not going to add anything to that. Okay. So, you're at a 5% you're good with the Not necessarily. But I'm not throwing out a number. I'll listen to this discussion in the room and we'll connect. Okay. All right, Heather. Um I would like to stick um 5% or close to the 5%. Um I I've heard some of the discussion last time about, you know, we started talking about fees about $50,000 of Delta. And, you know, I think it was clear

082that, you know, that's not going to move the needle. But what would move both the needle would be maybe, you know, another half mil. Um looking at this budget and I do appreciate uh that um you administrators you know, took a look at that and built some, you know, additional appetite for risk into that budget in order to keep it below 6%. Um you know, I will admit that um I'm not 100% comfortable with you know, uh just assuming we're not going to hire 10 pairs next year. I think that's uh those are positions that you know, it has been decided we need to meet student needs. And I don't feel comfortable with the idea, you know, building that in not just to this budget, but the risk that we build into this budget, we

083carry forward. It doesn't come back. We don't reset risk to zero when we go to the next budget season. That's the risk that we've decided is good to proceed with. Um and I I admit to I feel a little discomfort about that. Um I do not want to assume that we're just not going to hire 10 pairs that we think children need um in perpetuity. Um So, if we're going to talk about making big swings in order to get below or high, I'm I'm not comfortable with our starting position. And I'm not comfortable with um what else we might bake into that risk talk. So, that's that's where I am. Um so, couple things on that note. And maybe helpfulness if it would be to look at the last three or four years and see

084the open number of positions and how many we actually hired in um and how many were left open for the year that would have resulted in a surplus at the end of the year. Um I would say, you know, if the request was in here last time, so if you want more requests, whatever the number is, you know, we could see if you can throw it out. You know, what does it take to get under five? I think we said a $20,000 cut like on April 6th, I'd like to see a proposal. Like if you guys want this, this is what it looks like. Cuz I can't react to that without knowing what it is. I'm not just going to assume it's going to, you know, degrade the district before I know exactly what it

085would take to remove that cut. Some of my easy, right? Might be the social worker, might be the $50,000 in fees. All of a sudden you're a third of the way there. So, I do need to see that April 6th before making a decision on the budget. Um the last thing I'll say is it's not lost on me that I know Mr. Michaels has been at this a long time. It's an informed opinion. And uh his question about staffing is I think one that we've wrestled with. I understand that you cannot control the cost of healthcare, the escalating cost of healthcare. But we can control the multiplier, which is the number of staff members receiving healthcare. Um I will just repeat what I said last time, like hard decisions, I believe, are coming. And I

086would not be unsupportive of looking at staff positions that would that you could draw a direct line to academic performance. But I think there's a number of staff beyond that category that we evaluate, you know, one of the I hate to give it up. It's not something I advocated for. Facilities director. I absolutely think we need one, but if I'm and I champion that. But if I'm pushing that we need to get to a number that is something that would be a hard thing to draw a direct line to academic performance to. Um so, and we we've lived a year without it in one of the most stressful facilities we've had. I do think you enjoy being there helping and you need the relief help, but I think it's those types of positions that we

087can start to take a look at. Um Yeah, so that's what I'll say. That's what I'm looking at. All right. Thank you. Heather? A little bit of my time. Um I'd like to see just what it would look like. What what would you do? I know in years past we had like lever levers or ladders or I don't know how they put it, but some kind of option if we were going to be here, this is what it would take. Um I can't say I'm comfortable with the 548. I can't say I'm comfortable with the five or under. But I kind of want to see what it would take to get us a little bit lower at least. Um I can't just throw out a number through arbitrary here, but I do think, you know,

088I'm more comfortable with maybe not adding the social worker this year, kind of taking a look at how it goes, you know, that position or the other positions within that department or those departments, counseling, everything is allocated to see if we can find some efficiencies there for now. So, that's kind of where I'm at. Okay. Steve? Um I just a just a a comment and it's not like a criticism and it's not, but the additional um you got the budget increases for the other towns. Um I guess we were saying I think your superintendent for that. And uh So, in the name of trust but verify, I had actually looked up a bunch of them and they all do um they all have. So, and I just looked them up like in the articles. Um

089it's great. Uh although I did get also and it doesn't really change your average or really the context or anything, but uh region 14 was 4.6, Brookfield 4.86, uh New Milford 4.73, region 12 2.44. And I specifically went to Brookfield and region 14 cuz those are going to be compared to our uh aspects to. Um I thought also six hours, not 10. I don't think again that that changes the argument Heather was saying, but I thought I thought you would We had 10 but I believe it's four salaries instead of two. >> Yes, four. Four salaries, okay. All right. Sorry. So, it's yes, okay. Um yeah, I don't think it necessarily changes like the crux of the argument. Um the the social worker uh I don't think the case was really made for that social

090worker. Uh my sense was that people wanted us still like a I mean, yeah. Yes, we asked for comps to other towns. I I I guess we need to be more direct or specific next time, but a comp isn't just like like, you know, we need one to 20 cuz everyone else is one to 20 or whatever. Um so, I would say that could possibly be um put on hold for a year. Uh I also uh um There's another I think open position that there was like a data registrar or some kind of registrar. Central office registrar. Right. Is that something that can be um not filled? Um and then uh Slater speaking. I'm calling today. I was just saying that I guess that um and then the finance um how about the finance facilities,

091I'm sorry, and security um supervisor. Um As much as and I if I could I almost like I need to kind of hear about that again in a way if we're going to consider that or uh not not planning to fill that this year cuz I think the presentation on that was like a a couple years ago. Um I can tell you uh as as I throw out the number that I just a ballpark. And I do think difficult decisions need to be made. Um I can tell you though that uh my early time on the board, like we absolutely really went for like everything and anything that was not um you know, had a direct student impact. And then I think um it and that eventually caught up with us anyway. So, I think

092I yeah, everything has a direct student impact whether it's one, two, or three cuz So, I I I don't I I think everything's a hard choice and uh I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. I don't and I told you what my opinion was on the no guys. All right. What about Jeff? All right. So, I have I have no issue with the number under a few conditions. And I don't even know I don't care what the number is, if it changes up or down. These conditions. One, that it's a responsible budget that is focused solely at serving our students' needs. And to your point, everything serves students' needs. And some are more direct, and some are indirect. We're paying the price in the sins of the past and some of the facilities stuff

093that we're doing now. But and we know you guys are building the budget based on that. Two, that we minimize risk and waste, but also minimize bloat. It's kind of the Goldilocks thing, right? We can be too conservative. We can be too risky. Somewhere we got to be find that balance. You guys think I've really good job the last few years. But reassurance on that, you got to go through that exercise every year. Third one is a big one is that we need to really harshly analyze and and wrestle with the key areas. Um Thomas here brought up the facilities manager, the social worker. And honestly, I hadn't thought of the facilities manager till recently, but that is something we should wrestle with. Is it a like to have or is it a must have?

094Sometimes there's a really thin line between must have and like to have. And I'm not advocating one way or another. I'm just saying that that has to come in and we all have as a group have to say, "You know what? It's a must have and therefore the budget number that reflects from that makes sense to us. If it becomes a like to have and we're trying to to creep a number out, you can't go with all the like to haves when you're trying to creep a number out. So, we have to wrestle with that. Again, I'm not weighing in one side or another. And that goes with with pretty much everything. It goes with, you know, sometimes it's renovations, sometimes it's people, sometimes it's it's whatever else. Maybe it's the math coaches, right? I

095think we're all on board that has proven itself. But we harshly criticized that. We wrestled with it. And that's what we need to do to come out of here good. If all those things are true, then the numbers don't go. And you've met those criteria. I do have a bonus though, and I don't know what this is or how to do it. But somehow we need to start pushing back on the state. Because the state is doing us no favors. They continue to throw mandates and costs, even those $15,000 BS costs that they threw in that event fee. Um the the HVAC inspections that we had to do two years ago. Like the state just throws out those mandates. And I don't think any I don't think they're bad people, but I don't think any

096of it truly has students' well-being at heart. I think it's all politics. And so, somehow, whether it's social emotional regions or whatever, we got to start pushing back at the state cuz looking at those capital numbers, I bet if we went back 10 years, the salary to payroll was not at 50% and while payrolls are great, they serve a lot of I'm not picking on that. It's that and then there's something else and there's something else and there's something else. All of a sudden the state is eating up 80% of the budget and with with your hands tied. So, the only way to push back at those pieces, those mandated pieces, I'm not saying they're all wrong, is somehow that that the voice of the regions and the and the superintendent has to push back

097on the state system. Yeah, you like you said back in '71, you said you were going to fund it and you still haven't. We're still holding the bag. So, again, I have no idea how to do that. I'm not in politics nor do I ever want to be. But, oh. I am. I just said that. Yeah, told them all to use my name. Probably have to fill it. I think I think Murphy and Bloomfield if they were there would maybe be a headache. They should. But, anyway, it's on the record. Um to this point, Dave. Thank you. All right, Shannon. Sure. So, right, when you had to go back and look at past couple of months, right? With what we're continuing to do last, which is what we're here to serve. Nobody has said cut

098this, cut this, cut that. They want more cuts. And the reason it's so expensive now is because for many years we're couple of years with zeros and then had very low budgets, right? And now we're paying that price. It's costly now to those things. All those towns that we listed have facilities, right? They have their test scores. They had infrastructure that we don't have. Now we're paying double for that. We sit here and say we need We're doing all these facilities work and we fought in town hours of meetings. Okay, we need a facilities person and now we're like, "Oh, maybe we take that back." It was the same thing last year with the culinary spending $500,000 on a culinary room and we sat and said, "Maybe we shouldn't hire the culinary teacher." Right? But,

099if we're going to put these infrastructures to give kids and the community the things they need, it is going to cost money. And there's not going to be a space and time, really ever again, and I hope I'm wrong, where you see budgetary numbers coming in at 2 and 3%. That's just not realistic. Right? That's not where the world is going. Everything is so expensive. And the longer we wait, we pull If we pull, right, people out now and don't put them in this budget, right, 3 years from now we're going to say, "Why did we do that?" And and that's my issue. I think this budget is like Heather's point taking more risks than we've ever taken before. I said last time and I would echo that I'm a little comfortable with the paraprofessionals,

100right? The intent, the obligation, the legal obligation is for us to have those positions filled. Right? Our intent is to fill those positions. And now we're saying, "Well, we're going to take some risk on that cuz we're not so sure." So, right, those are all the things we say all these things, but then when it comes and we sit at this table, we don't we fight about follow-through. And that's kind of my issue, right? Five four eight, what's the number? It's five four eight. Five four eight, right? Is is a very conservative number with risk in it that we have not typically taken. So, I'm a little apprehensive when we go into next year and some things pan out that like five four eight's not going to hit. And then we're still going to have

101a We had 173 parents either write in or show up here that want more. They want a turf field, they want more. I have not heard There was not a single parent not a single parent, not a single public comment about lowering this number. People want more for us. And we have been very hesitant to give people things in the community. And and we have to start delivering. That's what we're here for. In a I don't think, right, if Josh and Joe were like, "I need 17%," right? Then it's like, "Okay." Right? But, it's it's five four eight. It's in line with everyone else. You guys made responsible listening. This is a responsible budget. We asked you, right? And And what I'm also concerned about, right, is we sit here and we kind of talk

102about these numbers, you guys pulled the levers before you came to us because you're trying to be prudent and responsible with our numbers. And you were transparent about it. This is the risk I took. These are the levers you pulled because we were nervous and we gave you guys a budget. And then we sit here and say, "Well, we got more levers." You're like, "Why?" Well, how many more levers to pull cuz we pulled them all for you?" And then we all sit here and say, "Well, we got to pull more levers." Um so, I'm at a five four eight and if someone argued for more than a five four eight to put the paraprofessionals back in, I would be on that, too. I I don't think this budget's going to help out that soon.

103All right, thank you. Um Sally. Oh. Sorry, I'm on my phone. Sally. Yeah, I'm here. Okay. So, I I guess I kind of agree with a lot of what Joe, Heather, and people have come. I do think that She She has great things to actually and it does get harder to add back and that sort of thing. I don't have a hard number either like Heather, but I do feel and I do feel like a lot of the levers were kind of pulled prior to it coming to us. Um my two kind of things where I appreciate Heather bringing up the the paraprofessionals. And is there any legal uh danger to us not budgeting for that? I guess. Um Yeah, if we were to legally need Yeah, you know what I mean? Like like it

104just seems kind of um Yeah, we're not There's like there's something a little bit Like I understand the numbers of it, but is there any I mean, is there a legal risk there, I guess? No, no, the risk is we're not we're not saying we're not going to fill it. What we're saying is we continue to try to fill them, but we've been trying. And it's not the same 10, you know, like two people will get hired, one person will leave somewhere else. Um so, our the worst-case scenario, the risk is if every position was filled starting on uh September 1st, then there would be a shortfall on that budget line, that salary line that we'd have to go somewhere else within the budget and not do something else or limit something else in order

105to pay those salaries. We wouldn't be in a position where we're like, "We're not going to pay you." Yeah, I I I figured that. I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah, no, thanks. Yeah, and then the the second one for me is Yeah, and I said this the other night, too, about I I I What I do want to I had very much a problem with the facilities director cuz it does seem like that's just getting more and and well, yes, we've gotten by. I can imagine and it's been at a pretty great cost and and you know, it's kind of hard to say what it would have looked like. What other things would I have been able to do if Joe not been kind of wearing both hats for these last 2 years especially?

106And with more coming. So, I'm comfortable keeping that in. But, but like I But, my sort of philosophy is on, you know, on the social worker. I I do feel like I need more and I need more. And that kind of felt like it was like, "Well, we have this next year position that we haven't filled and of course we could use a social worker, but maybe there were I just I feel like there was some background due diligence that I would like to have have seen and I don't want to add something and then that then that's kind of there. Um and and I'd like for that to be a more thoughtful add so that we can sort of maximize um what we're doing in terms of mental health services that we're providing for

107our students. Um and I don't I just don't feel like that that groundwork was laid or that information was there. Um so, I would not So, it for me is not a number. It's not really what I want in a number. It's really more that I think we can I I'm comfortable with not having that position in this budget, but but I would very much like to return to it in a larger discussion next year. And I acknowledge Shannon's point that that's also harder to argue for next year, but I I think it it needs a bigger discussion. All right, thank you, Sally. Um Yep. Sharon, do you want to still no comment or The only thing I mean, I'm listening to the room. It's very hard for me to say or agree or not

108agree with the facilities director. I very much align with Shannon. We identified the need. We have people that are breaking their backs trying to fix infrastructure that's falling apart. We're asking a town to spend 222 20 million on a referendum plus or minus reduction of the 64.2% and we're not going to fill the facilities director if that passes? That scares me. Right off the bat, to even think that the facilities director is on the table to be cut when we're setting up to referendum, to me that is totally illogical when we when we already have issues trying to get infrastructure already to a place that we can have kids safely in school. So, I think that yes, uh we have to be careful. Yes, we have to be fiscally conservative. But, in the same regard,

109be very careful about where we want to make modifications if you want to make modifications. And I think that there's a lot of variabilities and what I heard in the room is different levels of risk. So, um I appreciate the comment, but I'm actually more concerned having heard the discussion in the room relative to what ultimately is going to go to referendum. To me, the only thing that could even be negotiable is the um uh I'm sorry, the social ser- the social worker. I mean, and to me I I didn't really hear a strong case. When I hear Sally also asking that, I mean, that's her area of expertise. Um I have concerns. Um and I certainly in my mind, the facilities director, like if you don't have if you have an FTE position and

110you don't get to fill it, I understand there's that desire to cut it, but I actually think that we should be going out higher on what we're paying that facilities director, get someone good in place to position what they're going to the town for significant investment in the community to be able to offset and ensure that your expertise that and that the project that we want to be successful is actually supported. So, um I'll leave it at that, but I'm more concerned actually after going around the table. Okay. If we start hearing about cuts. Um And and for for my my two cents on this, um I agree with um the perception that this number the 5.48 is a conservative number with risk in it. I think that was a good way to describe it,

111Shannon. Um I am also a little bit concerned. I I appreciate that you're you're dialing up the risk a little bit in light of the fact that we're asking for this construction project. So, I do think that people appreciate that we're not asking for a lot of um wants here um versus needs. Uh I also think the social worker is a negotiable item for me as well. Um for the reasons as aforementioned. Um The part that I have a hard time with that keeps me up at night is where we are with our reserves. Um and that slide which I've which I've been talking to Josh about over the last couple weeks of like I we're the smallest regional district and we have the smallest number of reserves. I I think that's where an outlier

112on that and I don't like that. Um So, but I'm trying to balance that with the fact that we're trying to ask for this school construction project. Um So, to that end, like I think that I'm like 4 5 4 8 I think is a good number. I'd like to, you know, again probably look at the social worker for next year. But that's that's where I am. Uh I'm just going to make notes of what I just said. Should all the social worker cost into facilities and actually get someone that we can fill that position. And and what I kind of like to hear um now that everyone's gone around the table, thank you, is I would like to hear from from, you know, you guys about the facility director and about what the $450,000

113cut would look like. Like can you talk to us a little bit about that cuz I don't want people to expect a presentation on Monday that's going to have that. I want to talk about it right now. Okay. There's a couple of things I'll bring up. I would say, you know, we were in a position where we had to make that kind of uh it would it would probably look to do a combination of increasing risk and reducing services. Like we we wouldn't necessarily go right for staff because I think to the point is once you cut staff, bringing them back in becomes complicated. Uh And that is kind of why you see the repositioning uh point toward that social worker position being done by services now. Uh It's retired teachers that we hired to

114do some of that on track graduation work. So, uh you know, it's on me, I guess, if we didn't put some of that clearer earlier, but like we know that if that position goes away, what we add back in, as you've heard tonight, is full-time person. Uh which is hard to do when uh you're building a budget up. So, we're we're hesitant to cut staffing positions. I think the idea of being loaded and having too many is something that we talk about all the time. Uh At any point, we could have enrollment shift as you say that over the summer we've added classroom teacher over the summer. So, you know, cutting positions becomes complicated. Uh that being said, we look at a combination because that is, you know, your point health care cost went up

115with my staffing numbers, not necessarily my health care. So, uh we could look at some kind of a combination of risk. So, some off the top of my head, some some things are, you know, I think it's risky and not recommended, but we would put out there the um 100 and something 180,000 that's in the specialized contingency line. Or one night. One night. The the challenge with cutting that is once you do that, again, you don't have a lot of returns and if those paras all got hired and you said, "What are you going to do to pay them?" That would be a line that we would go to. Um if there was money left at the end of the year, it goes into our reserve account. Um if we cut the money that we

116see as kind of our um our margin of error, uh then you have no way to fund that next year I mean unless you can raise it. It's taken us The capital line is at um 570. Uh 570. It's taken us 7 years to build that. When I got here, that was zero. So, I'm hesitant to start to erode that because arguably it's anemic at the level that it's at now. Um it's grown at a very small percentage over the last few years. Um and so the idea that we're going to take 70,000 out of that line, the idea that we're going to put 70,000 back in next year is uh not guaranteed. So, uh you know, but I think that we would kind of take those kinds of lines, take a little bit out

117of this line and a little bit out of that line uh and kind of tear that stuff down. Uh So, that's, you know, kind of off the top of my head. We can I mean I don't know There's other uh we could go to like some of the uh I hate going to the maintenance lines. You know, you can look at again with uh with unknown uh escalation of petroleum products in the future, things like power tags are going to be cost more. Uh like, you know, a thing like COVID days, like the things that we didn't expect to go up in price. But like those would be the kinds of the philosophical approaches that we would take. Uh you know, I think that's how we would try to cobble together a order of $50,000.

118I think the greatest challenge to the budget as it sits is most lines have are flat. So, the problem is, you know, when you're inside increasing lines, you have to renegotiate a contract or kind of move things around. So, there's a lot of challenge in a budget that is primarily has a three job title of five object codes with a significant increases. Um facilities director, for example, like the long amount of work he's going to have with the clerk of works. He's going to have to get that project on site. He's done work for years, 20 years doing clerk work. So, we're going to supplement that with that. Um you know, the 125 salary that now and it's high enough to get an assistant clerk somebody cuz that what kind of seen in in the

119two two rounds of things that we've done. Um you know, it's uh you know, with all the lines, there's a lot. Yes, you can you can cut custodial supplies, there's things you can kind of, you know, small things that you take against against lines. It takes a lot a lot of time to get those lines there. Uh you know, we did that back as as we sort of froze things. Um positions Yeah, it's not it's not it's not a simple kind of work to do. Yeah, but face of, you know, pretty significant non-certified raises that are coming and obviously health insurance. You could hedge a little bit like again, these are strategies that other places have used when facing, you know, I think in some of our surrounding districts, they're in the newspaper facing huge

120deficits. Uh Like the facilities director, I agree with all of like that went in last year for our board request. Uh you know, I appreciate that Mr. Martello uh worked with it, but uh you know, when when there were concerns and Mr. Martello's vacation and the sky was high, I don't forget those days. I appreciate that he's forgotten. Uh I have. You can hold water. We were better But, you know, you can hedge, right? So, instead of hiring in September, you wait till October and you save, you know, some salary head space there. Like those are the types of, you know, fiduciary gymnastics that districts play with some open positions where you you sit on it for a little while. You know, But but they are I think those Jeff's point before, like the reason

121when when we started this journey, your supply accounts, your custodial repair lines were all zeroed out. Because that's how you kept artificially arguably up budgets low in that trough on the graph to 2014 and you see that like that wasn't because inflation was low. It wasn't because you didn't have salary increases. It's because you eroded some of those lines. Which again, like you have to do from time to time. And we had frozen budgets. Yeah. And and that's the risk you take when you start to freeze budgets and, you know, cut professional development lines and things like that. But I mean the short answer, I guess, is if you want us to get to 450, that's the approach we would take. Hold on one second. Like Jeff, then Shannon, then So, I'm thinking about the

122facilities manager and the referendum. And how long is the school project going to be if it passes? And how much work does the facilities manager have to do once the assuming it passes? So, I'm wondering if that facilities manager could be part of that referendum and then at the end of that, maybe you can hire someone with more project-based, project-centric with a higher salary as part of that piece. Cuz if we haven't been able to find someone for a full-time facilities director, maybe someone to manage that project and then the periphery of it is an is an in road without a guarantee when the project's over. But if that's a 5-10 year project, that's a gig for someone. And then at the end of it, that decision can be made to roll for three or

123four years. Three or four years. Three or four years. Still three or four years. Three is a strong amount of time. I'm just saying that the the the the hiring might be different. You'll get a higher skill set with that position. So, yes. It could be a way it doesn't solve for all of what the facilities manager was. I'm just thinking creatively and maybe it's a terrible idea, but a way to kind of find a different talent that we've struggled to find already while still satisfying a huge need that is on the doorstep. The clerk of the works is, I believe, 9 I'm 9% sure it's reimbursable on school construction projects. So, those those those pieces of the the site, we're seeing those two schools as a reimbursable. And contingent on our passing. But yes,

124I think we'll still have that. And What about this person? You you would Yes. Facilities person. you need always want to hire a skill set that is again like the general is going to do the work he wants. That's all he's done for a whole bunch of years as an architect and now doing your project management work to oversee really roof for any architect. Yeah, so I mean there's no way that I can sit and tell the community please go past this budget and we're saying we're going to take $450,000 and we're going to remove it from our reserve account. We can't say both because that's us saying our facilities don't matter. We're less than any other person in the state. Our percentages right when you compare it to the budget of retail districts, right?

125However, we need new schools. So go put the new school in. Right? We either have to say believe facilities need to make that investment and if that's something that that's not teachers, then we need to take that money out. Like the $450,000 like it has to be on the table because it's we're fighting with ourselves. That's what it is. What is that saying to our community? Like that's what I'm just struggling with. Those are the lines we need to go to. We need specialized contingency. We need to keep our capital money, right, in there because these are two schools. We have six other buildings that have a lot of issues, right? Every time we find out that we have to go please put that H back unit on the high school. That's a half a

126million dollars. Right? That that's one one unit on this building. We can't say cut back and go go new schools. That that would be uh that would be Sharon and Steve. $450,000 got thrown out last week. I and I think I don't know why we're talking about that number. And I get the optics on wanting it to be less than 500,000, but when I heard the round table we were talking about there were there were two people, right, that get it under five, but I heard social worker, I said possibly facilities director. That's nowhere near 500,000. So I think that we should be thinking about what would like when I listen to the room I'm not hearing anywhere close to cutting 450,000. I'm hearing possibly a social worker and possibly a facilities director. That's what

127$200,000? Or is it it's 0.4 for a social worker? That's people Like what are we really spending the time talking about because 400,000 seems like an arbitrary number just someone wants to lower No disrespect. I didn't tell you all to run with 450. That was it. That was a number. It was arbitrary. It could have been 300, it could have been 500. So to me I'm sitting here like we're arguing about garbage cans. Seriously? To Shannon's point, we're going to ask for new facilities and we're going to put kids in schools, but you know what? Cut supplies and cut garbage cans. This is I'm so concerned that this is the this is the topic of the conversation so that we I get it. We are fiscally need to be responsible. I know that's what was

128brought to the table. And I think that for me right now I'm not even prepared to pull the lever on the facilities director because we talked about this at Friday's. We talked about what the new construction project would be, if it's possible to think that in, if that's an option to just point absolutely. But to Shannon's point, you have six other schools that we need to ensure those are maintained while we've got new construction going on and overseeing a $220 million project. So for me the only thing that's on the table is social worker. And even that I think is is I'll leave it there, but I honestly I don't know what we're talking about. Um I think for me Eric, you said this is not recommended. The $450,000 like in you saying that, okay.

129But like that kind of settles it for me that it's not somewhere I'm necessarily willing to go given that we have not gotten feedback emails for people asking for people asking us to lower the budget and I think with Shannon if anything we have people asking for more. And and and while we're not considering second turf field for going to the May referendum, it does mean something that the people came here on Monday and said I think the school construction is a good idea and by the way we really need a second turf field. Like so they're not saying don't they're not saying cut the budget and give us the turf field. They're saying it's all great. We need it we need more. And I and I do appreciate that they came here to to

130say that. So I mean it's not that we're going to look into it. Finance is going to look for an estimate, but where where I hear people are, but I don't want us to be here you know too late tonight. Um at the same time I want to make sure that we have good use of our time so we're not too late on Monday. I see we have a couple of people maybe below 5% a couple people at still at 548 and a bigger chunk of people like a little bit below 548 regarding the social worker. Is that a fair estimate? I I would say. Um so I'm I'm okay with being there. Board members want to have more discussion, have more questions. I'm kind of want to hear more about the facility director from

131Josh cuz that might be helpful to you, but I don't know what more we're going to have for Monday. We also currently have a maintenance supervisor that has taken I've given more load to with some of our small projects the last let's say a year or so to kind of fill some of that role some of that. So that's been that's been very helpful. Um so that has taken at least the call of the smaller smaller pieces or easier than that. Did you did you say Joe that part of the facility director's salary you've taken that and using that for a clerk of the works for the roofs? Yes, so we've actually we've reprogrammed which I think I can account for $20,000 so that to for the one that will roof to basically put someone

132on the ground watching or overseeing Yeah. All right. So what's your can you formulate what's your opinion? Do you think that we still should add the facility director or not or I'm sorry. I'm just No, it's fine. I am uh appreciative of Mr. Martino's flexibility. I am concerned that as he is We have 10 ASOs that are overseen by Mr. Martino. There are lots of as he will tell you something breaks right now that we don't know about. And I am Some cheap maybe. It's It's all good as long as it's good. Yeah, it's starting to go sideways. I just I know we don't have another renovation bond right now. I know that that was a lot of the pressure that we felt a year and a half uh but there were several months that

133were extremely complicated. Uh and I even think of like the auto metal uh playground that we ran into challenges whether we needed contractor related um I don't think that like it would have been faster. No. Uh but I do think that I'm conscious of the amount of time and care and feeding of small projects. Uh we're doing the the piece for the roof, the grant applications. You saw the motions that we did last week. They were all my doing. And do think that I uh open to the conversation. I am listening to Am I answering We build a budget that we think we as responsible and we try to be as fiscally conservative and take in our peak conditions. Uh and not once did we say maybe we don't need that position. We did say

134we're not going to hire just to hire. We did say that we can bring in some maybe some part-time consultant work project based. I think of the scope of that job and I do you know I hear Mr. Martino the wrong person in that job becomes more of a guess and becomes more care and feeding. But the right person in that job I am people in Hartford right now are writing more regulations around water testing, around air quality, around school security. Uh and while they're going to tell us that it's an unfunded it's not it doesn't cost districts anything, it costs us time. And when we miss a report we end up on the 6:00 news on a list of school districts that didn't turn in their report on time. I can imagine all of

135you will not be happy about that and you'll say how come this didn't get sent on on time and how come we don't know about this. And yes, they all get done. We we we're checking the boxes now. You know, I do uh again this is a position that's in the budget. It's easy for us to say take it this year and we'll go back next year. My experience next year never comes. There's never going to be a year where someone's going to say the market's up, interest rates are down, this is the year put those things in that you you haven't gotten that like you know I've been doing this too long and that year never comes. So we worked hard to get it in. All everybody at this table thought it was important.

136I think there's ways for us to maybe again It's all in next year, once you take that salary position out and just it's not easy to get back. Yeah, you won't be under construction for the schools for another year, right? And so from the standpoint of that role, you won't be cranes in the air until sometime July or August 2027. >> 2021, page two. Yeah, so it gets very different kind of like like a year from now. You know, I think that's a very different conversation. That's needs still there today, but it's a very different conversation once you got, you know, um 150 construction workers. And and frankly, too, Josh had this debate, too, with the budget was all curbed. We would have We would have all the bond money. I mean, I I I

137think much like I feel the reserves, as we all do, I mean, if we could have put more into the bond into the debt service to kind of give smooth the for the future, I mean, that was a place where we began the budget from kind of day one until the health and personal came in. I mean, that was an area we felt we wanted to grow, too, because the anyway to smooth that more just makes the when the schools hit, you know, soft, but when you're in the fives already, you can't keep adding to the debt. But Steve I'm actually kind of completely that um the uh the I guess the 450 like I mean, I just appreciate that we're having a discussion not necessarily to get to 450, but just to have this

138discussion about what could be cut. Um and I think uh just to say we um live in our own world sometimes, maybe, um and uh I think when people yes, people write in and might So, first thing I think of well, when people write in um to say they want something, um you know, I don't think necessarily that they have Yes, we can note that they want something, but I don't think that necessarily means that those people under all conditions will always want that extra thing, right? Um I think there is a world where there's some people who say maybe don't, you know, don't give me the turf field if it means they're going to, you know, uh make classroom sizes 30, you know. So, I think um I just I just more and more,

139um you know, having as much as I want to hear people's opinions, like I just uh you know, I don't I don't think necessarily that three or four people showing up and asking for the the turf fields extra field is like a lot, and I know you could probably get, you know, fill the room. I have I I'm I have no doubt in it, but um but we live in our own worlds. We were at a a meeting last night, some of us, and that room was had a lot of people that said the budget was was high, right? So, it's and they're not writing us like, you know, they just said it out loud, right? So, I think there are people that think it's, you know, it's it's too high. Yeah, that's all. It's

140it's just it's just All all I'm saying is not everyone wants an increase. Um and I think um it is also our job to maybe think about not increasing, you know, not giving giving into to maybe what how can we lower the increase? Like I just think about those those points. It's so sensitive. I would like not to have an increase at all, either. Just for the record. I don't agree with that direction with that idea. It sounds like you don't but we do. Anyone else? Heather? Yeah, I mean, actually, can I just Yeah. I have Yeah, I just I'm sorry. Then I don't like like like it's not for reality. And I I'm a big proponent of like speaking to the group, but it's not for reality. Like I've had people say that, you

141know, with you know, whatever, my my I'm on a fixed income, and if this goes up and that goes up, then my entire like increase in my fixed income is consumed by a tax increase. And then I have to start making a decision between like what medication do I cut? Because I can't afford it because the taxes went up. So, just it's not it's not ridiculous. It's not like just 5 cents in additional tax income. It is real money to real people that with real problems sometimes. And it's just when we just say it's ludicrous or ridiculous or all right, get a check, it's it's insulting to those people. But Steve, I don't think anyone is saying that's the case. I understand that for a lot of people's reality. Right? But then then that's all

142the point. Thank you. But here's the thing, too, right? Then people need to have a conversation, right? About that, right? If the room if we had not even 173, that was the target number. 20 people say this budget was too high, then that would be a different conversation, right? But not a single person And right, every person has a different circle, and that's what makes us great, right? Is that we all have different circles and different perspectives. We respect them. We can always agree to disagree. That's totally fine, right? But like each of us comes here with our circle and our perspective and our people, right? And we our job is to share those points, right? There's not a single person in Middlebury people even object When I talk to people, grandparents on a fixed

143income, they want things for their school because they want to go and see their children cheer playing these fields and not have to drive to Danbury to watch their grandchild play lacrosse. And would rather pay for that, right? So, like these are these are the things like it's not like someone can't like everyone understands that this isn't a ludicrous number, but like the reality is things keep going up. Like that's just the United States of America fact. So, you know, unless we do away with property taxes, right? Then then this situation is different. So, it's not that it's not heard. It's not that it's not understood. It's just our job is to read through all of that, right? And kind of see where people are. And like I said, if there was 20 one person

144that said the budget was high, I've not heard one person tell me the budget was too high. They're like, "Oh, it's pretty low number considering where we are." Yes, I know. And that's that's like different circles, different circles, I guess. Yes. Um Heather, did you want to go in the next Um Yeah. I mean to that point, Middlebury as well. We are a service community. And we serve over a lot of people who need these services as well. So, you know, I do think we need to think about them when we you know I know like people feel pain when they see our budgets. Um Our budgets are also reflective services that you provide to the children as well. So, you know, um it I I get uncomfortable when you know, we kind of pit

145constituents against each other. Um you know, that you know children versus people on fixed incomes. So, I I get uncomfortable with that. I think we do need to have a holistic or you know, in you know, open to this budget. Um that actually wasn't what I was going to say. But um what I was going to say is um you know, just listening to around the table, I do I think it is very hard to come to a number because this is our public hearing, and there is nobody here. Um and so we have very little to gauge on where you know, people want to go. You know, we did have a public hearing on the schools, and then there were people who came out to speak about that, but this public hearing we have

146no public comments. Um so I'm not against having supply on Monday where we talk about what additional levers could be pulled. Um I think it's awfully late for the public to comment on that. Um but I'm not against you know, doing that thought experiment. Even though I'm personally not inclined to to take it all the way down to the full 5%. Uh but so I I'll put that in. Um I just one more thing I wanted to say that kind of piggybacks off something Jeff said. Um you know, the drivers of this budget since do you guys remember we were health care and special education costs. And health care, if this was if everybody was waiting for region 15 school budget to be the canary in the coal mine, like I I'm sorry, but there

147were other clues that this is unsustainable. Um and you know that's going to require some system systematic change. Um Special education, though, I mean, we are the largest You can find that tonight. We are the largest regional school district in the state. We have done something that the state has tried to encourage as school districts to regionalize to save costs. We have done it. We're the biggest one. And we are feeling this pain. And I uh we all put a lot of volunteer hours in, but uh you know, we had a couple of our members go to CABE Day on the Hill. I think that's, you know, part 1A of the advocacy that we need to be done to actually do something about this problem. I think we're in a good position to do it.

148Jeff, I'll gladly go to the Capitol with you. You might regret it, but I will not regret it. So, you're promised. I'm saying because of my comments. But, you know, I I I I think, you know, that's what needs to happen to do something about it. Just sitting around the table and talking about $20,000 here, $50,000 there, like that's not going to solve this problem. Uh advocacy is going to solve this problem, hopefully. Well, okay. Let's not be, you know, That's what we're here to work on, yeah. Maybe this is kind of going to work for us. I Advocacy is hard. Um but, you know, we haven't taken a big stand as a board on anything like that. And, uh maybe it's time. On that point, didn't we have success in the reading waiver pushback?

149So, like, interestingly, like people forget about the reading The reading waiver was about unfunded mandates. It wasn't necessarily about the reading scores. And, I do think, uh we got state halfway uh by using some of the money that they forced us to use on things that were not high-quality. But, uh you know, I think right now our friends in Hartford, this is a short session. The short session is supposed to just modify the governor's budget. Uh I can't even tell you how many bills related to education The The idea is literally laughable when it comes to it where people say, "This is a short session." It's one of the most active bill productions. Uh every problem under the sun is trying to be solved through a legislative mandate. So, I do think advocacy matters, and

150only the step at a time. The other piece that I just wanted to, like, just be transparent in um cuz I think here that the conversation about the impact, uh the the 5.48 is somewhat of an irrelevant number if you're going to talk about the impact to the individual. It's the ADM number and the town mill rate piece that really matters. So, you have to go if the the whatever cut we make is run through that. And so, uh listen, I have family members that live in town that are on fixed incomes, you know? Like, this is personal for me, too. Uh and, you know, if it really is about, like, I just want to be careful on our narrative. If it really is about talking about the issue and saving dollars for folks, if

151this impact the Southbury this year is driven by ADM. To really make a significant cut, not that I want to have this conversation, but 450,000 doesn't really do anything to that number. It brings you from a 7.4 and then to Right, right. 7%, 6%. Right, yeah. So, you get to 7%. Like, to really make the number palatable, if that's the goal, again, not that I want to have it, but to be transparent in the conversation, uh that that's the impact. And, the mill rate impact suffers year over year over 5 years off of the healthy ADM each year the other way. >> [clears throat] >> So, while it's said this year, it's been proportionally smaller the last few years. So, I just If we're going to have a conversation that's about what it does to

152the the taxpayer, I don't want people to to vote for a referendum thing where that we've saved money if if we submit it. I want to be transparent and honest and then we're going to If that's the issue, then it's Much as I don't want to have that conversation, um that's really the conversation to have. Oh, actually, Sharon had her hand up. I was just going to say, you know, I I think it's a very important comment, frankly, that you just You had you put it out, Josh, but I want to go back though cuz see, if I think that it's really good that you started the conversation and brought the perspective in, and I think that actually should be very much acknowledged. Um the stewardship and and really trying to make sure that the

153different perspectives are had. And, and I do appreciate it, right? But, recognizing there's emotionality in the room and kind of compartmentalizing that for a minute, and recognizing that people see numbers and, of course, there's an impact to their wallets and their pocketbooks, etc., and their related to their bills. I also go back and say, "What does this budget do for our school and for our community and for our children?" And, that's where I say, "We are not at a 6.65 and 11.4, 6.5, 6.7, but this 5 is very valuable to us." I'm not saying that 5.48 is not a high number. The end of the day, that 5.48 is what is going to actually allow us to move forward with having schools open. And, I'm still concerned over whether or not that's enough given the

154fact that we have such low budgets and we have kind of kicked the can. So, I understand the impact, the desire, but I say, "What what needs to happen to keep our school actually somewhat functioning so we are not feeling that we are creating too much risk that, God forbid, we have to do something extremely extreme because this doesn't get um just put a referendum and allow people to vote on that. So, from my perspective, I think it's been a healthy conversation, and I really do appreciate that you kind of opened the door and allowed that to happen. But, I also want to put it into perspective of what's happening in other communities and what the risk is if we don't do that. And, relative to what you're saying about advocacy, state mandate, pushing back,

155if you want to really push back, then don't hire paras. I'm not advocating for that. You want to go against the mandate, then do don't do it. But, what optics on that? And, how healthy is that? It's not healthy for our schools. It's not healthy for our students. So, I want to be very careful with the dialogue of what's getting put out there to say, "Oh, just push back and don't implement state mandates." Because if you want to go down that route, that changes the dialogue significantly. >> That was not the intent of advocacy, actually. It If you look at it and say, "Hey, it worked for reading waiver. Let's push it on the paras." We have to be very careful with that narrative. That is not how we should be thinking about our schools.

156That's not how we should be budgeting for our schools. It's what are the needs of the kids in the schools, administration, and for this district to run. So, I just Sorry. And and and and I know Tommy had your um a question, but I just wanted to While Sharon was talking about it, the advocacy part, um I I you know, we have this idea that advocacy advocacy is going to solve the problem. Um I love that optimism. And, like, I'm I'm ready to to, you know, rewrite at dawn, whoever wants to go. I think, you know, let's go. You're a good person. Yeah, right. But, I But, we have hosted legislative breakfasts for the last 4 years. We didn't do it this year cuz I'm no longer an area director for CABE. But, Region 15

157has hosted legislative breakfasts with all the area legislators and stuff, and we make our pitch. We're trying You know, we try our best with that. Um we have, you know, the CABE Day on the Hill, which I do appreciate Sally coming with me. Um and I kind of talked about how it seems the push is for, you know, educational cost-sharing, like, more money coming for that by CABE, but they're not even talking about the special education funding. Everyone's kind of given up on that, and they're just seeming to shift the burden of um costs to local to uh communities. That that is just the fact of what we're It's like screaming at the wind um going up there. And, also, we had our reps just here like less than 2 months ago on tours. And,

158you've been to You know, we were whispering at their side, like, "Hey, by the way, you know, what about I hear this about this legislative bill that's coming, you know?" So, we do have these opportunities, but there's like we are um a small district compared to other districts in Connecticut. And, You're not Hartford that's 60 million in the hole as the law is today. I know. It's And, we are part of the professional organization that's trying to fight for that and really trying hard. Like, and I was there, and I I do participate in their executive committee meetings, and we're they're trying to fight the fight even though there's like we're all suburban, urban districts all together, like, all kind of rowing in the same direction in terms of trying not to get or trying

159to get more funding, but it's just again, just screaming at the wind. So, and and yes, it's unsustainable, but um what's like, the solution? Again, anytime you want to go to Hartford, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'll drive. You tell me what. Okay. We'll go. I'm tired this week though. Um go ahead, Tom. I I did just want to comment on Josh's comment before, which is an accurate assessment of dollar impact this year. Uh yeah, like, to have a change that you could feel in your taxes, it would have to be a multi-million dollar cut. This board is losing its head over a tenth of a percent of a million dollars, like this. That's never going to happen. But, I think you're a bit simplistic in not acknowledging that there is compounding effect year to year.

160And, Sally, I don't know if you're still on the line. Sally, you said this last meeting. Still here. You said you brought up the compounding effect of delaying decisions last meeting, and I was really happy to hear it because I I it's something we don't talk about enough. You know, 2 years ago our failure to make a $200,000 cut when we added over a million dollars in new hands to the budget. That's not just 200 here that we're off this year. Over time, that would have been worth three, three and a half uh this year. Uh part of the reason why it's hard to swallow the 5.5 this year is because we didn't make hard decisions earlier. You know, part of the reason why health care is so hurt is like really a stressful situation

161right now is because we added 75 positions over the last 6 years and we weren't like to make those hard decisions back then. So, yeah, I see where the room is going and I have a feeling like we're not going to make much of an end in this year's budget. But, we can't keep coming back to this table every every spring and be like, "Well, there's nothing we can do." There is something you can do and it might not be a year one impact, but you know, Shannon, you said it earlier. In 3 years, we might be kicking ourselves like, "Uh why didn't we get rid of these positions?" I don't need to wait 4 years. I'm kicking myself now. Why didn't we make, you know, more hard decisions 2 years ago so we're not

162in a position where our backs are against the wall and we're shrugging our shoulders and saying there's nothing we can do. There is something we can do, right? It's not that we don't have options. It's the desire and the will to to have those hard discussions. Yeah, I don't disagree. My only point was if our narrative is this it's if that's our narrative you know, you can pull the brakes and minimize the growth. That's the same My narrative is at the current rate, average of the past 4 years, in 12 years time, we will have a $200 million budget and you can say there's nothing I can do about it, but I would disagree with you on that. There is something we can do about it. We can't keep doubling at a 12-year pace with

163a 5 and a half, you know, annual increase. Um I'm willing to do it, but I just don't want the perception to be you know, what can we do? We're telling you what you can do. And I hope you had heard all of us. It wasn't We didn't come to you. We could have came to you in the 7th. True. You should have though. And I do think one of the things that you do as a board Mhm. is telling you you telegraph not just like subliminally you know, or verbally uh that this had budget had to be certain some of the risks that are in there and some of the things again, had no new programs, no new staffing. There's nothing new in this budget. That came because of those conversations. With the exception

164of and again, $3,000 doesn't count, but the one recommendation was let's do a cutback. Maybe a bad year to cutback. Yeah, but even the So, the optics of that just to be totally transparent is we spent 4 or 6 hours knocking about fees last year and if I didn't put that in there, the optics would have been as a board, you had to increase the budget. Yeah. So, we put it in there so that you can make the option to cut the budget and and have that honest conversation. But, I thought that was a better optic than not putting it in. Yeah. And then you have an increase. And I do think if I came to you with a 5.4 and you made it a 5.48, like that wouldn't get Right. even worse, right? So,

165you think that's that's the piece. You know, that was the strategy of putting it in and letting you decide whether or not you wanted to keep it in. The last thing I'll say is, you know, the it's ultimately up to the voters whether this this number feels right or not. With one caveat. You know, we are elected uh to put in the work, which we sure as heck done here in March. With 20 different meetings. By the way, happy board member appreciation week. Let's not let the month go by without acknowledging that. So, I appreciate so much time together. But, we do have a certain responsibility um to make sure whatever we put forward has a sustainable direction to it, right? So, you can always say "Well, the budget passes every year." Well, in part

166because the public believes they are being presented a budget which they believe like, "Yeah, this has been reviewed and this is a sustainable growth." We've already said and I got to think we're all in agreement that 5 and a half every year is not sustainable. And yet, we're going to keep putting it out there. So, at some point, the board does have to step up and say like, "Yes, the budget I'm giving to you, it's ultimately yours to approve or reject, but we've put the work in and we believe it's it's sustainable." And I know we're in different we're in different positions on that, but don't discount that responsibility of the board and just leave it all in the hands of the voters. I don't I do I don't think that there's board members that

167are not taking that responsibility seriously though. I mean, we have disagreements about >> Yeah. what what that is, but I think that, you know, board members are That's I agree, but what I'm saying is if this moves forward and it sounds like it's going to move forward pretty close to where we are, I'm not sure what work the board has done this year to address issues that are not going away next year. How are we getting better on our health care costs, which I don't think the public has seen this chart, but that chart keeps me up at night, right? So, we have the information. What are we doing to address it? Right? Uh we we know where our revenue is in Harvard and we can say like, "Yeah, maybe this time we'll get more

168from the state." If you're counting on that, you know, I'd like to take the other side of the bet. So, knowing that reality, how has this board adjusted its budgeting practices or are we just saying, "Well, we're going to address that down the line and hope it gets better." I don't think hoping is a plan, which is why I'm saying I think we have to consider tougher action this year. It's not going to happen because I know you guys, but I'm just putting it out there that that's the kind of thinking that I think we need to start thinking. If not this year, certainly next year. I don't want to It's not my budget. Right? We We gave you the budget. It's yours. I have a steward of yours, but I do think one You

169don't have to just address it at budget. One of the things we did is negotiate hard contracts. Labor labor and wages were spent a lot of nights with the three contracts in the last 2 years. Yeah. So, I do think there's ways to manage some of that that they aren't just decisions made at budget. I would say this is the hardest time. The best way for us to address this is as we move through the year and as we do things to telegraph and indicate these are things that um are important and are not important. And if you try to take that I I don't want to give you a budget that's 7% and say it's yours cut it, you know, cuz I think that's a hard lift too. Yeah. So, um but I'm happy

170to do whatever the board would like me to do to get to a place where, you know, we're comfortable. Any other? You know what? I don't I don't need anything for for the 6. Yeah, me neither. No. It's okay. Anyone else comments? Sally, do you have anything you want to add? Uh no, I'm good. Okay. I think one one last thing I thought I'll say particularly a little bit different. When you look at things we change, that try to change, you look at even the gap town bus that we did a couple years ago. I mean, you're you're always they're always small the cutback. I do think there's a there's a standard here that if you come to where it's class size, all those things. And I I don't feel it's like you can't run

1715 infinity. I I don't think, you know, finance guys you can do the math. It it it doubles every X years. Um but at the same point, there is a standard that we hold here that is is expensive. And I don't know how to balance two. I mean, it seems it's a challenge Josh and I sit where we hand you the budget. Uh you know, and and there's no simple answer. And I guess that's our problem. I mean, health care costs we're better than town, right? If John Michaels' plan is about three to four 4,000 more than than our plan is to get and they left our plan for whatever reason. Uh so, in dollars, we can't curb it. But, again, we're adding 20, 30 pairs of all have health insurance coverage by union contract.

172Um you know, it's it's tough. You see medical claims, high claims are had a high claim at over a million dollars this year. We have never had it. And the towns have much bigger reserves than we do. And also bigger year than balance than we do. So, I think we're you know, we are trying to be responsible. I'm talking I got $300,000 pension line cuz we're not really beating the pension our pension plan. Again, we're 70 We are Josh, we are we are in an okay place, but you know, we get the report from pension. We're supposed to be funded at 100.4 and we're at 101. Yeah. What year did you raise $300,000 in pension? And here it's a payment you're going to make 40 years from now. Yeah, that's that's like I feel I

173was really like some of that. Maybe there's a way for us to to help telegraph some of those things better too because I think you're right. You think while it's not sustainable, we did take the X We've been adding to that actual We got to 73%. I said like, "This isn't the year to to add 25,000. It's not the year to to fund it at 100%. Like, so I I do think that there there are things we're doing. Um I do think our ability to even do that this year is we we now have at least a $570,000 capital line. Yes. >> Again, we had some of those higher budget numbers that you were talking about were because we had zero, we had to rebuild those. Yeah. You know, and even adding to the debt

174service line, we could do that now, it means that the train that's coming, you know, that we can slow. And so, um you know, um we welcome more like you want to talk about fiscal strategy or management. I don't know that we're going to prevent the fiscal tsunami that Shannon talked about about but but there are ways it's here later than it than some of our peers. So, when you look at Hartford at 60 or 70 million and New Haven I think is at 19 million in the hole. And those are community ones that would have their money to watch like everything is different but they go to the town and say we need to cut back. Now, we don't have that ability. If we That's not a friendly meeting just so you know. Yeah,

175no, no, that is. Um So, um you know, and I think maybe like we work out how do we like a fiscal strategy is a like a public conversation we have when we wrestle with some of this stuff. And your good point is let people know we're not just sitting here by four and you know, thank you and we're going to have a we You're busting costs more than most cuz you cover so lot of geography. I mean, you're covering two towns. There's a lot of geography you run over. I mean, you really Here's the thing, we have too many bus stops or not enough. I mean, but you just your geography you run over just your your bus cost is higher than the actual That was a That was a good example of the

176the daisy-chaining of out of Is there students that don't attend our schools? They're choice magnet schools. We tried to daisy-chain them and do those community stops. There was a big swell from a relatively small group of people that don't attend our schools. You know, there was a time with one of those zeros where we tried to move away from driveway stops and people not going to cul-de-sacs anymore and you had this outcry that's not what you know, and so there is kind of a when you ask where the 450 comes from like what's every service that we touch, there's going to be somebody that shows up and says this is a service that I depend on or I expect uh It's hard to say It is. It is. It's very And it's hard to say

177easier to say no to something we don't have than it is to take away something to Joe's point that we kind of created a standard of expectation. So, we can have that conversation. We can change that standard of expectation, but we need to do it like collectively. So, and people will ask us why. Yeah. You know, we're all on the same thing. We can start to I mean, let I heard you say that we have the blessing of more intense numbers than some of our other districts working here with the tsunami now. So, my question is to how we're going to spend How are we going to spend our time? How are we going to use that blessing? We can definitely talk about that. So, I I don't I will I know you like to

178have consensus um down here. I do. Uh I was going to vote for the budget as is last the social worker position last the ends last the um the revenue loss. What I mean to say is I mean Yeah, thanks for gate fees. Um and then I'm on this fence with it but I have to go back and find that presentation and listen to it again on the finance as well as the position. So, maybe that's the maybe for me. Thanks, you Steve. I think we're close. You close. I think you want to You want to prioritize emotional response. Yeah, not ready to say anything yet. I just want to say Sally, do you have anything you want to add or you good? No, good. Yeah, I hope you feel better. Yeah. I I just

179keep myself up to you. Yeah. Thank you for not coughing on us. Appreciate that. Yeah, no, I I figured I'd expose enough people on Monday. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't feel I was going to cough some coming up but Yeah. All right, thank you. So, if anyone else have anything they want to say about this discussion before we move on? All right, next we have announcement of teacher meeting dates. Um Monday, April 6th, PNC is meeting at 6:00 at this media center. And then we are having our regular Board of Education meeting at 7:30 that same night, Monday, April 6th and hopefully we will be adopting the Region 14 2026-2027 school budget. May I have a motion to adjourn? I have a lucky seat. Finish it. I'll take that. All right. Second. Is there a

180second? Second. Second. I see. Second. All those in favor? I. I. I. I. We are all in agreement. Thank you, everyone. Yeah, thank you Joe and Laura. I wish I could have been here. All right.