001Board of Education. Wednesday, March 26th. Um, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of America and to stand for. The mission of region 15, a collaborative community committed to excellence, is to educate every student to be productive, ethical, and engaged in a global society through proven and innovative learning experiences supported by its strong community whose decision-m is based on the best interest of all students. So, tonight we have um our another budget workshop. Um it's a special budget workshop because we have invited um the boards of finance from both Middlebury and Southbury to join us um and to ask us um any questions that they would like. Um I know that they've submitted some questions ahead of time um to have a um a presentation, but I thought it
002might be helpful if you were on the table so we could hear who you guys are and you can know who we are um to start before Mr. Smith does the presentation. So my name is Hanzo and I'm the chair of the um region 15 board of education. Heather Rogers, treasurer. Steve Ser, Shannon Kavalo, chairperson of board of finance. Joe Martino, finally board of finance. Vince, middle of language, George Flick, South area, and secretary Smith. And I see Casey Doc from the Southbury board of science is also joining as well. Not calling you out Casey just went around. So I'll turn this over to Mr. Smith um for his presentation and then we'll get to them especially have paper copies for should be enough for people in the audience too slide um that'll either remind
003you of some things that we have in our initial budget presentations questions that have came in uh over the last couple of weeks and then there's some time if you have additional questions we like to welcome you here uh it's appreciate having the board to finance communities join us to talk through the budget process. When we do um create a school budget, it starts with the mission, vision, and our theories back to drive the work that happens in our schools. Uh all of the things that are in our budget tied back to these four initiatives here. The idea that we want to build welcoming inclusive schools. The idea that we want to build a meaningful instructional environment. the idea of communication and transparency with stakeholders and access to something that comes out the next door.
004Not everybody necessarily goes to a fouryear college or a two-year college, but we want you to be ready for the bills next. Um, we often get questions about kind of the return on investment and what this budget does. And so, um, we like to highlight a few. This whole presentation will be a hundred slides longer if I talk about everything, but I'd like to highlight a few academic pieces. uh but also other ways that our students shine. Um for multiple years, there are only 95 schools of distinction. That those are schools the state of Connecticut sees as in the top 10% of achievement in the state. Uh we have students that are selected for musical awards, theater awards, athletic awards. For the second year in a row, one of our PE teachers was recognized as
005state teacher of the year by their organization. Um we had 42 students that participated in the uh annual American mathematics competition that took place in November. Our both our uh girls and boys swim team want to state championships. Uh the idea being is that we have success in the classrooms academically and in lots of other ways. I also like to highlight that the board did receive award earlier this year for their work. uh some cost efficiencies that you're going to see in the budget tonight. These are things that are already represented. Uh there's an increasing need um of building projects that we've been talking about. You go up to the high school tonight, you saw new tennis courts, you saw a storage building. Um there's a full renovation that's almost complete. We fight against some
006of the inflationary costs that towns have as well. uh some highlights that uh and I don't think the board's actually seen it played out in this way, but we wanted to put some things in there. We locked in our electricity rates, especially that market that's pretty volatile right now. Um the solar energy projects that we have are generating about $45,000 a year in energy credits. Um we had two Eversource energy leases that were nocost leases that paid off um the natural gas conversion projects that we have. And so all two of our facilities now run off of natural gas. We lock in oil at 270 or $2.70 a gallon. Um the energy base is interesting. So we've been undergoing LED rena in our schools. Um I thought it was interesting to look at the cost
007offsets of those projects that had we not done them would not have added about $426,000 in energy cost to our utilities lot. transportation. We have in the middle of the contract for bus u for our bus contract there's a negotiated contractional increase of 3.8% in there. We lock diesel. Um and then we have a regional transportation collaborative. So special education transportation is something that's creates a lot of volatility for us. There's not a lot of vendors and oftentimes those vendors can uh charge absorptive rates. And so we're working with about seven other school districts on a transportation collaborative. These aren't necessarily cost savings, but they are cost offsets. Um the kind of obligatory pie chart. What's interesting is um earlier this year we were looking at some budget documents from 1995. Same pie chart, same
008percentages. So while the dollar amounts change, we're a service organization. most of our dollars every year uh go to people and then that's that breakdown. Uh we've been working on the pension over the last five or six years. Um so our total benefit uh overall benefits line that's health insurance pension other benefits is up 8.92%. Health insurance specifically is up 13%. Um, we can continue with our contribution to the pension fund, increasing that by 40,000. There's a couple of slides again that would speak directly to that pension fund. Excess cost. Now, I know that some of you um may be new to this meeting. Excess cost is uh the largest state funded grant we get. It offsets the cost for special education services. It's somewhat complicated. I'm happy to give a brief overview tonight. spend
009as much time as anybody wants. Uh but basically there's a if you think of a high deductible health care plan, um it's based off of our per student cost and our deductible is four and a half times our per pupil cost. When we exceed that, anything more than our deductible gets reimbursed at a percent. That percent is subject to change. They changed um the law two years ago now with an aspirational amount of 88%. That would be the amount we spend over our deductible would be reimbured at 88%. Um we did not budget at 88%. They actually funded it in October at 60%. Uh and then after a lot of uh outrage from uh the communities, they upped that to uh about 73% I think this year. Um and that came in February through a
010special appropriation through the legislators. That difference would have been a $480,000 loss of revenue to the school district. Uh and so that swing is pretty large and represents a half a percent increase in our budget. So had the state legislators not made the adjustment in their current legislative session, our proposed increase would have been a half a percent higher. Because of that legislation, uh we've been able to absorb that. They haven't actually allocated the money in next year's uh budget, but we feel that it's a appropriate risk that if they took the measures this year in an emergency that that shows intent to make sure it's correct, at least at current level funding for next year. Here's a breakdown of our major object codes, these individual increases uh in the lines, the percent, the total
011budget, and then the increase um each of those lines represent in that 4.49%. Going a little fast, I'm going too fast for anybody. Okay, here's perhaps, you know, one of the more interesting slides and certainly the biggest driver of either town budget. This is the ADM or average daily membership for each town and community. This goes back to 1995. Um the red represents Southbury, the the orange um is uh Mbury. If you're above the line, that means that your enrollment increased or your percent district's enrollment increased in that year. Um, and it's out of a whole. So, if one town increases percentage-wise, there's a proportionate decrease in the other town. And what was interesting is if you look at the 1995 through 2005, you'll see that Southbury pretty consistently over that time experienced population increase.
012And then that shifted um somewhere around that 2006 time frame. And for the last 20 years that shift has been middleberry. The higher the line larger the shift which means that the higher shift budgetary increase. So regardless of what the overall school budget goes up this drives the percent each town pays of that overall budget. And in the 199596 year um quote me on this but I believe the middle varies proportion was about 26%. And to uh as of next year it will be 34%. So over the last 40 years there's been a significant shift um in the percents. Here's how those shifts break down. You take the total school gross budget. We then reduce that by any revenue received by outside agencies. uh federal, state, government that offsets our overall school budget. That net
013budget is the cost increase because there's a revenue decrease. It's an inverse proportion. There's a revenue decrease in um state aid. You'll see that the net budget impact in communities is larger than the actual school increase by about 0.1 almost 2%. uh when you roll that breakdown through the KDM uh percentages, that's how you get the town's cost. And you'll see that the um percent increase in Mbury happening because of that enrollment shift and the number of students that shift next year. Um it's actually based on the October one number of 24. So, it's the prior year October one number drive next year at ADF. I u I'm pretty critical sometimes of our friends at Hartford and the fact that they um push a lot of costs down to the local taxpayer uh in both
014our communities. Uh the educational cost sharing grant this goes to town. does not go in the school district, but it's meant to offset uh cost for education. Both towns see an increase next year in that amount, which if you run all of that through the ABN gives you the um direct cost uh to taxpayers for the school district projections. Every year we do demographic studies within the school district. Um you'll see that the 24 25 while we've seen declining enrollment for the last 15 years or so we're at the trough with the bottom of that curve and we're projected to increase. Most of this increase comes at the elementary level and you'll see that that grows pretty substantially over the next 10 years. Uh the good news is the high school is going to move
015from the 9997 or so up, but our high school's big enough to absorb those students. There's not going to be a proportionate cost increase for that enrollment. Promise pension slides. We have pension slides. Uh so region 15 minutes is our own pension. The pension is for non-certified staff. Anybody certified as a teacher in Connecticut uh is part of the teacher retirement fund and it's a state funded um pension not through the towns or the schools. The groups that are uh are in the district pension plan our professionals, our secretaries and our custodians that account for about 236 current and retired employees. Um in 2019 they sunset the uh defined benefit plan and move to a defined contribution plan. Uh and so anybody hired after 2019 is in the fine contribution plan. Our current pension obligation
016is budgeted at 1.1 million. Uh we began to increase this back in 2020 by 30,000 a year. The budget proposal that you have in front of you ups that to 40,000 per year up by 20,000 a year. Here are the actuals of that pension plan. um our projected investment rate of return, the rate of inflation. These are generated by our actuarials if not by Mr. Martino or myself. You can make your own judgments on the uh inflation uh writer there. Um on the slide you have the approved liability, um our current value and then our net pension liability uh back. So we've uh increased our funding rate by about 3% two and a half% over the last year. This is the pension performance where those lines intersect the purple and the orange that's when we
017are fully funded. Um at our current rate we would be fully funded at about 2030 or our pension obligation payments and our contribution will match. Um currently region 15 goes under two different uh has two different audit cycles. We have an internal audit cycle. That is a voluntary one that we hire um and work with them on what uh is audited. Um currently they're under contract for $24,000. That is amount that's in next year's budget. Um next year we have targeted the school lunch account to be the uh audited uh object code. Um and that they did give us a risk assessment for the next couple of years where we can u prioritize what other major object codes we look at based on um their multi-year plan. In addition to the internal audit, there's a
018mandatory uh external audit. This is statemandated um and those are the accounts that uh that outside audit uh looks at. In addition, 15 has um a double slide there. Apologies for that. Uh, in addition, we have our own bond ratings. So, the Newville school district close out for bond rating looks like the municipality would. Um, we met last week with the movies bond rating agent uh and gave them a um series of documents and interviews. Currently, the district is rated as a double A2. Uh normally these school districts, regional school districts would be rated at one tier below either town. So that double A2 um I believe little double A1 and that puts us at one below. Uh one of the the areas that they highlighted for us as favorable um were our revenue projections
019for the current year, fund balance and the tax bases of both Middlebury and South Berry. Um we've had a cyber liability plan for the last six years. Uh all of our audits are completed on time and we were surprised to learn that um a lot of municipalities are having trouble getting audits done at all. So they were very impressed with that. Um I hope that by Friday of this week we'll have our bond rating. Um anything out there that was Oh, and there were no areas that they identified as weaknesses um or detrimental to Currently, we uh have a 11 million bond that was approved by voters act in 2023. Uh we are issu issued a one-year bond anticipation note. That's how we got some of the projects underway. Um we did get a grant
020for about $700,000 from the state to offset the HFA work that's being done. You cannot bond a state reimbursement. So, the good news is that reimbursement will bring our actual bond uh issuance down to 10.2 million and save about $500,000 uh over the life of that 20-year bond. In 2021, we had a roofing study. We're in the process of updating that study now so that we can do some of the roofing work. Um the study in 2021 estimated each roof cost between$ 1.5 and $2 million to replace. um would take it through a roof planning cycle. So our roofs are eligible for state reimbursement under a construct grant. In order to do that, it's about a year and a half cycle of process. So the study is happening now. We would then get roof designs
021and costs. Then we voted for the board of education for approval. Once we have that and we go to the state for approval of their um grant process, at that point we can go out to bid and then if all that goes well in summer six, we could actually start the first roof. Um one of the things that we're trying to avoid is bonding roof projects. Um they're not while they're expensive when in the bond market they're not that expensive and so there's a lot of ease tied to that. So, our plan is to use our current debt service line. I know there's been some conversation about why you have debt service line if you don't have debt. Um, and part of the reason we can do all of this is as the debt for
022Long Meadow comes off, we want to use that debt service line to avoid taking out more debt. So, this is a tiered approach. Um the roof at Long Meadow, the uh actual cycle might change a little bit based on that roofing analysis, but as an example, the roof at Long Meadow would be replaced at a cost of about 1.5 million. We would apply for state reimbursement, which would be about 50% of that. We would take the 750,000 you got back in reimbursement, and kind of reinvest that in the next roof. So the group theoretically would cost 750,000 of local funds. Then you would finish that project again apply for reimbursement in the next project and see that the turf field is going to come end of life in the next five years. That is not
023a reimburse reimburseable construction expense. So when we get to replacing the turf field that will be a pure pay out of pocket. Um and so if we leverage the reinvestment and recycling of that um state construction grant for a couple years, then when the turf is field turf field is done, we have three roofs done and we basically use um that seed money to make the one time per payment. Um so it's a little bit of a complicated piece. there's a lot of recycling but believes it avoids any need to take out debt or issue bond to do a $2 million. Did we check RMS? So RMS roof is in better shape and checked in with RMS group. So it's not kind of a wholesale replacement but any that you ask about Ro Shambone because
024the next slide talks about Yes. Sorry. What's what's the amount of debt that's coming off from the the Well, last long metal payment was 810,000 which was made this year and the band payment interest of 450,000 of that payment. So it's approximately about 3400,000 kind of transfer at the service this year and move capital. Sorry. Um this would be the the new room media center air conditioning unit installed in 1980. Um it was not that color when it was installed. So in addition to the roofs, we do have a lot of HVAC work that we're looking to um use funds to grow. That was kind of where I um presentation on budgetary issues for line items. We did get some questions specific from uh finance members. So I'm going to take you through some of
025those. Some of the questions were about per pupil expenditure. Um, in the questions that I can pull up but are also online, there's a pretty detailed analysis of per pupil. Um, it kind of ties into a question that was asked about refuge services. So, if you look at our elementary and school budgets, you'll see an increase in their uh refuge or garbage service line. It's not really an increase. In the past, we budgeted that as a central uh uh account. It's a district-wide garbage account and the state likes to u break down the accounts into per school spending so they can look at what it cost to run individual school. So the shift you see in this year's budget is the shift of that refuge from district account to the school account and it say
026it'll save us some time in how we report that to the state department. Um, in addition to that, that kind of ties into some of this slide here where if you look at all of this, uh, data set was selected by board finance member. There's a lot of ways to to look at school district comparison sets. Um, and there's different pluses and minuses, but for this purpose, um, it looks like region 15's a major outlier in this spending piece. uh when you look there and there's two reasons for that that I'm going to walk you through. On the bottom there, I put you put down a breakdown of regions region 15's line. And what's interesting in 2023, we had an ESRE grant for $800,000 that we used to build portables at Long Meadow. This year,
027that money was put into our administration account. And so it disproportionately raised this account by $800,000, which breaks out to about $225 on a per student basis. Um, and every district captures some of this data a little differently, but for example, very few districts have their own pension account. Those accounts are usually on the municipal side. So of that 1,650700 in um per pupil spending for what's labor administration $276,000 or $276 per student is the pension contribution which is about $1.1 million. Um also in there is that $800,000 or $225 per student um federal grant. The social security team service this is we'll talk through in the next couple of slides. Some districts um include this in a district-wide account like administration. Some would break it down into a building account. Um and so these
028are the same um slide up. These were the other two comparisons when you looked at peral school-based administration and the comparison set uh that region 15's above the average. When you look at peral instructional cost, region 15 looks to be above the average. when you um just grabbed region 17, but you can look at any region and you grab all of those accounts. You can see here that the support services in general, we are disproportionately high budgeting about 1.6 or spending about 1 uh $1,600 per student where region 17 was $271 student. But that inverses when you look at central and other support services in region uh 17 is spending 1,800 per student and we're at 197 per student. So, while these are standard accounts from what's called the EFS report or the the state's
029financial system that we submit our funding to, um, how districts break out some of their costs and define like that garbage refuge example of whether you budget that as a central and other support services or a general admission services, districts have some way of how they build that. But when you roll it all up to the bottom, you'll see that even though we're disproportionate in some accounts and not in others, um the overall per people expenditure in region 15 is less than region 17, but you know, still kind of within the ballpark. Uh to hold up the same comparison set um for overall expenditure uh and I put region Queens here. um regional districts are usually higher than municipal school districts for a couple reasons. And the biggest one is that pension that I talked
030about. And the other one are things like um capital expenses or sometimes like those groups that we just talked about would be in a municipal bond, not a school district bond in a non regional school district. So put down the average of the um overall comparison set. Uh again, there's this this isn't a very fe comparison set. It's not a small district. There's um it's just the comparison set that someone chose. Uh but I when I pull out the regional average, you'll see that on on average regional school districts of this comparison set anyway um are higher than the municipals and then where region 15 fits in. Region 17 is no that's eight 17 region five it's which is just a high school develop an interesting uh data set region 13 region 16 um the
031question that was submitted didn't use real I didn't want to change the comparison set but happy to put together. Um, region 16 does not manage their own pension. They outsource their pension. So, it's not in there. Uh, that is on the municipal. Um, then what the other slide was trying to look at EPI which is the state for the district performance index. Um, which is fine. We talk about there's a report that Dr. Getting presented in December that talks through all of the student performance. It's really hard to connect student performance or district performance to the per pupil. Some of our lowest performing districts in the state have some of our highest per pupal cost. There's no direct u correlation between student performance and per there's a lot of things that go into that per
032pupil cost. um it'd be really easy to say you can spend more money if your um test scores go up. It's not quite that simple. There's a lot of other factors that go in. Um and the other piece that I would just point out is that even the district performance average kind of while it's a fair comparison that it's one data point where if you look at some other data points that are masked in that um again three of our elementary schools have been ranked in the top 10% of schools in the state over the last two years. Uh if you look at our 24 data, the the middle school science data is some of the highest in the state. Um our math SAP scores at the high schools uh exceed our DUR. Again, this
033isn't necessarily our DUR, but there's a lot of really strong districts in there that um we speak with on a regular basis. Um and then that that district uh DPI in the 23 24 school year and that's the most recent um was almost back to our pre-COVID level. The pre-COVID level being at 83 and Region 15 was one of the few districts in the state that is almost back to our pre we're moving back to that faster than uh other school districts in the state. Again, there's a lot of different reasons. uh when you get to uh I know that Mr. Michael couldn't be here tonight but u he likes to ask this question. Last year I believe we gave you um a report of unfunded mandates. Uh there's one on our website as well.
034Um back in 2016 there was a study commissioned about the unfunded mandates that's about 50 pages long. Um there have been 125 more since 2015. You know, one of the challenges that is hard for us is that some initiatives look like there's a no cost to the district. We have to buy for a lot of the legislation that's there and a lot of it's very much potential. Uh the problem with it is it creates new reporting structures, new accountability structures for school districts which again even on their surface I there's some merit to it but there is a cost in that there's a labor cost to it and that's not calculated into any legislation that's there. There's some really um I think well-intentioned uh legislation around anti-bullying laws which are again admirable what they're trying
035to do. uh reinforce that schools create structures that maybe arguably they should have had before, but then it creates unintended staffing implications and that's where a lot of these unfunded amenities come into play. And so the indoor air quality is in order. I don't think anybody um would argue about having high quality indoor air. when you talk about the that that air conditioning unit that I showed you was one of the newer ones um and uh you know our air conditioning units are you talking the one over the gym with the $330,000 retrofit it wasn't even a replacement replacement so it's really again well intention for legislator to say we're going to improve air quality but the dollars don't come together and so those are the pieces that um we try to work through we
036do that through tracking bills in Hartford. Uh we do that by speaking to our legislative representatives and helping them understand that u some of those no cost billation in our schools. Um then I just put in the budget cycle coming up. Um and again we have I think it's a 14page document of questions that have come in so far. We'll add some of these to that and that's on our website. That's phase one. What? And then we do open up questions to you. Yeah. Can I ask a question since we were just talking about the mandates? Jana had been taking the board finance in the loop about the mandate from the state about a reading program, but I know that we're fighting back on a bit because we thought that our students were able to
037test out of it or already had. Where is that at? And forgive me if I missed it. Were they included in this budget for this year? Yeah. So, um, thank you for the question. We were never arguing with the state department over the need to teach reading or the value or um, even arguing that our students could all test out. What we were what we were arguing is that we had invested for multiple years in programs that had were high quality. Um, and actually the main program we were arguing about through the process that they now sees as one of their sanctioned programs and our point was we report to this board, we report to you on a regular basis that Harford shouldn't be able to come in and tell us that we had to
038spend a half a million dollars to get rid of everything that we had without having a conversation with us. um that kill we and uh where we are in that process is that the state approved the the one of the programs that we're arguing over. So we already had that we did we have to invest in it. So there I guess the short answer is there are no dollars in this budget proposal related specifically to that manual. She made it sound like it was pretty expensive in the millions. Yeah. If we if we had not um if the state had forced us to choose a different program instead of accepting that the one that we were implementing met the criteria um it would have been hundreds of thousands for us to rip everything out and
039rephrase that. Thank you. M so a couple questions. I mean first I'm glad that you guys I saw the capital management John right here um how are we managing I was a little bit you know interested in the idea that it's good I guess to stick something in the that service right but I was hoping that's kind of temporary in a way so that that you can see you know that capital management is is being utilized and and maybe what what it's saying is so two pieces. So the debt service is a little it's a temporary solution to a longerterm problem. Um plus we have a building study going on right now. I mean while I can't predict what's going to come out of that building study, we know that we have two buildings that
040need some type of major work whether they be renovation building whatever. So the anticipation is that by 2030 that debt service line is going to going to need to be reallocated to one of these big projects which is why you see kind of this shortterm recycling um because when that roof structure is complete. The idea would be that would roll into it's probably not going to be enough for whatever bond project is going to happen but it will smooth impact that expense. While that's happening, we have been growing our operating capital budget over the last few years and that's allowing us to do kind of mid-grade projects. So that right now is 470 57 570 in the uh like um in the budget proposal we have in front of you that's like 57. So we're
041still um there was a capital presentation in November um that's linked on our website. send you directly, but that plays out a little bit how that operating capital will be used. That that account's never going to be big enough to do things like projects or major HBAC, but it will allow us to do some of the smaller projects. Uh there's a third uh leg of that stool. Well, I mean, the capital side of it, you have like a capital budget. I mean, yes. Yeah, it's the but the 575 right now and obviously there's there's reserve dollars too with you know something major broke what kind of was on the list but um obviously as Josh said we started budgeting capital dollars in 2001 I think we established 275,000 so it's we are you know we're
042behind we caught up to projects there's a lot of things here they're of age and are you just keeping the capital sort of as a a big pot or as target certain, right? You have an identified list of items through there and then obviously if other funding becomes available addressing other things like as we go like one project this year was the uh dust collector down in the wood shop. It's from 1979. It's doesn't function well at all. So that's going to replace this April that was in the current capital budget for example. So yeah, we're trying to work through kind of as best we can what exists today. The challenge exists is like we said over our heads is very old HBAC systems that are big units are probably about $2 million a unit.
043So we're trying to work through like plans on what those look like to replace and start to renovate. But yeah, it's dollars are large. trying to not make them a big part of um you know I guess I know more about this and more about this sort of one of my aspect is about retention right is that um u I guess I've always asked and you guys have promised me that you have kind of a structured plan about how you react you So I understand as it exists right now but how you react over time you know say you know again say the stock market crashes this year how would you react what do you have some sort of systematic plan about whatever 30,000 or whatever you're giving to it would change if if that
044funded ratio would would fluctuate Josh through the numbers too obviously some of the the growth you see is through the funds a million8 I think that went up between the years but odd to see if you saw new market down here kind of um you know where we where fun we fall and where we are but yeah there's there's a bunch of things we're looking at too in pension in general so yeah I think there's there's some the problem is as we alluded to getting to that 1.5 million current funding will will take some time to get that yeah I don't mind that I guess the question is the real question is um you know next year when anything rolls in and um um what would make you adjust the 30,000 sort of so for
045instance for Southbury we have a kind of you know have normal source that we use uh we're going to get to fully funded in next years and and we kind of do it gradually over time and we have flexibility about that but if this graph were to change radically next year with you know what kind of things would drive you to have to in order to put out more money? Yeah. Well, current budget environment and where we are as far as kind of the rest of the accounting structure where we sit for our renewals, our benefits, all those things. Um I mean obviously that model was done by our actuaries as well. Um so yeah, I mean we're we're aware we're not there yet in terms of that. With ship is we have I guess
046depends a little bit on how much right if it's a radical shift that's a different conversation. So this year you'll see an investment of 40,000 in our annual contribution. So right. So I guess in my brain I'll sit there and I'll just I'll see that that slide and next year I'll come back and if you show me that slide and it looks like well it's 2034 before you get to get to the purple line then um what what makes you kind of react in terms of getting more money to this pension. Well, and that's the the uh the discussion is I guess some of that is the other factors that are happening. So if that goes to 2034 and next year 7% increase because healthcare district is a 30% healthcare increase. So that if we
047face a 30% health care increase next year and that market dips and now we're at 34. I think the question is are we okay with the 34 or do you want the 7% increase to be a seven and a half percent increase or or are we willing to to cut something else somewhere? I mean I think that's that's the conversation that it's not it's never seen in isolation even now we could accelerate that if we wanted to question what's the the risk benefit analysis of accelerating that and what are we taking away that or pass it on to communities you know you guys said hey we're good at 8% this year and violent ups like I don't gonna happen right we could have stayed at 5% and and fully funded that fine. I mean, you
048know, so I think that's the the piece is that we're trying to find a way to balance all of those needs and right now the 68% or so that we're funded at um is a pretty smart market reasonable like we're in align with a lot of other school districts and municipalities. If that starts to become an outlier, then I think you talk about prioritizing moving up at the expense of something else. You know, I've got other questions. Go ahead. I knew you had How about Mr. We'll let Mr. Jacob go and then we'll get back to you. I'd like to spread it out, right? I knew you had several, so I'm gonna let him roll. That's all right. Um the first question, M with the group plan, I think it said that it was with
049a cost estimate or cost study that was done in 2021. Yes. But under the plan, I mean the project probably the earliest one begins summer of 2026. We're comfortable with those estimates. We are not right now as we um the person that did those roof estimates about redoing them um to update those prices and potentially have to update them again as we go for state reimbursement because everything's moved pretty quickly right now. And so but the the figures detailed in the graphic are based on that 2021 cost estimate. So it be highly unlikely it's going to be more expensive, right? It's a matter of how do we have an indication of that yet? I mean no short answer. Okay. They even point a 5% escalator on four to 5% per year. I talked to someone
050about this but yeah and again the order may change if you know if one roof's in worse condition the other we kind of reorder the list and just have one other about the I think I saw slide where it said health insurance cost for employees in the district that participated was 13% um what and I apologize if I should know this but what type of plan are they currently under and have you explored some of the options for other types of plans, talkable bargaining, etc. Is that 13% a result of any kind of um going back to the market and you know originally major was 20 you actually got it down to 13 or just wondering what kind of steps we're taking. Yeah. So I mean we have um the healthy drinks collaborative of which
051Southbury was part of at one point is still in um and so that is I don't know if you want to speak a little bit to um our last meeting. Yeah, we um we we're current Anthem and everyone's on a mandatory HSA plan. They have been for a good number of years here. Um we've generally seen renewals of it say like 5% to 9% the last x amount of years. Um but this year we had pretty high claim gone through and as of late we actually had a path kind of trend lower to probably 11 or so and we had just continue to see like kind of pretty pretty significant boost through the plan. There's been some negotiations bargaining tables on some concessions there through the last teachers contract we did and those things but
052again Josh districts are seeing just pretty high renewals on health and I think being selfinsured is definitely served us well and I think we are um I'm hoping this kind of a one year every five years or so in self insurance and you kind of catch a like a double digit number and I hope this is our our once in that cycle. We had yours at zero. We did change the stopwatch. Yeah. Thank you. Back to Mr. Con. You had something George. No. All right. Mr. Um so you know again the health insurance one of the things we're facing is more you know the more sttime staff but the more you know these numbers go up because of the insurance but they go up because of the numbers but sometimes I guess I was trying
053to figure out what the details what's your mix between um do you examine between certified and not certified staff and have you changed because it seemed to me when I read through the details that there was that non-certified staff seem to go up more than certified staff and I was curious about how you run that mix and and um I mean and are the sheer numbers of people like sometimes usually you give us kind of account maybe it was a count at the beginning thing that I missed on total employees and um you kind of review that. Yeah. Uh so the short answer you're you're correct that the percent increase of non-certified staff moves faster than the percent increase of certified. The um the number of certified staff overall is larger than the non-certified but
054percent increase moves quicker and that's really driven by federally mandated uh services. So most of our non certified staff are par professionals. Those pair professionals are there to serve the needs of students with um identified needs for those. That really prides that number. Um, and part-time is really not an option. Actually, we have, I believe, eight or 10 unfilled positions today of those. So, uh, the market is so competitive and the salaries for those jobs just aren't high enough. So, that you have like we can't get people to take full-time jobs, let alone part-time. And so, that's really the market pressure on that non-certified. We do have um not many, a couple of part-time custodial positions, but there's just not a lot of part-time um and during the school day for the most part and
055we work 35 hours a week. Like we try some part-time positions, but there's just not a lot of opportunity. I can't have a part-time teacher. We have I think 2.6 teachers in the district um that we've been able to work with. Uh but it's a very competitive market and usually those positions unless there's a kind of organic reason that those folks are in the 06 position. It's somebody that wants full-time position. Every school district in the state has a should be in absolutes. Most school districts in the state have open teaching positions right now depending on your certification. Getting hired is matter of how far you want to drive and not whether or not there's a point for you. So like that 6 is becomes extremely difficult to hold on to. Great. We had a
056um a 6 music position a few years ago um and it was just a revolving door of staff and so when we're able to what we have done is reposition. So like right now that person travels so instead of having like 2.5s uh we have a 1.0 position that we created and that person travels which is somewhat inconvenient. Um, but from a stability standpoint, um, it allows us to do things. But from an insurance standpoint, that's really complicated. Plus, the advantage on a self-insured plan could obviously again if you're hiring some younger staff possibly, you may only pay admin fees and kind of a basic where if it's a fully insured plan, you'd be paying the full 25,000 of the plan irrespective of use. So that's kind of the advantage to a little some of
057the the parapes that come through the lines. And so has has the headcount on that gone up after and has the overall headcount gone up? It has. Uh we did an analysis I think it's it's actually in those questions. Um certified staff went to 2018. Now two certified staff increased I think 23 over those seven years. Non-ertified staff increased by about 40 uh over that same period of time. Again, when you break down that two two things um factor into that when you look at someone's going to ask how do you have declining enrollment when you're adding staff most of the staff we're adding classroom director deductions to a lot of places they're mental health professionals uh BCBA agents uh social workers those are positions that we've added from a certified standpoint from a non-certified
058standpoint they're all almost all of those are professionals that come with through an IEP process where u there's a team meeting they identify a student need and then somewhere in that process there's an identified need for that student to have a parent educator or adult that works with that child sometimes it's a couple hours a week sometimes it's a couple hours a day sometimes it's all day every day but the non-certified decrease is driven almost exclusively by the educator We actually have a question for for you. Um Shannon had a question that she wanted to ask. Well, I just I know that um Mberry, right, and I maybe you guys don't have any more questions, but I know there was a meeting earlier this week. So, I just want to see if there's anything for
059the full board, right, to have a discussion on if there was lingering questions left over from a pre-eread. So there was a meeting invite sent for yesterday. You Oh, you didn't. Okay. So I was question there was no meeting. Oh, there was no meeting. Okay. Were there questions? I just wanted to make sure we were all kind of on the same page. I don't know if there was specific questions you wanted to talk through in that meeting or not. No, just just as a just as a discussion point to sit with, you know, Mbury who you represent to have just a discussion on, you know, thoughts that you might have prior to to this meeting. And you know, I think what we're going to do moving forward, we're definitely in and Jeff's not here. Um,
060but we'd like to have the uh representatives come into the board of finance meetings early enough so that they can, you know, give us a little debrief as to how things are progressing just so that we're in the loop and, you know, I've been some of our students too. That's just about communication, making sure. Thank you. Do you have other questions about budget? Um yeah, I did. Okay. So, there's a line about um tuition going down for special special ed. What's that about? So, that tuition line are students that we um service out. They're students that we're not able to provide services to in district. So um they are sent to other facilities where we make wishes to those facilities for the students that weren't um required by law to educate. Um the reason that
061line is going down is we have fewer students um allocated or um that need those outside services next year. So students moving out sometimes they age out. We educate some students to 22. uh most students to their senior year of 18, but there's a population of students who do so over that. Um sometimes students move out and if we know that we reduce that tuition line based on the tuition that was allocated for those students. So there's no next year could go up. This year we budgeted for some students. part of the um that line is running uh pretty in pretty good as a positive this year because we had budgeted for two students that were at fairly expensive outpatient schools that end up moving out of district. So if you look in our January
062report, you'll see our tuition line uh is kind of well above projected u and that's what's feeding some of our year end balance. Um, and it's because two students we anticipated being there one year. That that's probably the most volatile line in all the What does property? Oh, um, equipment because it seemed like property went down. Yeah, there was some equipment in for um, Memorial Library and there was a reduction there. So, yeah, that that's probably the biggest. We renovated the library last year. So, that line was higher last year because of the equipment in the new library. Well, the only reason that things go down is they're going to come back next year. No, it was it was a it was a one libraries last renovated like 96. So, I mean it'll come back
063maybe in 2042, but we're good for a while. How do you determine when the textbooks get switched out? because I noticed that there was a line in there about textbooks going up, but I was pretty sure that they went up the last time around, too. So, there's really a flat aotment for textbooks and then the schools will rotate which department. So, um if you look through um you should see another line somewhere in whatever school you're looking at that has a corresponding decrease in that textbook line. So, um, in the elementary schools, you'll see a little bit of a bump in there. It's not so much a textbook, but classroom libraries they have, um, there's a small increase in next year. And some of that tied to that reading initiative, I think it's a couple
064thousand dollars per school. Um, especially for kindergarten, first grade students have codable texts that are age appropriate. That's what that increase. But the big numbers usually at the high school. Um, and so the high school has a set aotment that they use for textbooks, but uh, they have a cycle. So like one year it might be the science department, the next year the social studies. Um there are times where that may fluctuate where the science textbooks more than the social studies but the base of that um comes from the same pool of money. Um and then the high school all the schools have um a controllable amount. So while the textbook line goes up um there should be maybe a furniture line or something else that goes down. They stay within that allocation. Um and
065our process internally is basically here's your allocation from last year. one, make sure that um you can justify spending that. And if there's anything that's um like a delta plus and you need more than that, then there's a process they go through to do a um a justification and then that's when we start to look at is that something the library was like that last year at Memorial that say the high school how many years science before you well? Yeah. So the interesting complicated thing is that textbook companies no longer move in the one textbook every 10 years that they move to kind of a subscription model with kind of an online resource. So the good news is your textbook is current. Bad news is now it's $5 per book per year as opposed to
066$50 in you could keep it for 10 years. So there are some textbooks we have that are that way. Um, sometimes we'll keep textbooks and only use portions of it and we'll supplement with some of the resources. Uh, so kind of the the former model of we bought textbooks this year and we spent $25,000 and we're good for 20 years. That's kind of everybody's moving to a subscription model that you know the investors that help our pension fund also want to see quarterly profits and that's driven more through you know cycles instead of one time. There was something else in there about cleaning products like Yeah. Yeah. That seemed kind of up like 11 as well. It could be up the the cost of those have gone up astronomically. Um just something as simple as
067paper towels, even though we did price them. Yeah, it's all it's all gone up significantly the last three or four years. Ser is that like a it seems to me that's a big for one year jump because you just build in like you have that contract and you go a couple years and then you rebate or something. We do and and even now we're kind of running behind if you look at some of some of the priors. Yeah, that we've seen a big because and now a lot of the hand sanitiz dispensers all that stuff all hits those lines. So yeah, it's all your floor waxes. It's it's a significant area because obviously everything comes on a pallet. There's just tons of shipping costs and involvement. We do take it into a central warehouse or
068by one meadow but even that it's still been a lot of excellent cost. At one point I did an example I think on uh paper towels and they think they literally lost almost 100% in the last four years very even though getting pricing and everything else they've done pretty significant and they're very basic we're not you know yeah no no bounty they're very basic they are brown paper towels Joe just a quick thing on the roofing estimates you said those are from 2021 one from 1.5 and 2 million. You know, once you get up there, like I know where the town, you did a lot of both projects and there was a lot other a lot of other things going on aside from the roof. So, was that taken into consideration with those estimates? It
069was. And then we're we'll do additional course sampling into the roads and kind of determine the R value and some other things. Yeah, there there's some, but he'll he'll do a much deeper dive into the debris now isolating those. Well, I'm going to have some shingles. Depends on on where some of comes in on some. All right. Well, this concludes this portion of the discussion. really want to thank each of you for coming tonight um and sharing your questions and also appreciate the questions that you submitted ahead of time that Mr. Smith was able to address the beginning um of our meeting and again if you have any further questions please let us know. All right. Thank you. Um we will move to the public hearing portion um of the evening. Um, the board of
070education will recognize citizens of Mbury and citizens are asked to state their name, their town of residents, and to limit their comments to three minutes. I have my phone set to the timer um to keep all of us honest. Um, in accordance with region 15 board of education bylaw 9325A, speakers are asked to express themselves in a civil manner with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others who may be affected by their comments. While it is not the board's intent to stifle public comment, speakers should be aware that if their statements violate the rights to others under the law of defamation or invasion of privacy, the speaker may be held legally responsible. Um, due to FOIA, board members typically do not respond to public comment, but we do welcome public comment and we
071are listening. So, if anyone would like to make a public comment, you're welcome to come up to the podium, state your name, your town of residence, and I'll start the timer. No. All right. Thank you. Now we'll move to the board budget discussion. Um so at our meeting last week, we started to to talk a little bit about um where board members uh were. Um there were a few board members not here um uh due to work conflicts. Um so hoping to get a pulse from the board um on where everyone stands with the budget um and if there's any further information people need any further discussion um you know the anticipation is that at our next meeting on April 7th we will be having our vote. So if anything happen needs to happen before
072April 7th now is the time to ask for it or talk about it. So we had a good discussion I feel like at our last meeting. Um there was uh uh definitely some uh support or you know talk about moving a little bit lower um given the uh circumstances of the stiff accounts and u special education um the reimbursement that we got back from this the state. Um, so I don't like know if people who were not here last week would like to open um, sorry, interest income, revenue, and nonrecurring expenses is what we were looking at to possibly bring down the budget a little bit. So I don't know if people want to start with were not here last week to share their thoughts. Go ahead, John. I think we can reduce it. I
073mean, one thing I know say is I think they could take 1% out of the salaries a vacancy factor because I think every year it's at least 1% over um with the federal funds coming in that reductions there. In addition, I'm a little uncomfortable with adding three additional staff. Um I hear the rationale for all three. But I think you know if we get down to one or two instead of three and the one would be um the facilities I think Joe needs some help but I would say you know more work at the works for supervisor director. Okay. Do you have a number in mind? Half a minute. So, all right. Is that just I just am out the $34 million account. So, I just reduced a half% of the overall budget would be
074I'll let you calculate the exact what he suggested. What does that budget about about a half million to get you down to um gets complicated on the revenue side but the the you be right around right around 5% 5.03 Yes. Sure. So, I watched the discussion. I think we have some video stuff to sort out because Jeremy's name flashes every 10 seconds. But, you know, there's a couple things and usually I I write something, but I I didn't have a chance this week. So first I want to think right Josh and Joe you guys come to this budget presentation fully thinking through scenarios playing stuff out you don't add when you look at all the surrounding Iran's budget and fairfields because I own piece of property there some of them people are coming at 10
07511% budgets and the items that they are bringing up that they need fixed are getting pushed into their town budget so their own board of education budgets are everyone one is essentially right in our dirt above a 6% and they have components in there like they need HVAC system. So if you go through New Town, some of their buildings are a similar age and they're talking about replacing HVAC, replacing roofs. They pushed that all in the town. They g they went through a whole 10-year capital plan and all the pieces and the town is picking up the HVAC replacements. That's a half a million dollars. They budgeted roughly the same that you would um when I went through and did those comparisons. So that's taken their six number, right? And you compare it to us
076moving it up significantly more. What I appreciate about you guys is when you come to us with a budget, it's fair, right? And and this is great, right? There's different ways to do stuff. When you do negotiations, you start, everyone starts high and you come to a place in the middle. The thing that I appreciate about this board the most is that we're so transparent. We come at things wholeheartedly from the beginning saying this is what I need to serve the community. Right? Over the past five years, we've been doing a lot of work about fixing our facilities. Right? And as you I sat and listened to the questions, right, from the town, they're worried about cost pressure. They're worried about us only putting $500,000 a year into our capital budget, right? They're worried about
077pension, the market, right? There's a lot of costs that face us and we're not taking money from putting in a special fund because we don't have that opportunity. So, I would be completely against a half a million dollar component piece. But I also would really ask us all to individually like we're looking to move like a $140,000. What is that to each town? Right? And we talk about the federal funds that doesn't come to us, right? So, I know Mberry because I live in Mberry is quoting a 603 number. The number is not 6%, it's 4.29, whatever was on this slide tonight because that federal money doesn't come to us or state the state money doesn't come to us. It goes to the town specifically that has to be an offset because we're special because
078we're a region. It would be a lot easier if we were new town said, "Listen, I need a roof and a half million dollars." Presenting a 6% number and then saying there's another one and a half of the town's going to pick up. So squeezing out another $140,000 when we have so many capital projects that need to be done. We have so many things every time like Joe sends an email what is breaking now right for $140,000 which is what to each town a tenth of a percent right to put us in a situation right that is going to come back next year and bite us right so if that's something okay we take out 14,000 but next year we have to put that back in there right I would really caution all of us
079on all the work and everything that we've been doing to build a capital plan to be responsible we keep talking about that the last four years for us to start knocking those numbers down I just don't think would be appropriate to thank you can piggy back I appreciate your comments so much um I listened to last week I did not um comment and I also reflected on where we were last year we had extensive conversation because there were board members that really wanted to chip away the budget by the same number that we're talking about this And I don't really understand what value that brings relative. So the reduction I want to to the value and the impact. It seems again disproportionate. I echo everything that you have said and as far as I'm concerned
080I think it's a fair budget and I would be remiss to chip away anything given to volatility and some of the components that are very are fluctuating. I just I think it's a reasonable budget. I think we have extensive history where we have been presented with fair budgets and from my perspective um I feel that it should not be eroded at all. Thank you. So, from there, hold on. I'm gonna let Heather wasn't here last week either, so she didn't get a chance to. Yeah. Um, no, I wasn't here last week, so thank you. [Music] Um, you know, I we did have a discussion last year about reducing the the budget. Um, and I was I was not on board with that. And the reason for that is the reason I still remain concerned. Um
081and that is all of the capital projects in the backlog that we have um in region and I do want to make sure that we have you know um we have our eyes on that capital plan. Um I think you know through this budget cycle Josh and Joe you've come up with some some good plans for the cycling for these roofing projects that we need to look at. Uh, you know, I'm glad that we are we finally ticked off the feasibility study. Um, you know, over the past year to look at PES and GES and all of the um the work that we need we know um would need to be done on those schools to keep them open where they are or possibly building something new to replace them. Um so I was nervous
082to start um creating liability in that in last year's budget when you know the discussion was you know let's say we we cut however however much money we were going to talk about you know let's say we were going to cut half a million dollars out of last year's budget you know we knew that the you know the line item that that would probably come out of was was capital projects. Um and then you know lo and behold over the last year we've had that leak at NES you know we've had HVAC units you know with problems um I I think those I think my concerns are justified um this year um I I'm looking at this and you know we have talked about a couple things and I know from we had prior discussions
083about um those slip accounts um and maybe and maybe we did or maybe adjusting our expectations for that revenue return um the other idea that had come up was this reimbursement that we're getting from the state special education I'm sorry I'm talking a lot but I'm talking a lot of my thoughts we talked a lot I I know well I hate to I hate to labor to get um you know that that reimbursement um I think creates an opportunity and unfortunately we haven't got through all of the policy work that we kind of were you know uh setting up um but you know we do have this opportunity to create an education expense um through that that was just created through legislation in the last year um which could enable us, should we choose to
084go in that direction, to, you know, create something that is more of a special education um better contingency than what we have now. What we have now is we assign a number to special education contingency. It's it's a uh $290,000 which is in the budget. Um and that is really a best guess of you know what liabilities may come in the next year. Um and you know I suppose that number could be zero but you know there are certainly situations where um a situation could come um where the liability would be much more than 290,000. Um, and in that case, you know, we we would have to be looking into other fine items in our budget to um to meet that commitment. Uh, I'm taking a very long way around, too. Uh, I think that
085that reimbursement represents an opportunity to create better structure for special education contingency. Um, I wouldn't want to use that to say down the budget. Um, I would rather use it to structure an actual special education contingency fund that lives through the years that we contribute to through the years that um that we could actually, you know, meet commitments from as they come up um over time. So, uh that so that's a 400 and I'm sorry, Joe 434. for reimbursement and that we have a 290 special education contingency. Um I would be open to um you know seeding that account and maybe reducing our um special education contingency um and not not eliminating it because I do think we still have room to build an account that would serve as a special education. Um but I
086would be open to making some amount of reduction um in that scenario. That said, you know, I'm not talking about half dollars here. Um, but I'm trying to signal some flexibility. Um, if you want to start talking going down that road. Thank you. Great. Tom, I know you wanted to. Yeah. So, I do um appreciate the points of view. I do want to just set the record straight on a couple of things. Um, you know, Shane made a great point that we do have very transparent budget. when the budget comes to us. Um I do believe as I tell that you do as well that it's an accurate representation of what the district believes it is. Um this is especially because some big pieces of information have come out since that budget was presented to
087us. Um the first of which I would say is at the last finance meeting we realized we're trending toward a $2 million surplus. um which can adjust between now on the end of the year but that is as go back and look at other financial reports over past years in my time report that is the largest trend line we've had um in the past five years. So we are currently in a very strong catch position. Now, some of that is aided by a second big piece of news, which we did not know at the time the budget was presented, that the state legislature sent back our way, the $430,000 for the express purpose of easing taxpayer burden and funding special education. So, to not put that money to use for those two purposes feels like
088a missed opportunity when uh we've been vulnerable to our representatives, we've made progress in getting some of our funds back. And if we were to say, actually, just kidding, we didn't need it. We should go and stick it in the reserve account and not put it to use to help the taxpayers put some of that money back in. To me, that feels like it's sending the wrong message back to the people who've been so desperate to be communicated with. And then the third piece of information that was new to me, maybe not to everyone at this table, but at the last finance meeting when you took a look at the revenue that we've been earning on interest and sound if I'm wrong. I mean, but it sounds like in that meeting that was brought to
089our attention because perhaps we're a bit too conservative. You know, in this year we are trending somewhere, we don't know the year, but somewhere between 275 and $300,000 in earned interest revenue. That's well, we missed, you know, in our revenue projection in last year's budget, we missed that by facult, in interest revenue. Um, so we are four times greater than what we budgeted. So next year, yes, it could be a different rate environment. We're also, however, earning interest on a larger four and a half% more dollars if we if we're at this. So perhaps that evens out, but the only data point I have to look at is right now to budget 150 in next year's budget when we're staring at, you know, almost twice that amount this year feels a bit disingenuous. So that's
090an adjustment we could make in our budget without cutting I mean that doesn't cut into anyone's capital line. So what that ultimately might cut into is a surplus at the end of next year. And we could talk about if we're purposely budgeting toward a a purposeful surplus or not. But you know that is not my intention. That's not has not been my approach to budgeting. So if we feel like we are conservative on that 150 that's an adjustment we can make very easily um and save the pay some money because we're pretty confident they want some time. So, you know, I hear that half a million there might not be. And Steve, I know you wanted to go bigger too last week. Um I'm hearing at the table we're not interested in that. I'm hearing
091some people say make less, but you know, Shannon, you said 150 doesn't make a difference. So may I propose something in the middle which last week I said about $350,000 would not at all affect our operating budget next year and the way we could get there is recognizing more interest revenue payown super I don't have the question she identified about $75,000 in you know some of it was in leases where we'd save interest if we just bought that out uh it's nonreoccurring expenses and then as Heather was saying using this new tool that we have um which is the educational expense fund. Let's seed that with the money that was given us for the purpose of special education and then reduce what I see as a very inefficient way of budgeting for um special education
092companies which is as a reoccurring item. Let's instead use that tool and have those hopefully approved if we don't use the whole uh with those three buckets alone. We're not touching operating budget at all and we can very easily it's the most painless $350,000 we could ever find in the budget. This is a special year given all of those recent developments. I think it would be wise of us especially with some of the asks that will be coming down the road for us to take advantage and put more dollars in tax pocket. So sorry because like there's there's some things you're saying Tom which are not correct. So I just want to make sure that we clarify that as you're projecting this huge surplus that $438,000 was something we budgeted. That's not a surprise. That's
093not a surplus. That's not extra money coming back to us. That was always in our budget. What they signal to us in October is they weren't even going to meet. It would be less. So we paused our capital projects, things that we were going to do purposefully and said we're pulling back. What are those? So let me finish as that question four times. Let me finish. Let me get there. Right. Pulled back. Right. And then the state said, well, I'll let Joe kind of talk through. Right. We pulled back and then the state came back in February or whatever and said, "Oh, everyone is angry. The entire state is angry. We're gonna fund you." We are still short in that line $51,000. So, there's no extra money. There's no extra piece that was given us.
094We still have the $51,000 net new budget, right? We're still low. Well, Josh put in, right? The $51,000 So right that surplus that was left was right so a half million down the fact that million swing right was all because of something that happened in Hartford where we had to make adjustments in October so that we weren't at this point in time so say Harford never did that and then we can't keep schools open because we couldn't go and spend the money. So I think there was items right that and I'll let Joe speak to but like saying into the community there was this extra money this surplus coming from Hartford is incorrect. Okay because we budgeted for that and we're still short on what you budget then. Okay so let's I would be very
095curious. I've asked a couple times what are things we have done without because of the shortfall that we've been holding on. So for example Texas cost came in like we held off on the lighting upgrad some thousand dollars dust collector. Those are a few of the items we held back on. Um some of the HDAC, not not not a a long list, but a few because again until the the excess cost center came through. Um it was unclear and and even with the shortfall, we still had room there. So at least felt comfortable that wasn't like really bad. Six wasn't great, but at least we knew it was workable inside that. So how much money are we talking about when you add up those items? So you look at some of those about 120,000 I'm
096not in that list. We've also had I'm trying to call escape at the moment, but yeah, there's there's a but in we also had the um the leak at at MEES which we obviously took that from capital so that hit there and we did tell the board like we thought maybe we're hopeful we could work that out of capital not go to reserve because reserve dollars kind of back so that also hit capital I think that's the biggest thing is some of the repair issues like the uh water pumps at MMS that we paid um after we knew that money the excess cost money was coming had that excess cost money not come back we probably would have capital so like some of the projects if it's it's emergency we have to fix it but
097it's that slow down kind of hold off as well as we can uh because then we would have went to capital so when I look at that I'm misreading that finance report where I see what the unencumbered funds in our budget that are left over Yes. Yeah. It's less than $2 million, right? So, you could spend that 120 on the dust bin and the other thing you mentioned and be at one and the tu the tuition view changed a lot the students moved. So, that shifted those dollars as well. So, I mean that was a point made earlier. Um, write it down. You know, that it's a little bit of a unicorn that we would have two students budgeted at, and I believe about 200,000 each that we expected to pay tuition for. So, that
098tuition line is pretty flush because two students. So, all of those factors add up. But what I'm curious on the bottom line, I want to understand your point because you that seem to take offense of me suggesting that a two million we're trending toward $2 million. I just want to keep the record straight. So 1.8 feels accurate. We're trending towards a $1.8 million. Like what do you want that that number to be? Can we be honest about the fact that this is a big we're anticipating a big batch of unnumbered funds towards the end of this year? that could be but I don't think it'll be a big batch at the end of time. Well, because what we do is we say like last year we only showed 250,000 because we did $650,000 in budget
099that are needed but not budgeted for but weren't budgeted for. But if we were to budget for the projects we need I would say add a million dollar to this budget. Right? If we're going to talk about what we need, what we need to do because we don't have a capital reserve account of 14 million and $30 million respectively. We have it at million dollars. So if you were to say what we're going to do next year, this is how unfortunately because we don't have any money in reserves, we operate. So if someone said okay, we should budget for we need then I would say increase the budget a million dollars. What number is that? Well, that's that's not what we're talking about though. So the point the point of the matter is well no
100not talking about adding a million dollars to budget right hypothetical but maybe I am put it out of there now um the point of the matter is this and it gets back to something I said earlier let's have an honest conversation because some of the I didn't submit the question but someone asked about overbudgeting it seemed like in that model we are purposely overbudgeting to have a big number at the end that we could pay down capital projects based on where that number sits. Wholeheartedly disagree. Okay. So, yes. I mean, the volcan that's going to be a bigger number this year than in recent years. As long as people don't move in though, right? Sure. Right. I mean, the closer you get to the end of the year, the more confident we are that it's
101not going to happen, you know, and the adjustment when we build the tuition line, we b it based on who's here, right? So we don't we don't pad that line. We don't say the last three years two students a year moved in. So you know we don't do any type of analysis like that. It's who's here where are they going next year and then that's what we budget for. And then any surprises anybody that moves in that's where the contingency comes from. That's where other pieces go. There's been years that contingency was gone on July 2nd. Um there was one year that the budget passed on whatever May 7th and like May 9th we were uh we got student. So uh for the following year so that line is volatile. I would say that no
102one pads the budget but in literally Mr. Martino's wall is a list of stuff that is in disrepair and we don't to to Malik but we don't budget for that. There are things that are in disrepair but they're not operationally broken. We can make do with them. They're they're not ready. So towards the end of the year sidewalks all of you walk on sidewalks. Some of our sidewalks are in rough shape. Uh Mr. Plaster was here last telling everybody um how I mean state basketball tournaments and people were impressed except for the big hole in parking lot that had cone stuff in it uh so that no one drove in it. So there's not like an annual we're going to spend $200,000 a year on parking lot. If we get to around this point of
103the year and those special ed tuition lines are running high, we say what's reasonable to go and and now do we don't do that in October because we don't know it. There's going to be other volatility. So as you start to see so we wouldn't necessarily spend down the 1.8 like I I think there's you know there's something in the middle but the idea that we've had the budget to do these projects is not accurate. um that we do look every month as to how we're trending and then start to queue up projects. So that but you can't do a parking lot that way. I can't do big ones. They're small. We have um like asbestous abatement. We can probably do 15 or $20,000 worth of abatement project in the summer, but we don't necessarily
104put together an abatement remediation plan over the next five. We could do that, but might not be a million, but it would be more than we budget right now. And so I think that's where having a contingency or that special ed contingency account I mean there have been districts that that is a million dollar surprise right now we have 290,000 some years we use that very quickly some years it's more than we need but it's not when you talk about risk one person risk mitigation there's another person over budgeting and I think that's the conversation that I don't want to dictate from the community um but you know some healthy in between I would make Mr. working on and I think I don't where we sit today with tuition lines you know you never want
105to be too far in the direction I mean so that those are they're concerning in a good way but I mean you always want to make budgeting everything that sits there and it's hard to deal with the movement of kids um the other area I'm focus on more is like our health insurance fund there's there's currently $2.5 million that sit in the fund we've seen some draws against it we didn't cover our additional dollars to move money into that fund um but you like one of the in the New Town example, their self insurance fund, I believe, and I don't know all the pieces there. There's they they have to really refill the fund. In order for this board to refill a $2.4 million reserve fund, I would take not we're not in that position,
106but I want to make sure we stay into that 25% funding. Um, you know, so there's a there's a lot the debt service line has contributed that surplus as well. That's $430,000 $450,000 um unspent funds and debt service. Good point. All right. Um can you just say that last part? So that debt service we made the last on the long metal bond. uh that was my year date 8.99 and we have currently encumbered uh 450,000 which is the banned interest payment which is due the end of April and then obviously that remaining balance approximately $450,000 that money will more than likely transfer up to capital to do a long clarifying question I thought so the amount of money you budgeted for excess cost reimbursement the percentage is it 65 that's in this current right and
107then with the hardford adding the money I thought said so now you're getting you're getting 73% being around 70% 73% so I thought that was when we talk about found the money I thought that 8ish% difference we were expecting 65% of X and now we're getting 73ish% of X. That difference was 47, right? 430 430 was back 65%. Uh it gets us higher. The the challenge in the excess cost calculation is so for example the kids that move out were in the calculation of the estimate last year. So the number is really never the same on the total dollar value. So you may be submitting against six kids, 10 kids, all depends what's what you have currently. So the excess cost, the reality would have fallen more because obviously those kids weren't reimburseable anymore, right?
108They're not So the 65% that we budgeted was based on a higher Yeah. net cost. I said 65% of X is now lower than because of the surplus and tuition, which I understand. And then so now we're going to get close to 73% of X which is still 73% of the lower number which is closer to the 65% of the higher I think this is only you can understand the confusion right so the the increase the um the right the unexpended dollars in tuition line is a good thing right it puts more in there than we anticipated, but the excess cost really is driven by that tuition line because it's again the four and a half times our per pupil. So, we have to spend about a h 100,000 as our deductible and we get
109reimbursed by over $100,000. Most of the the uh expenses that qualify for that excess cost formula are students that are tuitioned out to other places. Students we serve here never hit that $100,000 threshold. So, they never hit our deduction. So that last year's budget was based on 65% included those outpaced tuition. So those students didn't come. So this year's uh amount that we could apply for was less and in October we were going to get even less than that. But then in February it's actually the day before the budget. So next year's budget corrects for some of this. Um but then the adjustment made it 73% but it's 73% a lower number. Right. And that is so the but bottom line is that's it's we're still going to get so it's not the whole thing
110but we're still going to get more money than we originally in October we thought we were going to be corner $80,000 short this the action that the legislators took in February makes that a $51,000 double. So so just so the the change from 65 to 73 still results in the shortfall of $51,000. Correct. So sorry for that little just few seconds on the interest revenue too. Um and when I did our initial projections obviously there were still questions on rates but also too we've been very mindful of how we hold caps. Well back in the day rates were literally nothing. I mean so I'm not saying it didn't matter but you know again I know we follow lead of our towns. they do the same thing and far better than we even can on our
111side because obviously we're only pulling money monthly where you folks have actual like you know reserve funds that are acrewing. Um, so we've tried to kind of slow draw our AP runs to kind of hold that money as best we can to kind of make sure that interest income number is really as high as. Um, so that's where on our total revenue, we're actually ahead about $100,000 on the revenue side overall. Even though making excess cost number based on where the interest is coming and also too like re um rental's good example, not really in the revenue column, we're making guessing on revenue rental because obviously we really we did a lot of readjusting fees. So I think we'll stay where we were numbers. We'll see how all of our new moves kind of come
112through while we do that. So there's a few things there. Okay. Are there any further comments? I mean we're not going to go for a vote now obviously, but any other Well, so can I just get clarity on the things I was saying earlier? So, um, and this is I'm just curious if I were to pitch the idea of recognizing more revenue in next year's proposed budget based on the strongly return, would anyone at this table have strong opposition to that concept based on interest? Yeah. Like like this year we're going to make twice as much as we projected last year. So it seems like we're a little low. Seems like that's super concerning. Is there a general willingness to adjust? That's right. I just when we're talking about asking us to make decisions, this
113is where I struggle a little bit, right? We need to use real numbers, right? Saying twice as much is not correct. It's not twice as much. Last last finance meeting, Joe gave a range of 275 to 300. 285 was the number I gave. You're projecting 150. So you're approximately 135. So we're $135,000 and that's yeah somewhere in the middle of your projection, right? So would anyone be opposed to strongly opposed to raising? Is that something we could talk about next week? Raising instead of projecting $150,000 in interest revenue given that we're planning on making $285 in interest revenue. Can we adjust that number up from 150 in next year's revenue projections? Would anyone be opposed to that? I'm just trying to figure out where we can have discussions next week. So, I wouldn't right. I
114wouldn't try to start telling John Josh specific areas. We could talk with us. I don't think it's our perview to really say do this, do that. I would be okay with adjusting that number, but the $130,000 I would want to go into capital reserve. Like, the number is fair that we're presenting. I don't think there's fluff in here. I think the budget was transparent and honest. And I know that Joe and Josh reworked this the night before when we got new excess cost numbers in. They reworked all of the pieces they know about aren't something they left in there. They reworked it all. Right? The roofs are short. They're going to be short on dollars. We know that like the roof's not one and a half million. It's a $2 million roof, right? So, so
115we start talking about what I would consider on a almost $100 million nickel and diamond for $130,000. I'm fine with moving that number, but I want it moved into capital. Like, I'm not comfortable sitting here saying, "Let's take the number down when I know the list of things we have to do." And everyone's worried about that we're short on capital. Like the town, all their questions, I wrote them all down were all about we don't have enough capital. What's our capital plan? Where's the money? Are we self-funding? We're trying to save ourselves interest. We have to bond those groups. There's your $130,000 just in bond fees. So, it sounds like we're all open to having that discussion. The second thing is the superintendent has offered $75,000 in non-recurring expenses that we could pay down, but
116they're not necessarily capital related, but you said one was like switches for the Your numbers are going up from last week, Tom. Okay. Last week you had 50,000 in non-reoccurring. Um, Superintendent Smith answered a question about how much they had available. I know, but you were proposing 50. Now you're at 75. I'm only going with I didn't have an answer. It was 40,000 in switches and 35. Now that number could be somewhere in between there, but are we open to a very meager number, $75,000 in non-recurring expenses? Can we have a discussion about paying some of that down and taking it out of the next year's budget uh this year? things can take turns. I mean, I don't I have something I want to raise. I just don't want it to just be So, it
117doesn't sound like anyone's closed down. Yeah. I mean, and you said last week, too, Tom, that you had you were looking at the recognizing more revenue. You're looking at the interest income. I'm just making sure it's not reoccurring. Surprising things next week. The last thing is, you know, as Heather had said earlier tonight, um if we see that uh expense again, that educational expenses perhaps reducing the amount in um in the recurring special education. Was anyone opposed in principle to having that discussion? Okay. I just wanted to make sure that was all fair. But I don't think anyone's answering you, right? Because we're we're trying to do situation. You're saying it, but I think Steve said like point of work, right? Yeah. Well, nice. Yeah. Go ahead. Um, so I'm not against your question. Uh,
118but the clar question I want to comment. So the data person that we want to hire is not considered an additional um it's a net neutral position because there's someone that is retired. Um, I thought there was budget. I know exchange, but I mean like there's going to be one less person because they're retired account but not cost, right? One more person because we will hire. Um, so I think I do not agree. I don't I don't want to be talking necessarily about 150,000 250. I don't I don't You're right. it just it's just it's it's not enough to move the needle, you know, either way. Um I approached it differently um in that just to briefly repeat like if if we pass this budget then we'll have raised it about 18% in four years.
119So regardless of what is needed to be done in the district, I felt that just because you have done that like maybe it is time to maybe just put the brakes on it because it's a lot to raise it in four years. I know they were difficult four years but put the brakes on it to demonstrate some some restraint. Um and that's why I actually had suggested coming down to 39 which is what you had. Um we act like that I agree that we like whenever we have to forgo something we end up forgoing like it just seems to be like what what we do. Um and we act like that's not a choice like that that we could forgo something else. Um I stated last week that um based you know on the nextG
120reports we are for every student we have more employees per student in that ratio than we than similar talent and if we talk about like the I agree I think the budget is sound um but and I understand that we are you know that we have the scores that were in here that that someone from finance pointed out. Um those were scores from two years ago. Our scores have come up. So I think think we're on the right track. I think at some point as an organization we can say all right like there must be some efficiencies that can happen that can help us lower the number. Um, and as an example is we can let someone retire. I please, you know, I get I'm sure that person works hard every day and does a
121lot of valuable work, but that person can retire and we can hire someone else. What happened to the work that that person did? Like where does that go? Like is that being reassigned to other people? Like to me that's that's a conscious choice of of an efficiency that that we're making. So I don't under So to me I'm like what I think we can just I just want to say it's been too high. I need it to be lower. Honestly we vote on the number of that's it. So really to me it's just pick a number and to your point let if it is lower than the proposed number let the administrators decide just right how that's going to work. Right. And we don't need to we've given them our opinion and I think they
122can hopefully factor that in. Right. Well that's typically what happens anyway. So that that's how I copy that. All right. So what I'm hearing is that we've got couple people that are at the proposed budget, couple people that are at half a million lower, and the rest is somewhere in between. So higher that you're okay. All right. Um so I think I'm not hearing any new information needed. Right. Um, so I think that um we could just have our budget discussion and vote on the seventh and well I'll start with the proposed budget that'll be on the agenda that number. So just a question, a logistical question, right? So how does that work that we're all in different places? So like we'll just keep voting and amending. I'm just trying to understand like right because
123typically we have been um more in a same place. That's really bad sentence. But we have either been like in two we've been in two pages or mostly a line as we've gone into the lab. Yeah. So, this will be the first time maybe that we're in various places because I'm hearing like a $500,000 number. I'm hearing a 350 number, maybe two places. I don't really know. Right. So, so there is a lot of numbers. Actually, I feel that there, like I said, I think there's a couple extremes on either side and I think the majority is somewhere in the middle. So, I think I'm pretty comfortable with that. Can I ask a question though? Can you remind me of the vote and the weight because that's an important component. I know we talked about
124that last year because it's not a pure maturity. It's a weighted vote. So, can you just remind me of the weight and how that's calculated? I do not have my chart in front of me. Um, so Okay. Yeah. So how the budget votes are weighted, it's a pro rata um weighted vote that's decided by state. So thank you. A South Berry vote counts as 1.23. A middleberry vote counts as 66. And that is pursuant to the Connecticut census data. And that is prorated like how our budget is weighted. portal represent but but I think 10 15 years ago it was the exact opposite got like more and a half since yeah it was Mbury had more because they had less people so they had a higher we're in the hearing now I know it's all
125good thank you the my understanding of the statute is there it's proportional representation so if you wanted three members middlebury has three members in Southbury could seven and then it would be one but because it's four and six that's where that waiting I don't believe that's how it was make one more comment on budget number um so I they're like most of what what you were saying my one concern with the um with the numbers and again this is the like we don't micromanage kind of thing but it was more from a transparency um perspective was just the revenue predictions and you know again this is sort of like moving little things and but it's but it was more of a yeah more of a sort of transparency issue of are we actually doing that
126properly and I wouldn't necessarily in favor of cutting the budget for that but by putting it into a lot of fun that we have in front of us too but I just wanted to clarify that that wasn't a like give that you know reduce it by this much and that's good it was more really for the transparency of the process and along that same line I think kind of what you were saying Steve I do agree with you. We have to trust that the administration is going to put the money where it's best appropriated. But I do think that when there are changes and shifts in what that budget and this con there is 100% need for transparency and that is going to increase class size, right? That's a whole different conversation, but that's going
127to cut teach a whole different conversation. So I want to be very cautious about well we're just approving a number and we're giving the administration kind of cart launch to appropriate it the right way because there are certain I think motivators and factors that are definitely important to to the community and there could be different skews of that but I definitely would want to understand how the money is being appropriated. the conversation today about the offset, the special ed, like I can get behind that, but I I really really struggle with the fact that there are such a laundry list of things and we're talking about such a small percentage of such a huge budget and what is the benefit of of that? Well, I'll leave it there, but um I just wanted to comment.
128Um, so I would just um point that up because I wanted to ask about but I uh would in my mind I would make a motion in the sense of you know um given our discussion on decreasing the contingency to this or adding you know raising the revenue or you know like kind of spelling it out um you know motion to reduce superintendent's budget by X. So you're sort of spelling out an emotion where you're coming from, right? Like just just you can't you can't you can't find I think just tendency doing that, but you can say like this is this is this is this is why I'm making a motion, right? But so yes, so how how the the how it goes is that we negotiate different dollar amounts. But if the board said
129I do not want the data warehouse and everyone agreed to not wanting the data warehouse, I don't think the superintendent's going to get the data warehouse. But so but it's just much easier to just deal with dollar amounts unless there's something specific that the board really does not want in the budget. Heather and then Heather. Um I just want to ask, you know, we've been talking about this backlog of capital projects and you know, we did have a presentation with a with a fiveyear capitalist plan. Um and and just just transparency sake. Um, is this laundry list is it all on a 5-year capital plan that's we already have out there or is there things that that you know come up or been added to it since then? Yeah, I mean there's there's stuff out
130there. Um, the HVAC unit, the compressor 40,000 that was in the development was on capital repair expensive repair item. Um, we've got I'm trying for PS and GS is on there. Correct. Correct. That's the big elephant in the So I I I did for example have a conversation with Tecton about kind of the sustainable plan for PS and GS. So I would say you know 2030 is in theory all goes well on the timeline those those schools have five. So the conversation really was you know we're going to take we're going to take a deeper dive into the roofs kind of what's up there if we do more patching and those sort of things to make them go. Um, one of the updates I believe like the steam the steam traps at game field do
131not work. The valves that open close but $18,000 project if you don't contain the steam there's a chemical mixture that does it erodess the pipes and you get steam leaks and you have moisture issues. So like that's project push the button that's got to go to get done that is a heating. So it's those things weren't on the capital. So question the capital is a known list of fairly large items that are at end of life or beyond end of life and prioritized. In addition to that capital list, there's things like the steam trap. There's things like the uh the I'm looking at Sally, but it's the memorial um the the sewer line pumps that broke earlier this year. So those are things that are that are breaking. But then in addition to that I
132mentioned the like you have buildings with asbestous that need mitigation because floors are failing. Some of those things did not meet the capitalist that capitalist was prioritized. We could go back part of the reason we say facility supervisor I'm fine with like the title. Um it was it was called facility director before. So we and you had one until I think it was like 20 206. Um, and you had a facility director. Part of the reason having a facility direct is important to us is because of that tier two and tier three. Joe and I, it's very obvious that things are on that capital plan. The things that are a little further down the line are less obvious. But when they fail, they become like memorial was a whole wing there. I didn't have a
133bathroom for whatever that was, three or four days, five days. Um, so like that wasn't on the list. The now plan is not only we replace that one but redundancy so that won't happen again. So there there's kind of intertwined with the capital list is a prioritize. We had 470,000 in capital on that list that we prioritized around I think back to that November. One of the board members I believe asked a question like what should that number be? And again, it was hypothetical. If you had a million dollars in that operating capital line, you'd have that more like asbestous plan in there. But at 470, you start with what's the biggest stuff that needs to be fixed most immediately that impacts daily operating sort of. So the offshoot that was like, so that began
134another project at Memorial because now we're looking at redundant pump system 25 or 30,000, but then we've got redundancy with a pump failure plus a smaller pump, easier to get. um the high school switch failure began another project of what about the other six schools and their big disconnects. So now this summer we're looking at pricing for to service all the main disconnects and through that process now the main disconnect at middle elementary is an end of life unit there's no h has like a rebuild kit well for some reason which is not our old school mees that one that unit has to be an indirect full replacement so that's about 25 to 30,000 but if the switch fails there's no other way to rebuild it kind of on the fly so that's why we're
135looking at placement there. So it a lot of projects begin another project and an offshoot of another. So that's kind of where you know the cattle plan, you folks know the cattle plan always always evolves. Um yeah where it was going really was if we're going to talk numbers at the next meeting then I I kind of do want to understand you know what's on Humber what do we what could we do with that you know based on you know this list of priorities and some of them you know like everything you're saying sounds like things we probably should do but um you know where I'm going with this is, you know, if we're going to have a conversation about dollars and what dollars, you know, uh, are important to people, then then I think
136one piece of information I'd like to have is is this list kind of like immediate priorities of things that need to be April. Yeah, that'll be a point, but that doesn't relate to next year's budget, right? Well, it relates, you know, we're talking about unencumbered money and how do you lose that um then it then I think it does because we're, you know, part of what we're talking about doing is is moving budget line items because we have the sun, but I don't think it's as much as everyone thinks it's going to be. But I don't know like if we're going to have those numbers, right? because the February like right the the we're not going to have a final estimate for for all of that stuff but I want to understand like what projects
137are on offer you know that that need to be done what I'm hearing is that that list was can change on a dime and that's I think always the worry and I recognize budgets have been high but we also have the legacy of not investing in our infrastructure which is resulting in exactly the situation we're in. So, I there's a fine balance here and I think we have to we're seriously having the conversation, but I think we have to be very careful about what we're potentially jeopardizing even with a small reduction. Yeah. Um I think we're in a very different place than when I first got on the board. um we had no money in the reserve and it felt like we weren't doing any upgrades that weren't basically PTO funded. We're in a great
138place right now in comparison and I thank both of you and all of us actually too for that. Um other than PES and GES which are really the like the elephants the two elephants in the room. Um, I think also at that time it was hard because we could define what we wanted to and vote on it. But it was abundantly clear that once we passed a budget, it was now no longer our budget. It was superintendent and finance director's budget to do with what they wanted. You know, it's basically the same thing. But I think the difference now is our relationships with you guys are a lot more transparent. Um, what you're doing with it is more transparent. So if we said cut it by this much, don't take away this, you know, what
139can you do, um I have more faith in the process now than I did then. Um and a lot of that was the way it was set here now. This is my proposed budget. Now it's the board's budget while it's back on the table and could have done what they wanted to with it. Um so I do trust the process a lot more now. But I do think um there is room for discussion next week. I think, you know, maybe not in the exact way, but I'd be open to having a discussion on if there's a little bit of wiggle room here and there and what you propose to do with it. Um, I'd like to hear that. Define wiggle room. Sorry, you guys are all talking about different numbers. I'm willing I'm all I'm
140saying is I'm open to coming to the table to having a discussion. Yeah. Will we have the numbers on the rooms by next time we meet? We won't have that. I don't know. We'll have them by this summer. I just aren't here. But just because you brought it up and I I meant to bring it up soon. Um so there were some some comments from community about the prag of it fourth grade. Um, so and then I had it it was reduced to section and now when I look at this it's going it's going my reading this right it's going back to the next year they'll be in fifth grade and I see 65 66 projected enrollment for teachers so 16.5 um I think uh it might be helpful if you just we saw your
141your Saturday report to us and you mentioned how the class sizes can over and flow over time based on like who lives in or who lives out or what teachers are up rooms in the building and union and discussions with the principles and all that. Um, so this to me though is is not when we talk of this is not is not a contract like I think you get to change this as you did last year. You get to change it again if something happens. I think this is like your good faith estimate, but things can change and I think the community needs to know that like I don't want people voting yes or no because they are they cannot be 100% sure that their kid is going to make whatever school this is going
142to be the way. Um I just put that out there. It's not it's not it's not a contract. So um when we talk about Okay. Yes, you have a number. Even even if I don't want to tie your hands and can't change this just because I think that's up to me. No. Are you done? All right. I I think the situation is slightly different in that we recognize that class size is fluid just like um students moving in and out of the district is fluid relative to the budget conversation. I think the concern um and frankly it was my concern. I spent I think two hours in your office um in early September talking about this was one of my items. um and we've seen an influx of communication coming in since is that it
143was communicated that it was headcount neutral and as a result it was a 25% increase to that class size and I think we're not talking about class here class there it was a significant increase so the 16 to the 22 and 23 and when we start talking about um teachers time with students understanding the needs of students, how to teach to their needs. We've just increased the workload and decreased the ability for teachers to spend that time from an instructional perspective um with those students. So from my perspective, I heard mixed messages last year and I've spoken about that since that this cycle of the board event has started and it's continued. Um, and I think that the instructional classroom size is a very important element of the conversation to parents who have children in
144those schools. And I think it also speaks to our infrastructure because 23 children is a lot perhaps in other districts it might not be. I think it's high. It's also relative to the space that they have. And if you spend time in that classroom, it's hard. And I'm only in there a little bit. And I think it's hard but but I think it's also trying to ensure that what is put on there from a transparency perspective I think that there was a sudden shift in August and that had a significant impact. This is not something that's multiple parents have come up to me multiple emails have come in and as a parent I I also was concerned about it. I think it is a very important conversation and it's one where I hear well we'll
145make adjustments to the budget and I think there needs to be boundaries. Again, this is not a contract and things have to be fluid and we need to make sure we can manage the business, but I do think that it's it's an important conversation because it it can be perceived that it's impacting instructional education. So, um, yeah, I just I just want to be clear that if this budget is passed and then this changes, like that's okay. Like it it may not be okay because of the reasons you described and it may be almost um, you know, we're leaving people as a certain, you know, we you know, they think one thing and something else happens. I understand that that that's upsetting. Um I think though what you're like we have class size guidelines and
146these um these are all within the class size guidelines even at 23. So to me as a board when we set policy like we're not this should not be part of a budget discussion. It should be well then do the guidelines need to change and the guidelines are you know sometimes they show up on different slides sometimes. I think those are pre-covid guidelines correct but if you want to have postco guidelines then I think that needs to be a discussion held outside the stressors of passing the budget and you know I think then you get the superintendent input and if he's you know and we'll go from there I I do think what I'm hearing from the board though is not touching class sizes in this budget or really touching anything um substantive in the
147budget proposal that Mr. Smith did. It's more a discussion of do we want some unencumbered funds shifted in a different way to reserves or the educational um expense account. Thank you. Um so it's more of a philosophical discussion about uh capital reserves and what to do with projects that need to be done. Um, that's what I'm hearing. Um, so I think that that's all doable for April 7. Um, it's interesting you guys have stayed here. I said last week that I would love to match the reserves that the towns have. Um, years. It takes years. Um, you know, and I I I and I get it. And we're a little bit late to um to building our reserves because you know we had a different philosophy with the prior uh superintendent and administration and we
148have uh definitely shifted things to a better in a better direction. Um but I I agree with you Shannon um that you know we need to build our reserves because you know we have a lot of facilities more than the towns and very expensive things to fix at times. So I absolutely hear that. I absolutely hear what Tom is saying that you know we have some um unicorn issues that happened after the proposed budget. I think and I hope that the board can come together and reach consensus and some kind of middle ground um on on these kind of like a more limited uh uh view of the what we're discussing in the budget like we're not touching the data processing center. We're not touching I'm not hearing that kind of stuff. So um I'm
149I am comfortable um basically saying let's talk budget on April 7th. Um we could do you want to do something more in terms of a list of immediate priorities for projects actually um no um finance is at noon on on Monday for the board meeting. So it's like we're just right. Yeah. We'll have that list of finance that we'll bring in. Yes. So we will be you can repeat that list a little bit too. Yeah. About what? Yeah. Originally that was going to be kind of year end. What are the things that we want to address now that we can layer in here are some things that we can do now that would reduce that. we we've been through and I know it's hard for the uh people on the outside to understand the vast
150majority. How how can you look at a $94 million budget and find $75,000 with a non-reoccurring costs? And the reality is that again to the question around textbooks, almost all of the items in our budget are shifted to a reoccurring utilities, staffing, all those are reoccurring costs. When you get down to the what can you buy one time that is not going to come back in a future budget, the list is pretty small. I think after that you start looking at what services do you no longer want to provide. That's a different that's a different conversation. But of the one time nonrecurring capital, uh there's just not a lot that's in that project. So we'll have that list for you on uh whatever final April 7th. Thanks. Sorry, Mary. Yes. Can we clarify that at
151expense account for the I'm not sure. So the go ahead. Yeah just so the legislature at the end of last year we always had a capital reserve fund which is always in 2% of the fund just 2% of the operating budget get transferred into it. Uh late session in June the legislature made what's called an educational expense account which then it is a little bit like an unrestricted fund like you folks have but not exactly. It can go towards educational expenses, special ed, or really any place in the budget there was a pool where it would be held short. It's not just capital items we talk about. So now the board has like two funds established. One which is established at expense still but that's you hear those terms that's that's where those two items
152come from. Capital 2% total for both. It is% the amount hasn't changed. No amount has not changed but the but the you know Yeah. where you can put it. We've never come close to putting 2%. I want to make it clear with everybody listening. It's usually like one half of 1%. If that. Yeah. And the board is seeking to do policy and curriculum committee to define the educational expense guard rails. Um and we talked a little bit about this last week. Um PNC is looking to maybe limit it to only special education costs unless unless there's a twothirds vote to do something else. So, we're trying to this will be a forboard discussion, right? But since Joe was talking about the expend. All right. Any other questions or comments? Just the finances on this. Yeah,
153I'm gonna say it. Y that's my bad. All right. So, announcement of future meetings. April 7th, we have a finance meeting at noon and that is at MIG. Um, also on Monday, April 7th, PNC is meeting at the Humber Media Center at 6:30. On that same day, we have our regular board of ed meeting where hopefully we will be voting on our budget and adopting a budget. Monday, April 28th, PNC meets at 6:30. Also, Monday, April 28th, board of ed meeting at the high school, 7:30. May I have a motion to adjurnn? Thank you, Heather. Have a second. Second. Then to second.