03-05-2025 BOE Budget Workshop

001good evening I'm GNA call this meeting for the region te Board of Education to order for Wednesday March 5th we please stand for Pledge of Allegiance Pledge aliance to stat mission of region 15 a collaborative Community committed to Excellence is to educate every student to be conductive ethical and engaged in the global Society through proven and innovating Innovative learning experiences supported by its strong Community whose decision- making is based on the best in of all students we're here tonight for our first budget Workshop um and we're going to be talking about curriculum in instruction people services and capital um so we'll start with our curriculum in instruction parts of our budget is going to start tonight with her budget for the areas um we've tried to streamline the presentations for you and I think there

002is a um print version that's been distributed already do you have all three would you present so also in your pite you'll see you have a one for people services and a presentation for Capital I've also included graph one of the questions we've had so far uh that have come in from board members we can talk about those after the capital and then those will go on theb as well thank you very much um for the opportunity to share some highlights of um budget instruction um to the next um just to share uh a overview of the curriculum and instruction Department this budget actually the proposal is it maintains the professional learning opportunities or or uh professional development for staff uh so there's really there really wasn't much of a change in that line item

003next year's folks we talked a little bit about that portra of a learner how do we Implement that and make sure that those attributes are in our curriculum and what do those actually look like from kindergarten all the way up to 12th grades and looking at tier one supports what are the supports that we do inside the classroom um with all students um the teacher education reimbursement is a contractual thing so that uh has been maintained in the budget along with um the team mentoring sement and so the team mentoring sement is um something for mentors for teachers that are new to the district they are new to teaching they have a mentor for two years um that's not only contractual it's actually a state statute and so um that one is in there to

004pay teachers to be mentors to new uh to new teachers new to the profession there's a slight decrease in some of the items um so the testing line went went down by a little bit um the reason for that is for nwaa there was an add-on that you could do um for math that um was for KH Academy that now is free um so we don't have to payer Con Academy in for um it's open it's an open source um curriculum writing went down a little bit just because when you look at the cycle of curriculum writing um there weren't as many uh courses that we needed to work on this coming summer and other supplies went down um and that was because there was some there was um in my budget if you remember

005last year for the um the map Elementary map manipulatives those were in my budget those you don't have to buy every year eventually we'll have to replace some of them but it's not a yearly consumable thing so that's why other supplies are down a little bit you'll notice there is a little bit of an increase um about $800 um in other purchase services and I'll explain more about Monday night because I get theend payment on Monday night um about elementary and middle school MTH competitions which is something really exciting that we started um this year be a little bit more more formal so I'll explain that a little bit more on Monday but that $800 to paper um element Middle School student participate in that competitions um one thing that's new um we to go

006next slide one thing that's new to the um curriculum instruction uh department is the multilingual department and so this is the first year that it's been under uh me um my department so there are some budget increases or some things that are new to the multilingual uh budget we increased the supply line um for about about $1,200 um for in high school of resource and so that resources for ML students and what it does is it allows them to do uh Project based assignments or tasks it also does progress monitoring all of that is aligned to the last links test which is a test that multilingual students actually just finished um it's a state requirement to see there to gug a level of their relance proficiency so uh that increase was to get that resource

007to make sure that we are working with students aligned to that um that assessment multilingual uh textbooks are up by um $1,500 and that's we have consumables at the elementary school level usually we buy some and we have them um you know in case we need them we actually ran out of them this year and so that's replenish um mainly for the primary grades that that resource something that's new this year are uh in the ml department is um in the other purchase services and what we did is we put in uh money for interpretation and translation services that's actually something that we um are legally bound to be doing providing parents with an interpreter if they come to things like open house or PBT or conferences or if you sent um a notice home

008getting that translated into their need and their home language and so um we dates about $10,000 based on what we've used so far to date and what we um that are going to use from now until the end of the school year so that's actually new line in in the department sure so do you have to hire people to come in and be there or what so um for the interpretation yes we do and actually um we are working with a company that's actually really responsive we can call them to say like next Tuesday you need um an interpreter for Spanish or Mandarin and they'll find the person and then they'll send it actually yes yeah so they got yeah we do and we did say can we have at least two weeks in advance

009but sometimes it's been last minute and they've been pretty responsive we actually did send them the calendar for next year of like conferences openhouse um orientation so they have that on their calendar so they know that these might be um dates will we need more than one interpreter and the interesting thing was they actually called us this week and said what's going on next week because um we have a lot of people from Regent calling for um interpreters we said we have Elementary conferences and so that's why we were like they should send them next year's dates ahead of time so they can mark their calendars for that so that's yeah in person um the feedback from that this year has been amazing from families that have said you know they feel um very much

010like they belong here in region 15 having someone that sits next to them that can explain to them what's going on um during a presentation or what a teacher saying during open house so the feedbacks been really positive from the families which is great to hear so um one thing that's not necessarily in the assistant superintendent's budget but is something that would sit underneath the um assistant superintendent is the data warehouse and we talked a little bit about it um about it last time when documented the budget um so why so why do we need a data warehouse and so one of the things we've been focusing on over the last few years is about that idea of teachers being able to differentiate or staff instruction to meet the needs of all the students in

011their classroom and so in order to do this we do that by looking at data and the data needs to be timely it needs to be that just in time data and so um one of the things that a DAT Warehouse helps with is being able to gather that data so it's not teachers and administrators working to get the data and by the time we get it sometimes they could be out of date so having this data warehouse actually streamlines that ability to get that just in time data and to be able then to have teachers and administrators spend the time on using the data for instructional strategies or strategies that teachers better in their classro really is a way more effent with looking at data and then being able to act upon that data

012and so having the data warehouse actually provides information and and streamlines the conversation to support student learning it's a way to have like a broader picture of the student so um if you look at the bottom there those are all the different tools that we look at to have to uh find information about student so things like um that comprehensive Assessment program for esac which has the literacy the math and the ngss all there NWA know you know that we have the map Ro for map and the map road for literacy and we have the reading fluency those the read feny doesn't talk to the other two um the other two assessments so we have to pull that information by hand we have some spreadsheet that we use um for like school-based assessments or we're

013doing intervention um ml students have a different platform that we have to go look at special ed students have a different platform that we have to look at World Language assessments have a different platform that we have to look at so there are all these different platforms that if we want to see that complete picture of the student we have to go pull that information and then figure out how we're going to put that into a sheet so that if a teacher wanted to use it they have all those data points we even saw this year that as teachers compiled data they had to make them their own um emojis I would say to kind of uh have a key on what those things mean so for example they would have the NWA assessment there

014they'd have to go and then find the NG um the the EST assessment and then if we wanted to know if the students are at risk students so freeing reduce launch ml or special ed they actually then were handwriting in like a smiley face to show that that meant that they were they were high kns so a lot of this work currently is being done by hand um which is inefficient an and so um by having a data warehouse we'll be able to analyze way level data we can analyze data based on content so if we only want to look at like math scores if we want to look at Trends from from by school or Trends by grade level across the district we be able to do that um currently like I said we

015need to look in like all those places plus to be able to find some of the data and those um tools right there are those at thousands of data points and it's not not only the academic data Power School houses things like attendance data um the data warehouses that we're looking at will also hold mtss orl data um that that teachers can enter and being able um to compare the data from the various tools like I said requires a lot of this to be done manually and it's really time consuming and we really should be focusing on not trying to gather all this stuff but be able to spend time on what are the instructional strategies we're going to try in the classroom based on what the data are telling us sure why would dat

016and not just a so and I'm sorry K I miss this um I know that I my mind was going there too I um but as far as the line items in the budget what's the cost for the data warehouse versus that I know we have I think what is it 75k for the data man but what's the cost of this so right now in the budget is 18,000 it's under the district um services and then one of the other questions I had is um because when I think of data warehouse it it's it's the aggregation and consolidation of all those thousands and Plus data points that each reference but is that warehouse capable of synthesizing that data and programming it to pull those reports and so where I'm going with this is when you

017start talking about the data manager I want to understand how their role differentiates relative to what this system can provide us automatically yes okay okay so um if we go to the next slide and hopefully I'll be able to answer in the next few slides that if not been make a yes so I just want to share with you the the process and the timeline that we went through um when we're looking at the data warehouse so this past fall uh Josh and I and Russ um talked to different districts around the state about the data warehouse and said like what are you using do you like it you know like what and what are the ones that come up the most poten what are the ones that are the most recommended and we were

018actually able to narrow that narrow that list down we then asked um staff in the region 15 would you volunteer to be on a committee to take a look at some of these uh data warehouses and so in December um right before break and January right when we came back from break um the the committee jumped on zoom and we had the people come and uh we had an hour presentation for each one of the platform uh potentials and we had um a sheet that said what are some questions that we have what are some positive things that you liked about it what are some things that you have a question about or you have some concerns about um and then we asked them to rank so from one to you know the lowest like

019rank one being the highest one that you really liked um and then the low the highest number being necessarily should look at and so then took the top two and we brought that to the administrators and we did kind of that same thing we had those top two come to an ad meeting they hour share out um about their product and they actually do us a Sandbox to play in so the sandbox is fake data or mock data that you then can go through using their platform um and so the um upcoming is that um joshh and I are going to talk to some of the in Connecticut that Ed the top to that our um committee and our admins have Tak over that we're going to talk to them to see to get some

020feedback from them we're looking at um if the budg passes making a selection in May June um for a data warehouse and then in the summer we can populating that platform with the data that we have um and making a dashboard for staff and then really next school year would be training staff on how to use that dashboard and to begin using the platform so that's that's kind of like the timeline that we went through in the timeline that we're hoping to go through um come spring summer and next fall so that data and your position Josh mentioned last time that it's FTE neutral so it's really repurposing um that support position that already exists in um central office and so this the summary or what we envision this um data manager doing rather than

021a data um analyst is to oversee the management and maintenance of that um system so that means making sure that all the data that we have so whether that's from those different portals or tools that I showed you or whether it's from spreadsheets that teachers have all of that gets uploaded into that platform it would be a 12 month position and that it supports Educators and administrators in providing reports for them to make those decisions through instructional decisions and so one of the things um we talk about is not having that data manager analyze the information or the teacher or the administrator it's really providing them with the reports so that we as educ ators can look at it and make those instructional decisions and so um the nice thing about the data platform is

022the dashboard so when you click on it and you open it up can be tailored to the different um different Educators in the school or in the district so like Josh and I can open a platform and see um all the different schools where if we go down and the principal can see what's in their school the teacher can see their classroom so whatever um is on that home screen would be different depending on what your position is in region and so it's going to have to be someone who kind of manages that and knows um like who the different people are to make sure first of all that's there the other thing too um we envision is having that data person go to meetings data meetings at the school so that we're sitting in

023a third grade meeting and we're talking about data and they want a report that shows um free and reduced lunch kids third grade um um reading scores from esac and then um our um our our TC assessments the data person go back and make that report and then send it to them so it really is being responsive to the needs of the teacher the grade level the school the administrator to say I need a report that's going to show me this can will build thing and so that might take a little bit of time for the person to get up to speed um and also for us to get up to speed on what the platform to do but um from the conversation that we had with either one of the um warehouses it really

024can generate any report that we can Envision we just need to be able to Envision that and have someone who's going to work on that for each one of us to have to be able to learn the system well enough to be able to pull reports like that would just take too long and again it goes back to like that efficiency it's really efficient to have one person who as Josh said wakes up every day thinking about like that job and and those reports to focus on that so that we as the Educators can determine then what we need to do in the classroom and in the school that so again it's about having that data to make those instructional decisions rather than spending time trying to find all that data to then have that

025conversation question because you kind of hit on what where I was going but um is the expectation that this person will acclimate to the dashboard Ure the enity of the information run the requested reports but then those reports would be programmed so at the end of the 12 months you guys actually would have the information in the dashboard to be able to hit a button and get the reports you need because when I hear you're speaking sounds like there could be a desire to have this person long term in my mind I'm thinking 12 months and in my mind I'm thinking well if all of that work is done on Prim and programmed in that 12 month period Then should be self- sustainable after the so you talk a little bit about that because otherwise

026it's and maybe that's not that never happen no I understand but I'm just I'm trying to say we're talking about it in a 12 month period at a 75 but I think they saying it's a one year not a 12 Monon contract this is a new FTE but it will be be here through the summer typ contract that's not what I'm saying so the way this is presented is a 12 month position it's new to this budget it's head rral where I'm going conversation is after this if we if we say yeah you want this and it's going be part of the budget and it's $75,000 of 18,000 for the warehouse is it going to ultimately be a recurring cost year over year iar um I'm agre open to set it up to one year

027and then again if the everything's brok so you could um one of the things that we found is they will give you five free um uploads and the rest they charge you per upload and so if we go back to that um that list down there there are thousands of data points on there so to pay per data point or per report would be a lot more money than um than the position so that that's one thing the other thing too is the data keep changing so as we have assessments um you know there are things that um like for example I can take the the data um uh presentation that we do like that information to be able to run that right now it takes me two months for all that data together and

028so that's because I do that and my and the other things that I have to do so to have someone that focuses on that every year um is is is helpful same thing with all the data that um teachers or administrators want that will change depending on the trends that they think they're seeing or that they want to investigate to be able to to be responsive to what they're seeing in the class so it yes there are some reports that may be reoccurring ones that happen and you can set up a formula to be able to do that but the re real reason to have this person is to be responsive to what teachers um are seeing in the classroom if there are new trends or new things that they want to investigate that just

029we don't know about like try to CL clarify two things so the 18,000 Warehouse that's an annual licate cost for the warehouse it's not a and well we have two types two main types of positions in the district we have 10-mth positions and 12 month positions so we say it's a 12mon position this means it's a yearr round employee as opposed to a teacher contract which is we receiv a 10 Monon employe doesn't mean their employment ends at the end of this is this is a when we talk about the position that's being replaced is a full-time 12mth secretarial support position that we had that's currently unfilled when that person retired we chose not to replace it you wanted to analyze kind of the job of that person and whether or not we're going to

030keep it as structured or restructured what we're proposing is to restructure that FTE position still 12 month support position non-certified non-bargaining unit position into a 12mon full-time employee the cost differential we're projecting is that the person's position that was um that retired was budgeted at 45,000 you do not fill this position at 45,000 there's probably some discussion among all of us whether or not we can it for 75 get a kid out of school brand doesn't know anything about data lineage for 75,000 so you know often in public school we have to build instead of hire and so the training P of finding the right mindset of a person that's going to come we were successful in doing that um already in One support position um I feel like a year or two ago when

031the state put the C said database um we've done this several times this is kind of part of our um operational procedures we have to build people we're not going to be able to just put an ad out and hire the person for the salary structure that we're able to offer in public education so we know we're going to have to build this person but this is a full-time year round position the data Integrity Fe alone I tell you is an ongoing process we have to do that all the time it's not like we it'd be nice could do it Forin 12 months kind of close the book and say we're off and running but this is this is a caring feeding maintenance position for data so that we have teachers that can use data

032administrators that can use data as opposed to but it's it's less cost effective to have teachers and administrators bring data and it and that's a disposition for a lot of and is that the common set up for the systems that you're looking at that other school systems that are using them also Implement yes but so one of the things so when we started this process we did kind of um like just meta analysis of what districts are using when we dig into the process we're now we're going to talk to the people actually manage the data on the back end and say are you one person how big's your District what's the time like what other hats do you wear like that's kind of the analysis we're doing now um but we feel that at

033least one person in the beginning as we manage B Data Systems other structur like this so we can grow so just um right why I would say you can't have the data warehouse without a person to support it because just the data Lage alone understanding those connections and that creation right a data dictionary mean we have 17 departments to support a DAT base right I know this is smaller in scale but I think they have to go in again you have to have a person who lives in that space in in doing it and to the cost piece I was like going to ask before right like I know right that there's constraints but data is important the life talking about to vuture months to put together one airport right you want to serve up

034to the teachers something that's easy and have some really understanding it so I would encourage us to think about if that's a realistic number I get to bring someone in and train them but what's the Soft C on right so six people in central office spending three months doing that and then that person leaves in a year and a half because we know how contracts work when they come in like you don't move up as quickly and they'll get their of experience move somewhere else off the start so I think we should just think about like realistically when we hire that person we want some longevity because there are going to be like they're going to have to get up to speed on all of our stuff on all the schools and all the line

035and all the RO books and all the access that alone is a whole job never mind creating a report right keeping it that you can transfers there's a sub in there's a sub out there's pii right like we personally I done false information about students parents all of that Al is like a whole other ex so like I would just think about like the realistic number is not 75,000 so so how we manage that in the past is so one of the advantages as a school district is there are a lot of um support persons already in our district surrounding districts that understand student data that understand the identifying information that understand some of the data structures they may use them in different ways um but like all of our St secretaries for example use

036power school they depending on their role in The District they may have a pre sophisticated use of that they may use the C said database they may use some of those databases so we don't necessarily go and put an ADD and inde we start by trying to identify and improve people that have some of the back then data understanding we did this when we built the internal registration position that we have we pulled that person from within who already understood School structures this the kind of scope and sequence of the K12 the Cadence of the K12 so while there's learning ter it's kind of been um front loaded with a lot of the backend data structur so when we you guys know education has so many acronyms and finding people that already live inside of

037that environment and were shifting from one role to another versus and I would argue that most school districts don't have pure data analysts with undergraduate degrees and you know um relational basis because the salary sales are not something that we can manage so we tend to find people that understand these pieces and then grow their knowledge base based on where they're at so that's kind of our approach can I teach back because you were going EXA um just uh if a teacher has um like not every assessment I assum as computerized right computerized would the teacher be sort of handing like I paper to the the data manager just kind of get this into the system they enter Direct so it depends right now K12 or k or Elementary School I would say has a

038um spreadsheet and so for example like the math assessments um they they go and they can enter um that into the spreadsheet or they have that on on a spreadsheet and we they've actually done um a nice job with the tools that they have to do to kind of color code that so that it in a glance it'll show you like green if kids are you know doing well the yellow if you know it's kind of like a morning and I read if you know we're kind of worried about it so um same thing with like all the reading assessments which I think I showed um at one of the presentations where it like the whole list of um leading assessments those also are entered into the spreadsheet so we do have some stuff that

039we can just hand over and have them upload the spreadsheet but yeah them like templates I guess order to fin um but like for for Middle School like like they teacher own like they have all that information and then we would say oh how did we do on you know sixth grade and then we would sit together and we would have that conversation we' have to look at all the different spreadsheets rather than having like one place you go look at that some of it's power toool yeah and these tools do have kind of a front end a that we could customize to say these assment instead of the spr you can enter it right down here have some sure so I'm just hearing like now I almost hear like you may have some convin

040to do if it's done a certain way like in a school and now you're going to be saying now we're going to analyze it like no more let's sit around and look at your like we want you to put the information well I think they enter into a spreadsheet now so if they just entered it into a platform and might I mean and then you can see instantaneously or you know however quickly it'll um set that up rather than having to um spend time um putting a spreadsheet together there's plenty of places you can start without changing practice yes you know we try to do that like on the beach so we're going to wait in 10 met platform so there's plenty of data points that we're um going to be able to transition it's

041not going to change the daily life of anybody in the district other than the analysis won't be happening faster they won't have to be that backend calibration by people thank and my last question is how do you anticipate with measuring the success of system so actually I would like to get feedback then from like the teachers and the administrators to see how much time have they had to spend on like analyzing and like pulling the information and can they get um to looking at the instructional strategies quicker because right now time like I said before time is spent on like collecting all of this before we even talk about the construction and so that to hear from them um about whether this like benefited them or not I also think um like how are we

042using the data then that we get um and and then I also think that there's also been the conversation about like what other data do we want to collect or is there data in there that we only ever look at and so why are we collecting that um it's it's interesting in that the state just asked for a list of like all the assessments that we're doing and for what range how long does it take so um it'd be interesed to see if that list that we have is our data that are useful and that we have been using or if we're not using them like then we don't need to like that data um and I don't know just that you said this already um but in the fall when you were looking into

043what other uh districts were doing regarding to house warehouses um of the districts that we compare ourselves to how many of them have the data warehouse me I'm pretty sure we didn't speak to District we don't have most of their districts do yeah and and even though like I say this to Josh probably multiple times a year even though I did come from a bigger District like there was somebody I could call and say like I need this report to show across third grade how kids are doing on this standard and that person would pull it off be like you'll have it in a half hour and like would send it to me you'd be able to see like everything and so we like if I want to do that right now I'd have to

044call up each Elementary School I'd have to get their um spreadsheet and then I would have to look across each of the grades to be able to to do that like I it's it's an an system um did you have a more comment I think it would probably be an easy sell if you're showing the teachers the worth because for years one of the complaints that I heard was we collect a lot of debt what are we using for and if it's purposeful you know and we're looking at it and being able to analyze it I think it would be beneficial and I think they would see the benefit and it wouldn't just be like all way to is test you because i' heard that years and years ago we tested class to collect data

045what are you doing what are you doing with what do you want it so show that I think it's been nice the last few years that we have been starting to do that to like look at the data but then I think that's even that's where this came up even more saying like we're spending time looking at data having those conversations with one another talking about instructional strategies it just take a lot of time to go find all the data from all those different places it'd be nice to have it all in one place is had a quick question about the tool does it have a addictive analytics piece to it or just a look that um so um one of the tools actually does have that prediction and it would actually send an alert

046um based on some of the information so um yeah so one of them does have that which we were a little yeah we were excited about that is there big difference in prices between the big two not really no which was which was nice to see young gu yeah this is exciting a quick comment what we do v um I would appreciate a quick once over on security protocols I think a lot of people would shaken up by the tower School breach and our our school can get G anyone can get G yeah so however we do that I think that should be public basing whether that's here in a meeting or whether that's sending that security protocol out in one of your updates but the public should know how that data s and that's

047the comment I want to back sh two things one I think when we talk about this it needs to be a collective number not a little bit here a little bit there and and what realistically is it going to be is it 75 or is it closer to 100 plus the 18 for the system so I know that it's broken out in the budget but the addition should look at collectively as far as a dollar amount although what this costs in my opinion because we're already up to what 9 to3 if would take 75 right just the op on it I think is important I think the other piece is while I I commend the fact that you're trying to leverage internal knowledge to your point and to what Sharon raised earlier this is Privacy

048Information the the ability to navigate uh maintain and ensure it's appropriately secure one of course is coming from the system whatever Warehouse you choose to use but also by the person who accessing it implementing it and ultimately collecting it so wholeheartedly agree that needs to be very clearly understood and very transparent over how this information all those data points that are now going to be Consolidated are going to be perectly the last Point um if it's saving time then the speed of which the information is used and executed on I personally would be very much interested and it shouldn't just be two months to to aggregate syze the data but if you get that report in half an hour how is it being used how is it being implemented and what changes are we being

049are we going to make as a result of getting those much quicker hugely important to me than I like position that do another 25 30% I'm sorry John benefit benefit okay position right that's going to be all right anyone else have questions On's pration before he mes to the next F just the point of clarification while there's dollar the FTE is neutral so like I can split hairs however you want in this case the benefits already in the budget not because you're 30,000 or $40,000 position versus 70 or 80,000 position Social Security everything elseit the benefit cost is no it's higher higher salary higher benefit no it's the same cost Social Security is more Social Security but this person will pay social secur but the benefit cost is is theost is higher the higher the

050Sal the high healthare number is not Health guess questions all right so the next one that we have people services but really wants you to understand I'll take theor good evening everyone thank you for having me back here today we've talked about the student services buing presentation so this presentation is going to be a little bit different than I've done in the past so forgive me if it doesn't seem as Smitt as it's been in the past but what I what I'm going to try to do is to show you a little bit more information on what we're doing and what the benefit is the students and what the benefit is for the district um to purge that differently this year so hopefully I've done that myself first right so currently we have 642 students

051in our district that receive special education services and are supported by an individualized education plan and I and the plans are based on individual assessments and focus on personal growth rather than directec in harison peers and that's what makes this a little bit different for um figuring out grow so the individuals with Disabilities Act recognize 11 categories of disabilities and ensure that we deliver appropriate support services for each of these students so measuring progress for students with disabilities differs from traditional benchmarks as their growth does not follow a linear trajectory so while they may achieve a Year's worth of progress they often start behind their neurotypical peers uh requiring specialized in vention so understanding these factors help Educators and famili work together to set realistic goals and provide necessary resources so I captured in this

052chart here um some of the past programs that we've initiated um in the district and so I'm going to try to give you some description of what it is what it looks like and what our costance was for these particular programs so the next slide is Learning Center classroom at midbury elementary school so to meet the growing need for specialized learning environments we established a new Learning Center classroom at middleberry elementary school it is driven by the increasing number of students for applying such a space and a lack of available classroom areas at PS um the newly built classroom is equipped with air conditioning because our Stu some of our students have a need for temperature control based on um disabilities um a changing space a functional Space featuring cooking in laundry areas which provides

053students with access to instruction and essential life skills the total investment including construction and teacher salary was approximately $140,000 and with a capacity of five students the classroom is now at full enrollment Beyond its educational impact have brought significant financial benefit by keeping students within the district we avoided an estimated $352,000 in outplacement cost and understand outplacement cost it's not just situation Transportation um additionally it fostered Greater inclusion within the mes School community and allowed some students to remain in their home District enriching their learning experience and the experiences of other students sure um how do you decide whe somebody stays like here one of these we them outle schol so it's individualized it depends on if we have a disability to educate and provide um we do a really good job of providing Medical

054Care educational care but for someone it could be that we can no longer support that in the public school it's beyond that capabilities and that's so the elementary Collaborative Learning Program expansion at Long Meadow um was introduced in the 2324 budget Year and that was introducing we call a CLP at the elementary level we already have it at the high school level it's designed to provide in classroom academic and social emotional support while ensuring students also Reserve their academics and Housing Services a total of about $120,000 was invested in hiring a qualified teacher and equipping the classroom since its Inception the program has served seven students leading to an estimated cost avoidance of approximately $763,000 if all those children were required to go to another District placement while this program successfully supports students within our

055community it doesn't eliminate the possibility of recurring students out if they require a higher level of specialized support but it allows students to stay with our our it allows students to stay with friends it allows students not to ride buses for exorbitant amounts of time um and it allows parents to CL with their children because this area most other district schools are quite a distance away that's the CLP program so you said we have this at the high school as well the CLP yes there's a classroom at the high school but we don't have one in Middle School not yet what happen just wait there's more I have one quick question on your map on the savings that you posted is that lifetime savings or is that annual savings that's a good question that would

056have been an anal savings example one spent 119 at right right all yep the only thing I would say is some of those supplies in year one are not recurring so like when we condition the room at NS that's say one time cost I we do have to replace it in 4 years but it's a one time investment breaks no great thank youc um the next slide is about um our building internal capacity for our specialized reading instruction so we began um systematically building internal capacity reading instruction since about 2015 um and we started with and I had a look this up with five teachers who took an initial three-day Wilson training Wilson Reading system training and in 2025 we have approximately 27 teachers with this 3-day initial training and why that's important so over

057this over the years the initiative is expanded to include Orton Gillingham Wilson visualizing and verbalizing and Foundation methodologies currently the district has trained three Wilson level one teachers four Orton Gillingham associate level teachers with two more using completion two and two foundations level teachers and what's important to understand is that to become an associate level or to be level un certified you're taking graduate level courses and it could take up to three years Lally so it would be a teacher who is invested in learning the system in taking the practicum in doing graduate level cours workk and then being able to provide that to our students um this expansion enables students receive high quality interventions inhouse and reducing the need for outsourcing Services meaning contractors coming in um one major impact of this growth is

058sharing of special education features across multiple schools which does lead to an increase in travel related proed expenditures which I'll show you in my running um additionally since 2015 legislative changes have required students who classifi students specifically under dyslexia as opposed to just specific learning disability which reflects both the rise in need of services because in 2015 zero students are identified as having dyslexia to date we have 31 students who identify as having dyslexia and require those supports so we're improving our capacity to meet those needs um but our need is outpacing our ability to have fly certified staff in these methodologies but our clure service line is remaining relatively flat because as we're building we're kind of you know even out but we go through the lines and this is what I meant about

059the uh casing the training of Trav So currently in the budget it's an increase in $22,000 on employee training because we need to maintain these certifications once they receive them um and the travel which you know the percentage looks different than the totals but to travel we have more teachers moving across school so we pay their mileage for those B so for the 8600 of these lines when you look at our purchase Services line it it remains relatively flat so it's like a balance in exchange for taking from one and the other travel just between school between to correct right and and in this St age a lot of the foror is um we're interesting to know for that we're in Gillingham get your teaching certification it's multiple levels like it takes up to 12

060years in order again follows um but to be able to teach a class or tutor students doing like I said it's three years it's 70 hours of cour work plus a foure practicum with a fellow uh providing videos observations Etc before you receive that certification so it's quite an investment on a teacher so we try to support that so that it'll stay here in our district and provide that service um the last piece that I have on my chart today is transition services so um transition Services play critical role in supporting students with disabilities as they move from school to post school activities ensuring they have tools and resources to succeed in higher education employment Independent Learning um so on the slide I have the definition of the transition Services some available Services Etc um

061legislation in Connecticut has strengthened transition planning requiring students that receive individualized educational plans to have specific transition goals at age 14 that is everyone who has an IDP begins to get transition goals at age 14 right but this also helps us um ensure early planning and support So students can maximize their potential additionally uh recent legislation uh I believe it was Connecticut now extends special education eligibility to age 22 which allows students with higher support needs to reserve receive Services through the year in which they turn age um the next couple of slides help break that down a little bit more and then if you have more questions I think this might help with that understanding so unlike other areas of Education transition services do not follow state or national standardized benchmarks instead student progress

062is me they on individual abilities and performance towards goals set by their ID team so each student needs are met in a personalized manner again all students in I must have transition rules in place by AG 14 While most students complete PE within four years of high school those with significant disabilities May extend time so there's Community Based transition programs um that help students develop life and Vocational skills allowing them to ride in adulthood for students that receive uh require Services Beyond a local program alternative placement maybe necessary um as our own personal transition program continues to evolve we'll be working on a 3 to five year plan uh strategic plan to improve and expand our services to ensure better outcomes for students and that'll be something that'll be morec coming in in a while

063we're still working on what that plan looks like this last this last slide on transition I wanted to try to give you an idea about transition so our current clak High School senior class consists of 255 students of those students 42 are identified as having individualized educational programs I so this is about 16.4% of the total class of those 42 students a small portion 7.1 % will be continuing on to a fifth year while six of those students about 14.2% have been in high school for five six seven eight years because they are say till the age of 22 so that's a total of nine students that are staying beyond the four years of high school the encouraging news is that the majority of the students um 78% will graduate with their 2025 foror this

064year demonstrating the effectiveness of our support systems in place so this data highlights the importance of individual I support but I also wanted to let you know that it's a small amount that continue on beyond the four years of high school once they four years they still take normal Rec for class no so we um the students that are staying beyond the four years usually have some level of deficit that was um Beyond um I don't want to say it's usually not learning disability usually is some little cognitive disability or something like that nature so that's why we have our transition program in high school where they're working in the community job shadowing those kinds of things um they have different levels of services we do um have students going to other transition programs based

065on the needs that the students have so I did pull up our ntss and our next Generation accountability so our esack source because I wanted to show a little bit of a comparison about special education and it really is eye opening and um just you know for the data warehouse I had to go ask har because I forgot where to find it and so if I had someone I could say hey can you get um so our the first this is so hard to win classes the first of them are region 15 students with disabilities so that's our performance the the second column and this is from 20 through 24 are all of our students in region 15 so this is um grades three through eight right and then we have the state um scores

066students and disabilities and the state general education scores our special education students while our you know have a gap between our gen students or special education students are very close to or are um overperforming the state's aages so I think it's really important to to to look at that granted we're looking at the Gap we're trying to improve every day we're trying to change things to help stents and their outcomes but it was really enlightening to see that our students of special needs are doing fairly well according to the state averages what I also found interesting our science performances look really good um our students with disabilities are close out performing the state Genet students in science so you know they're really great data points to sit down and take a look at and delve

067in a little bit deeper our math gr actually um outperforms the state General Ed math um percentage which is really nice to see and although our reading growth is below the state's uh gened average and the special ed average it's commensurate with our um region 15 students um in the disc so it's you know although it's not a perfect system to show and it doesn't perfectly show the individual grow I think it's really good dat to see how we're performing is compared to the state averages the reason why I put up our other purchase service line is these are really the only lines that I have that are increasing um so I wanted to talk a little bit about it so the supplies the supplies um new additions of Assessments always occur and um we

068have to keep up with those additions um we don't have a choice that you get a b a year pH period but you have to purchase all the testing so School py testing equ testing all those kinds of things we have to keep it up and a lot of it is consumables um what's interesting to me is some companies are moving towards uh students uh instead of pen and paper working on an iPad which will in the future change another l code M as meting that level of access the technology software has a percent increase that's higher our state mandated um social emotional screener um I had paid for on a grant for two years it's now in the budget this year so that's why that line item is going out and um we had

069to get an iPad management system which I'm totally not telling you the right name that's a rust who's working with me on the reason being is that use um iPads for communication devices for many many of our students and the the way we are operating our password. compromise and we are a to access some of these iPads so we are purchasing Apple iPad management system so that um R Us you know one person can sit and monitor all the iPads and so we can make sure that the passwords never get compromised again not compromised Tak um us and keas you know I love how prices and percentages are different it's $750 but it's a 21% increase and that was a gym membership for a transition program so our kids part of their instruction for our

07018 to 22 year olds they go to the gym when um Healy body and exercising and all those kinds of things how to access a gym how to do this in our own community and then the property over here is supplies for the NBS Learning Center students so a lot of the consumables other items that we need to continue in that line so my current budget request for this year is um opening a Collaborative Learning Program in the middle school so we have one in the elementary we have one in the high school and now this would give us the K12 Continuum of this in District service um what I did put up here is that um you know as a five students it could be more they could potentially avoid 450 ,000 in tuition

071cost for those students to be placed out a district um but it allows PR transition space for the students who are coming back from external facilities you know allowing us to have smoother integration um you know it's one thing to come back from the facility and just being a regular school it's another thing to come back and be able to slowly transition in the acclimate so we are utilizing it that way at the high school and Elementary School levels as well and again keep students in their school with their access to their academics and after school activities and other pieces while having Evo uh therapeutic counseling kind of when they can out District replacement so that's Pate many have to go Che oh absolutely yeah so this is um for specific this is not for

072um students who have autism as their primary those are other types of disabilities um that require supports and behavioral supports um we we can easily build that classroom today we saving something we're spending Now by moving into this just sa um we have not but we have some students that are still in middle school that there next year who on the tra actually be place goar or you want so regarding on Slide Five the expansion at LMS um any concerns from a space limitations perspective everything you need or is that like expansion um so I could turn and look to Mr ruano because we can always use more space but we are we're adequately right now we took one of the last classrooms at Long Meadow we can't grow if we had to grow but

073we are okay right now thatass was former teacher room right was the former te room add question so to SL oh sorry it's the current budget reest she's done with presentation one more one more slide sorry it's okay way I just want to talk one more way of what success also AFF for our student so success isn't always measured by traditional metrics so the other piece of success that I see are a three-year-old who thought the lock now does at BO or student learns to learns to read Rail and now opens literacy um another student can um learn social skills to now participate in group projects so those are the kinds of things that we're working on that are individually mapped out for students that can't be U measured in a state assessment but that

074is what makes me feel like our program is successful and I'm sure the other staff is well or you know a student in high school who took five years now knows that they can go to the Community College program and be successful so these are each of the individual things that we help in that kids through um and work on those necessary skills so that they can get to the goals that they've been achieving so just want to make sure that for us successes not this numbers right go Shar so this thank you so much for the presentation and all the work you're doing um about extending this as Middle School which Middle School are we thinking about um is part one of my question part two is um if it's at one versus the

075other will every child that qualifies be able to attend that one location or split um and then again the third is is there SL so I go backwards and then I will let SMI answer your first one so all students in the Middle School will go to that school that's how it is for elementary if a student from another Elementary requires it we transport them there so we do the same for the middle SCH um we are going to create space for it to the school and when we say create space is that taking away a classroom or like what does that look like so the short answer is no like we're not going to displace a instructional space now one of the things we're looking at is can we uh rethink some of the

076spaces like what I would consider soft spaces places that we might do some of our intervention work some an office um are there spaces that would work for this building similar um not exactly I don't want teachers at either Middle School to think we're going to repurpose the the teachers uh room during turn the into an instructional space when we kind of re it we kept that as an instructional space and turned it into this progam so one of the things we're looking at now is are there is there like an organic transition in either Middle School that would most likely space where I'm going with this there would be no impact potential class Siz I'm not we're not going to impact um and then um it because it's centralized at one of the middle

077schools is there any additional Transportation costs that are built into this and what is that number potential as of now there is no specific transportation for is there a potential yes but we feel that we have enough Transportation already running for preschool program other programs that we feel that we have some ability to adjust our current transportation to absorb this um again the nice thing about this program is we don't when we out a student there's really not much choice right you need a bus to go to Stanford there's no other choice here we have some flexibility so if this means we're going to um change the route and maybe this student's going to arrive at um 9:00 instead of 8:30 like we have some flexibility of how we manage the transportation so didn't build

078in a um Rider so to speak transportation we have some FX in our time if this becomes something that we can't absorb then we have to address that think I know my answer but so this would be the same as those first two that you presented where that role of that location and save that money Transportation I assume that and other functions I assume the 450 is from pseudo action of students you would expect so it's fairly real yeah yeah I took an actual tuition cost and multiplied it by based on real real data real students that would be let this W man one this running right from the beginning of the year so one of the challenges you know we've had questions about how do you measure the return on investment of program like

079this and what we don't do we build a parallel budget of what the cost would have been if we didn't do any of the things that we do you know and so that's one of the having the cost of void so there's not a line in the budget that we're going to see that went down because of this but what you're not seeing is the growth of some of the Lin because we're adding you know if for example we decided that this isn't something that the board supported and we didn't want to move forward with it then we would have to go and look at that out of out of District wish align that public or private wish align and figure where these students could end up and kind of put projection there or that's

080where like that contingency line or some of the other special education funding lines we have that's where that can show up so Sten um so U thank you very very much for approaching this year um I really appreciate it I appreciate the look at next I appreciate information about cost avoidance just the way that broke it down it's very very helpful so thank you very much um I have a question about like we can just leave this slide up so like when you talk about a therapeutic class model without necessary understanding that I'm assuming it's like a skill set teacher that we're going to have here is able to to provide um so the special education would provide the special education academic services but therapeutic I would have a thice in the classroom um as

081well but that's something that's already in my budget line for the other collabtive learning pram so we I said teacher employ so is it you can now um bring this inhouse OD is it because you you're comfortable with like the econom of scale you have enough people where Mar now we have room assuming too so is that is that kind of how you make the decision to to do something like this because of the quantity of possibilities it makes more sense to build a program than to roll the dice to see what happens and not roll the dice it's just um working out to say okay um Mr Smith I have five I have to out place at $450,000 that I could as opposed to starting a program with the classroom and the teacher because

082maybe they just didn't like need the level of an out placement we didn't have the ability to take care of the in housee without instruction and then even when I of the room at M which I haven't G thatour so I didn't see her um is it is that kind of like I mean think my last question is that is that let me ask is that the Learning Center like so was it that we finally now have a space where we can we didn't have the space before um and the organization the environment to support doing that in house that came about because we have more studs that PS would hold um in the two classrooms and it couldn't expand so NS was like listen what we can try to repurpose the space that we

083have to see if we can facilitate that and I had students from mle be that would be able to populate that class so I'm not I was there I saw students receiving support I guess and so we didn't have that room then we would either have to send those students we have to figure out BS we're not going to do that so we have to send them we have to out that I'd have to say at least a percentage of those students would have had to in an outplacement yes and that's and that's really just really like a function of it just space I just want to add to when we look at these we look at not just the economy scale but the sustainability so ramping up a program cre SP H teacher that's

084not something we're going to add one year and get rid of the next so when we look at these programs that is there a critical mass of students that are going to need these services not one year but you know over the foreseeable future so the idea of that Mees program investing in the air conditioner investing in the room that the staff um kind of all those soft skills our training people it's because we feel there's a multi-year u benefit to having that program in house if it was really like we had four students one year and then they were going to go away it wouldn't be worth pce though also to add to that too though is I have the bir data um so that we understand types of disabilities and needs of children

085before they come into the special education age3 so we can sustain that program for a while which are some of my objective so I understand you're crystal ball a bit you're able to kind of predict the needs you're going to have so just I think having the con voy numbers are exceptionally helpful especially in talking to members of the community um to really say we're not we're really trying to figure out a way this that's just has thought and purpose revealing students in mind and yet still be able to um as he would say like not have the numbers go up maybe as high as they might you know had to had to I think one of the things it's not published online are the prices with these particular schools that help people have an

086understanding of what it costs and it's not just the tuition it's also the transportation cost and then it's the summer school cost and then it's all these other PES so putting it this way it's like a figure to an idea so I was hoping that you could um we could explain the differentiation between um The Learning Center and program so the Learning Center um is for students that are effective with multi uh faceted ways and they have um significant cognitive impairments or have have um lack of communication abilities or um their learning and achievement is significantly lower than the the typical specializ student service and a resource type of a setting um it could be someone who is multiply compromised medically physically and cognitively so it allows us to bring services to one area so

087students may need um nursing Services OT speech communication device um specialized instruction at that cognitive level so it allows us to pull our resources together in one place so that's the learning sector and then the Collaborative Learning Program was born of students that U may be behaviorally disregulated uh require a little more um therapy in in the milu while they're in a in a class so the established app program because there students that typically couldn't be regulated and may may have had to engage restraint seclusion or some kind of disciplinary action but it really is part of the disability that they were disregulated so we're trying to create a supportive environment that way okay no I mean I guess where where my thinking is is you know clearly we can't have all of these programs

088at um love it but uh I I guess um where my thought process was is you know we're taking a preschooler putting them into an elementary environment selecting one of these programs for them they'll perally be there for six years um and so I guess I just wanted to understand um is there Community between the programs or they you know very specific well so if a child in a Learning Center starts beinging so we've seen students that have all of a sudden had a wonderful use of their ABC device and they've been able to communicate more and so we've uh changed different classes and given that fluidity or if we have a student that has shown growth in the reading program well then you know they could still be in life you know having a

089life skill support in your Learning Center but then may people put them in a different setting for a different level skills so as far as we still have to have the case manager that manages all those moving pieces but if a student chose a need them to a different setting so that they I mean our goal is to get J that's the ultimate goal about your students so um we think about that LE restricted environment can we PR we start adding services so on the Fe we can't have everybody everywhere um I'm I'm I'm very pleased to know that we have four certifi level two teachers uh level one associate level yeah um so that's wonderful um we have seven schools and I just wonder um have we we kind of topped out interest in

090people Myer um you know is this something this is this something that there's growing interest or we pretty much going to stay around we do I think they're stable at the moment I'm not sure if I see a lot of new see new interests with interventionists in in working in that program but they don't necessarily touch the specialized students and we're still Contracting for um OG Services because although we have those teachers not all of them are moving around some of them are covering the students in their school um so the long and short of it is that I don't see any new um interest um no clear so we've added capacity in house which reduces our Reliance on outside support but we've also seen an increase in Weak so again like the cost avoidance

091for point is if we didn't have more people trained more would be going the outside Consultants providing the same service and it's more integrated into our district so um you know there's a way for us to encourage but you know I guess even as I say that some other things have taken place so we have more people that are will not not the high like introductory and really across the district our level of tier one chronics and continues to grow at a pretty rapid base which includes some of those strategies so um we have a stronger capacity that's wi not necessarily certain our students identify the question so one thing I just wanted to be clear about these four you know urgent certifi teachers it's not like there's one in every Elementary School um they're

092they're around but they don't correlate exactly to particular schools or particular roles one school may have a higher number yeah students Services that's where you have a little bit of Transportation increase to teacher may not be efficient for one Le School B Mees and longal are proportionately very different in size so we would just put one each school if students in letter require 100 more anate hours of services than students that's kind of how weo well and it's also higher too um I made say this wrong and I'll be corrected later but we have an elementary teacher that also Services some hours at a middle school and it was at one middle school last year now it's at a different Middle School this year so as the need changes or shifts for what we need

093um this teacher is you know being different places very apprciate their flexibility for sure um I just want to understand a little bit yeah I mean the she fact that it takes three years to get that level of certification that's demand is kind of limited you know and actually for outside Consultants who spend that time and have it great them you know because we have it yeah I'm very appreciative of building an house capacity so thank you for that um I'm working off the assumption that if um you know every situation is different a student can remain in the district that would be a preference is that a fair assumption to me yes it is yes it is because the best instruction and the best friendships the best social and the best care your just

094want to say I appreciate your effort to keep our kids here with their Community with their PE some of their families um it seems like we're doing more of that any questions all right thank you so much apprciate it and next we have couple I think that four years ago work our Capital PL present right it's like you know we started at 375,000 475 asking 57 um so I'll take plan a little longer two as well um H High School um we're looking at replacing a broken wall divider um up in the uh second floor there's um sound providers Bas make larger smaller testing LS so we're going the idea um it's a currently broken doesn't function correctly so we'll take that down new one and also the locker as you know we've done a

095lot of refinishing work on those so we're pick up um they count really good down there so we'll do similar but I think this time we're going to look at make sh small sh space um Roan Ro Middle School um refinishing a gym floor um what's currently there is a very yellow oilbased floor it's not been refinished in probably 30 years so it's got to be taken down to be wood and reu back up it look similar to high school floors that light right uh PA system upgrades we've done high now kind an emergency situation but B we do a full replacement of that system you could find an act really good vendor very reasonable pricing so then make it working all across all the Middle School really more the same their gym for same

096great oil base uh finish new finishes our water base and we really come much lighter give those buildups on the current floor and S memoral PA system we hope we make the summer gentleman was out to look at it I think it's very P should midle elementary school um we do are looking to install a specialized swing a special a program out there that J was talking about that's 13,000 on the main playground so a wheelchair swing and it kind of locks in and makes a swing setup from the student to roll into which was kind of cool um a wall divider look at the main gym increase more space um we have work Fire Marshal Des on that but that' be on the main stage for small sh spes and the side we have

097with the music room will at the options of maybe putting additional glass and more water off that patio um just kind of worried about reoccurrence over there Sun water Ms a long uh continuing on the classroom was a lot of carping at long metal so I continue continuing down the replacement the original carp building from the 1990s um also their their playground as you know put the portal in we did uh put a small playground the side black top you know one the large black top there well should nice addition there and then kind of the you know lot of long range plan and stuff will sa here so um you know we did a a review view of the rooms back in 2001 so Middlebury Elementary Memorial and long meow look at options on

098revisiting those three Rs let the architect kind of go through and evaluate three of priority doing one summer um the idea of looking a redesign of parking lot in uh at low that front parking lot is in pretty rough shape uh so to redesign trying to get more parking space out of that um and also I the architect today uh looking at R and Memorial at least the beginnings of redesign and pricing additional science talk about and and continue evaluate the HC systems and the um point last few things 2021 2001 we might have had one back then but maybe really may find it somewhere yeah uh so the roof study you'll see these are pictures of uh the one on the top left is memorial you really shouldn't have standard water on roofs means

099your pitch is kind of failing on them um and that is also long medals group that's part of the shingle section so you got issues just old age that's the original roof section um so kind of pour me at the idea of poning yes are old we were between 1.5 million $2 million per roof um and those Tims are somewhat old so we want to get those adjust Jo there's one thing that's kind of jumping out at me um you had look at PES well we're doing a study of that okay I just want to clarify that both of issues and we're we're doing patw work on right now yeah until once we get clarity on the project we'll decide thank you and res need look at the replacement cycle of the roof and kind

100of the long trajectory it takes to get ourselves there so we start the study in 25 summer 25 you're looking like a roof designing cost with an architect like early fall then basically you have to bring that to the board of for approval we left to take all our state standing committees building committees to go for State reimbursement uh then November 25 we done both for State funding our state approvals and then probably that you know December early January we B the roofing ideally The Sweep spot is to be like January February show all those rouers lined up on there some work so you're way out ahead of that and that way they begin their work right in that late June know still that and this process really repeat itself for each of the three

101groups this job do you need any zoning or building permits in the town yeah permit definitely um zoning mod but definitely building and so in look accting the dollars for it this is very important going through this process so as the board knows our current service payment um is only next year we lock in the bonds we're looking at about $450,000 payment for next year your current service line is $1.7 million you approximately $1.2 million in funding inside that service so thought is take those dollars and program those in for again this order is not really order this is just how I laid them out the architect says NES has go first go first this just kind of sa exercise we will take that those dollars program that into the first so that one those

102the 1.2 million plus much Capital let's say a $1.5 million project whatever the estim out to be then you have state reimbursement dollars so every year you should have a your debt service until we do a bigger project another project we're going to have about we about $700,000 in that that service line she Contin get the state money back which on 50% you're going to program in your next St of service payment and do the next Ro so you're going to kind of just slide scale of groups as you go through the goal of this is to minimize Bond because obviously if you do do a large school project you can't take on large am of bond D so these these grps collectively could represent five to six plus million dollar so the idea is

103if we can pay cash and pay as go on these it will minimize a B plus uh you're probably look about at least a half million payment Josh man estimat for 20 year so it's different more than you off set and then obviously in the fourth year you probably would have a vision of what it looks like for the larger school project and then you then would put your final money towards the turf which is proba right around that summer 29 and the roofing cycle be done uh because obviously the turf is not um reimbursable so that would kind of complete end of that like cycle not free that service line to go for Bond take out should do a building project and this is all coming full circle from Sharon's question at the think

104tank which we just had with the feasibility study because then if we did do something with the feasibility study the referendum may be in May of 2026 the bond doesn't hit for another few years years yes right it'll be out temporary Bond yeah you got a lot of lot of time right so in interim you use that debt service line to address this Roofing situation yeah because going out this level of borrowing would be and can't remember can't F reimbursement money so um this would allow us to take all of the reimbursement money reinvested into the next cycle and by pushing the tur field out which there is no reimbursement it ends that kind of cyclical reimbursement investment so it's a great plan it is I mean the challenge is your roofs are 2025 your

105roofs the high school is actually in decent shape um but you just kind of this weird cycle of age and lot what's your question yeah we've done we do a yearly GX score keep an eye on that and we do infill with um looks like rubber pellets uh they they infill sections that that aren't scoring correctly and they that score rating up so yeah as of now it's every year I asked like how much longer how much longer think we're somewhere in that four to five years cycle because we don't want to get to the tur doesn't work anym was bad U the next picture which is not really part of capital it's part of the repair bond this will be a project Finance actually hopefully next week uh this is just the AC unit

106at Rocher invol it's in the New Edition from 1980 ex Media Center long past useful life yeah it's not it's not an energy star it's just green uh so these are the things we bump into a lot we have a lot of these vintage units out there so um which kind of leads us to again this more long range plan piece uh dhda see High School um so most who see High School are as I've said the board before s um so we did um received um hbac dollars from the state approx million dollars $700,000 in pool unit units and there was $300,000 left for the auditorium unit um when we did the evaluation in December January on those units um the main auditor unit is a steam fired system that exists today the direct

107unit costs about $600,000 in that F there's two units one does the tech one this atorium section um when the architect was evaluating aori that one I'm like I I don't know yet said well it's not as good they're both bad I'm like I know they're both bad so then began the discussion of you know it kind scale doing two because you prer into a hot water system in that grand Ro problem is you're a million four there is money inside the bonds which again it's a deeper discussion I don't want to get too far into at the moment um but we continue to those are only two units of there's like six or seven of those units on the roof but Al the big big ones you can see with the parking lot those

108are like $200 each or more uh so the idea of chipping away at these units kind of deal as we go those 79 we're trying to heat the cost that down on the project um but um we just think this this long m in the same position their units are much smaller so they have air condition school as well but High School area Focus yeah I'll have more information on finance at least those two so can can you just explain the grant money that we were awarded we've received a million i' I'm submitting in process you have to Bas put out the money give the money back so we're in the process saying paying out get $700,000 in back and then obviously the original cost of the was 600,000 um we will net bond that

109money so what work of right now with our bond uh team is basically we're not going to bond the full 11.2 million we're actually Bond down to at least 10.5 million and work on actually work on some where to bond actually to to the grant M you know hav't um so we probably Bond like 10.2 milon so that'll help more that's amazing Joe just want to say just appreciate that you're lowering the bond that we have to do by getting well one of thoughts Jos around again the idea of almost like borrowing from capital reserve for $300,000 I don't have yet and then submitting like later because I want a bond Grant right so I think we're to make again keep discussion finan come backward but the idea of saying we're take a loan out

110a capital reserve $300,000 and it will then we reimburse capital reserve to $300,000 we get State we don't bond that next 12 years so at least that's two things that we like again we don't ever budget for one year the two pieces that we try to remain very conscious of is how do we leverage the thatb service that we have right now that's not committed to do the most uh cost effective project fix what's laying out in weight for us so that we can then minimize the impact whatever we decide at the end of the study we're going to do something with two buildings and new repairs whatever that is the more kind of head space we can preserve out of debt service to minimize the community impact four five years and as you C

111for example you will see in the coming years we'll see that g that Serv for budget but again cutting dollars would really impact like for example ging the last um so really the slide that I want to highlight are these two so this process you can see each roof is a yearlong process that includes specs so State reimbursement is um not insignificant um there are a lot of eyes that have to be doted uh and some roof manufacturers and installers actually don't be on projects that um ask for reimbursement because the process is thing we don't want to do so if you look at this slide and this slide both of those require a lot of heavy lifting when you layer that on top of the regular job of our finance director and you look

112at the 700,000 uh square feet that we man not having somebody to help babysit the Cycles the process the specs um all the inspections in addition to the amount of um I I I understand why state and federal regulations require more care feeding they require more annual assessments more accountability around our inal air quality around our security reporting I understand all of that um but you get to tipping points where there's only so much you can continue to layer in uh our transportation falls under the office um of operations and transportation we now have apps that we run are more respons you know all of these roles continue to get increasingly complex uh we removed this position in 2006 um as a cost-saving measure and I I can understand but from 2006 until 200 I

113don't know 23 or 22 we did no major building projects we issued no bonds and do think those things went hand in hand that some of the challenges we face today um and I think car said it earlier I say this all the time like who got up morning thinking about the hhc unit on top of the high school and when it's going to fail and what the temperature is outside like not having people that are conscious of those things right there might be a a maintenance person at the high school that um but there's not a person that has a vision on a daily basis of how all pieces hit together and that happens in a lot of areas in a school district we know all of us where lots of happen um but

114you start to get to a point where the the cost benefit of that is um diminishing ter when you look at the scope of the things that are out there um it's just I don't think it's sustainable I think that we've been able to manage I'm very proud of the work that's happening in this district and the amount of things we've been able to do and be creative on but there is a limit to how far we can look ahead and state reimbursement is huge we went a lot of years I mean we talk about being cost effective we talk about being fisal conservative there are dollars out there that we had not access because we didn't have the time or the planning for the manpower to to apply and to ask for those things

115and you know when Joe's saying that 300,000 in air conditioner that we're going to kind of move the pieces around so that we don't have to bom that that's a 20year interest payment on 300,000 that we're not going to make that's going to save tax for dollars and invest money in schools that doesn't happen if you unless you have creative people that are going to manage that process and kind of sign up to do the work there are lots of other districts I said if you move out reimbursement because the the pass is just too much piling out um I don't want to be that district and and not having a position that's going to help lift some of that um I think puts us um in a disadvantage and we're either going to not

116make all those cycles that roof cycle of kind of reinvesting um I think we're we're pretty creative in being able to do that but that is not an insignificant number of balls to keep in the air um and I just am concerned if you don't have the position now I think people ask honest questions like why why now um and I know that there's not a magic number um this and I conscious that at 4.49 um it's lower by a percent where we were you know last year the year before but that isn't necessarily a good number right think there's significant numbers of people that would like that to be a percent more uh when you look at kind of the dollar amount of disposition and with it they don't know what next year is

117going to look like they don't know the next year is going to be better um and I think it's easy to say well we'll just put this off again a lot of the maintenance that we're stuck with right now is because it deferred from somebody else's budget so there is kind of a a political analysis of is this a budget and this number that includes this position and still comes in over a percent less than last year I think we feel confident that we can absorb it um and not kind of defer the ask to to a future that's all right thank you very much question do you see this this for do you see this individual involv to do theability involved with usvs and what are your initial thoughts on on what be great

118get a person that's either serve a CM role or has construction PR ground yes defin make comes through the door um you know some have more Building Maintenance custodial PA knowledge ideally better if you got a big picture PB like kind of that kind of stuff put together yeah definitely I I see this person again every I've been Josh as well always had a facility and that person will come to the finan facilities report out some projects all that stuff we again I'm working tandem with them but that's their world to deliver that stuff so you know yeah definitely be involved in that um yeah pretty pretty in what would be Target for when this person would come in that budget get approved or sometimes we posted anticipated openings to kind of the market and

119then once the budget passes we we wouldn't do any um interviewing or hir before the budget passes but we would start posting as anticipated your project Scopes not sh they're just they're just large I mean the pull the rules and these are these are Big Summer Long projects and they're just they're very different their scope um compared to doing small Age act again it just good I'd say Josh Point go back five six years ago you probably question why he need or not because he have project scope very small money that he have was very small so you know um I the Argent making is if we didn't follow this creative strategy that we probably wouldn't have to buy point so we can collect decide we're going to take that service down to budget not

120you cut out $750,000 take that service per million drop budget percent and it be good for a minut and then next year when the roof start to fail and there's no plan to get back done then we're going to back up for another repair bond for more so that's kind of where that that that BEC so cost avoidance do that word again on yeah we're avoiding Bond cost you're avoiding the bond cost bonding is tough like that dollar amount so when you get into that like under $2 million Bond like just the issuance costs are expensive like it's a lot of lit so you get into this thing where you're bundling or bu Roots there's just not a and you can't do four roots in the summer so it gets really kind of yes so

121we have we have our interview coming up in a couple of weeks so I have initial call actually tomorrow um that alone cost you $25,000 just that you go to S&P any boring like that just where you give them just kind of cross the plane but long um your advisor Cost Plus the attorney cost so um can you talk about how we as a regional district are different than a town like how would a town school um system handle all these roof Replacements so a lot of towns have a bond structure so like in my previous life uh if we needed a roof I would kind of go to town and I would say when you fund this summer this is our next summer this is a roofing project that we want to do and

122they would layer in this million doll project on top of bonding for a fire truck or or roads or you know they had like an annual Bond cycle that they were every three years or something like that where the in a municipal non- Regional School District the town holds the bond they hold Debt Service um so the school district doesn't issue all those Bond issuance all the The Moody rating a regular school district doesn't have any of those things they can't they're not allowed it they're not aary agent so the town was on and they would just go with basically like a list over the like a fiveyear capital plan there are districts that have no fiveyear Capital plan I they have one but they have no funding for it because they just go to

123town and the town says this year we're going to pull in these projects and next year we're going to pull in these projects so this whole cycle wouldn't even be necessarily a school decision whether or not you went for for State reimbursement that would be run through the town and through their Municipal plan so it's Unique uh you know there are 19 School District Regional School districts in the state of Connecticut not all of the school districts are structured the same uh when you look like we what I would call Pure School District right we are 3K 12 Regional we have one board we have one budget there are other communities that have kind of variation of that they're just a high school they're just a c five district they three boards of you know

124um so it's it's very different when you look at how we run we are a pure School District we function as a municipality our our budgets are bigger than the municipal budgets our staffing are bigger our bond debt may or may not be bigger but part of because we haven't come up with the cycle yet um but that is how other districts would do a loop where this wouldn't be as important because a million dollar Bond would just be part of a bigger that wouldn't stand alone can we go to our towns and say middleberry and southberry with that work at all or you explain why why can't we do that like why we can't be part of their B we own build we are individual produci like our our ratings our bondings our debt

125service that's all offs I mean at some level like the the cost that passed on to individual but not through a municipal it gets like we basically go directly for referendum of to the I myself middleb we're in different situation we've been fixing stuff for the past 20 years so it's not we put stuff we cashh and so sou both districts have kind of like a cycle where they have enough Capital to do annual projects that they built over time and have Debt Service lines if they need them but technically often they don't use them for debt they use them for page go you know we're not close to we haven't built that kind of Reserve structure up yet but we think it's great stry and also to ex for example my role in most

126District or mantion like when I talk to my peers Josh you do have bonds because most boards that I finance right just hand the bonds they go right down from the city the city does the issuance all that stuff so it's very different and you're really Josh's Point most districts are just an expense department off the C your town budget so we're a whole home right this bubble structure is this would you call that pay as you go yes so CH so like our until we had like the the um the unique Advantage value Timeless of that Debt Service payment we built that opportunity and and had the advantage of paying off a bond for a school and that is not lost on a daily basis between Mr Martino and myself and how do we

127maximize that opportunity to get off of this hamster reel because once we do a building project that debt service is going to be committed and and we're while we're doing that we're trying to build up kind of reserves and that Capital line which is why we added that 100,000 so that kind of hopefully by the time we um debt Services kind of accounted for we have enough internal structures we may not be totally pay go depending on the project but roofs parking lots those kinds of things we would have an inhouse capacity advantage at some point okay you keep referring to a hypothetical slide of targets for Capital Improvement when do you want to revisit that conversation the question how much do you think we should have right so we told you in November a

128how a recommended number that that bill and I put together um that is well thought out and based on some meths but I don't know there's right I think the answer becomes kind of what's the community what's the differ between Community uh ability and comfort zone um in over taxing and risk shoing and that's the and and to some extent that's really for you as a board to decide like so if if one on that November chart we speculated that a million dollars in 2020 30 would be a good Benchmark or Target to shoot for is that too high is that too low is it too aggressive should we get there in seven years should we get there at all um I think that's the conversation and and it may not be linear right like

129maybe this year it's 100,000 next year it's 50 three years now it's 300,000 maybe it's we build up um the capital reserve account that non-referring account and we don't have it in our operating capital I think there's not a right answer I think from where we sit having some ability to weather storm to repair boilers that a heating boiler never breaks in July right it only breaks when you need it so to have nothing in reserve is risky and I think we feel really good and confident that we are not in the same risk tolerance place that we were in 2019 but again a lot of our air conditioning units are 1979 you know they they were here before I was a student here and they're still working and that they might work 10 years

130um but even with that you know the the coolant that we use like there's a lot of factors in that so we need to not kind of ignore the fact that our roots are starting to fail our air conditioning and air conditioning are come right there a million dollars or a million five $2 million and a year metime so if we don't have a plan to fund these things um we're going to be caught blacked at some point and then your bonding an emergency situation and you're going to take whatever um bank is you know it's not about what best rate you have or your Moody's rating Moody's your rating is dependent on kind of your foresight and your kind of fiscal responsibility not in your meor response to failure and so I think we're

131trying to build a structure that gets you there uh but what it means to be there I think is a collective conversation pension is a good example no different I mean we're 68% funding ,000 yeah you can fully f it tomorrow take lineon uh so I really appreciate that you are answering the question of what are we going to do with these kind of unassigned funds um because it does become a big po of money yes yeah this year um what are we thinking about the Delta you we would anticipate the Surplus for the end of this year well it's interesting because we I just saw they actually approved the excess cost doll so that's 440,000 com over they they modified the bill basically yeah they found a legislative tool so that they didn't have

132so everybody wi so that that will change our our current fund balance for example could pick up a little larger transfer into account or educational expens Pro it's hard to buy it so Josh I made a projection on Revenue that's we actually took into account that those dollars current year it's kind of hard to buy down like what's in there you got you know it's all hard what's down so if you buy so for example let's say we brought down this budget and we can probably find um a few things but unless it's a one time expenditure it really just compounds the increase two years that so what we would recommend is if there's one time cost to buy those down so or put them in a place that insulates like your debt service line

133if we have talked about growing we could grow that or you put it into that capital reserve align but you might one F if um we could put more money into that um nonre earing account the flexibility been given is it no longer has to be just for Capital project so you have 290 in um special education in if you build that other account up you might be able to lower that which then as long as you keep it flat I would recommend not lowering it to zero um because that other account like it sounds sounds really good that we have like 1.2 million in capital reserve but when you talk about an air conditioner that costs a million dollars I would say that that's not not enough when you look at um other Municipal

134entities like they have seven times that 10 times that on a much smaller budget so like what's the right number it's not going to be 30 million but a million is not enough so if you put it in there I think that's a good kind of vitamin D shot for that account and maybe could ease some of the um contingencies but we would recommend that you be very um specific about the things that we eliminate out of next year's budget one time pleas otherwise it just it just picks the C and you're going to see it compounded um element from that and collectively John we've made the decision to invest in our schools to do the capital things to not be Tak down the road so we have to kind of stay that course with

135some conviction I would say right like for us to talk and say all of these things that we're going to fix all these things and say we're going to buy down the budget half perc it's plan to then have an air condition unit break and us like now only need money we have to freeze something because we're in a bad place next year I just don't think it's prudent or in alignment with what we've been talking about and what we built it to over the last four years it kind of resets us this is an added correct and so I know we're getting to the questions and we don't have to have the discussion tonight because I know it's already late but um I did submit the question that you're see about um being sensitive

136to the idea that you know we have this gift of$ 400 something, but it's not as easy as buy down the budget you don't want to replace a recurring cost so I did ask the question about we have created a new recurring cost which we call Special Ed P can we use that mechanism that you described earlier to make that a you know a kind of part account so that we are not you know I can see a world where you can buy down some of what is currently in this budget with special contingency by taking the money they've just given and putting it in that account it's still available it's just in a different line of it right but that would be one way we could deploy it as opposed to just parking the

137whole thing without a use so I'd like to explore that again doesn't have to be tonight but yeah one of the challenges are buying down kind of line items in the budget next it'll come back to there's there is something that we're buying next year it's a one time $122,000 cost I don't remember exactly what it was you know but when you start talking about buying down a $112,000 item like it doesn't change and then you split that so that middleberry gets you know whatever $4,000 of that and $8,000 of that goes to southberry it doesn't change the budget number anymal way so you're going to buy down 4 would say 430 is going to be kind of our excess cost so if we're going to buy down $430,000 wor of stuff that lower next

138year budget I would say like that might be something I don't know that you're going to find 400,000 430,000 in non reoccurring costs in next year's budget so you're just putting a almost a half a percent into the following year budget before we even build it well we took that offset Revenue right and we right we did take we were north of five before they started about this extra 40 million so that we then especially Revenue by about 385,000 so it means that this point ,000 W be there again next year we've already absorbed we've already we Che the risk assumed next year's budget is going to have 4 30,000 more in state revenue because the Tad are they were going to work on a deal for this year which means they're definitely going to

139work on a deal for next year so what well the the this year will be the unexpected and it's really not unexpected they they they cut this back in November um and then kind of scrambled to now so this is really just restoring what they took away in November um so next year already captured reimbursement based on this money being so it's not going to bring down next year budget we've already kind of done that but finding some non-ring ways to to smooth next year's budget um I think there are some maybe some opportunities to do that we just point it to non s don't I see a 60c answer for it's a clarification question so you originally anticipated 72% was the number and then was okay now 16 but then they just now made

140it 72 why are we talking about like a found money like I it's not really found this brings us back to the 72 that we projected for well we projected 65 in the current year budget this now brings the current year reimbursement rate to 72 so it's only a 7260 ver 72 is only relevant in so far as it is informing your number for next year already the number at2 well but I mean if the world was ending and it came back down hard that's not just it doesn't matter doesn't matter so I wanted to know playing found yeah it's not it's not found it was there we had to absorb it but Bud conservatively this year at 65% you took the kind of gut punch in October November when they told sorry it's going

141to be 6. but I think it's fair I'm ask like we have [Music] on Surplus like what's the projection for Surplus for this year that's to me might it restores what we anticipated remember so in December we had to absorb cut from the state department of $430,000 the action taken yesterday or today rest stores that the cut so when we deferred all those projects because we didn't think we were going to do them this year now we have the conversation where we can now view them yeah so so you're whole there still could be a surplus yes like we are not trending as of the last Finance we are not trending to Z million and those you still have 30% of a year to and you'll have a new report for the finance meeting on

142Monday but there will we're trending towards a surplus not a that I mean there are some to be fair there are some districts that this is a Lifeline because they are struggling to meet their budget number this year so they need these dollars you have managed you have effectively managed the budget this year where if this $430,000 hadn't come through we would not be in danger of not being but in fact we probably still want to look at the Surplus based on hold onou right they they are there was a purpose fa not doing things that need done in our schools it's not like they're like we're okay right you were like well there's things maybe we can't do right now that we had planned on doing that we did not do and now we

143can turn them back on the reality is is that true I so it is true but the reality is because of the way that timing of this work some of those projects we we're going to run out of runway in order to scale them up so I do think we're going to have a year end balance that isn't what you saw at the last report but it's not going to be zero like we'll have some right you know will it equate exactly to the 4:30 like I don't want to sit here project that tonight until we kind of go back but I do think it's fair to say we'll have some money at the end of the year and a conversation around how much are going to add any more questions on the capital presentation

144all right move on to [Music] comments okay um Board of Education will recognize citizens of middleberry and southberry and citizens are asked to State their name their town of residence and to limit their comments to three minutes I'm in accordance with region 15 Board of Education bylaw 9325 a speakers are asked to express themselves in a Cil 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 speaker should be aware that if their statements violate the rights of others of the law of defamation or invasion of privacy the speaker may be held legally responsible so is there any public comments no all right may I have a motion to adjourn all those in favor all right

145we are adjourned every will see Monday