001good evening and welcome to the um meeting of the region 15 board of education for Monday February 24th May please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge Ali toed States the mission of region 15 a collaborative Community committed to Excellence is to educate every student to be productive ethical and engaged in the global Society improving and Innovative learning experiences supported by a strong Community whose decision- making is BAS to the best interest of all students we'll start with our student Representatives Miss test and Mr Brendon Ben all right good evening everyone as for p Rock High School Wednesday March 5th is sat day for the juniors and senors will be doing their senior year experience presentations as well the fifth is also a planned early dismissal for professional development March sixth is March Madness in
002int mural from 2:30 to 5:00 p.m and the districtwide string Festival is March 12th from 7 to 900m for Memorial Middle School thank you to the PTO for sponsoring an auor visit this past Wednesday who had spok to students about the writing process creating characters and compelling pot congratulations to the found math club students were coming in first place this past Saturday in the regional math CL competition held at PHS for Rano Middle School RMS sixth grade French students recently participated in an interactive language inspired stem field trip to workspace in bethl a special thanks to the RMS PTO for supporting the recent author visit and congratulations to the math club students for their participation in the regional math counts competition help this past weekend middle school students had the opportunity to meet luk which
003was the South Police Department's newest addition and emotional support therapy dog and coming up student and staff cornhole tournament and volleyball inerals are pretty soon all right thank you Tess moving on to the elementary schools at lmes students have been awarded a pajama day this Friday for their good character um long medal staff got to participate in a deep dive data day where teachers got to look at schools winter academic data and develop targeted strategic interventions to support students where they need it most they look forward to hosting authors Jay Wilson Mueller a region 15 family member and Jenna lman a former PHS student out long this week next week they look forward to the third grade wax museum where students will present about a famous person that they researched U moving on to pop
004rock Elementary School officer whiz of the South B Police Department brought in to pleas do student to meet uh last Friday Katie wood another author who wrote the book a simple seene came to speak to PS fifth graders and the book a simple seed offered valuable lessons in kindness honesty gratitude empathy and respect Katie shared her powerful stories of walking onto a college basketball team to supporting the hospital that saved the daughter's life and her message of resilience and gratitude deeply resonates with their de book uh they also had a twin day Spirit Day on Friday at Middlebury Metric school they kicked off their hats of book fundraisers supporting the Tommy the Tommy fund for Childhood Cancer um the class that reades the most money will earn the exciting opportunity to participate in a staff
005basketball game and if Mees raises the most funds in the state members of the Yukon basketball team will visit the school um coming from the theater department they are working hard at their upcoming showing of shk The Musical and the first showing will be Friday March first and then a quick sports update from the athletic department unified basketball had a game today at 3 and they have a tournament on the 26 the Watertown P hockey team has a game today at 7:30 and their senior night will be Wednesday at 7:30 uh the swim and Di team has their senior night also tomorrow at 6 and then the boys basketball team clinched a home game States however they missed the S swc tournament and BR basketball lost a tough game to the one- seated Notre Dame
006fa field in the semifinals that's that we see they will have in upcoming hope six thank you very much any questions foring their all right thank you very much um and before we move to the superintendence report um I just wanted to formally welcome back Mr John J cus who has just been appointed by the m board of selectman to um take Mr spirito's spot for their of Mr spirito's term um we're very happy to have you back John welcome back just in time for the budget happy to be here except for the you know make yeah right we'll see what we can do about that all right so next we have the superintendent 2025 2026 proposed budget a l USA so uh try to go through tonight uh the first of several nights where
007we'll walk through the budget the proposed budget for next year um as we do every year you know while we're going to talk a lot of numbers uh it's like to start and ground the work in why all those numbers matter and behind all of those numbers are how we run the school district how we manage uh the instruction and support for the staff that work with our children every day the theories of action and the mission statement are where we start with all of the U budget procedures and process uh everything in this budget is designed to support this slide uh while I'm going to talk tonight and over the next couple of nights uh you'll hear from administrators within the district this process really starts uh we've already started next year's budget now
008in a lot of ways and so there's a whole lot of people that go into building this uh from teachers that start talking with administrators to today about what is working and not working and how we build that into next year's planning we try to be thoughtful about how we build initiative so that there's a multi-year funding plan and that it's not just seen in isolation these are always hard slides to put together um you know we' like to share that there's a return on investment that all of the funding that goes into support for school system um has a lot of our students accomplishing things our staff accomplishing things that the community should be proud of how we pick those things is really difficult we try to make sure that we touch uh you
009know grades and ages and spaces and uh disciplines but there's a lot that isn't on these slides uh and so while there's a some tremendous accomplishments on here there's also a whole lot that doesn't fit on a couple of slides but it is helpful to to see some of this together when we talk about the accomplishments of students I don't want to leave out you know the work of our board uh and the accomplishment that that you learned this year some priorities that we look at uh we work and serve a community that uh requires a highlevel education system they have expectations of our uh performance they have expect a of why they move to town it's still the number one reason that brings communities uh families sorry communities uh and we have a promise
010to keep um we have Educators here that require supports and resources training that happens um the idea of a transparent budget has been something that we worked very hard on over the last few years and to make sure that this presentation the information on our website the information available to the public is clear and transparent and that we provide plenty of opportunity to discuss that uh it's really easy to build a budget that's really low and defer a whole lot of expenses and push that off to the Future it's not something that anybody on this board or this Administration has to deal with we could easily get that can down the road um there's a responsibility of making sure that we build a budget that takes care of not just today but builds uh a
011platform for people to grow from in the future uh and that while um our school budget's really important the idea that our community has fiscal restraints that large members of our community no longer have students in school and are on fixed incomes that that's factored into how we think about this that we don't just come of what we need today but what is our community need from us here's the whole budget in like seven bullets um in this budget that you're going to go through tonight all of the staffing needs are addressed uh that we can maintain all the programs that we have that we have accounts that have been underfunded historically we now publish our actuals you can't fix all of that in one budget season we've tried to smooth that out over the
012time and we continue to do that again to minimize that Community impact um instructional needs of students and programs inflationary costs are a factor that we have to uh manage and make sure that uh the programs that we're supporting have the resources behind them we've talked about the unfunded uh pension liability and if we ignore that again easy for us to do now but in the future that's going to catch up with somebody and so trying to um continue the investment to keep that pension um strong and healthy um the idea that we have aging infrastructure and that we've done a really good job as a board and a community to try to fix some of the big pieces but we can't just stop and take our eye off of that work and we have
013to continue to do that over time the the nice thing about how we work together is that a lot of the slides that I'm going to show you tonight are slides that you've seen the cool they should not be surprises um I think that we've done a good job if there's not a lot of surprises in this budget and you can say oh yes we've talked about that before the enrollment projections were on the trough if you remember the enrollment uh presentation from January uh that we've kind of had declining enrollment we're at the bottom of that enrollment Trend and we're going to start to see an increase over the next decade modestly my face when we look at class size averages here's the shift from the left hand sides are current class size averages
014the right hand side will be U the projected class size averages the formula at the bottom uh that I'll walk you through now tries to explain so we have three class reductions section reductions uh PES grade one and Long Meadow um at grade three Long Meadow at grade three is where that bubble is there's 100 students um in grade three this year that bubble's going to move through grade three the one behind it a lot smaller so you have three sack reductions at the elementary level and four additions those additions show up at Long Meadow in grades 24 um K2 and four and PS grade three when you do that kind of math there's a net increase of one FTE at the elementary level to adjust class sizes and keep them kind of consistent year
015to year and you're going to see a couple of slides now that we talked about in November when we look at planning uh you all know this but I'd like to remind the community that we manage about 700,000 square fet of space um and our buildings range from our smallest at 21,000 to our largest at 237,000 we have two different types of capital um accounts that we manage the operating Capitals in our budget that's the one you're going to see tonight the capital reserve is that one that U carries over year to year and is separate outside of the operating when we talked about this hypothetical plan plan uh back in November we had kind of three buckets that first is that operating Capital currently we have 475,000 in that operated Capital account some of
016that goes to break fix for things that we didn't know uh we're going to break when we have to fix them um and the conversation in November was what should that account be a million dollars is a conversation that's not a hard number but when you look at industry standard that if we use a $2 to $4 square foot that's kind of how you get there again and that's a point in time it's not a hard number but when we talk about what should our Capital our operating Capital be that's one um way to look at it then you have the capital reserve and The Debt Service remember that with the bond that we took out we have a Debt Service we're going to have some space in next year with that Debt Service account
017right now the conversation that started in November that's continuing uh through the uh finance committee is next year we have some operating Capital potentially and a bond payment that we don't have to make we have aging HVAC units um and our current approach is that we should use that money to invest and fix those HVAC units if we don't come up with a way to do that through our operating budget we're going to have to bond that there's really no other way they're too expensive they're too big and you need a multi-year plan when you have a multi-year plan for HVAC and roofs it opens the opportunity to apply for State reimbursement when you put yourself in a position where you're not proactive and you're waiting on great fix and you're trying to do it
018in an emergency situation you can't apply for State reimbursement the process is too long so our recommendation is that we take keep this money in the budget and we invest it in um infrastructure that we know is going to fail most of our HVAC units especially at the high school are from 1979 they're end of life and if you don't have a plan to start replacing them going to be in a mincy situation so with that in mind there are two things that uh we'll have in this budget I don't think it should surprise anybody we've talked about the amount of facilities work that's happening um we don't have a director of facility position we did until 2006 in 2006 that position was eliminated when we look at the work done in this District between
0192006 and 2019 there was not a bond issue there was not any major Construction there was no Capital plan until 2018 um and if you can think back to 2006 our conversation around school security was fundamentally different than it is today all of the work that we do in school security around reporting meeting infrastructure hardening our facility that didn't happen in 2007 it happens now not in the way that we do now there were some pieces of that um currently we have been extremely fortunate that our head custodians in this District have a very very long relationship with the district they range from our our youngest head our youngest our least experienced in the district headon has been here eight years our most experience has been here 43 years when those folks start to retire
020we're going to lose a lot of institutional knowledge if we create a director facilities position or refill it I guess we never toldly Ras it happened in 2006 uh we can start to build some of that capacity so that as people retire we don't use it all and there's some type of transition um and then Security Management when we talk about the reporting that has to be done the trainings that have to be done the meetings that have to be attended and the new meetings that are happening with the Western Connecticut uh Center for school safety having staff that can be in those places will build capacity that we currently don't have the the manpower to do so we're suggesting that that director faciliity position kind of be reenacted or Reed to the budget at
021a cost of about 125,000 based on what our peers around us had that uh increase in capital line we're suggesting we add 100,000 to it again that was a discussion in November it was not binding or anything like that but if you add a 100,000 to that line each year for the next five years we kind of get into that ballpark we don't have to add it every year but we think that we should start a trend to start to check off some of these end of life um facilities projects that we don't have a current funding source at a level need it to complete some major cost I'm want to start on the right side because the left is a whole lot of mess um on the right so contractual sapling changes so these
022are teacher contracts parent contracts administrative anything that we have an obligated contract we U increase our substitute costs recently um by increasing the daily rate to stay competitive as we have trouble filling those positions there are three new positions one uh I'll go through other than the U facilities directive health insurance is a 133% increase this is the highest increase we've faced in at least five years um in the last five years those have all been single digit increases um for those of you that may sit on the medical fing committee or paid attention in um early January we were looking at 13 and a half% increase as our claims rates have come in over the last 60 days um we've been able to adjust that down to about 13 we think anything more aggressive
023than that starts to create by on the left hand side so I left this language on the top this was language that was written Thursday and Friday um and had the language stayed we would be looking at about a half a percent increase in the current year budget and over the last two years the level of reduction of excess cost reimbursement in the state would cause a 1% overall impact for the budget however on Friday legislators decided that they were going to put $40 million into the current year budget and release that to school districts so if that happens now it's like happening at 7 or maybe it just happened the legislative action that's taking place will move the current reimbursement from 60% to 72% that will have a massive impact on this year's budget
024however that doesn't do anything for next year which still Lees a whole We Believe with confidence that the intent to fix this year shows um a commitment to fixing next year and already in the governor's budget is is making an adjustment for the year after so if they didn't do anything next year you'd have an adjustment this year you'd have a big hole next year and then return however at like 1 or two o'clock this afternoon the governor said he's going to veto this action to which the legislator said we can override your veto with a super majority so all of that is kind of in massive flux but kind of the news that we take away is there's a lot of conversation for next year that this is a recognized poll that is pushing
025underfunded state grants onto local taxpayers so three weeks ago our philosophy was to budget next year conservative at 60% because that's what we knew we were going to have this year over the last three weeks we've moved that adjustment from 60% to 72% based on what's happening right now and we have a pretty high confidence level that we're going to get the 72% that's a half that's a half a percent increase or a half a percent slider on the budget number what's the dollars uh so the 1% is about a million dollars so about five five to six 600,000 the difference 300,000 is the difference between where we were going to be next year and where we now are next year and this is kind of the breakout of the excess cost Grant since 2013
026so if you real if you see in the beginning the grant usually was above the 75% couple years it was lower but um it was funded on average over the those 10 years at about 70 60% the 60% was the lowest in the history of the grant which is why all of the legislators and people in Harford have kind of woken up and paid attention in 2022 they added this tiered structure So based on your local Town wealth you were now put into a tier uh for reimbursement which is how we ended up this year at the 60% after today assuming that this all works itself out I don't know what's going to happen this year but assuming the um intent of today is what happens in year one of the governor's budget next year
027we would be at about 72.8% so uh all of that is something that Mr Martino and I talk about about every 11 to 14 minutes um but I think we're pretty comfortable that the state recognizes you cannot cut us off the knees at that 60% and we're going to be in that 70% we do have in our budget a special education contingency amount so if we're within Striking Distance of that 72% like we do have a place to go to make of a difference so we don't feel that it's high risk to go to 72% this is the slide we all been waiting for um so when you look at all of those pieces this is where we end up um and you'll look that the percent change year-over-year by line um by Major uh
028account the revenue loss that you see is here which again instead of it being about 370,000 is at 35,000 which makes that 4.49% far more attractive than if we had to take that $300,000 loss of Revenue when you look at the revenue um you remember back in 2019 and U 2020 we didn't do a net budget we just did a gross budget we they break out our Revenue so that's why that green bar is still there um from 2020 on uh We've started to break out and itemize our Revenue the two things that I would point out is starting with this current year we started uh renegotiating the our our shortterm interest our short-term investment fund um we've been projecting pretty well so we can increase the interest we're going to make off of that
029account um and then there's the rest of the uh fees here's your excess cost we're projecting is going to be about flat um year to year when you break it down was asking dollar amounts when you factor in the ADM um this is how that factors into percent increase per down not 34% increase that's your ADM what just 30% certifi so this is the summary so we talked about the K5 we actually have a open position in our K5 that's currently unfilled part that's because we had some anticipated um medical complications earlier in the year um so next year we're going to be able to absorb that one position at a net zero FTE at the elementary currently our elementary schools have a Collaborative Learning Program in them and our high school has Collaborative Learning
030Program our middle schools do not so we end up supplementing those Resources with outside Consultants or programs and shipping it's not the most efficient model and we have kind of this awkward transition from services that students receive in elementary school they evaporate in middle school and then we bring them back in high school so we're um proposing to add a 1.0 FTE which creates that Collaborative Learning Program in the middle school so we would live at One middle school and we would share the students um that one program then we have um two non-certified so we've talked a lot about bringing in a data warehouse we tried this about six years years ago it's not the most successful um plan in part because we weren't ready for it so we've spent not all the last
031six years we spent a couple years managing a national International pandemic but um building u a foundation to bring that back in through that work what we realized is we don't necessarily need an instructional side of data we need a backend data person we have at central office right now A unfilled um through a retirement and unfilled um central office support position uh so we can reposition that so for about $30,000 net salary increase and zero FTE increase we can reposition that open position to be this District data person um and then the other salary um the other non-certified salary position would be the director facilities that would be a pure app so when you look at that there's really that two between the special integation position and the director specifics position when you look
032at kind of how that breaks down in the pie chart it's the same information from that original spreadsheet of 4.49% um these are just how they break down what's interesting is about 73% we're a service industry 73% of what we do as people if you go back 50 years while the dollar amounts might be different perentes don't change couple of other pieces um we've been very fortunate that uh We've converted our buildings to natural gas um we've been able to reduce the public benefit out of the electricity and we had some energy leases um to do some of that natural gas re retrofit um that have kind of sunset so all that together means we're able to keep our natural gas and utility flat Diesel and fuel oil we see a reduction actually in part
033because we have fewer buildings using oil and because of the ability to rate lock in our rate um we've been adding to our pension every year this proposed budget includes a $40,000 increase in our pension contribution and this year we started the uh last year we started the internal audit process this maintains to 15,000 do that um Tech we have a technology lease um for next year there is a federal eate program that will allow us to a matching grant for us to upgrade some of our Edge switches that are a slid looks complicated but basically if you're above the line if you're red you're southberry green your middleberry but if you're above the line it means the ADM shifted your way that year and if you're below the line it means they shifted away
034from you that year and what's interesting is that the first 20 years from about 1985 to 2005 uh you'll see that Southbury kind of took a lot of the shifting enrollment and really since 2005 middleberry has taken more in the shifting enrollment here's how the 4.49 fits into the historicals of um budget increases and this is how that all breaks out um with the ABM distribution and this 34% an increase over last year which is why we see a disproportionate increase to middleb so from here I'm GNA play in a slightly different sandbox so educational cost sharing so just want to be clear These funds go to town they do not come to schools and I've now entered somebody else's sandbox but I feel that we're very critical that Hartford has been taking money and
035disproportionately giving us unfunded V so I feel obliged to recognize that next year both towns will see an increase in their ECS money this is money from Hartford that goes to town to help offset the cost of Education um so middleburry next year will'll get the $52,000 increase and South bar get about a 1.4 million this is what this year is this is year one of the governor's budget this is year two of the governance buget put a link down here if anybody watchs that later um so after next year year it will have flatten out but next year um you'll see at least a fairly substantial increase if you were to take those and you apply it to the cost of Education here's what that looks like again the towns have choices with how
036they manage the the extra Revenue but when you calculate that um here's what that percent looks like right now then kind of our next budget works out Mar 5th 19 all of this will be on the website by tomorrow morning questions we will post uh questions sometimes it gets a little wonky but we try to keep a running list of questions on the website all the presentations will be on the website there's already a lot of the information on the website uh just an appreciation of all of the people that go into all of the numbers behind this um Mrs megleo has the full book for the board members we have copies for anybody in the audience of the um object code summary that'll go on the website tomorrow as well this presentation um that's
037all I got any questions that I can Orion thought I can respond to can you clarify um on one of your slides and thank you so much for all the work I know it's a lot in the bigger deal so I appreciate it um all the work get done you had a slide and not only slide but you see numbers on all the slides I wasn't able to capture it um but you had you started on the right before you went to the left because the excess gr or cost and you say um there were three positions when you see that second bullet under contractual Staffing salary increases so does that represent the special ed uh teacher middle school and plus one at the elementary school like what are those three it's the data position
038that's the data position which is like a hat you know because it's offset um and then the C's director and the special so can you then help you understand the the when we went to the class sizes and we looked at the elementary schools do that head count neutral or that it looked like there was a plus one there so there's a there's an official plus one from a hiring standpoint but we have a current position an FTE in the budget this year that's unfilled but that's if you but you also took you shifted things last year so the idea is that that would be as a result of the grade one classroom can you go to that slide for a b um no the one where you H the summary oh okay um it
039was details around where sh were so p through five right so you're reallocating that one open position and that's based off of the shift from K to one at PS right so it looks like that's a decrease and then there's yeah so there's Net Zero at PS going lose one in one grade add one in another grade that okay may not be the same feature that moves but in theory you simplify it a feature will move from grade one to grade three you clear to any teachers watching out there that may not be how it works but for like Simplicity um there's no there's no impact there no net Staffing Chang at Long Meadow you're going to have a net gain of one teacher there'll be one new classroom at long that doesn't exist this
040year that reduction okay but currently in this year's budget we have one FTE position that we were manaing earlier this year we had to that been vacated and it's not currently being so from a budget standpoint there will be no new FTE K same M follow question then if you go back to that enrollment class siiz enrollment slide there were some shifts done last year that resulted in increase class size and my concern is that some of the building and infrastructure is such that they are really at a place where they're busting at scenes so would there ever be a need rather than to create that cost neutral actually keep that SW there to offset some of that burden because when I see 21 22 20 kids in that class size that's significantly I'm looking
041at PES I'm looking at lmes for that 20 and Mees at F 20 and I've been on all those schools in those classrooms and the burden I think not only to the teachers but also to the instruction is something that I would definitely like to have additional conversations as we go into the additional workshops we can absolutely have conversation one of the challenges especially um at PES uh Long Meadow and Mees is actual class space pH which I'm very concerned that that allocation of that that CL that teacher wouldn't be utilize to offset some of that concern even creating additional Cod right you added if you added another fourth grade teacher let's say to BS orow bring down the class science but at Long Meadow I don't know the classroom set up to that section
042and that's the challenge with um really all of the Dan probably has the most um space and I say that a little tongue and cheek because there's not like empty classroom sitting there so that's one of the challenges that if you wanted to create a another section at grade four at P finding a physical classroom would do that challenge this is two years ago I was said you had to add like four teachers for one extra thing and so I confused what's one teacher back and forth so I believe that was like the middle school we had the team okay so elementary school so that slide that we were just on it just had all the bullet points had PDS a different I thought I so iy when we said PES I I thought there
043was position that went unfilled I I assume it's being substitutes or like how do we have a position so we we had earlier this year we had staff member Str medical challes and then so that second position was used in tand to make sure that there would be a continu of construction we no longer need that okay okay so still at the end of the day regardless of who was teaching the no so it's still that that show up that did show up in the block the orange did not that that was not a section that was kind of there it's an unfilled have one FD at the elementary school that's unfilled classroom teaching classroom teaching position yes but it's currently unfilled it's vac so if that person has showed up tomorrow where would that
044person we not okay so I'm I'm at a loss as to how we can not have someone and it's just it does not impact doesn't seem to impact so in in the budget there is a teaching salary right now allocated to a position that is currently unfilled but it was filled person just has Believe work whatever I don't want to get into the personal deeps but the person's okay so the person's lost that refill that okay but that position is currently yes but had that happened person's passing happen before school started we may have cut position okay can you go back to the can you go back to the grid where we have the green and orange blocks yes so let's just Che come at this at a different angle green orange blocks I'm looking
045at the left hand side of the page I'm looking at PS I see represented on the left hand side of this screen not in is one FTE that is currently vacant okay no one's in it the salary is in our budget okay when you look at the unex unencumbered money in our salary line of the current budget that salary is sitting in the unencumbered budget so you were able to staff those class with PES without this person that wasn't that PES or whatever it was at elementary school with this person right without this person corre um and therefore that that does not show up on the left hand side so I'm going to make a leap and say that you were able to reshuffle some of the class sizes you were expecting you had five
046teachers and one pass now you have four so the same amount of stud so so we had some uncertain going into the school right so we had teacher in that class right we had a teacher that was going to move in and out of that class yes okay and so that position is not represented on the left hand side so when we go to the right hand side that salary is already in the budget for this year we're just not using it if we were to look at last year's budget presentation we would see that Pro okay um thank you very much um can you the internal audit process in the $15,000 can you speak to what that just gets us what do we get so uh we choose an account structure internally first one
047we chose was Student Activities uh and then an outside auditor comes in and audits that series of accounts and we've done that once yes and so if we do it again it'll assum be something other than um we have entire budget we did that's a mandated State mandated uh compulsory it was requested by the board of finance and southberry who uses this br this and this board and then we slide 10 um just to get back to miss addict's point about the discussion so you're requesting a discussion about the uh was fourth fourth grade what was it you want to Sor I know you want to talk about the impact of a slightly larger classes what I've heard a lot consistently since I've been on the board is the impact of Education postco the advocacy
048for having um individualized construction and how that plays into things and and when I start to see some of these numbers and the impact of some of those numbers on a teachers's ability to actually have that individualized instruction um that's where my focus is because I see that we and we a lot of money and a lot of different things um and I think that maybe Mr Marks had commented on this earlier maybe not I can't remember but um in another pting um about where the money relative to in classroom instruction and and things in that space and so it's in the Forefront of my mind because if I think about all the things we talk about our assessments our curricula um our individualized you know uh education how we understand the needs of each
049child well that takes time and it's limited um when or disproportionate relative to how many kids do in the classroom relative to teacher and then I think about that relative to the physical classroom sums right having done all the tours this year going in I mean some of those classes there's no space so I was more like I really want to understand kind of where the allocation of the teachers are going when I see that that plus one that we had last year that wasn't used is kind of Bud neutral and how that potentially could be utilized if possible to offset some of that burden that's kind of where I was coming at it from so would you say it's fair if let's say there's eight students in the grade could have four classes I
050think 20 or five or 16 exactly and so you're are you saying the discussion would be about what of the benefits to having 16 like you know smaller size you know what of the benefits but then I also hear like a physical space component which I feel like is out of our hands so yeah I think it maybe it would be helpful for me to understand like what those like the class size is based off of what codor you know so um and to be perfectly open I've had some members of the community come and question who was involved in certain decisions last year that resulted in some increased class sizes and I think that's part of what's also and I to talk to Josh extensively about that um what's in the back of my
051mind because I do think that we just have to it's a careful balance um and I'm of course not advocating for larger class sizes I'm advocating the yeah I'm just trying again just how that you know what what would be the deliverables in that presentation like I guess no I just you know what I want to make so I came out this going into this year I was surprised at our August retreat with where some of the shifts were made and the impact to some of the classrooms and I understand the rationale of why that was done but to me I felt that there was a polarizing position of what was communicated in our presentations from the principles and the needs of the um instruction teachers which I fully support that they need you know
052ability to connect with students understand the needs of the students the complexities of education so when I saw certain class sizes go up last year to me that was very opposite of the messaging that i' heard and so I just want to put it out there that I'm critically looking at that when I'm hearing the presentations I peed that up a couple weeks ago as well that for me that's really important to understand if we're making any shifts in classroom and how instruction is given and it impacts the number of kids in that class where there's potential opportunity for to go up significantly 20% or something to me that goes against what I've been hearing for a long time since I've sit on PO since I've sat ad board and that's really been my fundamental
053concern with what happened right into this year so so now like so there's another layer of fing we talk about August then we're saying well then there was some shifts August that brought about some higher class sizes that's when we learned about it okay we learned that there was a a a cost neutral shift that had in the classroom and I want to try and have a level of clarity that that does not happen and because basically some community members said when who who made that decision and as a board member I learned about it in August that they trth right we approved you know and endorsed the budget but um think that there was concern relative to how that impacted the classroom okay I just again I just we up a discussion I just
054really wanted to understand we did you have question um did um and as long as we're here I'm just gonna add question just think there's one small here yes it's great is2 this year 17.75 the decreas is going they are they are yeah that is for that is four so what we can do here we can layer like you want to know many sections of teachers I'm just I'm just a little confused about her because right now PS on this side 22 Next Year bud there's three sections four SE yes but the the line at the bottom says adding a section three section okay I'm sorry okay so it's funny we had this conversation we put the section numbers in here or don't in so we can definitely come back and add them in sorry
055we have we have a slide that you know a spreadsheet that has all those pieces we'll give you the whole piece number of students number of classrooms the average class size and then if you want to add or subtract that would do your class size would be help we can be that um so the question I originally raised my hand about was um you know ECS it's not just going up middleberry southberry it's going up across the state um I like to do this thing when I'm looking at our budget and which is top out other District's budgets and see where they are what they're doing and um you know because we are a Regional School District it does not make sense ECS education class sharing ask for clarifying yes so so we do not
056it would not make sense for us to include that Revenue because it doesn't come to us however uh I'm just and you may not know the answer to this this may be like more fun than games for me um but do you know when um say non- Regional School districts are preparing their budget whether that ECS goes in revenue or whether it remains outside budget projections there's multiple different depends on commun there's not one everybody doesn't this one in some communities this the town takes this and uses it to offset their no ra tax base and others they push it over to the schools and say buy down the budget the end of the day kind of does the same thing there's just different approaches based on I guess just given increase this year is
057substantial as we examine you know as we try to like make comparisons with newspaper articles that we're reading in districts this can be a substantial Factor those percent increases kind of the hard part of that comparison is that the 4.49 is our school dist yep so kind of controlling all things being equal that's the number you would compare to others you know whether or not if this is where it gets hard Regional districts for example our pensions in our pension comption a non- regional district isn't making a pension comption you know so there's some things that aren't apples to apples to begin with um on average the last time I was a couple weeks maybe two weeks ago um of the districts that were reporting you know the average was about 5 and a half
0585.7 I haven't kind of done that but I would say that as a general comparison right that doesn't take into account ECS even the excess cost different districts are kind of all over the map about how we were um projecting that Revenue originally you talked to me two weeks ago Mr Martino and I felt pretty good about you know 63 or 65 if or maybe U not as comfortable some District budgeting 75 over the last 72 hours were more comfortable with the 73% that's in here so I think when you do those comparisons there's a lot underneath it especially right now but you know like that 40K contribution perc but this ECS number over a million dolls we were put that you know that would so I just want to point that's right recognizing that
059there are Boards of Finance members that are tuning in online and in person I want to be totally transparent you know that is their decision on how they use that and that's I'm totally fine with that what all I'm trying to say is it's to me it just seems like an extra layer to be care [Music] compd else clarify exactly the data manager what that would entails yes so um how we envision that position looking is um one of the challenges with data system that we kind of went through from our experience with mothers it's we have lots of data and lots of different structures it's in a Google doc it's in a spreadsheet it's in power school the back end communication between all those structures and systems is something that can get really technical
060really fast and if you are a teacher in a classroom the last thing that you need is to have to sit on uh a call with help support to get that data input um make sure it's clean and accurate and then make sure that the reports we're getting out are something you just can use to actually inform inst structure if we have data and it doesn't help us teach students better than he cares right so uh this person would manage that backend structure to say are the reports that teachers need available to them if they're not going create them or work for the company that have them created are the user rights and access able to the people that need it are the data that we're collecting in form in a format that we can
061ingest into the system and if not is that a systems piece or it a collection piece so that's really the um some of the the primary work of of what this world so help me to understand or give me an example like what type of data you're thinking about the map Ewa that comes from them that's pretty easy to to get in but teachers collect like if you're an elementary teacher you're doing letter recognition a lot of that might be on a check sheet it might be a Google doc that you're entering data in your classroom because that's really nwh big data at like a 30,000 foot level and you know Smarter Balance data is 100,000 foot if you're a classroom teacher you need access to that data so I want to know um in
062third grade I have these students that um have a certain absentee pattern and they miss certain types of instruction like is there are there Trend Trend data that I can work for as a classroom teacher how are you going to colate and make all that data so one more question so this would I'm I'm assuming would be cumulative like would be an aggregate not only for the class for that teacher but it would be across School across the district Etc as far as um If This Were to move forward the benefits of being able to leverage that would not be seen likely in the 25 26 budget what is the weak time that you're anticipating before we actually see that return I don't know that I can say we would return soon I mean we
063have interventionists right now that are doing a lot of data work um kind of old school where they're um heat mapping spreadsheets you know we should be able to aggregate some of that stuff relatively quickly look for kind of Big Data Trends uh we're putting in a new uh clonic system to look at some data across the district and are there schools where things are happening differently or um trends that we can start to look at um and how those Trends comparing are what classroom teachers seeing at an end of unit math assessment in alignment to what NWA is telling us and some of that stuff I don't think it's going to be a year or two oh everybody I mean I mean we have lots of people using data in lots of different ways
064it's just extremely manual um and it's really hard so like the big data stuff NWA Smarter Balance data like that's data that we can access and Aggregate and do some of this manipulation but they don't talk to each other so if you wanted to look at Smart Balance data and NWA data and look for um kind of overlap Trends validation points you can't do that other than b you have to explo each student somebody doing that now maybe every like like our principles do it our intervention there's no one place where all that lives and so like if I build a spreadsheet that does comparison I can share that spreadsheet with Dr J but it's not a report to run it's not imported it's it's a spreadsheet at my desktop that I can share with
065her but there's no uh kind of consistent data set our like interventionists have consistent like Google Docs when they get together they kind of look at that stuff but it's it's I don't know real like 2008 so basically what you're saying is that anonymized data and reports could be provided to us as a board to review how about I go one further these tools at perform so we can do that so that's so as far as transparency of how we're performing and those different corts and Trends you have three or l site oh yeah our site now while we have a decent it's extremely labor intensive get the line ofy we have now um I would just kind of little as it being tools have parent facing how long that takes to turn on it
066may not be like in three weeks um but I do think like fairly quickly I mean the good news about this is we are not on the beding edge of this work and the tools that we're looking at are um extremely mature and have some kind of TurnKey features that we should be able to to fire uh so we've talked a lot and you've given us a lot of updates on the data warehouse kind of shopping B process I didn't see in your presentation the PA for implementation and the licensing to house so is that something we have an idea of you or yeah so you'll see some details of that in Dr G presentation we're looking really at about an annual license cost of about $188,000 but we should be able to do this
067year with some of the fun available to least get ourselves a contract and get some of the profession development backend startup I'm working Dr you know a lot of lot of lines in my head but 18,000 is about where we are for next year uh you know we thought it was going to be a lot more but they've been pre agressive s uh my second question is um fingers crossed on the access cost funding um from your lips to God's ears that's 72% next year um um but there's a risk in that so what if it's not 72% what if it is the number that it is this year I have $400,000 shortfall how do we address that so if if the number is next year what it is this year um there's going to
068be you know I hate to say ride in the streets and be but I mean that would be it'd be a huge hit for us but on a Statewide level that would be um extremely problematic so but I don't disagree with you the short answer is we had a special ed contingency line um that we have not reduced and we would look to hold on to that until we knew um where these numbers were I also think that we're going to know it's not going to be next October or December that we learn this we'll know by the end of this legislative session uh what that's going to be and we'll have a little bit of time to kind of worst case scenario I don't want to scary but you know freezing the budget and
069pulling back initiatives and saying we're not going to do that because it's 60% instead of 73% like we'll we'll be able to see that coming and we'll know by the end of this legislative session and probably way before then how real that is plus dollar was too large to ignore I mean if it was $50,000 you'd sit there and wonder but I mean talking 385,000 can't we couldn't just be conservative again when we try to balance the the impact of the taxpayer I think this is a we're we're not uh fiscally risky people but I think that would have been seen as overly conservative if we sat on 350,000 and said Gee you know I hope hope we pass this so the governor's out there saying don't come to the state so yeah there's a
070nonzero chance not rest I don't I don't disagree I also think there's a huge difference between taking an action that imp act this fiscal year that's already been allocated in enumber and you only have a couple of months left of it and making decision for next fiscal year you know the government did recognize in year two of his budget that this has to be addressed um so I do think there's um political will to make something happen next year um I think to your point like I understand the hesitancy of doing it right now because um depending on which article you read some between 50 and 100 million they 500,000 from their fiscal cap and either of these would blow that cap so like I understand it' be nice to have it versus not have
071it but I understand the tension here but I think that some of that is going to lead to acknowledging that we have to do something next year so I don't think that this is an aggressive risk to make that adjustment for next year so uh I think it would helpful to me and then for people that lived online for history sake to have couple like a slide to tease out more about the data manager and the facilities director like if we're adding roles like more and I again I know we've had some conversations I who we are you know we' talked about tonight but something a little more than just maybe a brief mention in a slide we're going to be so tonight you get a cursory yeah so when you get to Dr ch
072presentation data manager and data warehouse maybe you'll get some of that we get to the capital we'll talk a little bit more specific about that okay um and then um so um all that thought too so then um we also have to talk at some point about the facility can use like dials if we're GNA adjust Middle School like at some point in our discussions lose that usually you have a dial slide in this presentation or should the board want to adjust something out um there's a dial slide I'm sure I could guess what that might be but um it's not in this presentation so I don't know because the obvious as to what that might be or there other things that consider so it's intentional it's not in here this year I think that's
073because I I think that you are a mature board has I mean in theory everything in here is a DI right like whether or not you dial class size of whether you look at new position you know whether you look at the risk factor of the excess cost number you can dial that up or back again you saw years of 80% recommend that but I think if if there's a place you know we thought um I think there's a bias here but I think there's a good bud I think the number one works pretty good I think the the ECS money helps the conversation so I didn't want to um Prejudice the board as to that dial if um there's things that you want us to recommend if you think this number is High um
074you want to look at bringing it down like can provide recommendations to that there's areas where we're too risky looking at you doesn't have to be CL size but there's if we're too aggressive in areas and you want to know a cost impact or you want to look at the speed schedule and say if we take this out is there a place that we could increase or decrease the budget to offset that or just do a p increase like we can go in any of those directions and we're happy that question when we did the Sor I'm trying to be brief and my bullet pointed um um oh so regards to presentations uh like you know normally for example we have the elementary teachers come in like is I don't know is that like really
075necessary if there's not that much l to give like do we bring people in just to bring them in and have questions or I understand it might no no this was actually one of my questions where I was going in I trans thought it was would did some of the tours were some things that were discussed um relative to equity in the classroom I remember distinctly the conversation um was of RNs about the laboratory maybe that wasn't something for this year's budget but in the future like it's those types of things when I start to think about equity in the classroom and the fact you have a science teacher teaching in a regular room with a carpet like to me like where does that fit maybe not this budget but there are things to create
076equity in our classes that I think need to be talked about or maybe that will be presented I don't necessarily Cheo me all the details but there some things I'm like where is some of the money going where could it Go and it is not in larger class size it's just to be very clear Ian a man would be grab out the with a very specific purpose than to like I know one year they came was very nice we don't really have much to say we're some new desks some shelves that's not you know we have a an hour conversation about Team part of the bud so maybe I'm just saying we don't have to just because it's what we always do like have to bring this have to have the same come back and
077the same presentations just different B so we have discussed streamlining it to more so every object has some ins and outs of shifts and dollar amount um on the whole the vast majority of accounts for that for that slide up here um are not in instru accounts they're not in you know if you look mean the big numbers are in those you know top two accounts right so when you start talking about how much is in an elementary budget to control there's not a lot of dollar however when you start to go through your budget books and you look at some shifts sometimes you want to know that we shifted money from um this uh cost center to that one for using X Y or Z similar to what we did with um athletic budget
078last year when we talked about specific dollar amounts um some of those have programmatic increases or programmatic impact and some don't so we can streamline that but I do think like we're going to talk about class size is an interesting conversation because there's two factors there one of it's Financial but one is also fiscal right there's only so many spaces that we have so um I'm happy to boil down those conversations so whatever topics you want us to focus on um and I think some of the questions like around the science lab is an interesting one you know like I think the short answer is science labs in their entirety are half a million dollars with the eyewash and we don't have ques yet when we get to the capital and talk about some of
079that but it doesn't mean that there's not the potential for some intermediary steps we don't have to wait if we look at science labs costing 250 or $300,000 and we have 26 science labs like we might have to come up with an intermediate plan because that might not be something that contain right so those are the kinds of things like we're happy to have those conversations with you and in some ways that operating capital and growing that allows us to do some of the the science LS um without necessarily looking at that next tier of kind of highend bond type structures where it gets you know into the seven figure range two more point I larly two more but I can wait till um about um some of the bond you know going away um
080Mr I thought one idea was to replace that bond with buing school was that something no that's that's what this slide is here that Debt Service the last row again this is kind of a hypothetical mockup not anything we're locked into but currently we budget 1.6 million in bond this budget does not grow that but it does not shrink that but the way our current Bond inst structured we are not going to have a full Bond payment so we'll have some of that money available next year was that Bond payment the result of that's paid off in d uh some of that is and some of it is that the new Bond payment isn't fully recognized we we haven't spent all the 11 million bonds so we're not going to make a payment the the
081idea being if we choose to build the school um and again there's a lot of kind of in here based on um interest rates stay Bond rates all that stuff but to mock it up you know if you were to look at 2031 you might look at a high waterm Mark of a bond payment of 5.1 million so you're you know whatever the math is four and change three and change between those two is we have two choices either that hits kind of in its entirety or we find a way to smooth that over the next five or seven years so just uh just for transparency I did send an email to the superintendent where as for more information relative to the student services presentation we talk about assessments they have a lot of have
082time assessments now Break It Out by uh General calculation as well as the special needs something group special groups the phras is high needs groups right the next we also see the high groups are broken out um and I was um I had asked um that maybe in previous student services presentations kind of focused on like these are all the services that are provided and the key areas such as like um the addition of the ml teacher and um transition program that um is last year or enhanced um but I would um like to maybe see more um sort of metrics like and how we track like how that money is spent on the return on investment in in that area of budgeting I can follow yes I know we've got like srbi and the
083structures sort of move through srbi um I feel like kind of once it's like you're really in there with a lot of needs like there's I don't know how we know like is that like how is how effectively or how is how are we measuring as a district that money going to students with um in those uh Finance groups um is basically giving us our our return on investment if you will um I hate to use that phas like with people but like if you know we look at um again the assessment presentation we can talk about sat data esac and NW I always I feel like the the high needs groups like aren't like necessarily collected in that and how we are supporting them and how we're spending this money and um I just
084would like more you know if we're going to change a presentation like I would like to see that like you had or you you have an exra ml teer like well what what has been the impact that what was the impact on money spent on that transition program as well like a deeper dive into um how that how that trying to to about the best results I'm sure we are but it's never unsure but it's never really been in all my years of the bo I feel like it's never really been able to sort of demonstrate it um sort of with the same rigor that the demand of other disciples just that's just something I would I would really like to see I think beneficial that um and then the the 449 while um we
085were taking pets if was sort the pric is right I would wor and not to Showcase um however uh it's still to me something that um you know I want to evaluate the dials uh and given the history of some previous budgets um I do think I mean I am very rest that is 449 given um where other districts are um I am not going to be playing the so I I did that last I've done that a lot I'm not I I'm even going to look at what other districts Vis it when we're higher than other districts like you know it's well now we're lower but so it doesn't matter when we're higher it doesn't matter when we're lower to me um I think to at this point um to kind of piggy back
086and what you were saying um then I'll admit this I the gate this is in a way unfair because I know better I know better with per puple expenditures I know that you could look at a per pup expenditure for a town you don't know if they're carrying the insurance for the pen or whatever in their Municipal budget so how do we know like it's an apples oranges comparison um for last year out of 180 districts so our people we were 76 out of 20 about 23,000 the average was um 21 or 22 and and the medium was 21 22 so but we were a little bit above both um if like I'm looking at like I would just love to know um look at like a Maro or a cheser where they have the
087same amount of people like the per people expend so much them by thousands of dollars like how I I would just I would love and that that talk about like an SAT style metric like that comes up constantly and I would love to be able to say well yes but like we dove into Monroe and you know like millions of dollars just kept on the new ipal you know how do these other just just love to know and I can't move to another town and get them that's not a municipal that's not a Regional School District and get on that board and figure it out I need someone to tell me I would say if you gave us some districts we like should just do that up the yeah I cou there's a couple I
088mean I can tell you one of the short answers is our transportation's higher because as a Regional School District our number like we have 65 buses again without even looking I'm pretty sure that the row has less than 65 buses I'm pretty sure that Chester has less than5 so without even looking like Regional School Districts and large like new town and Milford both geographically large spaces have more school buses you know if you look at bethl and Wilton where they have campuses they efficiencies of Transportation so again I'm happy to to answer that hard to do if you want me to look at all 100 no because there's a couple that are our size you 44500 kids and maybe millions of dollar you know the couple extra thousand for student is all bet yeah I
089bet our bus contracts about 800,000 to a million without even looking if we are having a discussion in the future about you know either refurbished or built new like are there advantages to you know having um the two schools right next to each other maybe we could combine bus runs and then how we pay for the bus very but like it might lend itself to to other inform other decisions questions for now we know that there's more that but no have to go the budget books as well all right um so to be continue um and everyone's welcome to submit questions to to Josh um that will be answered um know in that that scrolling question cheet or can guide um future budget workshops as to what can be discussed can I add one point
090to that yeah you just turned it off but I I can remember the um workshops yes there was the second one where we have like four groups presented but I know some of them are quick that but I existed really quick one it feels like every year we get to these workshops and we are scrambling to make sure everyone gets time in and they come very very long so I wonder if there's a way we can think about how that's structured or maybe we break some of those into you know a regular meeting or first regular meeting I don't know but I uh want to make sure people have time to present and aren't feeling rushed because we're on hour three at the same time maybe we could also you know think about how much
091like it or I just seems to be a recurring problem I don't know how we address it but I want to make sure everyone has the space to get their presentation rushed and we don't feel like we are you know no we talked about compressing to kind of what's changed cost Delta program Delta kind ofing then okay I'd rather do workshops by the categories you had on that sheet that we spent the most time on was the percentages 4.9 yeah I'd love to see workshops those Sal benefits structional nonr you can look here and you see which ones you can't touch which ones you can't or touching them is a much different kind of strategy I don't know think there value and the salary is mostly contract you can change that pretty much by you
092know increasing or decreasing staff that the salary increases most of those are in targeting units the benefits kind of we've done that it goes well and it also goes with our um Self Insurance Consortium so that it's kind of all baked in there's really not much the only way that can CCT the benefit line I guess is really to reduce the number of people in the plan you know there's really noted what's that reduce the benefit well even that can't happen here you know like there's other pieces like the board unilateral would say change your insurance plan yes you know that would take negotiations of time so uh you know of those lines that you are going to look at instructional non instructional the transportation is kind of locked in there's no I know this
093is like the frustrating part of level there's not much you can do to change the transportation there are some things you could do it would be somewhat radical um but you could if you wanted to move all the community STS who did that for the out District ones for a little while like that would have a lot of people in the audience but it would be cheaper um so I mean I think that doing it that way interesting but I think that's my point is that what what we talk about these Catal brings a totally different lens to the way the budget is constructed and to the way the budget is received and I just think there's value there I did this last year with breaking down what we felt would be as the board
094is looking at a budget and everyone is is freaking out over a five something what can how can we get that in five something we're always talking in the macro and we look down here a really quick see a 9 that we could have found right yeah there's probably more than that but it just interesting way to to look at yes to important transportation we can't do anything with Transportation but Steve's Point Transportation could be on agenda for how other things down the road looking at them in these categories versus by school by grade way I don't know we're getting as much value from that as we might be from looking at a different way I could be wrong just clear you said go find a way to bring Transportation down by we could those
095might be more complicated decisions for you to make they hav't brought it to but I just want to be clear the some level every one of these as a board you have some control how and what that means but yeah I don't want to make it s can't anyone else the U the DAT you there is that the package yes and you'll get this presentation this will be on the website all those dates are on our website already questions all right we continue um all right next may have approval of the minutes for February 3rd 2025 special meeting fee Workshop minutes thank you heather do have a second second second Sally any changes or comments on the February 3D special meeting certain Mr Marks putting back here because I know who wants to make a
096comment on the minutes from the facilities from the 10 sorry I all right so for the February 3rd any comments or changes all those in favor anys um may I have a motion for approval of the February 5th 2025 special meeting minutes thank you heather do I have a second second thank you Steve any comments or changes all those in favor any exensions one abion mrus next May I have a motion for approve of the February 10th 2025 regular meeting minutes thank you heather do I have a second second thank you Steve any comments or questions yeah a quick note so as we were compiling these minutes you'll recall when the uh be um schedule came up for a vote uh we made an amendment which I made um to clarify what would happen if
097a group that had less than 80% membership um was looking to use the the facilities where would they go and so we kind of worked it out at the table um was a bit awkward the way I proposed the amendment and you know Maran tried to help with getting the language right um to the best of our ability this is how we believe the motion was made but if everyone wants to give that a post read and make sure that that um mirror is their understanding and if you have questions about what that amended fee schedule is going to look like there's an opportunity to look r that said a few weeks or so have that if you have you more concerns about it but I just want to point out that you know there
098a little bit of ambiguity so I just want to make sure everyone was comfortable and that is the motion that was made but there was some question about making sure that was at once 10 L than 8 I'll let someone else sorry John what was your question what was less than 80% participate the students participate the children participate the question that isn't answered in the way he written but when you listen l in conversation if you're an out of town organization but you're serving South par middleb students um that's not both of those are for local nonprofit not out of town nonprofit um so there was some lack like ambigu when we tried to unpack that I think we talked about it but I don't know that that motion kind of dials it in so
099I know that we spent a lot of time talking about this I think it's fine the way it is there aren't that many organizations we can revisit in the future whether that be two weeks six weeks next year DNC what think we all feel comfortable we all being in general experience captured here but I didn't want to have a vote without pointing out that there was discussion as we're putting any comments or questions right all those in favor I any Nays any exensions youring and Don's abstaining okay okay right so carries thank you and next we have information and proposals board committee reports policy curriculum committee Miss Heather so this evening before this meeting we our 5000 policies I'm sure no um we did uh take one last look at a couple policies related to
100student mental health we will be submitting those to C for their commentary come to this board for first read um we also uh looked at a couple policies related to student rights um and uh if you will recall did promise the first read of some policy stud Health uh we had submitted those we got some feedback we addressed that feedback at tonight's meeting our next um we will be meeting again on March any questions all right next we have financing facilities committee um Shannon wasn't able to be here tonight so Mr Martino is g to take over for the update um Finance facilities met we did a presentation from our external Auditors Charles he company made a good audit and a good review we updated the bond spending and also timeline for Bond refinancing or
101Bond refinancing is about mid April we well for a full Bond auction for to lock in our 11 bilon Bond we also approv the phhs fire panel upgrade and obviously sub rates that are on tonight did suffering any questions is that ative issue that we thought we were not where other districts are and we having yeah we did a study around the area and kind of felt Pro to some to some compar questions all right we'll move on to the GPS feasibility study I think Dr Romano has it tonight so the last meeting I think was at the end of January might have been covered in I know the last update but I speak to some of the more for PL been make in terms of meetings so at that at that meeting they discussed
102Impressions and and really long time we spent talking about Community involvement and and um and a plan for Community conversations um which um there are three scheduled Community conversations um at this time the first one is Thursday March 13th at TBS from 600 to 7: p.m. next one is Thursday April 10th from 600 to 7 p.m. at PS and then the uh final one is on May 22nd also 6 to 7M um at long me out um with three different themes the first one being bigger thinking other one being ref find options and um kind of come to more preferred plans and then the final one being finalizing things and coming up with next steps but the goal of these is Rel to getting meeting engagement throughout the process um the other thing is that
103um there will be Think Tank days that are um held specific to the schools that are By Invitation um for those those will be on Wednesday March 5th Wednesday um April 30th at PS and GBS respectively um and then the other thing I just wanted to mention with respect as the next um feasibility study committee meeting is schedu from March 11 5 to 7 and then we do have um a lot of links on the website web page to agendas minutes um videos and there's a lck at the last meeting in terms of what the inial were and I just wanted to point that out might want to check it out so they follow the same qu I actually was looking at that just last night um I just want to make sure it was
104complete because it seemed to end slide presentation I think we can talk yeah from the last meeting it didn't have like a motion to adjourn I couldn't find that page it just went through and then after the page with this SL and maybe on me but maybe just double check for completeness for the minutes of the GES the visibility meeting all right we did we did a jerk we're still we're not going don't know page went straight to the community community conversations mention that's yes and then that's part of the whole IDE okay and then um then there was another set of meetings that was specific to the school invitation so um how how's how are people being reached out to so that they know that they may attend these Community conversations and what were
105the criteria for the invation so the the the the 10 days which are the on that invitation our the first one is actually the K through two staff of both schools and they're split into two like they're split into um two days and then two sections each day so that first section is actually I think it's a professional doph day or so that so the staff will spend the cry staff will spend that and then it's town and community members and I don't know I think that's still inment I'm not quite sure how how those invitations are being determined they going out but but the but the um you know the first half of both day is actually split up it's PS and then 35 and then for the to Hall that is hopefully everyone
106will come so people want to come but I mean are we doing an e blast I'm sure on the website well so they have a lot of um this is not yet just got ready fores or is this afternoon yeah so oh cool all right it yesterday for my but we didn't have it so we'll send it out and I just want to add that you know part of the reason that we selected zon is because we thought that they did a a really good job with Community engagement and making sure the community was involved in this process um so I I guess I just wanted to reiterate that um you know you have an invite to the one of the um than TS like that's really helpful but I think we're really hoping um
107you know that the community comes to these events on March 13th and April 10th and and May 22nd because that was a big part of the reason of you know selecting who we selected and going with the the people that we went with is because we we really are interested in keeping the community involved in every step of this and each of these conversations is built around you know fundamental decisions that we're going to make about these projects so please you see this you know hopefully we start seeing this everywhere you know after this week but if people do see it please do come like we are very much interested in um where the community is on this project and those are all and like six to seven Des to what's the over how is
108that like what's the overarching messaging on that like how is that communication in these dates other than this meeting other our website face can go into school holders like take home in in the backpacks will it be in voices like what's the plan for this the voices piece uh we can get it into the papers pending time schedule we just got like 4:00 today we got that so the March 13th one have to look at the timing for the voice is specific but uh yeah we that we've moved away from stuffing backs per se but we can certainly push it out through you know while our news blast work well doesn't necessarily get to people who don't s right so making sure that other on other websites will the schools like the individual schools be
109posting that too like yeah I don't know that there's been a strategic rule out plan for that specific fer with Pon other than conversation that we had last time so I think that the initial new class will come through our channels but we can then ask like the towns push out through their channels as well any other questions on the feasibility study great and next we have board member comment coms the school climate survey comment question a I remember I thought it was requ and I remember it being very helpful and getting um lot of free text areas for people to comment um a lot of good questions about do your child will say SCH do your child trust adult veryan qu every other year yeah I want to say may any other comments right
110we'll move on to the superintendent report three quick things first is that the portrait of a learner survey is on our website went out yesterday heard people to fill that out second um our legislative session continues to be very active even more active than I thought when I wrote this um that we're literally watching um Herford move um I would just point out that the Cade day on the hill I know some of you thought in the past is March 12th you'd like to attend that day please let M mego know and we make sure you get signed up um and then kind of to continue that me um National conversations around education are happening extremely frequently uh we met on Friday with the commissioner of education and her leadership team um and that they
111kind of assured us that they are working with other state agencies as well as federal agencies some ways just to monitor all the things that happened and try to separate the the noise from the reality um and then to help us manage that um I do think a lot of it is going to come down to your Authority as a loal board some of the state Authority and some of the national and so um while we're paying attention to all of those uh conversations we're also trying to to manage um what we hear and kind of our reaction and balance that so that we move when there's a solid consensus and not just kind of Chas heades so that's what I'm sure me do all right any questions I'm all right next we have comments
112from citizens the 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 for three minutes no citizens okay uh next we have regular business requiring board action um may I have a motion to establish the pomaro high school graduation date that the Board of Education set P High School's graduation date for June 14th 2025 First State Statute 10-1 161 establishment of graduation date that provides 180 days of school you have a second second thank you Steve um you want to talk about how daring you are about no more snow well would say no more snow we still have you know there's this still um allows for a couple of snow AG should we have them um and it
113allows families to start to plan and you know flights get really complicated the closer again so a longer Runway literally we can get to families um I do feel that that we are now far enough into the year um what what's our our last days so this in another two days um but we have some adjustment in that as well any questions does that work with your schedule okay okay and we're just we're always trying to do Saturdays now Saturday morning yeah yeah all right so I guess all those in favor I any Nays any exensions no all right June 14th put it on your count there's everyone um next may I have a motion for approval of the 2025 2026 miscellaneous salary rate schedule move that the Board of Education upon recommendation of the
114finance committee approved 2025 2026 miscellaneous salary rate schedule presented thank you st Second Joe do you want toct that question yeah just quickly um as we alluded to before we did move the sub rate from the 110 to the 115 based on how around um and we see do see increases further down for nursing subs and a small increase for sectorial subs and obv St as well just kind of stay ahead of the minimum wage it's currently you see any questions and these are reflected in the budget he just presented so right all those in favor anys great announc a fure meetings Wednesday March 5th we have a board of ed meeting um at 6:30 Monday March 10th we have a finance meeting at MJ at 12 o'clock Monday March 10th we also have a
115PMC meeting at 6:30 and then we have a regular meeting of the board of education at 730 um with that we'll have our curriculum update in math K to 12 um in science Wednesday March 19th we have a budget workshop at 6:30 Monday March 24th PNC meets at the media center um Monday March 24th we have a regular board event meeting at 7:30 but we're kind of leaving that one flexible as to what we might do might cancel it because of all the other meetings we have going on so stay tuned Wednesday March 26 we have a budget workshop with the boards of Finance from both middleberry and southberry at the PHS media center at 6:30 that's always fun um and then following the that will be the Board of Education public hearing at 730
116may I have a motion to adjourn motion tojn second second by all those in favor