001To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Do you have any acknowledgements, Dr. Willie? We do. Uh, actually, uh, today I wanted to bring some attention to our amazing artists. Um, and we have, uh, some of their artwork displayed all around the, uh, the library. So, we do have a picture of that artwork. It's the Talon Public Library. As you know, we do a evening honoring all of the artists monthly. And so, um, you know, so these kids came in and had a ceremony and they had their art officially recognized, but I'd like to read their their names just so you have a sense of the kids that contributed to that great art presentation. There's quite a few
002of them. So, um, it'll take a moment or so. Uh, Lany Neves did a great job with dragon paintings. And many of these that I'm listing now are are under what will be called a dragon painting. And then I'll give you a heads up as we change. So for the dragon paintings, um, Landon Jameson, Violet Cody, Travis Mitchell, Artham Deali, Connor Stroka, and now color blending with oil pastels. Hunter Allen, Adelyn Brighton, Declan Overton, Declan, I'm sorry, Declan Overton, Mason Rose, Kyle Bracken, WY Russo, and these are coy the color blendings. And now there was a picture of President Trump. That was Kylie's. Uh, President Kennedy was wilies. President Nixon, Maria Victoria, President Bush, Natalie Allegro. A mannequin drawing was Lucas Lines. Also mannequin drawing, Khloe London, mannequin drawing, Gavin Border. and additional mannequins, uh,
003Galanany Bonitez and, uh, William Meade. Pine cone rendering was Ray Fedic. Peace without limits, a graphic design um, poster was Owen Gra. Also, Peace Without Limits was Mason Larelle and Alexandra Chichaga with Peace Without Limit. a perspective drawing of southwestern an adobe house also painting Madison Price. Uh and also this southwestern house it was Phoebe Green and Wesley Stanford and Stephanie Robo also Marley Lavine. And finally for southwestern adobe house painting Shane Woo. So thank you to all of our artists who contributed and as I said they were honored at the Talon Public Library recently. So great congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations to all the kids. Just a quick Actually I noticed that it wasn't shared. So let me just do a quick share so that the people at home can see that picture. TV's working.
004Yeah, we turned it on. Oh, I asked about this two months ago. Said we all right. Yeah. Okay. Cool stuff. As I zoom in and out, that's what made people nauseous last time. So, I'm gonna not do this. And maybe you said this, Dr. Are they all middle school students? Um, yes. Yep, they are. Recognize the first group of They're all Then middle school kiddos. And um and you know, again, amazing job. That's I think still down at the public library too on display if anybody wants to check that out. Great. Thank you. Okay. Uh next we have additions to the agenda. I'll have an addition, but propose a change to move K3 to K1 so our curriculum staff doesn't have to be here all night with us. I'll second that. Okay. Second. Oh, sorry.
005I missed it. You can get No, I don't want to. I'll right back to you. Any discussion? All right. Jaden. Hi, Rainy. Hi, Brian. Hi, Bill. Hi, Dana. Hi Dan. Hi Katie on. Yes she is Katie. I so Dr. We can go ahead and move that up. Great. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. So next up is approval of minutes. I will accept a motion to approve the March 19th 2025 minutes. So move second. Any discussion? All right, we go again. Jaden, hi. Reinie. Hi, Brian. Hi, Bill. Hi, Dana. Hi, Dan. Hi, Katie. Hi, I and I as well. I will now accept a motion to approve the March 26, 2025 minutes. So, moved. I second. Jumping ahead. Yeah. Any discussion? All right. Jaden, hi. Reinie. Hi. Brian. Hi. Bill. Second. I mean I Dana. Hi. Dan.
006Hi. Katie. She muted and unmuted. Sorry Katie. I'm an I. That passes. All right, let's move on now to public participation. Dr. Willlet, if you can get that trusty timer ready. So, the members of the Talent Board of Education welcome members of the public to share their thoughts and ideas at this time when appropriate to do so. Members of the board and administration may respond to comments during points of information. However, in consideration of these those in attendance and in an effort to proceed in a timely manner, follow-up discussion may need to take place outside of the meeting setting. So would anyone in the room like to participate? See no one do we have anyone online? Going once, twice. Okay, let's close out publications. Bill, do you have a correspondence report? We had 34 emails.
00733 of them were budget related, one was potential foyer request related. Okay, thank you. Um, next is points of information. Would any board member like to speak at this time? Okay, rolling right along. Uh, student representatives report. All right. So, starting off today, we've had our NGSS testing for January. And then this week, the school store is doing a big blowout spring sale. We have some really cool items for 20% off. Um, make sure to pop by if you're at the store. I will be there third block and you will get 20% off specialized items. Also, for seniors, this is the last week to sign up for the Taland Community Scholarship because the deadline is April in Weapons. So, get that in. And last week, we had an assembly the senior class did um talking
008about some upcoming events and the senior class day permission slips can be handed in in Miss Marshall's room during either fourth block or after school. So, make sure to turn those in. Also, for the Spain trip in 2026, any students interested should see Miss Kisman. All right, short and sweet. Any questions? Yes. What do you sell in the store? So, we sell mostly clothing items. We sell all branded merch. We sell hoodies, crew necks, shirts, pants, joggers, uh pajama pants. We sell all different types of hats. We sell scarves. Um we sell mugs. We got a lot of mugs a few years ago. Like way too many. So, we're selling the 20% off. 20% off. Really? Um, no. But we have a really wide array of uh clothing items. And then we have a few
009binders. We spaced out selling pool supplies a few years ago because they weren't selling after CO. Um, so better to cut the loss. But we have some really cool merchandise and we try and add a new addition to the school store for you. I was purchased a hoodie today. Was it 20% off? It was not 20% off. It was not part of the sale. For you have to send him back tomorrow. Just might. Um, okay. Anything else? Are y'all participating in the Birch Grove and TIS spirit day for the Yukon? So on Friday, no, I didn't happen. Blue and white for those two schools. I don't know. All right. Maybe I'll participate. All right. So, unfortunately, I just had an infusion, so I am on my last leg. So, I am gonna go. Um, but
010make good choices. Have a good time. Listen closely. And thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. Okay. Next is the committee and liaison reports. Um Dana, do you have policy? April 3rd. Okay. Brian, no communications, right? No. End of the month. Um I think it's probably all that same one. We did have negotiations. We've begun um negotiations with the custodians and um curriculum we have at the end of the month. Right. Dan, has there been an FFC meeting? Yeah. So, there was just an FFC meeting prior to this call. Um prior to that FFC meeting as well. We had a deep dive into insurance. Um it was good discussion. Dr. Willlet provided kind of historical background on um EHIP. We're going to be raising uh this as a agenda item at the board of
011education level uh soon. I believe that's with the planning team. Um and then just following our discussion today um completed our first review of the new credit card program that we currently have. Um so all things are going well with that. Um this was the first time that we kind of took a look back. Um apparently per Dr. Willis words. It's been a night and day change from switching over from AMX, which is awesome. Um, just as a reminder, we kind of adjusted for ease of reporting and there was some cost savings as well. Um, but AMX seemed to be really restrictive and it's been a good change so far. Um, going forward within FFC, we're going to do a threemonth look back of kind of credit card billing statements as well as just ensuring
012like if there's any balance, we understand why. Um, so we're going to kind of add that to the FFC planning. So more line of sight into everything being spent on uh district credit cards. So all good there. Great. Thanks, Hannah. Um, okay. Next is the chairs report. I have a very long chairs report. Don't kidding. We're going to skip that and go on to the superintendence report. Dr. Will it K1 monthly financial? Oh, no. I'm sorry. K1 is not. So, tonight we are lucky to have our curriculum administration here. Jennifer Webster is our curriculum director and she's um she'll wave. There she is. Uh Mark Rudy is our STEM director. No, our STEM curriculum administrator for STEM and Cara Hennessy is our curriculum administrator for humanities. And you me may remember that um we kind
013of reorganized um in the recent past. And so they're here tonight to do a presentation on curriculum for you and to answer questions that you may have. And um so what I'll do is I'm going to we were talking about my role here. My role is to um when she points at me or says good, I will move the presentation forward. Uh but we'll let the expertise um let the experts talk here tonight and I'll act as come up to our So thank you so much for coming tonight and we're so very um so the presentation's up there also for the public and uh I'm going to and pray that that there. So it's working pretty good. Go to the next slide. Next slide. Practice right off the bat. All right. So well mentioned I'm
014Jen Webster. director of curriculum. Um I'm really excited to transition to the director of curriculum role. Um prior to this I was the K through 12 math supervisor and I we did a lot of work in terms of developing uh best instructional practices in our math departments and looking at our curriculum and now I'm able to extend that work across the whole district and all of our grade levels and all of our subject areas. Um it's been really exciting working with these nice people behind us or behind me. So, um I think we're working towards articulating a curriculum and having some best practices seen in our classroom and some of you have seen that in our instructional walks or instructional grounds in our buildings as well. Now, if you're more comfortable, the three of you
015can sit at this very nice wood table that has been acquired for the town and wag. It's up to you. You can stand as well, but go to the next slide. Here you go. So some of the things that we're working towards now and looking at the future, the first one is um artificial intelligence or the use of AI both as um adults and staff members and teachers, but also looking at student use currently. Um the practice that we're following in the guideline is that only adults are allowed to use AI in the district. In particular, we have seven AI that are approved. Um and they are approved because these AI sign a privacy waiver that um uh privacy settings for student data through the state of Connecticut. Um there's seven different ones. I'll list
016them for you. I made a little visual but one is Magic School Pilot School AI Gemini Defit um KIGO which is a spin off of Khan Academy and Brisk. And all of them do different types of things. They're all different types of AI. Some of them require a written prompt to generate material. Some of them have tools and embedded prompts that are more easily accessible. Um, if you're not a great prompt writer or you don't feel competent as a prompt writer, all of them produce materials that could be uh differentiated or leveled for meeting student needs. Um, helping planning and um planning for um instruction. Um, and currently we have some staff using it. for example, taking a text that they might be reading at TIS and taking that text and putting it into this
017particular one is magic school and it levels it so that a student who might be in a fourth grade room is we're still reading the same content but at their reading level and so it provides more ability to give kids what they need when they need it um and at the level of entry for them so that we can give them that instruction. Um, moving forward over the next year and a half, we are building an AI committee at the district level that's going to be representation of all of our buildings, departments, grade levels to have a balanced view of how we can use AI both as educators and with students. and we're going to be building like I call it a guidelines and guard rails document to give us some guidance on best practices
018for AI uh how to use it uh safely, how to use it functionally and how to help us be better better educators and use our time and our resources effectively. Additionally, how might students use this? Uh some of them are have the ability to coach a student and for example in magic school their chatbot is called Raina and she can only coach a student. So if a student asked X + 4= 12 what is X equal? Rain will say sorry I cannot give you that answer but let me explain to you a way or a strategy that you could arrive at that answer. So there's different ways that students can use it, but this committee is going to be looking at all the possibilities and all of the opportunities for staff and students to interact
019with AI to really be 21st century learners and be career and college ready. question about AI. So, what are we doing as a district to prohibit the fraud and stealing and kids using AI to write their papers and reports and all of that? That's part of what the district curriculum or the district not curriculum district a committee is going to be looking at is setting out those guidelines and guard rails around what happens when a students use AI to generate a paper. What are we going to do at a building level in terms of uh a restorative practice to restore that not great choice that student just did and how are they going to maybe redo the paper or an opportunity to address those concerns. The committee is going to define those things as a
020group which is why that balanced approach of having different departments, special education, uh different uh different grade levels because it looks different. Fifth grader could do something very similar but at a different level. So that guidelines and guardrails document is going to be crucial in defining those things as we start using it. It's why we're currently only using with adults. All right. Yeah. Just a bit cautious because my wife, she teaches up at Yukon and it's being used a lot and some of the AI information that they're gathering necessarily isn't true as well. So, it's causing problems in in the college level. I I definitely hear that and I think part of it is educating our staff and students about best practice and ethical practices, safety practices and using AI much like using technology in
021general in terms of our learning. It's not just that we get to use it. It's how we use it safely and ethically to help us learn and help us grow. I Dr. Well, don't do that question. Um, but we already do have something that flags at least in the high school because I know I've heard of Yeah, we have software that flags if things are being done appropriately, but AI, you know, is a little different in write a paper, paste it into something notes, things like that. There's definitely flags. Guardian and things like that. students already do get flagged at least at the high school if they're using those kinds of means to there are platforms um yeah especially in the English department that can look at um the words used and and kind of
022look and um one of them has been like turnitin.com where they can um and then from a revision history you can Google has a um component that you can see how quickly they're typing in the document as well. Yeah, both my children have used Turn It In a whole bunch. So, there were there already is some some um guard rails in place. Interesting. All right. Oh, that's a good question. I had a similar question like when we were in CO before we had all of the Chromebooks, my kindergartner at the time was on an iPad and so he would be typing up the stuff and it would like automatically spellch checkck him or he'd type in BR and it would say bridge, you know, and all that. So, so things like that, especially at the
023most fundamental levels. So, I'm glad there are some guardrails and it's obviously on your radar. So, because that's concerning, too. Like, what is he learning when he's typing this in? Thank you. Uh, next up is our curriculum, instruction, and assessment teams. We're 612. This year we've developed we call them CIA teams curriculum and assessment and they're uh 612 been trained in understand by design which a backwards way of planning our curriculum. So if we know what the standard and expectation are from that unpacking it in the skills understandings transfer goals that are connected to portrait of a graduate that we want students to be able to know at the end of a unit at the end of a course at the end of a particular grade level. And so we've used that training for understand
024by design at 612 to really gear up some curriculum writing and articulate what our curriculum looks like. Our CIA teams have been working within the day to start looking at uh the particular courses at the high school and grade level courses at the middle school. Uh we're in every department they're writing. The teachers are doing a fantastic job really not just unpacking what students expectations are but articulating um working on articulating common experiences across the department or across the grade level across the course. Looking at ways that we're assessing how in not just in paper and pencil but in problem based learning experiences or projects and real world scenarios and how we're assessing that they are achieving those standards and grade level and course expectations. Um, and they're looking at ways to integrate things that
025we do with in other aspects like our social emotional learning curriculum and ruler, our portrait of a graduate, um, and making sure that we're all in alignment with our common core standards and expectations. So, we're hoping that as we go throughout this process and we start articulating our curriculum, it provides some more consistency across our coursework, um, and provides more innovative opportunities to really think critically about our assessment practices. um and a student led center approach in terms of our direct instruction with students. Um and the last thing on the slide is around grants. We're continuing to look at opportunities um and researching opportunities and a variety of grants to help support our school district and initiatives and programs that we're working towards. And so it's an ongoing process to research and be aware of
026what's available to us to help support us and what we're working on. Last two for me is around professional learning and MTSS. Really proud of our professional learning. Our February TD day um was driven based on our teacher goals. So our teacher set goals around um building in board goals and how they can grow as an educator. And we took that information and found trends. We identified five trends and what they were looking for to grow in to be better educators. So we were looking at active learning strategies, multitude systems of support or intervention, artificial intelligence. Oh, my brain just cleared in the last two. Um, oh, there was an issue for ELA to support directly support inter reading um and integration of social studies um into our inter reading and our uh ELA instruction
027because it's a first year programming and we put those themes out to our staff and uh staff volunteer to lead sessions that they felt like they were leaders in. Um, we had a uh over 20 sessions that were ran by our teaching staff. Every staff member got to self- select what their interest was in order to learn from each other. Um, we had a lot of compliments from staff around it felt like they were attending a conference. Everyone got an individualized schedule. They all got um feedback to each other. They all got work time and it was a really great opportunity to help support our district goals, our board goals, and the teachers goals to help improve our practices and strengthen our teaching practices. Um and during the ER days, we've been using those to
028support mandated trainings both from the state and from um federal expectations of requirements for training and um having immersive learning experiences for all of our subject areas including and ruler um to give teachers what they need so that they can be ready and um available to give kids what they need in their classrooms. Questions about professional learning. Our February day was awesome. getting really great feedback from staff and they all walked away feeling like they can learn they learned something. I got a lot of feedback about a week later saying that they like the next day they went in and tried something um from one of the sessions they were talking about is numbers reasonleness and many teachers attended that and said I did it the next day. I feel confident and comfortable being able
029to do that with my students talk about reasonable numbers um and seamlessly integrated in their planning. So, it's a really great outcome from the day. Oh, I think we got to see MTSS in action at Birch Grove doing the rounds with you and that was that was really great and really informative that day. Thank you. We did MTSS walkthroughs at TIS and Birch. We're really looking to revise and update our MT MTSS into a multi-tered systems of support. It's the ability to provide level differentiation targeted instruction to give kids what they need. So if they're not working on grade level, how could we give them what they need so that they can be? If they are working on grade level, how can we extend and enrich their learning? Um when you think about multi-ter system
030support, you may have thinking about like all the acronyms of fun like RTI, SRPI, SATs. We're used to run on like a triangle where we were looking at kids at the top of the triangle. Five 5% were like our most high-risisk kids and it went down from there. Really, when you're talking about multi-tered systems of support, you can consider it more like a diamond. And that we're looking at kids both what they need, where where they are. And as you move to either end of the diamond, you're looking at the different tiers of support, one, two, and three. And on the other end, you could be looking at enrichment. And every student should and could be somewhere within the diamond. And how do we support them where they are to get them where they should
031be? Um, so we're looking at updating, we're reviewing our practices and looking at updating and revising our MTSS practices at Birch Tis and every building to have more consistency with within the district and to pro provide a systemwide approach to making sure our interventionists have what we need and our teachers have what they need for tiered instruction so that we're giving kids what they need so that we're making sure that we're closing gaps along the way and having everyone grow. questions about NTSS instructional rounds. Yeah, I love the way you explained it. I think it's super important for everybody to be aware and I know you guys are you're doing not only preventative but proactive work with MTSS. So, um I think it's important to understand that. I think when you explain the diamond part
032versus the triangle, I think that is huge, right? Um so I appreciate all of that framework that we're doing to make sure that we're taking care of all students at every level. I need like before they said a proactive and preventative thing as part of it. So, thank you for going deep into it. Any questions? Yep. Yeah, because this obviously this is this is one of our big talking points in the last few months and whatnot in terms of MTSS and multi multi-ter systems of support. What helps you accomplish? This is more of a got the professionals in front here. So, I'm gonna ask and I was sick when we did the rounds and so I want to ask now out of curiosity. what helps you accomplish I'd like to know more about the professional
033learning and all these things because it's been another topic of conversations but but what helps you accomplish you know making sure that every student is is is touched by this this sort of system that's there to support them no pun intended um so I think one of it is time looking time looking at data we collect data our teachers collect data both um informally and formally and having that data be live for our teachers to know um where our students are and what resources we have access to to plan to support those those students without time for teachers to be able to really understand where their kids are. And for some teachers, they're teaching math, ELA, science, social studies with the same kids in their room. That's a lot of data to go through. It's
034a lot to understand where a kid is that frankly will likely be different in all of those subjects and to plan accordingly so that they all have a low floor access to our curriculum so everyone can access it but then how to increase that rigor and push them to that ceiling. So, I think like utilizing that professional learning time, having structures within our early release days, our staff meetings, um, where teachers have the ability to make our data live, maybe have a systemwide approach of how we're looking at that data or a platform to be able to integrate that data in a more timely way, I think, is critical in terms of making movement and having teachers be able to plan accordingly for their students. It's also building out toolkits. We have resources and we
035have teachers who we've spent time and money training and they're our internal experts. And we did that because over time they're able to better support our teachers which better support our students. So our intervention staff has been critical in supporting tier 2 and tier three. Um and all that time and effort in training them has really built our capacity of intervention and MTSS within our buildings. uh looking how to extend that to the high school to be able to provide students intervention up there. Looking at ways to um maximize our interventionist and and maximize that time that students get and building out those resources so that teachers can really understand what they have access to to provide tiered support in their rooms during that virtual learning lab in their schedule um or connect at the
036middle school walk maybe at the high school. So I think that said a lot of things but like that's really making it live for teachers and that time to be able to go through that data and have it real actionable and timely is is step one I would say. No that that helps. And I don't know I don't know if this is going to come up again if if others have have basically agreed but [Music] um she hit the nail on the head or if there's anything else to add. No, I I mean I I think I was going to touch upon it a little bit at mine, but I um I think it really is about maximizing the resources we have. So, we have been lucky to train teachers in the district from a
037literacy perspective. And now, how do we transfer that into um how they're meeting the students needs? And I think it does go back to that data piece of now that I have the knowledge um on targeting different areas, what is the data telling me I need to do to target it? Um and that just involves making a meaningful schedule so that they can do it close enough to when that assessment's given to that data is is working. And and then um another piece with the data is then we have to progress monitor. So creating those cycles of how often are we taking little dipstick checks so that we see is what we decided our intervention or enrichment working or do we need to come back to the table and collaborate and look at a different
038way because our dipsticks are saying that we're kind of stagnant and not making the growth. Makes sense. Well, that makes sense. Thank you. I appreciate that. Some of the processes in the building that we have student assistance. So as we revise our MTSS plan, those meetings like will become MTSS meetings and having that data, having a clear progress monitoring system, not just for interventionist but for our classroom teachers and our tier 2 supports will make the flow of that information um stronger and make the communication between all of the teachers who might see a particular student. Um that communication is important for everyone to work together. So it's part of the MTSS system is not just looking at the data and what teachers are doing with students but our practices and our systems in place
039for uh talking about and meeting about students who are at risk or um having meetings at the building level which are currently called student assistant team meetings where we all get together and look at what are the needs of the student how might we create think creatively to provide those supports if they've already received x amount of things or these things that we have already tried. I appreciate that. By taking that collaborative approach, we're trying to look at that whole child. So, as Jen mentioned, they might be receiving reading intervention but be accelerating in math. So, bringing a group together and trying to figure out, you know, their their strength is over here. What are they doing in that area? And how can we maybe utilize some of the tools they're doing there in a
040different content area? or who are staff members in the building that seem to be connecting with them and and trying to really make that plan to meet their needs by bringing a group of people together who see different aspects of the child so that we can come up with the best intervention to meet their needs. That that would have helped me with math class, right? That that make that's I was always a history and English kid. I know. I know. You know, my eighth grade love your math lesson. My eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Erikson told me the basically the same thing when I was in school of you never know but but but I think that that that sort of lays out a picture of you know well maybe Jaden just isn't seeing it right
041because he's he's missing this or that. What is he getting in math class that you know he does really well and how can we sort of sort of tailor that to his English and and and uh and uh and uh um excuse me math and science classes. So no that makes complete sense. I appreciate your your explanation there. Want to go back to go back to elementary school saying math lesson. It's really taking a strengthbased or asset approach of helping students in a holistic way. MTSS considers not just academics but academic behavior social emotional learning attendance. It's looking at the whole child and we in our SAT meetings currently we take a strength approach. We look at things that students are doing really well and how we can leverage that to support the things that
042they need to grow in. Um, and right now what we're looking at in terms of MKSS districtwide is how do we take that and make it a systemwide practice? How does this how does that look in every building? making sure that each building's communicating along the way and sending that information along the way, having similar conversations, um, and being able to work collaboratively, not just when students at Birch, but when they go to TIS, this making sure that we give them support along the way as they go and as they need it. It's extremely helpful. Thank you. No problem. Any other questions? Because you're about to get some. We could probably talk about TSS on that. I mean someone with me origami paper we can make later. Hi folks. Uh Mark Rudy. I'm the curriculum
043administrator for STEM. Been here as the science uh curriculum coordinator for um about six and a half years before now shifting to this. Um, and what I was doing with science, uh, and also working with teched, business, and a couple other departments that are now officially under my umbrellas just sort of gives this the official nod to the work that we're trying to do to pull these departments together. Um, and then, uh, taking in in the math and the things that have gone on in the past few years with strengthening our approaches there. So, um, it's definitely been a learning curve to see what Jen has done in the last six years and honestly not screw it up. So, thank you. Uh that's probably my primary job right now is not to ruin what Jen
044has done. Um so on the next slide, I just tried to lay out sort of where my um main focus is in each of those areas. Um so as I've talked over the last few years, science continues the the main focus is really around two things. One would be continuing to develop those local connections. I spoke a bit about our uh sixth grade Lyme disease field trip that we do every year which they're actually prepping for right now uh that we do in town where they're working in uh a town plot in order to help manage um tick infestation and try to you know limit the amount of ticks that are there. So it's an actual application. They learn about Lyme disease. They learn about what it does to the body. They learn about the
045ecosystem uh the environmental pieces behind that and how they can use the ecosystem to manage the dicks themselves. And so then they get to go and do it. Uh doing things like that and trying to build those local connections. The fourth grade um trail project that uses uh Randle across the street. Um things like that wherever we can find them is definitely been one of our big focus points. Uh and then making sure that our assessments in particular are aligned to the NGSS test. Uh you heard the the high school kids talking about the fact that that was today for 11th grade. um it's really that um thinking and skills-based approach and less just spitback content. And so making sure that we're assessing them in that way and building those skills with them day-to-day in
046the classroom so that when they're given those questions on the test that may or may not have content specifically that was spoken about in the class, they can still think through the resources that have been given them, analyze the graphs, the data tables, you know, perform the experiments and you know be able to answer the questions and and come to some meaningful conclusions. So um for science those have really been the big two areas. Um with math as I mentioned you know a lot has been done Jen mentioned it herself a lot has been done about the instructional practices um as Bridges has now been on for was it five years four years um and I am at the middle school and the continued development of the various courses at the high school um you
047know we continue to look at the instructional practices and we've seen the strength uh of what they've accomplished already at the elementary and middle school levels with the scores that have shown some significant improvement and so just kind of trying to build those um and in particular particular more recently um building thinking classrooms is an approach that's become a bit more um popular through math but quite frankly has applications across subject areas. So that's one of the things that I'll be looking at. Um it certainly can work in science classes but honestly can work across all subject areas. Uh it's really about again turning over the classroom a bit more to the student um centered approach, getting them to think a bit more about the subject, not just that stand and deliver that we all
048experience but necessarily didn't engage us in our thinking. We could sit back and just receive maybe. Um but the building thinking classrooms is much more about that. uh getting kids involved and getting them thinking and questioning and you know building their own approaches and strategies talking to each other and bouncing ideas off of each other and not necessarily having to go uh to the teacher all the time kind of leveraging the the knowledge of the classroom as opposed to just the one person um with teched computer science business and uh family consumer science those are the elective departments I now officially oversee um the work we've been doing really is about uh aligning the courses and instructional practices so that's high school and middle school where those departments are uh present. Just trying to get
049those aligned to the career uh practices and expectations that are out there in those fields. Um we'd love at some point to be able to build it to the point where we can actually get kids to earn certifications, credentials that would actually help them too going into those fields. Um that's something that a lot of the schools these days are looking to do to really get kids ready for whatever they choose to do after school, whether it is college first or whether they go directly into a career. um those uh skills are absolutely effective and and key for whatever they choose to do. Um the Perkins grant is the one grant that I do oversee which is the career and technical education grant. Um so we've continued to use that to try to build those
050things. Techad at the high school for example has used it to bring in more uh equipment that is again similar to what they would see out in the uh out in the field. So, we brought in a CNC machine, um, laser engravers, a couple other things that needed some updating as well, just to keep the the equipment that students are using up to date and, you know, similar to what they would see uh, in the future. Um, and business in particular has used that funding to continually bring in professionals and get kids out as well to see uh, not only colleges but also businesses uh, and approaches. Sports marketing goes to the goats uh, for example. Talk to their department about how they do things. So they get to really see what they're learning in
051the classroom is and looking like in the real world. So we've really tried to support that through the Perkins um and the pathways as they continue to develop. Um that is again that opportunity to make that connection for kids between what may be a future career for them uh and what it is that they're doing in the classroom because you know we all sat in the class and went why am I learning this? Well hopefully the pathways are helping to to build that for them. Um my other particular piece over the last few years, we also talked about a little bit last year for those of you that were here, the Portuguese graduate. Um this year the focus has been primarily around the the skills rubrics. So the skills of problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration,
052communication primarily. Uh we've been developing uh the four rubrics for the high school. They're previous schoolwide rubrics. Some of them aligned. They had a collaboration rubric. They had a problem solving rubric, but they also had a reading, a writing, um speaking rubric. Those have essentially morphed and been uh brought into the communication rubric. Um so we've taken some of the the previous work that they had done and brought it into this updated model. Uh at this point, the high school is now we've kind of got the rubrics where we can work with them. We think the key is figuring out how it is that we're going to be able to implement them and report out on how kids are um progressing. We want them to be able to meet the the criteria in those rubrics
053by the time they graduate. That's the whole point of portion of graduate. Uh and so that's where they are right now is determining how it is that kids are going to demonstrate that they met those expectations. So um we're just about ready to bring those rubrics now down to the middle school so that they can create their version that will feed those high school rubrics and from there it will go down. Uh counter to that what we have done over the last couple years is the dispositions the perseverance growth mindset empathy kindness uh those were going up. So those started in the middle school we created statements based on those criteria that were friendly to the kids because what we wrote is not quite frankly at a reading level in a kindergartner let alone can
054they understand the concept of empathy yet. That's still something they're developing. Um but we created through the teachers statements that they would be able to understand and built those up all the way through the middle school last year. So those will go to the high school very shortly for their final piece and then we'll have all those pieces in place and it becomes a true prek to13 effort not just high school your job to get the kids to graduate. Well if the high school doesn't get them in a place where they're ready to you know grow those last few levels to to graduate then it doesn't work. So we truly create a full district effort at getting our kids prepared to meet the challenges that they'll face once they leave us. So that uh the
055other piece on the next slide is just um I think the next level of focus is really looking at those cross connections between the areas. Um in particular if you were to look at the science skills, the math skills and if you look at the career and technical education skills that they list things that kids have to be able to do, there's massive amounts of overlap and we need to start crosscontaminating essentially within those subject areas. And quite frankly, there's a lot of overlap with all the subject areas. when you talk about um arguing from evidence, for example, you do that in everything. That's not just a science thing, it's clearly in math, but you do that when you're writing persuasive paper in ELA or social studies as well. So, being able to do that
056for kids explicitly, getting them to understand that these skills are useful across all of these areas, even if there's not common vocabulary, we might call it a hypothesis in science and a thesis in social studies and a, you know, claim in ELA, whatever the case may be, that's still all the same thing. and getting kids to understand that and not see these as disperate subject areas. Um, but within STEM, of course, the practices are even more overlapped. And so, getting both teachers and students to be able to see that and be able to speak the same language and understand that, um, is going to be one of the most important things I think that we'll be doing going forward within these particular questions. Um, I just wanted to say a couple things. portrait of a
057graduate. You gave us a I think we had a board presentation, but we had a very in-depth curriculum presentation and I was amazed at the amount of data and analytics and that goes into that. So, um just want to commend you for the work that you've done on that. And you know, I think we say portrait of a graduate so much. It's it's it's important to us as a board, right? unfortunately through the district to be able to see everything that has been done and can't even imagine the work that you still have to do there because of what we looked at. I mean it was massive. So um but I really loved I really loved that presentation. Um and then you know touching on MTSS you were really helpful with me when we did
058the um the rounds you know we talked about how you know I was noticing how the kids were using you know the same manipulatives you know online as they were in you know um with their with the um why am I drawing blanks in intervention with our interventionist um but yeah and like saying you pointed out to me you were like well because some do really well with, you know, the the Rick and Rack or some do really well with dice or some do really well with the number line, but everybody they all kind of do it differently. And um to see that in action was again just very enlightening to see it. And to see it done in so many different ways and, you know, large scale, small scale, you know, very direct one-on-one
059and then, you know, a bunch of those the kids in the math lab on their on their computers. So, um there was a lot of a lot of what you talked about reminded of me of that as well. Yeah. Are you are you using these uh professional development days is when you're using this um training or the developing of the cross connections for the teachers specifically or Yeah, there's a few that happening. There's a few opportunities built in. So, uh at the middle school um actually at the high school too, there happened to be we have department meetings and so the last one in particular at the middle school I had I got to have math and science together. Um that's one of the only uh struggles I would say or challenges is that there
060is only three of us. And so you know with all the departments that I have it's kind of hard for me to be in all those places at once when they have department meetings at the same time. But being able to bring science and math together we started to have this exact conversation. We were able to put up the two sets of practices and look at the literal same language in some cases and the crosscontamination with graduate perseverance is one of the math standards or practices. um you know mathematical computation is one of the science practices. So there's clear connections between the two that you could see when you put them side by side. Um so I want more opportunities to do that and to build it into not only the learning of the teachers
061but then teachers starting to say that explicitly to kids so that they can see the connections as well because we can say it. I mean we can do things that we know are connected with them but if we don't say it to the kids they don't realize why yes we're doing what we're doing you know. So that's definitely what I need to be able to do. What we have to figure out is how to then bring those UA departments, tech ed, uh, and computer science into that same conversation at the same moment and have those and not just have me be the person that goes and talks to me and says, "Oh, hey, by the way, when I was talking to math department, here's what we talked about." I want them in the room. So,
062we're that's the next step, too. Yeah. Thank you. Um, thank you for teeing that up, Brian, because on the previous slide, teched and computer science, and you were talking about it as well, when we were at the rounds of the middle school, those students were asking for more of it, more and more and more. And then they were talking about the different levels, you know, from sixth grade to eighth grade, what does that gap look like and what does that transition look like? They think and and when you were talking about still developing it through the UA departments I think it's you know when those students were talking it wasn't they want to do I mean they want to do the different activities and such but they were saying we want we want more teched
063we want more computer and science because of what it helps them in all of the other aspects of their subjects and that was I mean we spent a lengthy time talking to those students at TMS um so it's it's it was very it was fantastic and educate ational listening to them and then you know you you know bringing it all together. Um it's good to see and again you're asking for more more of it and more of it. So it's amazing how they're willing to actually do math when it means something to fixing their code that's not working you know suddenly they want to do math or how you know and it was but it's again we talked a lot about what gets these students wheels turning you know and maybe it's not just the
064regular old straight up math. Maybe it's not the right, you know, and it's between behind the computer science of it and the tech and and the different and maybe it's a someone who's drumming, you know, and bringing it all together or videographer and how that all pulls together. Then next thing you know, it's impacting their mathematics and their ELA, the different things. So, no, Dana is right. A lot of them did talk about the overlap and and and you know, how the unified arts helped them in their core classes, too. Um, so it's great. I mean, for middle schoolers to already be thinking like that is is really great. So, and like Dana said, yeah, they you guys would have been so proud of them. I mean, they really loved their classes and they were
065very articulate about what they liked about them and what they wanted more of. And Miss Hickey did was very upfront and said that these students, they were notified 48 hours in advance. No, I didn't think I had maybe 24 hours. So, they were, you know, didn't have weeks and weeks to prepare what they were going to say. So, they were truly speaking from there day in day out, very candid, very honest, um, positive, you know, um, but talking exactly about what you're talking about today. So, this speaks to every way teachers are so important. We need that. We need more of them to be able to provide more experience. Oh, that was what they asked. And more time. They want more time in them. They want variations throughout the day with them in the morning,
066right? interdisiplinary connections like seeing how math is at sorry math is everywhere it's at music all of music is math like and kids identifying that on their own and how we're leveraging that and talking to talking having conversations with teachers so they can identify it talking about that math mindset so everyone's using that same language across every subject area it unifies us and it unifies the kids and being able to feel like they are part of their educational system and that they can contribute and learn something that they want to be able to do. Talking about college and career readiness like talking like geomet high school geometry is hard but if we talk about you want to work on a construction set you have to know how to use tape measure how to measure fractions
067you have to know that those things are actually measured they're three inches. So if you pull it all the way to a corner and just add three, you don't have to like jerryrig it. Like that's a mathematical skill to be able to know reasonable measure fractions that all comes out of like geometry all across the way K12 and seeing kids know and having kids know and see that all of these things from all over. They live outside the classroom and this is how and why we can use it. This is how and why our language is important. How we can talk and persevere through problems. It's important. So I would tell kindergarten incoming kindergarten parents for anyone who attended play games is really important. You should win sometimes so that they have to persevere through
068that kindergarten skills. All right. Thank you. So I'm the new one on the team that started at the end of January. um coming from Coventry where I did a similar role um as the literacy specialist and so I've been taking the last um two or so months really to get up to speed as best I could with the eight departments and um have those conversations with the staff members to understand what's working well and where they would like support um and some of my big lenses are going to be on the next page when I click um so in taking on the humanities department and overseeing about eight departments. Now I'm really trying to align as many of them have mentioned already that vertical alignment across grade levels. So um especially in areas like music
069and library and art there's singletons in their school and so doing the CIA process has really helped us to start looking at similar to the portrait of a graduate what does it look like as a kindergartener and what skills do we want to keep building upon as we move up through the grades. So, I had the opportunity to meet with our um elementary unified arts teams today and we were looking at that process of, you know, when they're starting in preK and art and learning how to use scissors and glue, how does that then build up when they're finishing fifth grade at TIS and now they're brought all these skills that they've been learning and different materials that they've been working with over the years and making these more complex projects. So a lot of
070my work this year has been looking at the curricular work that all of the departments have been doing. Unified arts was starting in K, but um secondary level has been working on it in social studies and ELA and figuring out where are those commonalities and trends. And so our next steps are looking at those universal experiences. So, no matter which classroom you're in or what teacher you have, you're going to have these guaranteed experiences and that you're going to have these overarching knowledge and skills that you're going to acquire. And maybe the teacher will deliver it a little bit differently depending on their style, but you know, you can have this guaranteed experience when you leave. And so, that's the work that we've been trying to um look at. And also prompting a reflective process.
071you know, if you've been teaching the same course or you've been in the same grade for a while, you've been doing things sometimes the same way over time. And so, this is giving them time to collaborate and really think, is this the work that I want to be doing or this is a great time to reflect and say, you know, with new trainings I've been to or new professional learning opportunities I've had, I want to tweak this as I'm going back in. And we're having the opportunity to um redevelop our curriculum since it's been a while. Uh, and as I mentioned with that vertical alignment, we're looking at thats piece and that data piece and looking at those experiences. So, I'm really trying to look at what assessments are students given and then how are
072we using that information? Um, you know, how is that informing our practices? So if we're getting data that says that the percentage of most kids in that grade level, they're not showing proficiency in that, then let's go back to that curriculum and see why, you know, do we have a hole in our curriculum at that moment? And since we're doing the CIA process, it's a great time to kind of merge these two separate ideas um in the process together. And then from a big picture perspective, as Mark mentioned, we're three people and overseeing a lot of departments. So, we're really trying to be um purposeful as we look to the next school year and how can we um utilize the ER days and faculty meetings and the PD days to get teams together and to
073provide professional learning opportunities um in a sequential way over the period of time so that we can be as many places as possible. Um, and so that really takes that that planning part at the beginning and I think we're, you know, starting in May kind of looking forward to next year based on the feedback we've gotten from staff so that we can meet all the individual departments needs and try to give them what um, they've been asking for as we move forward. Next slide. And so my big task when I started was the interreading program implementation. So this was our reading program adopted K4 at the start of the school year. Um it is a newer version of Journeys which is a program that was used here in the past. Um and it has a
074lot of great components. Um but it is a lot of components and for K through fourth grade teachers who are already um tackling planning for multiple content areas every day. You know they were given a lot of materials and trying to figure out how to maneuver through the program. So my goal really has been supporting the teachers in planning. So we have um structured a lot of purposeful time since I started to work with teachers around goals during um faculty meetings or ER days where we can get the whole team of teachers together because they don't have a shared time during their normal school day to look at it and we've been looking at assessment practices on the portal. Um they use somewhat of a spiral curriculum. So they're going to see the same concepts.
075So text features might come up in module 1, module 3, and module 8. Um, and so there's a lot of content that they're covering in each module. So we've tried to prioritize where do we see um certain concepts coming out more in a module and making sure that we're looking for some level of mastery and then having that secondary exposure to some of the other concepts just so that we can keep the pace of the program um moving along. And then just looking at how the different pieces come together. So there's a my book which is a student workbook. There's two different teaching manuals. There's decodable readers. There's leveled readers. Um there's an online platform that students can use and a different one for teachers. So just trying to dissect that. So part of um
076when we purchase the program is that they have a professional development person that I meet with. So I've been meeting with them at least once a week and having them kind of give me tips and tricks that I can then share out with the teachers to make that program a little bit manageable. as we go through um and then as we work through this year looking at what are those big needs for next year when we're in year two um and so I think teachers are getting more and more comfortable with it but it does come with a lot of components and just trying to support them so that they're giving the best instruction in the classroom and they feel comfortable with the materials and that is it us um questions on my areas is
077yeah I was going to I mean I think you pretty much answered it but when you talk about moving um you know programs like changing from journeys into reading just imagine that being really challenging or is there is there enough overlap that you know it's the teachers did find some similarities in the program um they did find interreading which is a good thing that they have they made a lot of positive changes to um improve the program and This um came out of the K3 reading legislation that started a few years ago and this was one of the programs that they vetted to say it had all the components to create a well-rounded um ELA curriculum for kids at the elementary level. And so I think right now the downfall of the program is there
078are so many resources that really do support the teachers and trying to prioritize which are the best resources to use within the schedule of the day and the needs of your students. Um, so that's sort of where we've been unpacking. How do we not cover every single concept every day that comes up in the teacher room manual, but what are the ones that really work best with this story that are questions on the assessment at the end of the module that we want to make sure students have mastery of? And then pulling in some of those secondary concepts in smaller settings. Um, and then balancing the whole group and the small group because as we've said all night the MTSS process, we want to make sure that we're meeting kids where they're at. So after
079they get that whole group instruction and have resources, then they can have that time where they're um exploring at their level with some of the other materials and the teachers can pull those small groups and give them their individualized needs based on the data. And I really like what you said about which is kind of almost like the opposite of that that when you said that when you look back at you know a lesson if there was a lot of you know students who struggled or just weren't showing proficient that you went you go back and you look at the curriculum and see okay are there holes in the curriculum you know so it's not just about like oh this individual child had a hard time but maybe there's things that we can look at
080that maybe everyone had maybe not as hard as every every child struggled with it but maybe to make it better for every kids. So, I really liked that flip of it as well. And we've been using since the K4 has not been doing curricular work in the essence of writing their um curricular documents because they're rolling out a program this year, we've really been trying to still use that backwards design of what are we wanting them to know by the end. What is our assessment asking them in what format? And then where are the points along the um trajectory of that module where they're getting that chance to rehearse it both as small groups or individual um and so trying to help plan that out and one of the nice resources they have editable plans
081that come with the teachers. you have your teachers guide and you're they have a teaching pal which is um the more user friendly one when you're in front of the room that has the prompting questions embedded in the mentor text the story they're reading. Um, but these edibil plans will highlight what is covered each day and then it will star which components are going to be on the assessment at the end. So that that helps the teachers prioritize if they're, you know, struggling with time, I really want to make sure that I'm hitting these prioritized parts of the lesson and the other stuff maybe I just give a little bit of exposure to because I know it's going to come up um at a deeper level in another module. And then I also I was
082thinking about like full circle moments when you were talking you know you talk about like ELA and music art things like that like I was thinking about how you know you might make a piece of artwork or you know um write a piece of music but then a lot of times there's a reflection that comes along with that whereas where you would use a lot of you know your typical ELA skills on that reflection of so I'm sure in lots of other aspects but I when you were talking about reflection that's Well, and I think that that's we're really trying to work closely at all times to see how we can make that transference across our departments. Um, and then it, you know, to me it is a privilege to be over eight departments because
083I'm hearing things in different departments that I can see those connections and then how can we blend it. Um, so when I was meeting today with the library media specialist, we were talking about, you know, what skills do they use in writing and what are the content and knowledge building that they're doing in interreading and how could that come into what they're doing during those library classes during that time. Um, and to your point with art, if there's a certain content that they're doing in a module that works with the skills that they want to do in art, maybe there can be that that crosscurricular connection. So I think it is nice that we're able to be working with many departments because we can kind of be that person to pick up and make those
084connections and then figure out through the professional learning opportunities how we can get staff together to to make those plans so that there is that connection for students along the way. No, that's great questions for Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Cara, remember, you know, when Jen I'm surprised Mark, you're not giving her a little elbow. When Jen says, "Math is everywhere." Barbara was here. She would say, "But you need to be able to read to do math." I didn't want Jen's still trying to build everybody's math mindset. I'm pretty dedicated to it. We'll let it go. I'll be back in the project. Perfect. Bye. Thank you for coming. Yeah, because it the air is really pumping in here. Are you guys cold? I'm always the cold one. That's something we have no. It
085doesn't have to be a lot, but a degree or two would help. Thank you. A degree or two. I'm comfortable. How about 72? Oh my gosh. That's one. Holy. What is it now? Sweet. Don't put it too warm. 68. Yeah. How about 70? Let's Yeah, let's try 70. Scared of compromise. My 62. No, I would have thought 75. Only 70. I love that would be good for me. Yeah, that was awesome. I'm just trying to save money. All right. Yeah. Thank you. It's not our building. Isn't it all of our Um, okay. Thank you. Dr. Do you want to now go to the monthly financial report? Sure. What was previously known as K1? Okay. Excellent. So, we're going to jump right into that. Blow that up a little bit. So, as as you know, at
086the beginning of of every month, typically we'll do a monthly financial report, one page document about 42 items, and uh it'll give you a general idea of where things are for the month. It's usually accompanied with a letter as well. Oops. It's usually accompanied with a letter as well, um giving you a sense of just what the remaining balance is and what the percentage is. um the budget balance on the report for the month of February and mind remembering it's goes back a month is about 1.22% but this month um from March is down to 466 580 58 8613 which is about 1.06% of 6%. So it's going down as expected to. Um couple of highlights for the budget for this month or not highlights but just you know larger areas. Um substitutes are over
087budget as we knew that would be happening. That's typically because of our parab vacancies things like that. Um you know we have to staff those positions. So they're either done with contracted services or with substitutes. So, um, that line typically would run over with for that reason. Overtime code also for budget 31. This also has to do with the custodial subs, which we've talked about. Many of these things are themes that have been going on the last couple months that you're aware of. Um, you know, stipens, same thing. Uh we continue to collect information with uh sorry collect money with respect to the different activities but we also have um leaf stipens that are part of the special education program and master scheduling program. Uh there are additional as we know kind of club activities
088and those are the five transportation clubs at BGP which we've talked about in the past things like that. Um health life disability insurance is over by 73,000. Last month it was 61,000. This will continue to change based on the fluctuations like vacancies and retirements so on. Special Education Services Code 320 is over budget by 254,87. Last month it was 275, so it's slightly down. It'll continue to change as special education needs fluctuate along the way to the end of the year, but this line does tend to run high. Contracted services are covering things like the psychology vacancy and that is more expensive. um we are one of you know 20 districts looking for a psychologist right now. So you have to contract out for that as we've talked about before. This also includes where para
089contracted services hit um and we have a company that laces paras because we're having a hard time you know hiring right now getting them locally. Tech services code 350 is over budget 76,000. Um it has to do with the increased technology online services costs and the companies are increasing their their costs. So that go went up and reportingly goes up in this line. General supplies that's about 11,000 over and it's mostly due to custodial supplies. Cost of custodial supplies went up and so so that's affected that. Um, these are pretty similar to the things that we talked about last month. So, this is what typically tends to happen as we get towards the end of the year. Okay. Thank you. Any questions for Dr. Willlet? Okay, Dr. Willlet, K2, WFDA. So once in a while
090I'll bring uh what's called a within fiscal year position addition. WFPAS are typically done because um there might be some special education requirement case load increases things like that. Um in this case this is for ABIS positions for Birch Grove. Um that's because Birch Grove case load requirements and IEPs now require certain things that we have to address with ABIS positions. A total of 2.75 FTEES are going to be funded through grants um that we are able to acquire and the other remaining 1.25 FTEES are covered by reallocating budgeted but unfilled positions to ABIS roles which we talked about because we have some issues in hiring others. um we have to reclassify positions and reclassify job duties and this is what starts to happen. So um those 1.25 um you know they're going to be
091covered by funds that we have at this point. So there's really no fiscal year impact right now for fiscal year 25. But the total fiscal impact for these positions for fiscal year 26 will be $16,930 when you take out the the grant the grant money. um short-term subs and contracted services have been used in the short term that these positions are necessary to uh fulfill the obligations. What is the official ABIS acronym? Associate Behavior Intervention Specialist. Okay, thank you. Yeah, sorry. Oh, it's it's fine. You done? Yes, I am. Thank you. Well, you already do. So did I wait for you to call for Are you on that, Brian? Yes, I am. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Um, have we been needing these positions now and we've been contracting them out? Yeah, we've been using
092contract services, subs, things like that. These are, you know, when we say, oh, there's open positions, really, we're still, we're using subs to cover them. We're using contracted services to cover them. So that line item is going up even though that position salary line item might not be the the well um ABIS is our special classification of job that that are you know now necessary to cover it and so that's why we're hiring for them. They have more responsibilities. So, is it a reasonable reasonable deduction [Music] that if we don't fund this, if we don't fund this 16 $17,000, it'll cost us more because we'll have to contract it out. Yes. Okay. And a follow up to Bill. So, this is for this school year. Is that correct? Yeah, it starts now and then into
093next year and in perpetuity it's about 16931 next year 169 we only have you know maximum number of less than two months for you know time we're hiring now because we're trying to get these positions filled for next year. Okay. All right. So I was going to say by the time we put this out interview this that and the other you're lucky if you have by the end of the year. All right. Thank you. When you say 169 perpetuity, meaning that's what it'll that's the yearly. Yeah. Be and beyond. That's what we add to our budget. 169. You know, is this um is this a concern with um what you said? Yeah. To ensure compliance. So, this is Yes. Yeah. Um anybody else have anything? I know. Sorry. No, go ahead. I know. I know
094it's like it's the next agenda item, but is this 167,000 that Bill referenced? Does this need to be uh into the budget figures that we have going on next or should I wait for my question or it's uh that 6930 I'll have I'll be looking to find that in our budget for next year. Yes. But there's a couple of ways we can do that and I'll explain that. Okay. So that 169 you said in perpetuity. Obviously for ABIS roles don't cost $17,000. The the rest of it is funded through grants. Grants and it's the differential between the positions that were there and these ABIS's because these ABIS's are what positions were there? Paris. Paris. But these cities have more responsibilities than parish, but they replace jobs that we're not able to fill in that classification.
095So unfilled positions, four of them or however many of them are moving to four ABIS positions, roughly, right? And the job responsibilities are different and more expansive and uh they require a certain kind of person, you know, role something that they really have to want to do this. Sure. And that's part of the reason why we're not Are you going to be able to find the grant that's funding more than the $17,000 annually? Are you going to be able to get that grant every year? You should be able to. It's reoccurring. Okay. And so unless you know, and again, we have to What's the actual What's the actual number? If if we had no grant, what do one of these positions cost us? uh 33,000 or $33 an hour, but it's like it's a little
096bit more than a pair, I guess. Okay. I guess the other one more followup. Um are these positions are we going to be able to find people to build these positions locally? Yeah, more people are interested in this position at this level than I think the other positions were yielded. Okay. more people are applying to these. So there's more money. Yeah. And what tends to happen is sometimes you even get people that are in other jobs in the district applying for these jobs. Okay. So you can sometimes shore up a problem and other times it'll open up an opening somewhere else than something short. So certifications potentially are easier to get for this. No, they're just uh it's this is a harder job to do. No, I understand that. And so they're not easier to
097get. There's more training involved with this job. It's just that there's more compensation too to some extent. So yeah. No, I'm just saying like saying some people in the district might cross reference into this position. Just that that we'll leave it at that. Thank you. Do you foresee us being short pairs because some might transition into this? Well, we're already short peras. The answer to that though is yes. So we might have some people transition into these jobs and we have to fill those jobs. But but but you know we need to fill the u we need to address our obligations and this is the way we you know can do that and we have to make sure we're making moves to do that. So um you know this is a solution to a particular
098problem that exists otherwise we're using contracted services we're using you know and it's not that help sorry and they're not the people who are necessarily have the training to do right and you know had contracted services are like the temp agencies that then will deploy people for a certain amount of time you know example of the psychologist it costs a lot more you know that's it it's a it's twofold it's cost and having the right person in position stable person probably too I think we got some feedback on that you know and the concerns with using substitutes rather than um people that are trained to do those do those jobs, especially with our most vulnerable children. So Jaden, how close are we to that threshold of utilizing contracted services compared to we're already contracted services?
099I guess more I guess that's the wrong question. I guess in in abundance if are we four positions away from from being out of compliance in the eyes of the state? All right. Are we are we are we four positions away from from needing a more I guess expensive alternative than than the behavior text or the or the that's what they call them right down the road. Well, we have we have an extremely you know we have amazing staff who bend over backwards and we have a lot of people working hard to make sure all the tees are crossed all the eyes are dotted but you can't leave a problem. you can't let something like this just live on in perpetuity. It has to be addressed. And so, you know, I think if you're showing
100that you're addressing it, um I don't I don't think we would be like in an OCR kind of situation, but if you don't take make moves to address it, then absolutely. So, I think it's um the district's making moves and trying everything it can to address it. And it has come up in a number of different conversations with different entities about um you know shortages. We're not the only one with these shortages either. So it's just just trying to work through a problem that we have this the state has you know um and we're doing it. We're getting there. But this is a solid this one waveform. Okay. Anything else? Okay. All right. K4 budget. Okay. You don't need anything for K2. Yeah. But good question. Oh, yeah. Just review. Um, okay. So, where we
101are in the process for tonight, um I don't know if uh people were able to tune in to the town council's deliberations in the last couple of days, last week. Uh you know, they worked hard. There were some late evenings there with them. Um and the uh they are helping out in that um there are two things that they were able to do to offset the board of eds budget. Meaning it allows us to um use these as reductions out of our budget versus using um say having to cut certain things or staff. One of these things was that $188,000 that was going to be allocated to TMS auditorium seats in um next year in fiscal year 26 because we will likely have some ERF money because the state gave districts back some special ed
102money. We'll likely have some money to do that um using the educational reserve fund. So at the end of the year, we'll be transferring the goal is to transfer at least 188 to the educational reserve fund that could then after the third quarter of next year once the audit is complete be applied to the TMS auditorium seats. And if we're able to do that, which looks like we will, and because we're able to probably do that, um the town council would then reallocate those monies towards our educational technology initiative, which means that 188,000 of our educational technology initiative can be taken out of our operating budget proposed for next year and instead will be done through capital, which allowed us to then use that as a reduction to get to 2.09. The next uh item
103that was they were helping us with is that there is a fund called the utility internal service fund. We've talked about that before, talked about it in FFC before. um thanks to the council um they were willing to allow the board of education to take 300,000 of its own funds in the UISF fund and apply that towards our electrical energy because it is a high amount um very high this year 770 um and many people have seen that too it's just it's this impactful year from an energy point of view and because we're able to apply that we can also reduce our budget by that amount as well. So 488,000 basically came back to us or off of what we would have to find if otherwise. So the the worksheet remains the same as it
104was last time, but the difference is where the where things have slid. You'll notice that table one is still the aggregator. Table two has everything uh the blue that was the superintendent's proposed budget and then the red items that have been part of discussion um before. But the difference is to the right side in table three. These items were moved out of the reductions. So you'll notice that most of the items moved out of the reductions are staff. um the BGP that had been thrown out there, the TMS, um ths. This is restoring, you know, making those taking those reductions away so that those reductions are not part of the budget. The 299 also the LPN was discussed potentially at Birch Grove. All clubs and activities would be preserved. Um TMS athletics program would be
105preserved. Um you'll notice that to the left the tallying goes to 2.99%. It's exactly 45,174141. Um that's by design. Some of the little smaller items were tweaked to get to that. You know there's a certain amount like 30,000 maybe 19,000 is taken etc. Um the red is the reduction that would go from that 734 down to 299. Uh and you'll notice that at the tail end that's where um you know the or embedded in there is the reductions that um we were allowed to make in those two areas. You'll that's at the top. I tried to group those things together. The utilization of the various funds I grouped at the top and then the other reduction items extend out from there. So you know that includes the EIP, the ERF, the UISF capital ETI replacement
106and then those four are make up largely our program offsets using our reserves and then the rest of it is actually is reductions from there. If you move something out of the items to consider, for instance, if you were to take, you know, something there and move it back into the reductions, you could take something from reductions out and put it in the holding space or I would put it in the holding space for you. That's more or less it. And right now, as it sits, it would bring you to 299 without having to reduce. There remains one one reduction um that is a teaching position and that would be a math reduction at the high school. That is the only teaching position that would remain in a reduction position here. One note though, you
107notice the social worker things like that. That was because in your 734 you had that. That wasn't a position that existed. It was being added, but it's being taken out. That also gets you from 734 down to 299 because that's being pulled. So that's not a position that exists right now. That is that in that case that is a position that you had in there that you were going to add. The rest of these are positions that exist or that in that case like that math teacher is somebody that exists but there's a retirement. Just a clarifying question. When we because this isn't a publicly released document yet, when we speak of these things, are we allowed to be specific with what you have in here as it pertains to positions? Debate. You can the
108um for instance ths teacher for instance uh in this case the one that is in that list is a math. You can also ask to do other things. You know, this is just a result of what the board has talked about along the way in one form or another. That's why these are here or off to the side. But these other positions are actual people. Can we Oh, can we say you can say a position if you're considering a certain thing. You do have to keep in mind conscious and yeah I mean you can you can talk that you're at the point now where you are in a deliberation you know point where would probably need to be talking about whatever is on your mind and we have to try to resolve it because the
109taxpayers are you know when you go to referendum you want to know what you're voting for. So at some point we have to take it from where it was at and move it to tonight. For instance, if you were to adopt these reductions, then I would be publishing a document that officially says these were the reductions. I'd be sensitive to everybody you do talk about will be afraid of of that and it does create a undesirable situation. I have one more clarifying before. So I just want to be clear. So the link that you have in here that goes to So these red here were not the original red that we had on some of the teacher positions that got moved onto the ad or erased out of this red. Is that correct? In table
110two, the ones that were red that got that got moved out of table two. Yes. Yeah, I see it. Yep. They were put those red items are the ones that that those put into table three were the ones removed from the reduction less than put in table three. The ones that are black there. So across the top there's table one two. Oh okay. Okay. So basically the tables are table one is an aggregator just it'll change. No no I'm I'm I'm 100% good right now. All right. One thing to keep out the SRO and the medical supplies, those are those were not in that list before. They're just you know things you can decide to do one thing or the other with there is to clarify too because this was something I think was a
111little confusing for people. Originally there were two SRO that were part of your SE 734. This is one SRO remaining a full-time SRO, right? So that's why you have one in the table three and one in the reduction list is because you had maybe two happening and now it's only one happening unless you were to do something else. Okay. So basically table three is our builder table. The items in red were reductions that Dr. Wlet has slid over for as suggestions for us to look at. Um, so they were things that we've already reduced, but they are things that we can now bring back with the $488,000 that we can now utilize thanks to the town council's recent vote. So, why don't we start with um I just don't I don't want to move things
112in and out willy-nilly to start. Maybe we can just start with questions and discussion and then see where we are before we start moving things around and making it too complicated that we might have to take a recess for. Okay. So, um does anybody want to start with a question? Question. Okay. Why, um looking at what you moved over into table three, the um the saving the one ths teacher possibly art retiring not replacing? Why did you value that over not replacing the math teacher? What was your art is a much well first of all and remember that it's based on conversations that have occurred and information that we've gathered. Anything in art is very hard to schedule with fewer there are very there are fewer options and if our art teachers removed even if
113we can't replace an art teacher it very much limits what they were talking about today the ways the unified arts classes that people are able to take it creates a very narrow set of sections it's not ideal for a comprehensive high school so that's why that one um would be potentially difficult for them to schedule around losing another art teacher and they have already lost some art teachers over the last few years. And how is losing a math teacher going to affect us? You know, not losing any teacher is not a great thing, but that the average class sizes are fairly decent in that area and that the sections would be able to be run. Um, again, I'm not saying that anything is preferable, but right now from a scheduling point of view, it would
114probably be difficult more difficult for the high school to lose an art person than than the math person. Um, can I just I just want to build your question. So, um, I guess I I'm I understand the thought process of it. I'm not negating it in any way, but I'm also I I think I talk a lot about being concerned about math classes in particular. You you couldn't really I can't you can't elaborate at this time what you think class sizes could go up to for math, right? No, but you you do have data on class sizes currently. And so, um, you know, I I it's there because it's a retirement and it's there because the class sizes could absorb that. It's not what we want, but the harder again going back to the harder
115thing for that high school to schedule would be the art. Would it impact being able to have, you know, as many, you know, we have, you know, two ends of the spectrum, right? We have kids probably in the standard classes with co-eing and then we probably have some advanced or AP options. Are we going to be limiting um are we going to be limiting those options so that kids students won't be able to either utilize a co-taught standard class because there's not enough room in the class or not offer an AP class for somebody who who wants well anytime you have fewer teachers you limit options but the there would be much more there would be a much more significant impact limiting students options with the art production that doesn't mean there wouldn't be with
116the math. The math would definitely any teacher has an impact no matter where if it's Birch Grove you that creates higher sizes and everything down at that level where kids are coming in. So it's it's not either way it's not good. But when I talked to the um people involved it was that the impact of losing those art sections would be much harder to adapt to than losing the math sections current. But that again it's not that there isn't pay you know something there's always something when we would step um you know you you could uh you could take a look at some of these other things and you know again there are other options here they are the table three has other options if you want me to move something move that math one
117back and move something else in table three over but this is not an easy thing because there's really not when you go from something like 734 to 299 as we talked about that's even with the gracious and wonderful uh adaptations that the council was willing to make. Um it's still like $1.5 million and you don't get there without without things you these lists are pretty much everything we could throw at this. So, um, you know, and obviously the purpose was to try to avoid having impacts on kids and staff to the greatest extent possible. So, you know, you'd have to swap out something to get some that. And right now, um, that is what I was told was that the art classes much harder for the high school to adapt to. No, and I do
118understand that. And I I'm I'm not again I'm not saying that I would, you know, make a change based on that. It's just it's tough. It's Sophie's choice, right? I mean, I think, you know, when I I will say that for the last two maybe not three years, one of the one of the questions I always ask in the um administrator the community budget workshop when the administrators are there is what are of the positions asked for? What did you ask for that you always let us know? You know, there were 31 positions requested and you know, we only talked about so many and the high school consistently says an art teacher. They lost an art teacher years ago and they've never had it replaced. And I do know, you know, obviously from my own
119kids, but also from other kids that, you know, as the years have gone on, we've lost electives. I know how popular I mean, I think like, you know, I hear culinary has, you know, a list of like 70 or 80 kids on a weight list or something like that. And I know photography um is a great class, too. So, I wouldn't want those classes to be impacted because we we talk about how important these are for our kids to have them within their day as well. Um, it's just tough because I also, you know, again, having a student struggle in math with with a high class size, it's it's a rock and a hard place. Dan and your hands up. Yeah. Do we Is this still just uh because I don't know if you were
120done? What? I'm sorry. We just have questions or Yeah. Are you all set with all your questions? I just want to make sure it wasn't I would these guys have had their hands raised for a while, so that's Let's move on. Oh, I I don't want If you're still going Dan, you want to go? Yeah, that'd be great. Actually, Brian, thanks. Because I wanted to somewhat build off of Jen here. Um, first things first, do we know um not that it matters here? I I guess, but the T high school uh math teacher possibly that's retiring. Do we know who is retiring out of curiosity? Is that something we're allowed to know? I I don't I would prefer not to do that because somebody may not want understand you know they they may not want
121that announced publicly to the whole world even though they might have told people in the school but they wanted them. Yeah. Okay. No trouble. And then just to clarify, if we were to see something in column 2, like an increase paytoplay by $100, if that was shifted over to the right, is that $40,000 that we could potentially have to offset something that we're removing? Like, so if we moved $40,000 approximately over to the right to table three, we only have to make up $30,000 for a teacher, like a high school teacher. That's seems like something worth looking at. That Yeah, that that 40 though gets you to the 299, so you'd have to take something. Understood. Okay, you're taking more than like Got it. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'm clear now. Thanks, Walt. That
122was just a clarifying. Uh, Jen, you you can move on here. Thanks. I think you know I think what you're saying, Walt, is that it's it's actually the opposite. We we've already already we've already so what is the pay to play projected to be then I guess would answer the question. Well I mean the when you look at paytoplay here if you're increasing it by 100 the average uh the typical number of students that participate in that is about 400 which is why that's 40,000. Well that's I guess I just want to make sure that we're we're increasing it $100. Is that correct? Well, if you choose to do so, yes. But that was one of the things that was discussed. That's why it's in there. But yes. Okay. You you'd be increasing it from
123200 to 300. Okay. And um you know, again, we went through some of that last time we talked that the actual cost like if everybody split everything and they were paying for everything would be about 1,000. Well, I understand that. I I I think we well I think we we got caught in in a very bad situation with this pay to play with, you know, living high in the hog with co and everything's paid and all the buses are free and all this other stuff that's going on and that all of a sudden now we're hundreds of thousands of dollars in in the hole from a variety of reasons that the money's just gone and it's not longer being funded to us that I I think we need to keep up with inflation as officials.
124costs go up, transportation goes up, the siphings go up, but we can't just be at at a cost from 1985, you know, regarding these activities. So, that's just my personal view and I'll leave it there at that. Can I ask a couple others? Sorry. Thank you. Um, so I I know in the other uh in the monthly financial report you said that we were um contracting out custodians and I see that there's a custodian another custodian to be removed here in this list here. Yeah. How is that going? Are we going to be just having to sub out um or contract custodian work and over budget that or overextend that line item for removing this potential custodian? Well, there wouldn't need I mean this I'm not being but they're like there wouldn't need to be
125a sub for somebody that wasn't there. So what would end up happening is the work would be split among fewer people and we'd probably not get it done as fast. Um the subs are high because a lot of these individuals are sick. Like it's it so the subs might we had we've had a pretty tough year with people just getting ill and you know for whatever reason this year was very bad for that and has been. But um we you know technically if you don't have a custodian you don't need the the sub for the custodian if they're out. But then the work falls to the rest of them and that becomes harder for them and they can't get through it as fast. So they have to reorganize the zones and maybe they won't get
126to things as quickly as they would have otherwise. That type of thing, you know, how does that work for possible events that we might have if we're short on custodial staff or cleanup and different issues that that arise or even have people available to be on site for these events that we might have? Well, this could take an impact in the day-to-day operations, but those evening those kinds of events are usually posted to the group and people typically pick those up. Oh, because it's extra money. Okay. Like a PT like a PTO event. Yeah. Yeah. But a teacher may be frustrated because their trash can didn't get emptied. You know, if they're overwhelmed and some people are out or something, then they might come in the next day and, you know, it's still there and
127it's still got everybody's juice boxes or something. You know what I mean? So that could be a little frustrating. Um yeah, one one other um item that I have just on my mind right now is the the clubs. So I know when you provided the list for clubs and activities, a lot of those were still at about $20 a pop. Is there thought of possibly raising that to 25 or 30 or 35 to increase a couple extra dollars that might be able to be put into either something or some more supplies or something just to help offset I don't know how long it's been at $20. It's uh I don't it's higher than that I think at the middle school and the high school 40 40 but you know but uh the thing about clubs
128is that um whereas sports has a certain kind of um I don't I'm trying to find the right word for it. You know within a certain price point people will typically continue to do sports but the clubs there's only so much they're willing to pay for the chess. you know, like the games club because technically you could grab a bunch of games and go to the library and play a bunch of games, you know, and so there's an appeal to doing it in school because there's transportation, other things. But if that gets too much higher, it's a point of diminishing returns because people, we can say, oh, sure, we're going to collect $100 for every club. But if most of the parents look at that and go, I don't I'm not I'm not doing it.
129and we will have this hole in the budget that we're being very optimistic about what someone might No, I wouldn't anywhere near the $100. I just thought I maybe I'm I'm incorrect. I thought a bunch of them were at 20, but I apologize if they're not. All right. Um, now can you give me a quick just I'm just, you know, just shoot me here, but what is the the the MTSS6 stipens? Can you just quickly tell me what those six are? Yeah, that the multi-tered systems and support. Yes. Um, you know, the high school is redoing its looking at redoing its schedule a little bit to incorporate and you did some of the walkarounds that they don't have a lot of um um support for some struggling learners and they have done a really great
130job of covering with what they had did have. These stipens were going to be for um staff to then do um extra work to work with the populations, tier one, tier well tier two and tier three populations that might need the assistance. If it's not going to be something in the budget, then we will have to find other ways of accomplishing that. There's other schedule options they're looking at. um making more eagle blocks, going to more eagle blocks per week, um changing their schedule a bit to adjust. These were going to allow um to have either one person to do it or six different people to uh be available to help children that are young adults who are in the tier 2, tier three help. This was specifically for the high school. This was mostly
131for the high school because the high school is the one school that really doesn't have they had referenced that in their curriculum talk just a few minutes ago. The hard part about this one is um in my opinion while I really really would have liked to have seen that happen, I don't want to trade a birch growth teacher for that. You know what I'm saying? And that was the tradeoff here is what we got back. We got back enough to restore positions, you know, a very good number and we're very thankful for that. But I don't want to lose a teacher to gain six stipens or something. It just isn't worth losing a teacher for that. Um, and so that's or or other things on here. For instance, you can see the two one in
132black at the top. I don't think you you probably want to lose, you know, an SRO for six. You know, that's that kind of decision- making that we end up being in when we have 1.5 million to cut. So, it's it's I don't want to have that go out, but I I I would Yeah, I don't either because I I I feel if these are two tier two and tier three of of our older, you know, kids who are are struggling, which, you know, a lot of times the material is a lot harder at that at that point, especially when they're going to be, you know, kicked out the door shortly to be heading out into the real world or whatever you want to. The only thing state there I just really really I mean
133I know if we can't have it we can't have it but it really really saddens me that we can't have that in there. It's harder to get and if I am able to get grants of certain donations and things like that. It's harder to get one for a position than it is to get one for a statement, you know. So that's why I'd rather not have a position in there because if a grant just opened up for instance for possible transportation for you know children during our summer ESY program. It's not a ton of money but I I I filled it out today that you know those types of things pop up more than the one that is the social worker that you know that I completed that gave us a social worker for a
134couple years. Those are few and far between. But the ones that are for smaller amounts that you know that sometimes you can get a siphon or two out of those are more frequent. So that's the other reason why that's there versus say a position is the chances of something popping up somewhere along the line that would allow us to write a grand cover that are greater than something coming for a position that would not be in perpetuity. You know, not funded by grant perpetuity. All right, I'll just pause right now. I just wanted to build off two things Brian said. Um, the first one is is do we know do we know to what Brian was talking about with maybe increasing clubs by even just $5 or whatnot? Do we know how many paid clubs
135that we have right now to even talk about whether or not that would be a substantial enough amount of money to do anything with? Well, I I provided that info last time. I can go dig it up again. But but you may remember that you don't collect the out out expense out on clubs and what you collect on clubs with the amount you have now is somewhat poulry. So if you increase the price of clubs, I don't think supply and demand curve, you're going to collect more. That's kind you don't collect the full amount. Parent we weren't covering stipens. parent guardians are not paying the full the all of it now for a variety of reasons. You're not probably going to collect more by increasing the price of club. Clubs aren't on here because they're
136an unreliable source of of revenue in that situation. They're not they're not going to be um you're not collecting the full amount now anyway. No, you understand like I brought up last time that it would be limiting like my my son is in two clubs that he's not even attending right now, but should the price of one of those be too much, he wouldn't be in those clubs anymore. Yeah, it's a tricky one to do that with because I don't think that as that goes up, especially in the next couple of months, you know, into next year with some of things that are going on, I don't know the people are going to I think you could have a effect where fewer people will even sign up. Yeah. But I in a in a different
137world, I would like to look at that. Um is there so I know we had 60,000 for the MTSS at the high school. We could still if we like you said if if we if there was a grant or if there was you know money that freed up somehow 10,000 20,000 we could still do some things at the high school like do we need that full amount in order to do any of this at the high school? I mean uh ideally it would be at that amount but if there is something that comes on you know the radar it would be something we would go for right away and there's more likely something to come up on in that kind of um area than other things but you know again we're we're doing what we
138have to do to reach the cut point of 299. There's no easy way to reach this cut point. It's it is miserable to do this process and there's just no good way to reach it. Um I will say again, you know, it was great that the council was able to be supportive with that and um you we're benefiting from it. The rest of these things in here, there's just not a lot of other options. All right, Jaden, did I see your I was going to comment on something he just said, but then he answered what I was I'm doing math over here, so I'll have some questions for you in a minute, but he answered the question. Thank you, Bill. Okay. Anybody I want to talk to talk about your question real quick. Go ahead.
139We added the $100. So, right now at the high school, the general fee per sport is $200 and at the middle school, I believe it's$125. The family cap is 700. So that would change the high school to 300. That would change the middle school to if those rates were still the same to 225. According to I, you know, where where we'd be getting most of it is a $100 increase to the high school because you get the greatest number of participants there. you know, probably be a small adjustment to the middle, but your high school is where you're making up the majority of that money is going to be high school parents, high school athletes, the vast majority. And I'm making an assumption, too. We have to make we take a chance because it's possible
140that if you have multiple kids in the system and this goes up, you might not have your child participate in all of the sports that they used to. You might then say, "Well, you can only choose two," right? You know, and I think that that then if that that starts to factor, then you lose the benefit of the it'll go down because cost went up. Family can't adjust at all or not? Uh we weren't going to make a change, but we we might have to. Um that wasn't discussed yet, but No, I think you would have to adjust that. If you're expecting it wasn't it wasn't discussed yet. Yeah, excuse me. It wasn't discussed. All right. So, right now it's just increasing the price without modifying the family cap. Well, the family cap doesn't necessarily
141affect everyone, you know, but increasing paytoplay for everyone would still bring you additional funds, you know, like I I I won't hit family cap because I'll just have one kid in the high school. So I you already said you have two kids two kids playing $2 each. I'm just saying so you'll but I wouldn't necessarily hit it but I will still be paying an extra $100 towards thing. So I just I mean we can obviously talk about that but I just think that goes back to the same concerns with clubs because now if you're going to say that parents have to pay up to $800 you might actually have them dropping out of the sport rather than you know what I mean? We're still collecting 700 collecting $700 from them. If we if we raise
142it, we run the risk of them just saying, "Okay, never mind. You're not doing basketball." And then they're actually paying less than $700. You you may lose particip. We raise it up, we may then have people doing less clubs and also not paying as much for clubs. So that would be my concern with the family cat piece. 7100 is still quite a hardy amount. Trying to think in my case for my both of my boys, I pay $1,50. If I if there wasn't a family cap for their individual sports, so would I pay, you know, if I pay $700 now, would I pay $800 as opposed to $1,50 or, you know, a little bit less? For me, I would probably pay an extra $100. The closer I get to that $1,50, I would have to
143seriously consider having them choose one sport instead of playing two sports each. How would we if we did discuss that? I'm thinking more in terms of like when we're done with questions and discussion, if we move then move on to maybe what people would move around so that we could have Walt run numbers if we need to. But if we did discuss something like that, how would we how could we quantify that? I was just going to say, here's the other thing. How many families are like me that have multiple kids, multiple sports? Just don't know how to quantify that. It's not it's not ideal. You're not the higher your uh if you raise the family cap, then you get more money because if they're if they can take care of what it takes. Yeah.
144So, two out of nine in this group. The reason that 300 is chosen roughly is because even with 300 there's a calculated loss of participation because we have more than 400 participants. Not a lot more but assuming that you lose a certain percentage of participants every time you knock up the cause. This is being a little conservative in that it's assuming you might lose 60 and there'd still be 400 participants. No. Do we know how many families hit the family cap? Um, is that a number that we not sure but it's probably 20 30% of that something when uh every year at the administrator or the the community rounds the first stop I go to is with Mr. McCluskey and he's always talking to us about the unique you'll have to help me here. There's
145there's the athletes enrolled in this in a program but then there's also unique athletes. the athletes who are doing multiple sports a year. Do we know what the numbers are of athletes who are participating in one sport versus unique athletes who are No, I just know semester, you know, or you know, each season you're at around that 400. Gotcha. Mr. McQuire year is what 700 700. So, if there was no cap for my family, I would pay over $1,000. But there's a cap at 700 for the year. School, right? Yeah. Middle school and high school. Yeah. But there's a family cap in the district for 700. They do multiple sports for that, right? Multiple. Yeah. Both boys are in two sports each. I think that's a steal. I mean, I I paid I paid $500
146for for 12 weeks of flag football. What? At Star Hill and I do baseball and I do swimming and like I pay thousands $700 is I mean for sports people I don't think for an attire from September to June I think is a hell of a steal. But it's also combined with our taxes. Yeah. Well, I don't have like I so I have kids in Birch Grove and TIS. I don't have an option to just pay $700. I got to write the check for the big dollars at Star Hill or wherever else. I got to do that. So that's what I'm saying. Like I I think you're saving quite a bit of money once you get up to the upper levels you're doing and you're having better coaches and officials and everything else versus me.
147I got to just find a place to get my kids involved in and pay the going rate. I think that's the difference between a public school system and a private Yeah. Part of it is equity too because in a public school system you're trying to give every kid an opportunity to play and you know we I think you know for instance I've been fortunate and that the kid my kids that want to play things typically have been able to afford that it is more expensive a swim team can be a,100 that type of thing but some people don't have that option or opportunity so the public school system may be the only place the kids get a shot at it if there's a certain um demographic you know the other piece is that what's happening
148right now is um your average parent guardian, which I'm sure you're all painfully aware of. You know, if you have kids, like I had three, you're getting hit with something every day. It's the field trip, it's the ECE course, it's like 250 here, the AP class is like another 200 there. You know, you got 300, 300, and 300. And you know, for the esports and then, you know, it just it it really adds up and parents do have a hard time with it. Um, a lot of parents are in the in that sandwich generation. They're helping their parents, but they're also trying to pay for their kids. And so, it is it is hard on parents the more fees and more things. Um, even if the school system offsets it, there's a lot of other
149things that are constantly drawing on them, even the food. So, it's um it's it's one of those things that they would have to start making possibly choices. The higher that amount went, they might think, well, you know, you can't do all of this. you can only do one this year or two or something. Um, you could say I could see that happening based on all the burdens that they people are already absorbing. And there's two things I think of when we talk about equity too. Number one is that you know there are a lot of parents who can't bring their children to the outside. Actually, like when I was a kid, I was on the high school swim team. My parents didn't come to my swim meetings. That was something that was my own. I
150didn't have parents that could do that. So, I think that there's probably a lot of kids who, you know, go to baseball, they get on the bus at school, they come back to the bus school, the parents can pick them up later. You know, they can't run them to these travel sports that we're paying thousands of dollars for and in different cities and towns and states. Um, and then there was another there was another equity piece I just thought of as well that Oh, I mean when we talk about high school sports too. I mean, yeah, I'm paying whatever I'm paying for baseball, but I'm also buying, you know, gloves that are expensive and baseball bats that are expensive and baseball gloves that are expensive and and all of those things, too. So it's not
151just simply really the what they the fee, it's also all the equipment that you have to provide. Even college applications, you got to drop serious dollars every application. If your child applies to five or six schools, you're dropping hundreds. I'm not saying I'm I'm against raising a cap. I'm saying that it's hard for me to think about doing that when we can't qualify what that would actually save us. That's where I come back to. I don't know how that helps us with this discussion. Well, and anything like that, too. A lot of things that you're doing, you're taking a risk, you know, that But I just want to give people an idea of what people are paying. Thank you. All right. I feel like I saw Ryan. You haven't spoken yet. I I just wanted
152to maybe just check with Bill like in my mind. I'm like, well, you're going to go up $100 per sport. Like, what if the cap just went up like a hundred? like not not excessive, not like oh let's increase it 300, but maybe like if it if the cap went up 100 so that you can maybe take advantage and take advantage is the wrong terminology but realize the additional income from raising it from pay to play from 200 to 300, right? That that's all I was kind of like thinking in my mind, you know, because we're already saying we're g we're gonna increase it a $100. If you have kids in three sports, that's $300 maybe. So now you're, you know, over the cap. So you're really only going to get $100. I I it
153just it seems like you'd almost have to increase the family thing a little bit. Maybe not a lot, but maybe a little bit in order to capitalize on this. And again, it's it's all about do you have multiple families with multiple multiple kids in multiple sports? It's a complicated process. It is. And um you know, you you'd probably Yeah, you get a better return out of increasing the family cap, too. J, but I guess that's why I'm so curious about how many unique athlete how many athletes we have in, you know, in in in households. It to Jen's point, Sereni's point, and to Bill point, everyone's making good points right now. It is very hard to quantify what that would look like. But I agree with the premise of we should at least investigate, and
154I've said this a thousand times, we should at least investigate it. I completely agree with the idea that it's worth looking into. I just can't do that unless I've got again those numbers that Mr. McCcluskey gave plus and then some. I mean, plus how many on average how many athletes are in each household and and and you know, going through all these different things. So, um I think it's a it's a it's a great point. I just need I need something I need to I need something to work with in order to balance bounce those ideas off one another. I guess the numbers versus I guess the the family cap numbers, the numbers of athletes versus the cap that it'll be raised to. So that's all. But I think it's I I think it's a
155fair point that you I think what we're I think what we're realizing is that at the very least knowing that this is the position that we're in this year and could likely find ourselves in again next year. I think that going into that we need to probably ask for some more in-depth information going into next year probably about clubs, the number of clubs, the fees, the participants in clubs, the fees that they're paying for that as well as the sports information like we're all talking about. how many multiple families do we have and etc etc because then at least we could I mean we're talking about this for a long time but again I don't see how that how we factor that into the decision that we have to make tonight so well and the
156return on that it's a moot point okay I just think it's going to be a flexible number yeah well maybe that's what I was going to say is we could look at it all day long for what's happening right now but you know the population goes up and down we got the family with five we got a family with one you know So, it's it's never going to be a static number and you know, we've got $40,000 on there because we're assuming everybody's going to pay an extra $100, but with the cap and with the kids graduating and new kids going, we really, you know, it's a little bit of a crapshoot. It's that and it is anything like that is a um is a risk. All right, let's we can always come back to
157this if we need to to deliberate on it. What's I think that's times reading. I agreed today. Even in the last five years, um yeah, I just want to check with uh Katie. Did you You're the only person that we haven't touched during the discussion. I just don't want to leave you. No, I I don't have anything to say right now. Um, the only thing I had been curious about really was the math teacher and if that's a, you know, poses a programming issue for us and, you know, I understand the discussion around, you know, capping for people who have more children. Um, it's a good discussion to have, but I think that it would be a nominal increase in in savings or, you know, revenue. So, I don't want to get too bogged down
158in things like that. And I but I also don't want to I want us to be cautious of anything that's going to really change the experience that the kids in our in our school district are having. And I think that that we have the right focus with what's on this list right now. Yeah. I wanted to um switch focus to not reductions but revenue. Now the solar discussion that we had that's not realized revenue until the 2627 fiscal year because the thought process is if we approve that in the coming meetings that construction won't start until the summer of 26. There are quite a few things to to work out to work through that. So that revenue from that wouldn't be realized for another another year. Yeah. Not something we can count on here. Right.
159Um the other thing is um if we opened up open choice well and um and you know it depends on on how far but uh right now it's it's not going to be a major game changer for next year but if we do that as a regular practice over the next five years it would you know it's that right now um you know it's been kids coming in in K2 and we've extended that to K5. If you extend it to K12, then you'll definitely get more each year. When did we extend it to K5? Um, well, we have kids already that have come through now. But we're not taking any new kids. Siblings come. Yeah, we're I based on the conversation we've been having, I'm looking at, you know, since we have siblings coming in
160and coming out of this year, one of my recommendations would be to expand the open choice program, you know, and open up more seats in every grade at least to K5. And um if you did 612, that would increase the number even more. However, that would be a conversation that we'd want to have because there are other things to consider, you know, in terms of readiness and all of that. So, I don't want to look at a child as revenue, but when we bring a child in from open choice, what what is that what are the costs? Well, what's the tuition? What's the expenses for that one child? The the best way to to answer that is if you look at the board of edoped budget document, there's an open choice page because there's a
161magnifying effect. So after a certain percentage is achieved, the amount jumps up and then it jumps up again. So um if I u I can pull that up real quick, but certain towns certain towns get more than a million dollars from that. It's just it depends on the extent of the program and how many children. It's it it it is wonderful to have the program because um it allows for a lot of awesome educational opportunities and diversity. One of the other benefits of that and one of the things that it seeks to do is solve the challenge of chef versus O'Neal in Connecticut um where it tries to get Connecticut schools more integrated. So, um, you know, it does have incentives for that. That page is the best way to to explain what you're asking.
162So, it gradually the more that you have. Yeah, we we Well, can I ask a question on Bill's question? So, let me um I'll load that up real quick. While he's loading up, it's just the open choice. Currently, if I understand the program correctly, they start in at as a kindergartener and work their way through and their siblings can join typically the younger siblings. So, they're joining as they enter kindergarten. Correct. And then they work their way through the Tom public school system, right? For open kids grow up together, they go up through. So, if you're talking about expanding it from K through five, in theory, I could a student could stop start in fifth grade. Is that what you're saying? Right. Rather than coming and that's what you're talking about expanding. Yes. Expanding the
163the time that they can enter. Yes. And as enrollment increases from you know less than 2% to 4% the reimbursement rate increases and it starts to magnify. So one of the examples is if we had um if reaches 86 students which is about seven students per grade and you approximately say one additional for every classroom um that would be $688,000 and right now we have 80 for about 79 to8,000 but again as you said we're not putting dollar signs on human beings it's it's simply that these are the types of things that can benefit a district for being engag engaged and that's one of them. But another is the really great opportunities for students to to know each other and to grow up together and be integrated in a you know state Connecticut. If we
164at some point in time in the near future gave you a directive to open up open choice for K through six. What what type of uh attendance? What type of new student influx could we potentially see year-over-year? Well, hard to say because we haven't done that yet, but it's competitive. So, we compete with every other open school. We'd open the seats, but then we would go out there and market ourselves. We have a marketing flyer. I send Tom Swanson right now and other, you know, some other admin went in the previous years. Tom Swanson is our principal at BGP. He went down and did a great job of representing us at this this kind of fair. I don't doubt it. And he's great. And then we've also had others go and he Jim Dina and
165others have gone over the years. Um and so we go there and we we recruit like this is a great school to be in, you know, and we'd up that those efforts because now we're expanding for more grades. And my guess is that it would start slow and then start to increase. So the first year we'd probably get, you know, a handful more than we would have gotten otherwise. But then as people are aware that we're opening it that way, more will come. Other things are a preschool program attracts kids to the district because they if you have two or three kids and one of them's preschool, if the district has preschool, then we bring all three to that district. So for instance, some districts have that. We might be looking at how to leverage
166our FRC program and do some things creative if we're going to continue to expand that. Um, and I would keep working on that, but I that is one of my recommendations for the next couple years would be to greatly expand that program too. So, if we gave you that directive for this year, is there anything that you would be comfortable pulling off of that reductions list that we could move over, assuming that we would get eight new kids or 10 new kids at $3,000 a pop, whatever. Not next year because we the seats are already they get established pretty early. So we've already done that for next year. The there's already that process is already underway. Tom already went to the fair people already selected. So but that in coming years you know we could
167look at if we were really being aggressive expanding it and you know I would want to be conservative and look at what we were getting first. Sure. you know, 10 20,000 maybe to begin with, you know, but we'd have to really look at what what we were how successful we would be. Yeah. And do you think because I just because you and I have talked quite a bit about this. Um I understand why we started off slow to make sure that that staff was ready and and school was ready for the schools were ready for this. Um, do you feel that that the training that's been provided to our staff um is adequate enough to be ready for a larger influx of kids that aren't necessarily from town? I think we we would I think
168that the staff has had some great training. I think that as the numbers increase, we would need to increase our training, you know, according because um, you know, I think that training is an ongoing thing. you know it's something that happens regularly and then patterns and habits and things like that they are most likely to uh maintain you know a evolved status or people are most likely to grow if things are regularly done and you know they're reminded of things regularly and that type of thing. So we increase those along with the increased number of kids. Um good adding on the bill. I think it's more so than just needing how I interpret it is we not just increasing training but we've got class sizes right now that you know 28 28 kids. So, I
169think part of it is also finding some sort of path with the town council to sort of rejuvenate the schools and and make sure we've got the infrastructure set to to to withstand as many kids as many students, excuse me, that would come into town. And and I think that's another key and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Will. I I you got a lot of experience in this department. Um, in my opinion, I think I would love this idea of opening up that open choice, but again, if I get to choose between, you know, Rockville's the first thing that came to my mind was the high school. I believe Rockville has a high school agricultural program and whatnot. Probably. Yeah. Some something along those lines. And and so the first thing that
170came to my mind was, well, if that's what I want to go into, and that's, you know, I can't we we can't compete. you know, we've got a great botney course and and great science courses and all that and and whatnot, but you know, I don't think we're at the point I think it's going to take a little while for us to be able to suit up and and compete with some of these districts nearby specifically and and Rockville is just the first one that came to mind because of their a program. So, um I think that's another part of part of the conversation that we'd have to look into a year or two from now is or really last year, the last 10 years, but I won't go I won't get into it. But,
171um you know, I guess my thought process is is bringing kids in and again I think Talon has a lot to offer. Even with reductions that we have to make, Talon still has a lot to offer. So, I don't want to look at at bringing students in as dollar signs, but you know, the reality is is that when we bring kids in through the open choice program, it comes with tuition, correct, that we get paid. So, you know, that would also be the thought process of how we could, you know, hire those needed teachers to compensate for the influx coming in. Yeah. Uh what I'm what I'm I guess my counter to to that is is if if if that infrastructure isn't already in place, why would I choose to go there? You know, for
172and I'm the only one here that doesn't have children and whatnot. You guys can correct me if I'm you know please valid point but you know if if if I need my kid to go there and have a good quality education but that you know they don't have enough Paris to get around to you know the those types of questions and and you know they don't have a a uh child what's child um what's the what was the class that we cut two years ago child development course anymore you know where you know my kid wants to go into so that's more so what I'm saying is we need to attract them here in order to get that money too so how do we do that we build up our school district, you know, as
173as as we as this board every year, you know, tries to deem fit. And so I think you guys are at a place of there's two ways of thinking. If you build it, they will come or if they come, we will build it. And well, and I'm not saying if they come, we will build it. I'm saying yes, we have we we've taken away a number of things over the last number of years. We still have a lot to offer, you know, and I don't want to diminish, you know, what our teachers do, the incredible things that our teachers do with less. I don't want to diminish that. We still have a lot to offer. And I still think that even with where we're at now, we are still attractive. Are we more attractive than
174other places? No, we're not more attractive than other places. But you know that's we can leave that on the parents that are entering the open choice program to decide. Um so you know I think our first responsibility is to have seats for them. Um and you know and and I'm not saying that you know bring them here and then we build up. I think it's it's it's a combined thing you know a plan but if we don't have a plan for growth we're just going to keep shrinking. There's got to be a plan. That's why I was so adamantate about grant writers and and you know having a plan for grants, having a plan for bringing additional revenue. I think the solar is a great thing that's additional revenue coming into us. So I I
175think it's just got to be a whole cohesive plan. If we don't have a have a plan, we're just going to continue to shrink. Bingo. And all I'm saying to you is I think that part of that conversation has to be with the with the town agreed town council in almost in a sense. We've done, you know, I've been on this board four years and every year through different boards, we've done a decent job getting to where we all sort of agree at the end of maybe we don't agree on how we got there and this and that, but you know, a lot there's been a lot of unanimous votes uh when when solidifying our budget. I cannot say the same. No, we can't say the same for, you know, the council and whatnot, even
176though, again, they show they show a due diligence and and a willingness to to to work and find these solutions. So, I just think that I I love the idea of these conversations, the solar, the the open choice and whatnot. What does that look like? I think we should investigate in, you know, moving forward, you know, in the next whatever it is, few months, few years, whatever it is. Um, but I agree with you, waiting isn't, you know, it's not going to do as much, but I just don't think we can do that on our own. some things like the open choice I would recommend and I think it would be a good thing to expand um you know you know and we had a few tough years because we had a crumbling foundation issue
177and we had co so we we'll have probably a better five years than we had having said that um we also have a lot of cost avoidance programs that have developed over the years that are excellent and have done exactly what we wanted them to do otherwise the damage would be more uh so but I think that there was a feeling on the board side that long term We probably need to look at federal budget process and how we go through it sort of the council goes through it and then you know and evaluate that because your average over a period of 12 years being 1.67 six, seven. If you subtract other factors, it's it's, you know, you you've taken a lot of it's narrowed what's available to the point where, you know, you've got
178a we're in a place right now where this this is there's not a lot more that can be done than what you're looking at right in front of you when we have some kind of reduction like that. So, expanding open choice and continuing our diligence on our cost avoidance programs, all very important. Um, but there also should be some process consideration. is in the process though on town council to open the charter to make those changes. It's just uh you know I think you could have an opportunity. Yes. But maybe you know find ways that maybe um like the meeting that you had the other night was very productive. Yeah. I definitely think we need to continue to have those conversations and I think part of part of my emphasis is that you know we
179we don't stop like I don't want the next time we talk about this to be a year from now when we're talking about more budget reductions. you know, I want to continue to talk about, you know, you know, being optimistic and thinking how we can, you know, increase revenue and and, you know, promote growth as opposed to mitigate reductions. Um, you know, and and we've got to promote growth, yes, by our relationship with town council and and how cooperative um, you know, they are with us, we are with them, but also, you know, things that we can do. I think the solar is a great thing that that uh we're we're looking at. Um I think open choice is another great thing because Taland has a lot to offer. Yeah, I agree. So in the
180interest of time, I don't I I mean I want everybody to feel like they got their questions and they were heard and but I think we need to kind of start figuring out how to tackle this list. So I don't know. I was thinking, you know, maybe we we could start with what's in the red knowing that we can do that. Although the caveat is, well, it looks like that number is about $12,000 over 488, but can we still work with it? Don't think of it as like a total night. Each of those pieces has an Each of those pieces has an associated value. Thank you. So if you move it in that it, you know, moving any of those into the reductions area would lower the budget by that amount. Anything that's in reductions
181coming out. So if you move in something like TMS athletics program into the reduction and you you know take out something that has more value, you're you're moving it in the wrong direction. Right. I guess what I'm just trying to start with is if we started with what's in the red, we can do what's in the red, right? Well, what what you have here we table three table three is what is currently not being reduced and if you would like one of those things well not totally table three just the items in the red no the items in the red are what you looked at last time and those items were pulled out red so you could see the red question again so the items in the red on table Can we can we do
182all of those things with what we have from the count? Can we keep those items? They're currently they're currently in the budget if they're in table three. All right. They're currently before you we can move them back into our bud. They are in your budget right now because they are not in the reduction table. Those things in table three are currently part of your budget right now. They are not being reduced. We have I need to I need to start with a starting point. Can that be my starting point? The items in the red. Well, there's two reds. There's table two. On table three, I can change everything in table three just to black if you want. The only reason that's red is I want No, I don't want to do that cuz everything in
183table three is $580,000 and we can't do that. I need a starting point to start to go around. The only way I can think to do this, we can do that right now. The way this sits, we hit 2.99%. That's right. And if you mess with Yes, it is. But that's $580,000. How I I'm understanding it is we got 488 back. This number is at 580. Correct. So, the reason that you're looking at a number that's 580, there's things in there that were beyond were never taken out to begin, right? They were always in there. Yeah. So, they weren't taken out. He said he just said those ones in the SRO and the medical supplies are not taken out. The the red is just it's just red because it was taken from the reductions table
184into the holding table so that we don't have to reduce them because you got the 488. So the 488 became what we could cut. These staff positions were moved out of the reduction table into that holding table three and so they are not being reduced. Anything in table three is not being reduced. Everything in table two is being reduced if it's in the reduction area in the reduction column. And if you're going to take something out of the reduction column, you have to put something of equal value into the reduction column to balance it because 2.9, you know, to get the 299. So if we were to take, for instance, let's just use it as an example. If we took that 40,000 increase out and we zeroed it out, right? That goes away. Look at
185what it does to just as a sake of example. See how it pushes? Now it's a 3.08%. It's not a 2.99. How that kind of goes. So you take that out of your reductions now. Oh, I understand. It's high. It's higher than you need. You're It's too hot. You need to get it back down. So something would have to leave you recording. something would have to be cut to reach that. And these are carefully, you know, these are carefully selected based on the conversations you've had. Let me let me try and just make sense of what Jen was saying. Yeah. So, the only thing we added to our budget is $488,000. Correct. That's the 300,000 from the Yousef fund and the 188,000 from the cap swap because we were able to use that 488, right?
186That meant that now we are no longer paying for the edte because capital's paying for it, right? The energy amount was lower because the US is paying for it. So our budget went down by 488 because we're able to take those out of the budget and because of that you didn't have to reduce as much. So should the things that in table three the in red the ones that we had to make changes should those total up to 488 because that's the number that was the change. No if you look at the red by itself it almost it's a little bit more than 488 right because I I also modified I think it was co-eing or something. there was a 488 and then I modified upwards or changed one of the other figures that we
187hadn't used all haven't produced all of it and modified that. So that's the $12,000 difference you know it was trying to get as many positions back as we could and the 488 is there plus a few other tweaks. So there was some other tweaks like co teaching things that okay so I'm still not there. So, if I if let's let's say that if right now we vote on every item in table three staying remaining in the budget, we're good. We're at 2.99. Yeah. All you all you really have to do is to you, you know, motion to approve the reductions as presented to the board of ed in the, you know, April 9th meeting by the superintendent because that's what's being presented to you as the reductions. If you accept those reductions, you're at 299
188and a including the SRO and the medical supplies. one of your SRO. We have one SRO now in the budget. Yeah, the medical supplies is not a reduction right now. And that second SRO is not a reduction right now. That that is something that is sitting there that you could move into your reductions and then move something else out. You know what I'm saying? We could move an SRO. We could move this SRO out. We would have no SRO's and move a teacher back in. Correct. But then you want to you what I'm trying to show you is you can't you can't just take you gota you got to swap something for right if you're gonna if you're going to take one and try to get back that fund you have to produce something else
189to cover. Can I have a clarify point? So the SRO you just mentioned not not the one on table three but is in in the other part portion of the budget. There's one in there currently and this would be the second SRO in table three. Is that correct? Yeah. Your bud your budget hits your budget. Is this the second SRO in table three? Yeah. That the one you keep would have been the second one. You keep one, you lose one in the budget. You're only going to have one. You're only going to have one. You'll have one in the budget, which is that one correct black table. No, the one. So there's one. There's not one in the other part of the budget. No, you you're saying there's zero. I just I just want to
190clarify that. So you have one next. If you remove this SRO, we have zero. If you guess, right? Let's say you said I want that math teacher and I'm going to move the SRO. Yeah. No, I I I I get all that. I I I just want for clarification that that if we remove this SRO, then we have zero. Okay. Thank you. We got zero SRO. All right. Thank you. Go ahead, J. So what I'm not understanding and I'm sorry to be a pain in the butt. If we if our number to work with is 488, how h how explain to me and maybe this is just simple simple stuff that I'm just missing. I'm just missing something. How are we able to pass something that's worth 5 580 $580,000? Do we not have to
191reduce whatever's in this list below 488? So in the second table, yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, it's okay. Everything in the blue and everything in the red brings you from 734 to 299, right? And um on the right side, because we were able to not have to pay for the ad tech stuff and not have to pay for 300 of our 300,000 of our energy, that meant that you could in, you know, instead of cutting last week's list, you could instead um reduce fewer people because of it. So on the table three area is what was taken, you know, out of it so that you can still keep them. And if you were to total all the reds, the reds come up to 500,000 124. And that's because it's 4.88, right? And I took 12
192grand and adjusted some of the other lines. I think one of them was teaching or something. Took more from that to make that happen. So that's how it because when you're trying to get to 299, you're trying to get to a dollar figure of 45,174,141. So 488, we were getting closer to that, but then I modified others to get that extra amount. Sort of many makeup. Yeah. So here's the I I think what it is is is that I looked at this as we only added one additional SRO because we currently have two part-time SRO positions that we had one one full-time. So for me to see the SRO on table three, I might as well then see every Birch Grove, TIS, TMS, you know what I because those are already in the budget is
193how I considered it. So now I see what you're saying. There's still an SRO reduction in red here. I cons I didn't consider us adding two SRO positions. I considered us we already had an SRO position in our budget. We were adding an additional Another way to think about it is that in your budget you had two. So in the 734 you were giving up there you had two right? I didn't look at to get it to 299 your budget next year has one right you know regardless of thinking what you have and don't have think of the budget as a collective whole that changes my thinking on it. Okay so then let's start with this then if we can have everything that's in table three. Why don't we go around and talk about if
194we want to make a change. Well that's what we're going to go around and do. So, if you're good with these, listen, I know none of us are are great with these items. I I clearly am not as well. Um, but I don't think any of us are really okay with any of the things that we're not able to put back or at least the big, you know, the ones that we talked about, which was like $780,000. Um, so why don't we just at least start from a point of what's in table three. And if there's something in here that you want to swap, if you're good with it or good enough with it, then you're good enough with it and you think that the this is the best we can do with what we
195have. If you want to flip one out for something in, then then let's let's start there. And then if we have a lot of those, then I guess we're going to have to have Walt run some scenarios while we wait. So, do you want me to start with you this time or you want to get me to give you a break? No, no, you're good. And I just have a quick question. It'll be very quick as I'm getting my point across. So, what I'm looking at is the math teacher, the T th T th T th T th T th T th T th T th T th T th T ths math teacher at 72 at 726 and then I'm looking at the the uh th teacher which is 737 and you mentioned before
196Dr. Willlet how with the electives and and and how they're sort of tight already. Is there a sort of measuring stick between I mean they're pretty close in they're pretty close in salary and whatnot. Is there a measuring stick between the PE teacher? Somebody asked you about the art teacher. I'm asking you now about PE would be a massively disruptive thing. Okay, that's why because you'd have to they'd have to reorganize all. So, it's the same answer. It would throw a bunch. It comes down to uh your two things. One, like can you absorb it within the class sizes? And two, um you know, what kind of schedule disruption would that cause? Right? When I talked to the high school uh people that would cause a greater schedule disruption, a much harder thing because you're
197losing sections and you have the people then will be blocking into other sections. Yeah. Then it creates more of a problem. You lose your elective there, you know, because then it only be mandatory, freshman, sophomore that a lot of people go to that elective. So then they have to go to other electives that are already at a high capacity. And it just you've heard them saying earlier today the UAS are vital and you know oh I completely agree with that and I think it's it's just not that m that isn't it's just that you know in that situation there's a retiree and the scheduling is much harder we take P and it will cause bumping it'll bump people all through the district which creates a cascading with you know series of challenges people that are
198not used to working with kids of a certain age level to be working with them and so on, right? Going from going from say working with 12th grade to going to, you know, even sixth grade or third grade. I mean, it's a it's a world's a that's a world's difference. And so I I can imagine I'm not I do not speak from experience. So, um, there's been a lot of questions asked and I and I appreciate everyone's questions because I think sometimes it's necessary to make sure that it's fleshed out because this if you if you give somebody this document, odds are they're going to say almost every single thing that was said at this table. So, I appreciate everyone's questions. Um, with that, I don't have any further questions. I don't have any further
199comments other than um if this is what we were to pass in this in this right column um you know to be clear how disappointing it is to still have this huge second column where we're losing again custodial staff and pair of educators which I've been talking to you about for weeks and months at this point. um you know, a lot of these a lot of these, you know, trainings and whatnot that I tried to look at it from a business lens because, you know, again, I want to make sure I'm looking at it through everybody's perspectives here because that's that helps me do the job. And, you know, trying to get an understanding of if staff members didn't get the training they needed this year and now they're going this whole year without it,
200but then we have to get it next year because of this or that and something changes in the state and now it's double expensive and all these things. I'm not happy that we're at the situation we're at. However, we're at the situation we're at and so how do I feel right now? I would support and I know people are going to have changes and whatnot. I would support um what is in what is highlighted under table 3 um as is as long as again as long as it's just the 12,000 that you were sort of finagling and not you know a whole what 80 92,000 that it would be the difference between 580 um and 488. So, in terms of comments and whatnot, I hopefully I didn't talk too much, but just to remember, if
201you accept table three, you're accepting table two, correct? Because you're accepting that nothing is shifting from these. I'm talking about what's being added back. Sure. Sure. I just want to make sure you're everybody's on the same page that that's essentially what you're doing. So, that's where I stand. I I'm not happy with table two. I am accepting of table two in order to accomplish table three. There's some word verbage for you. I would agree with J going with what Dr. Will is recommending. Right. So yes, I how how the terminology is. So I'm looking at this I don't if you want to bring the teacher this one teacher for 105 836 here is is is this the only language that is there or how does that play into this school system? Yeah, it would uh
202potentially kill the lang it would it would probably end the languages at the middle school all of them or just this we'd have to see but right now at French would be probably out of the system at the and then that would if you don't have a feeder school with that it also erodess it later so it' have cascading effects to do that you know you'd be a school you'd have a middle school that would potentially only be one language and then that that French program if they're not coming in earlier then there's even fewer numbers going in at the high school then it starts to kill it and you know that type of thing. So it that's why it's there too is comprehensive school system you know having only like language is not a
203great great great kind of thing to have out there all right now that you know you also have to keep in mind I am sure with all the hard work that's happening right now and that um hard work where here and and then a council that the referendum has a really good chance of passing but if the referendum you know for whatever reason didn't you're back at the table looking at similar things and these things would be things that you'd have to be talking about. So in your first round of you know and I hope it's the only round you know I would not go to world language right now as a as a thing to do right now. I'd still like to continue but I think Dana is itching to say something about world
204language. Yes. Maybe you can expand on it Jen and Dr. Willlet. When we were at the rounds at TMS, they specifically said, well, because one, she's she's popping back and forth right now from TMS high school. It's going to bump. It's this is a person. It's going to bump and someone's going to lose a job. So, we do not want to talk specifically and I don't What I'm just saying is this is they were talking about world language would solve a lot of their scheduling problems. scheduling if they had world language in high school. They talked about expanding and the need for expanding world language. This is us just sustaining. So, let me just clarify what you're saying. what they what they said at the rounds for the middle school is is one of the
205things that they were working on is for intervention for reading intervention because of the limitations that the middle school already and Walt please correct me if I'm getting this wrong but because of the limitations that the middle school already has a lot of times you are taking children out of you know electives to get help with reading right or you're taking them out of reading to get help with reading right having a language having vision is less of an impact negatively on instruction if they can take the student out of language because then that makes sense because a kid who's already struggling in ELA is going to struggle with language as well, right? So it was a it made more sense to how they could help kids that are needing reading intervention at the middle
206school. So that was I think what you're touching on when she talked about scheduling. She was talking about scheduling as it when it came to how to offer kids intervention during what periods and also not to limit them like right now I think if you take a language in eighth grade you can't take like woodshop right is that correct like there's already limitations because of the small amount that we can offer. So, so you're just to follow up on what you're saying, are there are there limited people in these language classes because of the fact that a bunch of these kids are getting pulled out of these language classes before intervention? No. And and what I'm saying isn't really referencing this. I was just trying to clarify what Dana was saying the situation. Yeah. I
207just didn't want I didn't want it to be that was the scheduling part of the conversation. It was about trying to find Dr. Will, am I getting that right? It was about it's hard to get like so for instance um if a child needed math and you know ELA has they needed help they needed tier 2 supports taking the child out of world language you know when they have struggle in ELA makes sense because they struggle with world language too versus taking them out of something they're really they were excited about like chorus or band you know and if there's no options then they have to come out of the things that they're really excited about and and it's it's one of those deals where a kid who's already struggling shouldn't have to lose things
208they love like music in order to get help. They should be able to get help you know out of something they would have might also found a struggle with as well. But but the choices become narrower and then child really would love to be part of the music program and not be able to be because they have to you know they that's the only choice for intervention or something. I mean, that's the logic, not necessarily how it always falls, but that's the logic is, you know, if they're struggling in ELA, they they might struggle in world language. So, addressing their needs out of the world language class for intervention makes sense. But if there's no world language, then they're coming out of something else. And it's probably something that enriches them in a different way.
209And that's tragic to a lot of people. you I think there was an email from a parent about that parallel a few months ago saying you know I can't believe that's what has to happen here I don't want my child to miss out on your music or whatever that that was you know at the time um all right then thank you okay [Music] I you can go ahead I really have much more to say Um, in the reductions list, the in the blue section where we're getting rid of 3/4 of a nurse, 7 of a nurse. Well, those are gone. Anything in blue is already Yep. Yep. And then in the red, we're getting rid of another nurse, fulltime, one 1.0 nurse. Is that essentially one and three/4ers nurses in our district that we're losing?
210the the seven was a this nurse with a specialized situation and the one that is would be coming out would be the red. Okay. At least that's how it was looking and then they might have to shift resources around with who remains. It's two people, right? Yeah. The 7 is unfilled right now. Okay. Then the next question I have is I see I see in the red uh uh secretary is being maintained at a 10-month contract. I'm assuming we were trying to move her to a 12-month contract. Are there any other positions that we can hold back at 10-month contracts and not move to 12? That's the only one. I'm I'm along the same lines of Jaden. I don't like losing that math teacher. I don't like losing a lot of it, but I I
211certainly don't like losing the math teacher. Um but if I was trying to sub out language, but if sound like a good idea, it seems like this uh table three is the best that we can do to minimize um minimize the losses. So I would be in support of the document that you sent us here. First, I want to apologize for com I was trying to communicate how important the TMS team communicated to us the world languages. So, yes, there was multiple factors. So, I apologize if I complicated the or confused the situation. I was just trying to impress upon it. We heard from the students and Miss Hickeyi and the world language teachers how important world language is, French, Spanish. They even talked about ASL. I know that's not the conversation right now, but
212I wanted to so I didn't mean to derail that. Um, I'm I'm struggling with all of it as you guys know because there's so much more that I would want back. Um, first of all, Dr. W, I know this has been painstaking. Um, and I know trying to explain it to us how you set your graph and your tables. So, we understand it. Thank you for being patient. I'm really, really, really, really struggling with the math teacher and I'm struggling with the TMS, ths social worker. I'm also struggling and I don't I guess hindsight's 2020 and with different things, but I'm struggling with the fact that the board of education is a town building. Why does a board of educ if the if there was an SRO if there was a police officer or some
213sort of security that was needed in a town building that should be covered by a town? So I struggle with the fact that that's in our budget. Obviously I care very deeply and greatly about our student safety and security and that's why I go back to that social worker. we go back to the mental health um and support with the students. So when I look at losing a social worker at TMS and I look at losing a math teacher at ths, the first line I go to is that I mean obviously um yeah I know I was I was seeing if she was making so Jaden. Hi Reinie. Yeah Brian. Hi Bill. Hi Dana. Hi Dan. Hi, Katie. Hi. I ahead. Okay. So, that's where I'm at. Um, I think that I'm appreciative that the
214town actually looked at other funds that have allocated things. Um, anyways, that's right. Are you a stay? You would stay with you would choose to stay with this list. I struggle with the SR position. But you don't have anything that you're Well, I did. I said I would take the TMS TMS or THS and you do know that that's just that's that would leave us with zero SRO. I'm only saying there's no two HS anymore. No period in the current. We're looking to get a we're not going to be able to fill a half position anyway. So, I just wanted to make sure you understood because I know and again I look at it again. We've all talked before like I feel strongly that that should be something provided by the town. I know that
215that's beyond where we're at right now. It's it's it's our yes, we want to keep our children safe. So I don't want to say educate our kids and not keep them safe. So please don't skew my words because I really I really think we having the supports and the resources for our students needs to be a a focus. And I get it. The safety and security is there. I'm struggling. I also feel that it's important that we are unified. And if I'm the outlier here with this, then I'm the outlier and I will be unified with the team. But I really feel like this is just again, it's just a bad situation where we're at. So I'm just going to record you for now is switching the social worker up for this. I think that's
216fine. You have every right to Okay. Um Dan. Yeah. So I would be in support of where things stand as they currently are. Uh, obviously I I'd love to see as well funding coming from somewhere else within the town for this SRO position. Um, because we spoke so like at length multiple times as this is a a important item for the town council. If we could make something happen there, that'd be great. But in addition to the safety, it's also the social worker that I'd like to see come back too. So I think those two work hand in hand. But obviously I don't feel good about any of these. But I'm fully supportive of where things stand today if we can't get any other funding from town council as this is the I'm okay with
217Dr. Willis's thoughts on what he thinks would be the lowest impact. So if we have to move forward and can't find money elsewhere, I'm supportive of where it stands today. But those three items certainly social worker, SRO, and math teaching would be something that I would want to try to save, but I'm not sure if we're going to be able to right now. So supportive of where it stands right now, but if we find anything else, those are my three. Thanks, Dan. Um, sort of like the same as Dan and Dana. I I'm really I'm really concerned about the ths nurse. Honestly, the nurses at THS do a great deal for the students there. Um, you know, whether you have like a chronic health condition or you're just needing like a minute to yourself, they
218provide that to you. Um, so I'm really concerned about losing that. I'm concerned about the social worker. Um, you know, I've said this before in meetings that I think it's the the response is really important, but prevention and intervention can can help stop those things. But I also can't agree that we don't have to have any SRO. I none of it's good. I'm willing to go with this option because I think that this is the best that we could do at this point. Okay. Um, I guess my thoughts are this. I just want to say something to to be fair. A request was was not made at Wednesday night's meeting from anyone to ask them ask town council to fund the SRO position. So, as much as I would like them to fund that, it
219may be other things. And, you know, they weren't no one asked them that on Wednesday. I mean, aside from it was included in the $150,000 that I asked them for, but we didn't we only really went asked them two options or three things during that meeting. The two options that Walt provided, which was the Yousef and the the capital item, and then I asked them for just a monetary figure. So, I'm I'm just again I just want to be fair because I don't want them to be upset that we're now talking about something they didn't give them. They didn't give us that we didn't ask for. Um, I clearly I I I don't like this list. I'm I'm a I have a big concern over math. Um, I've been probably the one of the largest
220supporters of the social worker here. MTSS is just it's crazy to me that we're not doing that in the high school. As Brian pointed out earlier, we're doing it everywhere else. I mean, again, I'm not we've gone through this enough. A lot of me just wants to say things so that you know our staff understands you know the pair of vacancies is extreme concern um with the feedback that we we've gotten on that. So I don't want anyone to think I'm not taking all of this lightly. I don't even like that we're going to reduce two buses because we played this game years ago and it didn't work out well for us and it left a lot of kids and parents unhappy. Um, but again, given what we have and given the conversation tonight, I
221don't really see I I I can't there's nothing I can flip here to get those any of those things back because we need all of it. So again, it's it's it's disappointing that this is where we are. And just to point out, if I'm looking at this correctly, we are not adding anything. We are in another year of just taking away. There's an HVAC inspection requirement that is an unfunded mandate that's 33,000 and that's an hour. Okay. We're not adding any programs. We're not adding any services. We're not adding any I I respect that you pointed that out just like I had to just point out that we are I just want everyone to understand that and the public to understand that that we are not adding anything. we are just continually taking away and
222taking away and trying to do the least damage possible with what we have. So given that I have to stay with this too. Um so I want to just I wanted to go back to you anyway because everybody Dana said not to stay. Everybody else had to stay. You kind of left with a question so go right ahead. Um is that have um is that not something that the town should be taking care of their building? Um well the HVAC stuff is new and it's a very frustrating requirement and you have to do inspections um and this is a a required inspection so it's just something that we have to have. Is this required by the school or for the town? State of Connecticut state requires it now was one of the unfunded mandates with
223the Hback stuff was they have to do it. So it's everything else that you know we've been you notice all the cuts across the reductions and the tabs and everything but this had to be had to be put in somewhere and that's one that I mean the tab won't do. All right. Okay. That's just a question. And the other thing I have uh I don't know it's a I don't know if it's a crazy idea or an idea is is it is it I would like to possibly add in the MTSS for 60,000. Is it possible to draw the 60,000 from the um uh Egypt insurance reserve fund? I uh get these uh older kids some much needed uh assistance. I totally understand why you would want to do that. If you take a look
224at the blue and the red, notice that there's a draw down on the reserve in both the blue and the red. I I do understand that that would be the maximum I would recommend doing because it's it's already kind of a that's the maximum I'd recommend doing on that unfortunately. I wish I could say otherwise, but that we're we're pushing those funds are are being pushed as far as they could probably be pushed with this I'll I'll like that to happen, but uh you say no, you say no. But that's what I would You guys can order me to do whatever you want. I'm just saying it's it's you know, can I add to what you're saying, Brian? Yes. Did you also mention earlier in the conversation this evening that um MTSS is something that's
225more likely a grant might pop up for opposed to positions? Yeah, I wouldn't want to lose a position for a professional study. So, you know, there's still So, you're saying there's a chance there's still a possibility that some of these funds, some of these things might get funded if grants happen to pop up um onto that that website you were showing us. Yeah. Any right, anything that pops up, we're grabbing and and in my experience, positions do not come up as much as stipent opportunities. And that MTSS is stipens. Yeah. There was a paro one that I that we got that now we can allow the paris to do training for you know that they designed and that just popped up and we grabbed it right but stipens and things like that are more likely
226to pop up than you know complete position replacement. So we might find three months from now hey we were able to get that because a grant popped up and I applied for it and we got it. Much more likely than a position right? Okay. What has there been grants for say in the last two years for that type of stipen? Uh not for MTSS directly. It's apparently so the last two years there's been zero. Otherwise I would have done it and then you wouldn't even have I know you say there's a chance maybe our grant writing department can just full disclosure I asked the same question. I also wanted to take it out of ERF. stuff. It's only because of the concern about where those funds are, we don't have enough. You only have 19
227I don't disagree with your thinking, but given the strong concern, I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to take more out of insurance if we could. But being that we're in the situation we are already with insurance and likely, you know, even if we got a zero, it would still be the same amount next year. And knowing that we may have to draw from it again next year if we're in the same place. That's that's my concern. But I I had the same question. If that makes you feel it shouldn't change your mind, but I just wanted you to know that I I completely I thank you for that completely. I I I Yeah, I guess I'm okay with whatever this list is. I'm okay with not being I mean I know I
228do. Um All right. So, I'm going to just swing back to you, Dana. We have two options. You are the one who wanted to do a switch out. We can look at that. I'm gonna change mine. I mean, I Katie and Dan and I all said the same thing and I I totally hear you, Jen, that probably should have been more vocal at the town council board of ed joint meeting. I thought I'd been pretty crystal clear with it, but at this point, I think our best scenario would be to go with what Dr. Willlet has presented in table three. Um, although it stinks. I mean, none of it's good as as we've all said at Nauseium. Um, I would I would almost like to make a motion to move forward with his presentation tonight.
229I would second that motion. We're accepting motion. And I don't want to jump because I know other people want to talk, but that's there's motion is probably to approve the reductions as presented in the board of ed presented to the board of ed in the April 9th, 2025 meeting. Is that what you're saying? What? Yeah. Just because we don't have Lisa here for I'm trying to help Lisa with her wording like she tries to look at the video. That's fine. We still have a discussion period eventually. So we have a motion. We have a second. We can discuss that. So does anybody have anything that they want to discuss on this motion that's on the table? Go J. Other than just really quickly that I think again who's here next year, who knows? But I
230think that's what you bring up what you mentioned about this is a town building. Why why why is this I think this is absolutely worth the conversation next next next budget cycle and and and uh and then perhaps we can swap out that SRO position for what are the odds we bring something back you know we add you know a teacher very slim but it's worth it's worth a shot it's worth looking at so um so your point that you mentioned of of you know wanting the town to cover um the SRO position I think it's a fair conversation um unfortunately I you It might be too late in the conversation. We are where we are. It's it's we can't change any of it now. Things have been voted on and the referendum is being
231prepared as we speak, but um but I I I I don't want that to get lost. Just like what we were talking about a little bit before with the open choice. I don't want these conversations to get lost whether I'm here or not. I I don't want these conversations to get lost. So, um hopefully that's in the meeting minutes somewhere. Let's bring this back up, you know, down the road and discuss this hopefully a little further. So, I I I appreciate you guys bringing up some of these different solutions here. So, that's all great. And now, at the risk of possibly being run over by some students, um, you know, there is the TMS athletics program for 30,000. I know I've talked to Bill a little bit about this and there's some other opportunities out
232there for kids at that level. So, you know, that might give you 30. And I don't know, I I know it seems like this club thing is an all or nothing proposal, but I don't know that it necessarily has to be like that. So, you know, maybe there's some room in there to save one of the things that's being proposed, whether it's the second SRO, whether it's the social worker, whether it's the math teacher. I'm just saying, you know, you could, you know, make some adjustments to those two line items and maybe bring back one of those other things. I'm not saying that that's the best way to go, but I'm just saying it is an option. I guess my concern. So, thank you. Agree. Um, one, I think we're for discussion of a motion,
233we'd have to then look to amend the motion if we wanted to change those things. Um, again, just as a discussion point, I like I said, I think that those things are things we need to look at for the future. My concern with tonight is that the timeline that we are on and going towards referendum and asking people to vote in support. I think that we're running out of days to we'd have to have another meeting then to come back look at that data, right? And then know what that dollar value is. So I don't think unfortunat I think unfortunately we don't have the time for that with that timeline. That's my opinion. Other people can weigh in. And then I also just wanted to clarify um please don't take what I said for one
234second as not being in total agreement but again because you know we are a place of a compromise of two boards and we have a referendum to pass. And as much again as I believe our district deserves more than what we have, I do not want to risk that a referendum not passing would take more away. So, I just wanted to be fair in the spirit of compromise that the town council reviewed the options, we presented them, and then gave us an answer on that. That's that's all because I think it's important to our community to know that that meeting was, you know, something that we all, you know, knew what we were doing going into it and we knew what we were doing coming out of it, you know. So, um, it's just for
235me it's, you know, this has been such an unstable situation in the past. I very much want it to be a stable one. I want it to be what's best for the community and all the divisiveness and I want everybody in every department to be getting as much as they can. So, that was the only reason why I clarified that. But, it's not because I wouldn't be in favor of looking at about a hundred more options. Um, we just didn't present them 100 more options. Um, okay. Any other discussion? Reie, do you want to do you want to amend the motion? No, no, I want to point it out. Okay. All right. So, with that then I I think we we go and we vote on this motion, right? Did Did the online right away?
236Dan Kat, do you have anything else you want to add to the discussion of the motion? Okay, I'm good. Okay. All right. So, let's go. Jaden, I Reie. Hi, Brian. Hi, Bill. Hi, Dana. I Dan, I Katie, I. And I am an I as well. Motion passes. Okay. Uh let's move on to L new business L1 superintendent evaluation. This is just a friendly reminder that it's coming up. That's it. Old business. Well, I apologize. Old business. I moved on. What's the reminder? He's just selling this. Old business is uh what do we have here? Do we have any old business? They're not on the agenda. Okay, we've got nothing for board action. Uh public participation, so comments must be limited to the items on this agenda. Do we have a two-minute timer, Dr. Willlet? I
237think it's still stuck at the bottom. Would anybody in the room like to speak? of all the people, the crowds in the room. Would anyone online like to speak? Okay. Um, points of information? Anyone on the board like to say anything else? Oh, that's good. Yeah. Sorry. I was seeing if there was an attachment for this other item, but do you have a point of information? I know I don't. Okay, I'm gonna move to the next future. Dr. Willlet, just a reminder that we do have a you know you like the instructional rounds. There's one coming up May 1st. So, please register for it. It's co-eing one. It is a longer one than the others because you're going to multiple schools, but it's a great thing to see. Wasn't that getting cut though the code
238teaching or it is not entirely sure it's what is being cut is the certain aspects of it that we get training from eastcon but the program itself is a program of our school system that wouldn't completely go away because it's 30 the 30,000 only 19,000 of the training cut I'm excited for the coaching All right. I will accept a motion for adjournment. So move. Second. Jaden. I Brian. Hi. Bill. Hi. Dana. Hi. Dan. Hi. Katie. Hi. And I meeting is adjourned. 10:18.