Tolland Board of Education - March 26, 2025

001we'll go ahead and get started start this meeting of the board of education at 7:09 if you could all rise flag of the United States of America to The Republic stands one nation God IND this is great to see a crow thank you Dr will acknowledgements I'm sorry that before the meeting I didn't get a chance to kind of run out there shake your hands before we start it's a little hectic but um we're starting today with recognition of our valorian and storian um and so I'm going to read a little statement about each of them and I'm going to give them a special prize from the prize bag lucky you then um you know the board can take an opportunity to uh to engage them and also uh share our respect for them and

002admiration uh so first is Marin Millington she is our Sal salatan choke on that one U it's evident uh that Marin has a passion for knowledge she consistently demonstrates intellectual curiosity that surpasses um many others she is fully capable and fully engaged in the curriculum she approaches all subjects with enthusiasm and diligence she has completed among the most rigorous curriculum and courses that our school offers last year she was awarded the Award of Excellence in every core subject including Spanish Beyond academic she exemplifies leadership and service her curriculum extracurricular involvement is diverse and offers her the opportunity to Foster school spirit and Community engagement in her various roles in student council and class offices addition additionally her involvement in the link crew demonstrates a genuine commitment to mentoring peers and creating an inclusive School environment

003her membership in three honor societies displays is exemplifying her commitment to achievement and service she has an she's also an accomplished athlete excelling in both La Fross and as Captain of soccer team she approaches challenges with maturity and perseverance her ability to balance multiple commitments while maintaining a high standard of Excellence in everything she does is truly commendable she has made our community proud and represents what it truly means to be an eagle come on up let's get [Music] okay Cameron Urban is our valid Victorian Cameron has successfully excelled in our school's most rigorous course as well and demonstrated exceptional intelligence and commitment in all Endeavors throughout his time at tand high school he has thrived in various AP courses and with dual enrollment and honors level courses he has a unique combination of talent

004playing in the jazz band and pep band and mastering the most advanced math science and English courses offered his academic achievement has been recognized by the science department who selected him with a renier medal and the faculty who chose him for numerous Pride Awards he continues to strive for excellence in his studies this year and by graduation he will have completed seven AP courses and three University of Connecticut courses I'm sure his parents very happy about that uh in addition to the curriculum Cameron is a leader in the community as a link leader he mentors ninth grade students and assists with their transition to high school he also volunteers with volunteer uh with younger athletes sharing his skills and encouraging them to join High School sports teams Cameron is a fierce competitor on the varsity

005tennis team Varsity outdoor track and field team and the rage robotics team he has made the talin community proud and as with Mar Cameron represents what it truly means to be an eagle congratulations just one quick statement both it is my absolute honor to meet you both you know on top of what had to be a Herculean effort from an academic perspective you've both taken the time to give to the people coming up behind you and and really that that's what touches me the most if he s and think about how many people are better because of the efforts that you did without thinking about it without asking for anything in return that's an inspiration so thank you both for for representing tand for representing our district and and for just being the amazing people

006that you are to the parents this could not have been easy you know the sacrifice and the time that you gave to make sure these two young adults could be the the spectacular people they are is not unnoticed thank you both guys have any words of wisdom for your your fellow sorry gradation yeah yeah congratul smart move smart good save congratulations congratulations get between that way we go kind of P like off I'll send them to good work serious what's next next thank you we will see with graduation anything that right Dr I that works additionally this evening we have the uh the honor of honoring some of our Athletics uh our Sports athletes or student athletes and their achievements um to do so I have Mr marar thank you again for having us here

007it's always pleasure to come and be able to um you know show off what a great um group of student athletes we have just to add to the accolades of of both Cam and Mar and they also are cast cic scholar athletes so you'll be seeing them on the Facebook page once we go to our bank down in um in uh May so again another great accomplishment for the two of them so uh the other thing that we're here for tonight is this past winter during the winter season we had some outstanding accomplishments by uh multiple teams but uh one of our teams in particular and an individual athlete um and so our gymnastics team and Dylan stord from from track uh really excelled I'm going to introduce their coaches give them an opportunity just

008to give you a highlight of what happened this year um if we went into all all of the back blades that this gymnastics team has earned over the past you know three to four years that they've been in existence this would probably be your longest meeting um they've been uh state champs open New England um but coach you talk about this year and this was really um nice for me um prior to come into Thailand I got to work with Cali at Ellington so um she had really helped to build this program to what it is and then Richie came on board and the two of them have done just an amazing job um pulling these two schools together and getting them to work as one under some you know some difficult circumstances with you

009know cracking offsite multiple schools multiple families so um to give a little bit more about our season I introduce our head coach Cali valon step sure the hourl will find you little small so I probably go the front um well I just wanted to start off by congratulating our team this is our third year I think colling together so it's been a great um opportunity to have both schools together to give um especially talin the opportunity to be a part of the team sports because before they were just individuals so um it's been awesome to see how the two teams have cooperated together to have done an amazing job so this year um our season we did fairly well we ended the season 10th in the state which made us go to Team States and

010at the end of our team uh competition we ended up sixth in the state which is pretty pretty decent um and in him did mention our previous years we were even higher up in the state so it's just been three years of really really good part working gymnasts um after our team States uh we at our team States we got second in our class M Championship division so I think that pretty amazing uh this is our third third or fourth year in a row um topping in class M championships so that's pretty pretty impressive last year or the last two years we actually won Class M championships so pretty pretty incredible um and then on top of making it to teen States I had two tall and gymnasts also make it to State opens individually

011um we had Cassidy a wave she made it individually for floor and then AA made it uh individually for bars and they both U performed amazingly and we are very proud of their accomplishments um and then we have two managers who have been incredible for the past couple years helping um support our team and being there at practices and competitions and just helping us in any way we can so it's been pretty great yes what's the what's the hardest J getting out of the chair when you're doing the flippy thing um I would say probably for most gymnast bars itself is probably just the hardest event to do it's takes the most strength and courage honestly to do it's very very scary um on top of all of those we our team did make uh

012all state so uh Cassidy and Ava making it to State opens became Allstate gymnasts um and to go to the All State banquet a couple weeks ago to get honored for that and our Ellington Fallen team together also um got allamerican status this year effort to keep you hydrated while you're doing that Dr W I got a question so did I hear you right that you you guys have won state championships the last two years for Class M 23 and 24 234 we got second place this year all right so you got to stop slacking and get back up two out of three that's pretty impressive that's good congratulations absolutely amazing effort thank you it's I mean it was hard enough for me to to get through just school let alone Athletics and to do

013both at such a such a top level it is truly wonderful and hand hats off to all of you for representing it and doing congratulations just is a correction I think Mr mesy I think I call you Mr M and so the next that we have um to recognize here again Dylan is I look at any of our athletes I'm I'm just so odd with what they do watching the gym with Dr asking like what the hardest thing is um I think part of the reason they may not have had an aners because they're so good at what they do and they work so hard that it is second nature like the thought of me just standing on a balance beam and taking a step just seems crazy but for them it's just HEC so

014and Dylan is um you're going to hear from from coach Elliot again Dylan is another one of those athletes that um I watched them the other day in the rain out there running I watched him in the winter when it was 23 degrees out there running um just nothing stops him and again just a a tremendous um example for you know for everyone at Talent high school and in ton just in general so to uh talk a little bit more about Dylan our head track coach Brandon Elliot so thank you very much it's great to have the opportunity to uh acknowledge these great athletes here um along with Marin and cam who I had as you know students back in the day as well taking some of the you know most challenging courses uh that

015we have to offer here um for Dylan um again I can speak to a lot of his accomplishments from this season which were phenomenal but it was really a four-year process to and where he was at this point in his high school career um he's been part of multiple um state champion and runnerup teams over his four years uh as a member of our cross country and track and field programs um this particular year um he was uh selected as a captain of our boys cross country indoor and outdoor um so not only is he a great athlete he's also a great leader um for our athletes um and has been uh even before he was elected to that uh position for indoor track and Fields um we spend a lot of our time traveling

016throughout the state um because as you know Town High School does not have an indoor track um nor do many high schools around the state um so we spend uh a lot of time at various colleges and universities where athletes have an opportunity to qualify to compete at their State uh championship meets um this year Dylan ran uh the Thousand where he was the boys Class M th000 meter state champion um he set a new school record uh in that event um he also with that performance earned a opportunity to run uh at the State open as well as at new englands where he was named all New England um by finishing in the top six in New England in that thousand meter event uh he also moved on uh to Nationals indoor Nationals was

017held up in Boston just a few weeks ago um he ran the 800 meter um which is the uh the distance contestant at Nationals uh where he set a new school record in that particular event as well um and he also anchored a relay team of boys that we had there in the Sprint medal relay um where they ran the season best time so it was a phenomenal season start to finish um did a great job and again as Mr MCL had said he's put in a tremendous amount of work um going above and beyond in order to achieve that level of success so that that was it for come up and you guys usually give a count on three one two three nice one more time one two [Music] you guys have any inspirational

018words for your uh your fellow students or you think about your coaches any dir the we love that right well thank you very much guys now you know the purpose was to honor you and not torture you so at any time in the next minute if you sleep out and you you know that's totally up to you if you would like to stay for the entire budget presentation absolutely we'd love to hear your inut but we're going to look this way and if we disa behind this Happ congratulations congratulations [Music] whatever yes yeah put it on my all right we can go ahead and do the next then do we have do we have any additions to the agenda okay hearing none we have no uh no minutes to approve so we will move past

019that and now we will pause we wait I thought that would take us how are you two doing uh work good yeah lot of homework so on one of my favorite days I have to leave early but I'll leave you with some wisdom before I go don't worry you got a new table Tony would you like to move that H in front of just in case any the budget question response runs 30 minutes if they have well move it in front of move it in front of now want move that that we got a motion to move the student rep representation Representatives report um up to now any discussion all right Jaden hi grey hi Ryan hi Bill hi Jen hi Dana hi Dan hi and I haven't seen is Katie on okay perfect then

020Dr Willet uh in the interest of homework we are going to move the student representative report to now excellent all right thank you very much means a lot to both me and my teachers um so we're gonna start off strong and this was from basically feels like last month already but Deca States happened very early this month um we took 41 competitors and we left with eight six top three placements um as well as other fourth and place medalists you will hear and learn more about them in the future as they're coming to a future board event meeting where you can you know learn from their story you can see them shake their hands get to know them um but it's a really great group we have 10 people going to Nationals in Orlando Florida

021the 25th of April through the 30th 30th of April so that will be including me that will be such a fun time I'll come back with a massive report from that but de States went wonderfully and everyone had a great time moving on what another business thing the tall and talk speaker series happened last week um Hunter mle Hazard came and presented in front of 60 students on how to start a business modeled after he himself started his own business after graduating col High School um it was a very inter active presentation it was a lot of fun I helped organize it as the seminar student for Mrs bridge this year and I gained a lot from it I know a lot of students gained a lot from it and I hope that Hunter gained

022a lot from it too but these tent talk be year series are a large part of our business Pathways program and they allow a lot of Jen they allow a lot of people to learn a lot of new things uh you know business is ever growing and we like to represent said that in the business Pathways program what another business thing it's like this keeps happening Innovation Challenge I mentioned it before uh the state level is happening April 22nd just a little bit before Nationals and we have two teams that are invited to go the first place team which is comprised of wiie Honor Cecilia re gyro Ash Shaw and Audrey maowen who will unfortunately not be present at the state competition due to work obligations um um and another team that won third place

023um comprised of Danny teraso Amanda itsu Diana Rodriguez rooklyn walls and Michael Wiggins so those two teams will be making it up to quinc university on April 22nd to compete for the state Innovation Challenge and my last thing wait I'm sorry is this another business thing yes it is we have a lot this month um interview day is happening next week interview day is a big part of the personal finance class in our school it is where a bunch of different professionals from around the Town and County come in and inform real life interviews with students to help students practice making portfolios public speaking real life interview skills that they'll use in the future I'm also part of part of this personal finance class and to some of those on this uh uh on the

024zoom I am interviewing with Brian Foley so put in a word you know sprinkle a little sugar but yeah that is a super impactful day student got a lot from it um and it is very very highly regretted all right so a couple weeks ago um our theater program had their showing of Hades town I don't know if any of you went but I went it was one of the most amazing talent high school productions I had ever seen honestly changed what my expectations were for a High School production of a play it was really amazing I was almost brought to tears it it was just really really amazing um uh chamber choir and jazz band auditions are April 10th if you have any questions ask Mr fields and also the class of 2025 held

025their dodgeball tournament we had seven teams come out and play so it was an overall success which was really Delight since we've had a lot of problems with um what's the word participation lately but that worked out really well we had a lot of people come and watch and yeah all right any questions comments or concerns Jaden Hunter Mouser Hunter mher former Deca student he was he was the firstand student to place at Nationals Bingo there you go one back in and my neighbor a great guy another question I coming I don't really think you need to sprinkle any sugar in your interview day I think you're going to do just you might teach him a thing aren't you yeah maybe you should interview him fine now uh and I don't want to put you

026on the spot so feel free to to Bow but knowing that you have to go do you have any comments on items later in the agenda I'm so glad you asked um no I don't okay actually I do um you know similar to last season this is a really tough budget season I've looked over some of the stuff it's nasty and I don't like looking at it had to shut my computer a few times but I want you all to keep in mind just like last year uh how impactful this is not only on the students not only on the teachers but on the community this is a big thing for our community every year and I hope that more people and more people come out and vote um especially more than last year uh

027you know I don't get to vote until June My birthday is June 1st I don't want to have to vote in this election if I must you guys know probably what my vote will be but I really want to put Bo not only to the board but to anyone watching that this is absolutely credal and this season of budget cuts is not like any other season of budget cuts because I talked about it last year if we keep going down that momentum will grow stronger and stronger until tand is no longer a school district one that people move to schools for it's just another District it is so critical that we have a strong school system that supports its students and its teachers and I really really hope that even if I'm not here to

028look at you like this that you'll keep that in mind throughout this process because it's truly important to me it's important to Sarah it's important to all of the students at CH high school that we get the quality of Education that we deserve even with the budget cuts that we don't deserve so than very well thank you I think I really just want to repeat that we need people to come out vote I'm going to be voting I'm 18 so yeah you'll see me out there um but yeah that's really critical I feel like last year we had a big problem again with participation seems like a trend all around um but go out and vote it's really important especially to a students who even some of us who can't we try to show up

029we're here right now representing the students because we want to be here we want to stay our peace we want to let the students have a voice in what goes into our school because that's ultimately what affects and I guess I just want to say to keep us in mind um even though we all have different opinions on what how or how the school should be run um it's really just about thinking that we all have our best interest in mind and we all just have to come together and figure out how that's going to work thank you thank you both thank you very much wish me luck on my million pages that was great all right Dr Willet moving on uh to and again I thank the communication committee for for the recommendation here

030uh for instead of our normal public participation here at the beginning we are going to test run uh Community budget question and response period so the members of the ton Board of Education welcome the members of the public to ask a budget question at this time please raise your hand physically or virtually and when selected by myself state your name and address and ask a question up to three minutes in duration the superintendent will then answer your question or if the question requires additional information and in consideration of the time uh it will be posted at the b b OE fact document on the website which is linked right there okay so that being said like I said if you are in the room uh raise your hand if you're online raise your virtual hand

031and be recognized sorry I John grainy 260 gr Hill Road um I emailed the board and the the Town Council the other day my thoughts on the budget process this year my question is um seeing as the town manager is is trying to strike aord with the voters and get the budget down to 3% um level and we've had a a systemic problem with voter participation had 18% vote Al first three referendum is there anything that the school board can do or the town can do to better communicate to the town residents um the importance of of voting in this uh in this process it seems as though we have 85 to 90% show up for a presidential election in town but we have 18 to 21% is there anything available to us in terms

032of um Flyers emailing social media that the town can do to kind of encourage people to get out V and and reinforce the importance of the process I I think it's a great question one that we uh we grapple with every year uh once the referendum is Set uh we can't advocate for a budget um prior to that point we're also somewhat limited we can share information so the methods that have been used for that have been more less the the bulletins the digital backpacks um and um you know various uh Communications that are sent mostly through our our I5 system with respect to those bulletins online there is a budget site for All U of the public and it's at www..us there's a budget section and if uh people click on that and click

033budget there are a series of documents and there is a calendar that explains when all of the different things are happening in town and the different meetings that uh will be covering budget related items um a lot of that uh is really uh you know out there but getting people to it is the challenge and um so you know we tried through a variety of ways through video and like certain things to do that but I think we need to to continue to brainstorm about how to best do it because people have very complicated lives and they're very busy so having um you know getting a lot of people to come out is challenging or getting a lot of people even to to see it is challenging and we are trying to figure that out

034ourselves no Brian is communication shair you want no the only thing I did want to add I know the end of last year there was I believe it was a Town Council or somebody had met there was some conversations happening about the following year because the process did take so many cycles of U voting of actually like putting out banners and signs when the Ellington line and the Mansfield or comry line and you know around town know whether they're going to go ahead with that plan or if it was was just chatter at the end of last budget cycle I do not know but I know there was discussion about about whether or not that's actually the town is actually doing that I do not thank you uh Kate Howard Bard hi y'all Kate Howard

035Bender 103 goosing can you hear me yes we can okay perfect sorry I thought I heard a feedback I was any who Okay question question number one um how can we make sure given the continuous um cuts U reductions whatever we want to call it um in the opportunities for our kids that they are going to be adequately served when they get Beyond Talent high school that's question one um and then question two same old question as always can we please ask the Town Council to use some money out of the general fund fun balance sorry um I'm doing that because it's been said before but um if not now when so that's my second question and that's kind of more of a Boe question than it is a Dr will question but just getting

036it on the record thank you friends for the work that you do and for advocating for our students as always be well thank you K Dr will so the um with respect to how to make sure the students are served despite the cuts um you know I think that is the the thing that typically is the biggest challenge whenever we you know go through a budget process and you know the various things that are happening this year in the budget both on a federal and state and local level you know that's always on my mind what I would suggest is that you know the cluts any cluts that would happen to a school district the job of any you know Educators administrators you know all of us is to do our best to make that

037have the low impact least impact on kids that we can there's no great way to answer that question because and any loss you know we'll have a um you know will have an impact but you know we'll do our best to make sure that you know whatever impacts we do have to face that uh you know we appropriately modify services so that kids are getting the best shot possible coming out of the Town Public Schools then you have a very good school system with very high um scores for performance for accountability School and really hardworking people so we you know it does have an impact but we're always going to be doing everything we can to mitigate it because we're in the job to serve children um so we're never going to give up but

038we do want to start to figure out ways and the district is doing it uh to cost avoid and to come up with uh ways to offset budgets so we have programs like leap we have programs like TTA um you know we have an open Choice um Cooperative program and all of these programs provide um opportunities either for cost avoidance or for some Revenue into the district um we have independent Food Services we have an FCS program that run independently and we can leverage those things too so we are constantly looking for new ways to provide offsets to the budgets and you know we'll continue to do that to try to minimize impacts from budget seasons and to provide other options for tal and um you know other funding sources to help thank you and

039I just you know that that question is also the opportunity to actually give you know a shout out to the absolute amazing people that are our teachers and our staff you know we've had as you're going to see and as we've seen we've had reductions before but each year our teachers our staff our admins are sitting there for the rest of the year trying to figure out ways of squeezing just a little bit more out of that that they're making combinations they're teaching the curriculum in just a slightly different way than they did before to try to make up and compensate for what just isn't there and that's an absolutely amazing and commendable thing but eventually it's get to the point where there it's just nothing that can come back out of that we have

040to realize that floor exists despite the quality of the Educators that we that we have okay just like to i' would like to add um correct my numbers but I do believe that the town uh when they put forward their budget I believe there was four or 5,000 from One Fund and I think two or 3,000 I think it was a total of 7 or $800,000 they were using but I don't necessarily know what the per what they were using it on specifically um I don't I don't know if it was just I really don't know what it was specific but I do know the town was using some money not obviously not on the board of that side that we are aware of other questions in the room online raise your hand or your

041virtual hand going once all right thank you all again Dr Willet and uh Bri your committee it's a good idea I like this recommendation all right moving on correspondence Mr B we had two emails come in since last week both budget related one one budget one uh security related that was it sry points of information would anybody from the board like to speak Jen okay I wanted to talk about the two rounds we did um visiting the schools we had one last week and one maybe a month ago but I don't think anybody talked about it at the last meeting so I figured I would do both um so our most recent rounds was at tal Middle School um Tony Dana and myself attended these rounds focused on um unified Arts programming and that is

042Art computer science health library music physical education technology and World Language we were able to visit classrooms um meet with teachers um meet with and meet with a group of eight students across the three grade 68 the classrooms were great they were Lively with teacher student interaction um as well as student student interaction we saw students working in both Spanish and French um we saw them receiving a lesson with active participation and we saw one with kids moving around the room in groups we viewed kids working in Mr Schneider's technology class testing their own crafted Bridges to see how much weight they could support um students were Learning Without Even Trying they were engineers they were cheering each other on and they were worried about what would happen on their turn they were commenting on

043changes that they were already seeing they could make to their own Bridge um they were excited and they were happy um teachers were very informative regarding their curriculum and why and how the concepts of each course contribute to the student as a whole student and a whole city ien um I encourage the board I think Dr Willet posted um a video it was actually made by one of the students that we met with um and the materials were also posted I would love to give an update on every single one of the classes um and the curriculum and the concepts and how they tied into how they taught the children new things but how they tied into all of their other courses and really just about them becoming um student citizens you know or grown

044citizens of the world um but I'm afraid I'll I'll miss somebody or something so I don't want to get too specific but um I have to say that the best part of the day was meeting with the students we had eight students and they were blow you away kind of students they were eloquent they were so prepared but they spoke off the cup they were passionate about what each class means to them um these classes and these teachers mean the world to them they uh what struck me was um their requests for us more they wanted more choice they don't have choice they wanted more flexibility they wanted more time they wanted more language options they wanted more HTML they wanted more coding they talked to us about programs and what they were like and

045what happened when they finished them and what they did they wanted more time in jam band they wanted more time one of the students there was a part of of the band he was working on the play he created ated the video that was posted of all the unified Arts he did it in sore he's in the technology or media club that I think he maybe meets once a month they asked for more time to do these things um they talked about how they couldn't believe how much they learned that they you know would never have thought they'd be interested in wood shop and they can't believe what they took out of it and how it changed their perception on things or they didn't think they were an artist and then they had this great

046lesson and they became so interested in they're excited to take art classes in high school when they have more options um they weren't asking for hot balloon rides they were asking for coding you know they it was it was it was amazing and it was informative um they I actually have some of their quotes so I don't know I'll just randomly pick one I did not think of myself as artistic and then we started looking at a certain art which moves As you move I began researching it and I found my passion in art um in PE I was grouped with people I normally wouldn't work with we have to collaborate we had to work as a team to win the game it's also movement in the middle of the day and it helps me

047Focus for the rest of the day a lot of the kids talked about how they are so overwhelmed during the course of the day and these classes were a break for them they knew that they were learning but they were using the creative side of their mind and they were asking when they had these things in the beginning of the day can't we find a way to sometimes have them in the middle the day um they they treasure them um we need to have UA options and could choose we used to have more offerings you know someone said my brother had this my sister had this in sixth grade we had this and you reduced them um some kids Lov a second PE choice I personally love the class HTML where we get to get

048into coding computer science is good but we should start computer science before middle school and expand our offerings at Middle School um they talked about how much they love a lot of them are Library helpers and they work in the library with the librarian and they do all kinds of projects as well um and there used to be a seminar class and they where they could research a topic and they could present to their um peers it was just it was it was really amazing and um I just want to thank we we got to meet with all of the univi Arts teachers and the administration and of course Dr Willet and the time that goes into preparing this I can't even imagine so thank you Dr Willet and thank you to everyone who was

049involved the second one I want to touch on is the Birch grove rounds um that was maybe about a month ago that was Tony Bill Brian and myself that's where we looked at math and Ela mtss mtss is multi-tier support system and I know that that's confusing a lot of people ask me about that I know we have a lot of people online so briefly you know multi-tier support systems tier one is you know classroom instruction tier two breaks down you know kids maybe get extra help in things they work you know with devices tier three is when you move to very small groups two to five students intensive individualized um there our most needy students after you leave that is when you go into special education so um for tier two we were able

050to see we began the day we got to see students in a before school computer lab and they were working mainly on iPads and they were working at um with a reading program um don't forget these are these are kther to these are our littlest guys and they were you know sitting on the ground with their iPads some in group some on their own and they were so excited to show me what they were working on what level they were on how many points they needed they talked about some of them said I do this at home with my parents someone said I can't do this at home because we don't have a computer um they were fantastic and adorable um and then we went into the math lab which was so cool kids kind

051kind of kept funneling in and out they came in with their iPad they picked up um a laminated sheet that had a QR code on it they went and they sat down they scanned themselves in so they were they was independent and autonomous but um they were all working on math and they were using virtual manipulatives the same that they use in the classroom so you know Dice and Rick RS and number lines and they were again everyone I sat with could you know told me all about what they were doing how many points they needed to complete the great math interventionists were walking around and helping children as they needed it or checking their progress that was really cool then we looked at um tier three students so we were able to observe small

052groups that were working with both our Ela and math interventionists and um we actually got to see a new group starting they I think this was like a six week intervention group they had just begun so we really saw them as they were the inter the interventionists were wel welcoming them in um earning their trust you know dealing with some some and social emotional learning Concepts to make sure that they felt safe in the classroom again these are our most needy kids before special Edge so a lot of kids you know have trouble when they're all of a sudden in a new group right so that building of trust is important um we also got to see you know another group as they were farther in the lesson with the math interventionist and then we

053got to see our Ela interventionist with kids working on reading Concepts um it was just it it was Wonder wonderful it was enlightening we met with the interventionist we met with the and with Administration we had all of the curriculum heads with us and um Dr Willet as well they discussed with us um the curriculum the concepts throughout the day each time we had a break um strategies data collection how children are um identified how they're observed how they're make progress how they're recorded how that follows them up into the older years so it was um again just a wonderful day to see our schools in action and to see our kids getting excellent um educations and care and all of those good things so thank you very much Dr Willet for putting those together

054and thanks to all of our staff and the the heavy lift on that is our staff the teachers the students the parents the secretaries the you know everybody involved with those instructional Realms you know and the administration I just want to thank them all they do the heavy lifting Dan um well a couple things um first um I wish I had time to thank all all of our student athletes that were here tonight because that was really awesome to see um such success on multiple levels um and see it in real life here in the room um but also I was able to go to the Middle School uh I just want to reiterate I don't want to Jen genen articulated quite well uh with what we saw but those students were mind-blowing and Miss

055hickey she she said she said I'm GNA say I never i g she gave the kids two days notice that they were going to be on on the group that was going to speak and they so with that you had some with the little note cards with the five different color highlighters and very organized and then you had others speaking just right from the hip and exactly what they were feeling exactly what they were needing exactly what they were wanting exactly what they were getting and how it was impacting them um Jen did say that they did ask they did ask for things because there have been things that are different from since they were in sixth grade now eighth grade even um the big thing that I heard from from what they were saying

056was these uh unified arts classes gave them a lot of confidence opportunities leadership opportunities opportunities to learn something that they didn't know that they had you know like there was like the one kid who wasn't an artist they he found art in a different way was it photography was it it wasn't the like drawing or clay he he said I'm not an artist but then few seconds later he said he was an artist in a different capacity so I think opening up the doors uh for these students gives them an opportunity to thrive and Excel and then in that case also they said it was also a break although they were learning in these classes it gives them a break to rejuvenate to get back to their core classes but then again it was also

057putting another tool in their to full box to help them succeed in their classes but um but I wish that we could always have these meetings with these zics here and I wish that we could have our students all of us could have been there and listening to those those students because that's why we're here right it was just so amazing to see what our future has with these with these students and um they really put a lot into perspective uh of what they need and what they're thriving and like Jen said they're not asking for these crazy weird classes they were asking for more Internet Security coding you know Tech all that stuff and it's it's it was pretty cool you know what they had to say so again if if you ever have

058a chance I know there's only one more for the calendar or for the school calendar year um but please take a chance take time to come and go to him and and please go on and see the video of one of our students and he she said he whipped it together in soore class and it's just but it would have taken me days and days and days to do a video that was so brilliant and the bridge I we did tell I did tell Miki that I was coming back because I want to learn to we have some engineers in that room with us and it was right Tony probe could have stayed in that classroom the whole day I still want to be in that class yeah but it was great and I and

059I did I did ret talk to Miss hiiki and and passed upon my appreciation in the time because what those students and what that staff did to prepare to to host us while still running their everyday curriculum and several of them as they were talking picking up and run into the next thing because of how pass they are for their students so um it was really amazing to see and watch and participate so thank you yeah go go ahead I just want to thank the staff and some students and a few of the um activities that I've been a part of like Jen said the mtss over at Birch Grove participated in um also participating the curriculum K through five night egg drop challenge with the real eggs you at the price of eggs these

060days it's pretty spectacular a school to see different things for one of my younger kids one of my older kids over there um and uh had didn't notice the mileage club is back things starting up Friday and career day tiis is Friday as well so but those two things on the horizon for later this week let to say and I attended the uh High School play it's down very good production so that was very good to go and S so so and I just want to make a comment John I want to thank you for your email H for not replying yet it's been a crazy week but there's a line in there that you know honestly I wrote down I'm old so I still write things down in my notebook but you you know

061say you're saying there that uh I know my money is teaching my kids flowing my roads enriching my community and keeping my T safe there it is and you know you you fast forward to your question earlier today and that's really what I know we've challenged our our communication committee our curriculum committee that's been many a conversation and Dr will it my uh Theory conversations that we have weekly is how do we get that message out where not only the council the decision makers the public the the state representatives really know what those dollars are doing and I take it back to these these instructional reals and you know the board members up here were incredibly lucky because we get a school we get the administration the staff we get a couple of those kids

062to take a complete half a day out of an insane you know schedule and sit down with us and walk us through what they do and how they do you know we we went in I'm going to geek out with my engineer here but you know we went in that bridge that bridge building class we got a room full of kids and popsicle sticks and the teacher is up there setting up this students to get measured and you know next thing I know I'm right up there up front I'm looking at it I'm going how did she know to build trusses and he's going she figured it out and it helped and you know I went home and I I told my wife I told my daughter about that I was like here's this student

063that built trusses and it held 4 42 LBS or something like that and her friends are cheering and you could just see her glow we go in later and we're talking to these kids that are not I they're not mindless automatons they know what they want they know what's enriching them they know what's making them feel good and helping them Reach and they're telling us we've got our amazing student Representatives here that are truly representing the student body and telling us this is what we need you know I went to the Wizards game I took my my 8-year-old anybody that's met her knows she is not lacking for an opinion but the the teachers running and she jumps up on the bench and she's screaming you know there's Mr Mitchell there's Mr Mitchell every day

064when I'm going to lunch he steps out he gives me a high five I can't wait to go to lunch because I know I'm going to see Dr Mr M and that enthusiasm carries her the rest of the day you know these are the things that our money is doing and you know I recognize that dollars are a scarce commodity you know live in town I don't want to spend any more of my money than I have to either but I recognize that if I want this then I have to pay for that we have to make decisions not only as a district and Dr will it is task on a daily basis to make tough decisions and figure out how to do more with L but as a town we also have to figure

065that priority and the only way to legitimately and fairly look at our Town Council and our town manager and say this is what we need you to do is to get them the information so that they truly know what we're asking them to spend money again that line struck me and I appreciate it thank you people people want people don't want to spend a lot of money but people do want to invest money and you know having been in the schools and talking with the seeing the administrators seeing the teachers and interacting with them and seeing how much they're Comm committed to the students of you know my kids are in the schools you know my wife's a school teacher um you know spending money on education is an investment and and uh and it

066really it really saddens me when I see 18% show up for a budget vote and then to get it to get it up to 21% this these this is the this is the vote that affects you the most your town budget is what impacts you the most and if people are watching or can get the word out we need people we need 100% of this town to show up that should be the goal you know if you get to 50 if you get to 40 whatever but but I mean we you know 85 to 90% show show up for a presidential election and we don't we don't show up for our own town that's the that's the question that I've you know I think I hit Dr will I've been doing this for six years

067now and every year I ask him how do we get the people that aren't on T and open discussion right you know if you don't log on there how do I get you this information because that's not the entire town right so again thank you all right Dr Willis hey Tony really Qui do you still have Dan hey can you hear me okay absolutely go ahead sir thank you so much just wanted to at risk of go going too long here there's never enough time for thank yous but the instructional rounds that are just so tough to get to during the day but just wanted a specific call out to the Birch Grove parent night I had the pleasure of my daughters going into Birch Grove and to the teachers that stayed to the administration

068curriculum advisers that state it was an awesome event I think my daughter is super excited to go even though this was for the parents but but while our kids are excited to be going to kindergarten it's nerve-wracking as a parent for sure but coming out my wife and I felt so much better about sending our kids to the school so just a big thank you to everybody who stayed late that night because it's after hours and it really helps parents like build confidence that they're going to a good place so big thank you there as well just to wrap up there anybody that has not had the opportunity to meet Tom Swanson there is somebody born to be in elementary school I joke that he rides his unicorn on the r he just the happiest

069a daughter is intis but it's still absolutely beyond the moon to see Mr Swanson and try to give him a high- five all right Dr Willet oh I'm sorry you did mention it but I want to make sure it gets highlighted the I saw these fine folks over here at the Wizards game as well on on Saturday and the amount of people that I saw with the volunteer tags and the and the yellow you know the yellow orangey you know slips on their chest I had some black football guys in High School volunteering getting some community service hours and whatnot and so um and the the Applause that the teachers got and I think there were I want to say 18 or so teachers I you might have a better number for that than me

070Dr will but uh um that event was put on by the tand Education Foundation and it mentioned tonight it was mentioned briefly but I want to make sure they get their credit because they put on I mean and I have never been to a Wizards game before I got to participate this year um and it was unbelievable it was so fun so I uh I hope they come back and I hope the educate and all that money goes straight back into kids and and in the district so um so well done to them as well so there's their recognition for this week's meeting did you no referee saw got dance on came from Mr Mr Mr uh um oh my gosh oh my gosh I'm blanking nope never mind uh there were some people not

071happy that it didn't call some fouls but that's okay you know but but again the credit goes to those those people they the teachers staff and uh Education Foundation it was it was amazing that was so fun if that was so fun I want to go back I want them to come so thank you all right on to committee reports communication uh we're passing uh this month taking the month off okay we have scheduling and the budget and all kinds of other things happen we'll catch back next month J has anything with PTO besides the mileage club and a lot of other things to do for tonight yes curriculum we met today before this meeting and we had a great discussion on grants and um how we apply for them how we go out and

072get them who goes out to to get them so it was a a good discussion to uh show us uh the process and how it ties into um R it not today um we talked about a couple different updates we have some legal updates that we'll be presenting to leadership for the next board meeting um we talked about summer meetings um and then Jaden um we spit bu some ideas of some different policies that we wanted to put on our agendas and Jaden has some ideas that we're going to put on our next agenda meeting so we're trying to keeping it brief and streamlined right now FFC I'll bring a report to our next FFC meeting when I'm not when I'm actually there in person thank you negotiations we wrapped up secur uh secretary negotiations

073and we have a tentative agreement so stay tuned for that all right thank you all moving on chairperson's report yes bill I kept it brief yes I'll be the judge all right so more on what we were talking about I I do not envy the position that the town councilors are in tased with determining a budget that supports the needs of the town they have to make decisions based upon information that is presented to them they have to ask the necessary questions they have to come together and deliberate But ultimately they have to trust that information presented is developed and presented with integrity and a focus on purpose earlier this week counselors on both both sides of the Isles commented on the process that asked the board to present a budget focused entirely on the

074educational needs and ask the council to deliberate that budget based only on Town meets how can we expect the Town Council to understand what those numbers really mean how can we expect them to understand the effect of reducing a foreign language teacher without hearing that middle school student talk about exploring a global Society while relying on du lingo to learn how how can we expect the council to understand a reduction in computer teachers without hearing the teacher that passionately explains creating a curriculum around programming a monkey trying to get a banana how can we ask the council to understand the importance of each room of our facilities without showing them the Miracles that our students create on the stage in the Kil or in the choir room we have the opportunity to watch a young

075man glow as he told us about the video that he created to help us understand unified Arts I then saw him float around the gym capturing the moments of our Wizards event I spoke to a young adult as he showed us his sculptures that led him to an opportunity for advanced education how can we expect the council to know the priorities of the town if we don't help them here like any of the other portions of the Town budget we the board create a budget request based upon our knowledge and the absolute expertise of our staff the only way this works is if it is received with the same Spirit of truth that it is presented tonight we have the opportunity to once again fit into that process the budget number that we have has

076not been decided we will not make any final decisions tonight tonight we will discuss what the effects of a reduction from our budget request to the currently proposed numbers would be we will ask the difficult questions and deliberate with respectful disagreement my ask is that we all take the action to take what we discussed tonight and help it be heard thank you all right Dr Willet the fun part just want to be sure do you want do you want to do this your educational Reserve fund would you I want to do this appreciate so at this point you know there there are no let me make one comment one real quick going uh again and I want to point out in here like I said the number that we have has not been approved by

077the Town Council what we have is the town managers proposed by we are not going to exit tonight with direction to say yes these are the reductions we're have that's not the goal tonight is to talk through the reductions that it would take opportunities ideas to really try to get that information turned up and discuss sorry me your not I I want to reiterate that too that there is there's nothing that has been determined and that the process we in as board requested there are no um you know preformatted options there's just discussion so the you know the the items that are up for reduction you know there are many items listed that are part of the superintendent's proposed budget that was 11.1% the items that are part of the Board of Ed budget that

078are 7.34% are there and then there are many many items you know that the Board of Education would be talking about tonight there's no easy way to get from 7.34% to 2.99% so that just stating that outright you know um so the board has been having some discussions with respect to how that might happen and and at this point I'm here to answer questions for you and to try to help in any way that I can I think that um with respect to where you end tonight and I think that we uh at this point other than the discussion that you have about the various items I don't think that we should be publishing any final document unless you actually intend to have that completed by no so I'm just here to act as a

079resource while you have that conversation you have information available to you and you let me know how you want to vote so what I'd like to do and I completely agree you know I'm not going to call for any vote what I would like to do is I'd like you to go through I know you prepared a series of potential reduction ideas of what those num would look like all things go ahead what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to briefly go through that just what those ideas what those things would be what those numbers would look like from 30,000 foot View and then I'm going to come to the board and give each give everybody an opportunity to to discuss to bring up ideas Dr will well and so these are

080the result of many conversations that we've had going through the the you know the year with respect to the budget um you know was asked to put a list together of things that you that had been discussed in your past future and now so um I think we should talk about them but you're you have access to that I don't think you should publish anything unless you have a decided unless you've decided so um do you want me to go through everything from the spb all the way through or just the most most so one possibility and these are all things that have been thrown out there you can consider and chew on them um additional echip Offset you know that we have insurance reserves one thing we could do is take more uh from

081the insurance Reserve reserves we want to be careful not to take too much from that but I would rather us taking um you know and and use some of the insurance reserves than to lose people I think we've had a terrible Insurance you know Insurance year and one of the most tragic things that can happen in my opinion would be you know losing staff because we had a bad insurance here so I think we should use it for the rainy day that we have we have a great program I mean on average it's 5% you know if you average it out over the last whatever since 2012 it's been at average of 5% but this is a very bad year so you know that's one thing we can do um there are you know some

082opportunities here from the standpoint of um things that were in the budget secretary for curriculum for instance would remain 10 months instead of being 12 that would be something that come out instead of um having a higher increase we could do just a 2% increase for bcbas bis's ab's the security officer job coaches PT it and maintenance if you limit it to 2% you can pick up some funds there um no one wants to see Athletics uh be eliminated in any way but this is a$ 1.9 million to $2 million reduction so you'd have to talk about every you know every aspect of possibility here so one possibility is the elimination of the Middle School athletics program program another possibility is the elimination of basically 90% of the um student clubs and activities and go

083to a full funding model that you know that uh you could try try out just having you know any board funding for that eliminated and then seeing whether or not um we could sustain it strictly on what it would cost parents which would be a lot more um we have charged the uh the r services that we provide to our partners and there are charges associated with those services that I would recommend that we um that we uh charge and so for instance um f FRC there are Services we provide to the F FRC which is a self-funded program that is under our umbrella and there are services and that could give us some revenue and again I'm looking for anything to try to avoid Personnel uh professional development reductions in that um we have

084to keep obviously certain amount of professional development because there are certain things that staff have to have and there are certain requirements that we have to live up to but making reductions there um par vacancy uh most of those eliminated um any you know any um TAA uh differentials there are some there are some money there with respect to the vacancies that we could just make some assumptions on hiring whenever we make assumptions that we're going to hire at a certain level if we don't hire at that level we end up being a little bit underwater so we got to be careful but making some measured assumptions and you know again I would rather not lose people I would rather make a less conservative assumption than cut people we can avoid it um so there's

085vacancies that we would assume hiring in different you know less maybe not as at ma7 maybe ma ma lower than that may3 um erf utilization use another 100,000 out of the erf you erf in this case we would use it to offset the educational technology initiative that was one of the reasons I was just going to throw erf first because you can see how much we have but we could put another 100,000 towards it from erf um Mission square is a forfeiture account for insurance for um for nonc employees and so there's some money that we can you know allocate out of that uh we would pre-investment and that could offset next year's budget we' pre-investment for buses on a daily rate um you know you have a bus for the day no matter how

086many routes you run but if we have fewer buses there's a savings involved uh so that's that's recommended rather than losing more people um the pathways program I have funded that for years outside of the operating budget we were hoping to expand that put it in the operating budget to actually you know actualize it as part of our budget supported programming uh we would take that out try to do my best to find alternative funding Edgenuity um this is a program we use for students that are in Credit Recovery or special programming through IEPs uh we would reduce that um and it would be less of an opportunity to use it for kids that are expelled and things like that we be taking a chance on not having as many kids or any kids expelled

087um intradistrict tuition adjustment um these are all things in response to what board members have talked about and so board member brought that up Mr bod and you know we made an adjustment to the intradistrict tuition um for that and again these are all things that have been brought up at one point or another that we're trying to put on you know put out there most things have been brought up paper pallet pre-investment do only have so much space but we want to [Music] pre-investment that's about what we can do for that uh co- teing you know this is a very important program you you all know the importance of it many of you have uh been involved in some aspect of it or heard about it and the uh instructional rounds at the end

088of the year will be about co- teing but I would seek alternative sources of funding for co- teing this would still leave some money in the budget for it um but I would also be looking for some alternative funding and this is usually our partnership with econ that costs some of the money we have you we have an excellent relationship with Eon there's Dr jackon du who helps us and she's involved in the district in our co- teing processes I would look for alternative funding there's still some left in the budget with this but I would also look for some alternative funding but it it would come that chunk would come out of the operating budget um there'd be equipment reductions and you can see what those equipment I won't go through all of those

089because it would take an hour but you can take a look at that we would reduce what we use for Community workshops um Power School support we have individuals who every year have to go for training for power schools so that we uh can keep that software updated to everything that changes in the state information requirements and uh Equity reports and all these things that have been done we would take a year off of that in the hopes that the training we've done throughout the last few years would be sufficient um and then we would just try to get help from other districts um you know for some of the changes that occur we can't do that forever we could do it for a year because uh we can try to work with some of

090our partners um but that would come out potentially and some of these other things are workbooks and some additional supplies that didn't make it into the tab um mtss stiens you know we got to the point where again $1.9 million we're not going to get there without doing some of the things that were in the superintendent's budget um this was discussed and this would be coming out of the budget that I recommended um you know it's just hard to get there um so these are things that were discussed increasing pay to playay by $100 uh tand already has a pretty high paid of play but this would leverage assuming you got at least or close to the same number of athletes you would get some money to offset Sports uh if you look at one

091of the other tabs because this was another thing that was discussed by the board or a question that came up what would the cost of Athletics be to our students if it was fully funded by parents it would be about 1,5 $71 per sport per par per um student uh so this would not be that high but um this would leave a lot of funding you know that is in our operating budget but an increase to $300 for pay to play would give more money into that program and provide an offset to your budget assuming that we get the same number of players which you might not because if the price goes up that may go down that we take a chance again these are assumptions one of the SRO positions of the two um

092would be um would be you know out but would we would keep in mind that for the future we that would leave you still with one SRO full position and a security officer um some transport adjustments uh tea step adjustments um those provide a little bit of money here and there and then um you know again nobody wants staff reductions this is the worst possible thing whenever we have to do it um you know obviously I don't recommend it but uh staff reductions that have been out there potentially and you have discussed some of them in the past uh some reduction to secretary there would be no unit really um that might not be impacted in your season but um secretary considerations there would be potentially some uh reductions in secretaries sharing a positions uh

093custodian reduction or reductions um social worker would be out that was being recommended uh you notice that we had cut the LPN um out of the budget at one point in in the process and this would take more of the LPNs out there would be sharing of nurse resources between buildings um potentially buildings that would lose teachers now again when I say this um you can't get an exact thing because people have similar certifications so it would not be you know if you reduce a position say at Birch Grove people might have the same certification and the bumping the person that gets you know eliminated if it is one might be somebody in a different building but a position might be reduced in in you know another building so a potential reduction at bgp um

094a potential reduction at TMS uh possibly U three teacher reduction at the high school based on your review of uh the enrollment information um and and I think that that's about it at this point running through as much as I can there are tabs there and I'm not going through everything in the tabs uh you can you know you can take a look at the rest of that but it's it's mostly material oriented so just a couple questions myself before I get to the um to understand what you just said just to to back brief here we're talking a reduction from the board's of education's proposed budget to the current 2.99 uh is just over $1.9 million right one 1,941 245 okay and based on the the work that you're you're currently and have been

095doing and I'm absolutely certain are going to continue to do with sharpen pencils um in addition to what I'm seeing is you know some rather significant equipment uh reductions and U some risk Assumption of risk from an insurance perspective from a from a special education perspective and potentially from a Windows supportability perspective uh there's really not a way to get there without doing staff and thereby program reduction I mean Athletics being $1,571 per student you know the these these are things you can consider I obviously don't want to see staff reduced as and I don't think anybody does $1.9 million with this included staff and if you don't you know you're going to you're GNA have to figure out other options but but the problem is we have a process problem because you're in this

096position each year and I think there's some process issues with that um and that we should work on you how this process occurs in ton because it feels like you're giving a budget in due diligence and you know you're forced to be in this situation but to answer your question that that is what you have in front of you are these reductions these reductions do include potential some staff and I leave it to you let me know how you would like to proceive with absolutely absolutely and you know as we articulated earlier in this meeting you know my intention here is not only for us to better understand but also for the council to understand you know we we talked last year and I know data we've talked a couple years as we've gone through

097this process in trying to make the adjustments here that aren't yours you know and we looked at you know buying additional paper we can pre- buby it now we save a little money what we do is then create a gap later but you know what hopefully next year is better uh we said that last year looking at these my interpretation is that we've reached the point where we've run out or are running out of those things we can do that can be reversed I mean there's many examples of that where at this point um you know we have used those strategies in the past and we try to use them but they do haunt us and Athletics transportation is one of those it was low Bal in previous years and then we got nailed with

098it this year and we have a higher figure some things look like they are more than 100% increase but that's almost always or 90% of the time that's because we did some kind of pre- purchasing in a prior year I think you've tried every strategy that you can in remember that your budget has had an average of about 1.73% over 12 years something like that right I mean you have uh it's been a difficult job for the board and um yes that's true well and I'm worried about I know you've thought about it but again just to just to throw it out there I'm worried about the secondary and tertiary effects the I think as we you know as we were in that that instructional round the other day and they were telling us about

099the instructional round the the going you know they're in each one for a certain amount of time um but if one of these reductions affects that balance then all of a sudden the amount of time that they're in their changes and we have to redo what was a curriculum at that point so we incur cost in our attemp to R redu right so an ex example would be that if you look at the clubs they're um there are uh many CL many Club possibilities but uh some of those gloves Offset you know cost in other ways and so you have to be very careful about what you reduce because you might actually increase your cost by reducing certain things and that you know that's something that we really have to be mindful of you know

100so if somebody were to completely cut an internal program if that internal program is a cost avoidance program you're going to have double or tripled our expense within a year or two and that is something we have to be very very here our staff and our programming is our most valuable asset and and they you know our students are our most crucial clients and we've got to do everything we can to minimize the impact wherever we and just to to tug on that stre a little bit a little bit further you know we've looked at the middle school and the TI and those type of things but I think you were telling me in one of our other conversations about how that you know that Domino over the next year affects for example if we

101you know by touching a foreign language in the Middle School when does that then kill something in the high school unintentionally right it will anytime you don't have things like that starting in the middle or if you only leave one or another then essentially the one that you don't service will will be cut off from people uh go get going into it and will ultimately suffer from that from an enrollment point of view of the high school you now um everything affects every everything else right it's like it's like a body you know you can't impact one area of the body without another area of the body being impacted and so the overall health of the district it it it succeeds or fails based on how every other part of the district do to you

102know so that that's true and that what that is what makes the tasks you have in front of you streem diff difficult I'm GNA give up the floor Jaden yeah um I'll try to keep my questions we we had a bunch of time to ask about the specific line items and like all all the things and so I'm not and and you you you answered some of the you know I saw a power school on there and then it turned out to be it's a power school I believe training or something like that so I'm not going to end up going into the line items but I want to get some some some stuff off my chest um and then I'm happy to ask a couple questions I think this uh I'm going to one

103up you here a little bit in in one case instead of a 10year span over an 11year span tand has had an average of one not 1.73 1.62% of an increase over the last 11 years and we can look at compet competing I say competing towns towns neighbors of ours we can look at towns right next door to us that are in the threes that are in the high twos that are in the low fours Ellington being of them being in the in the thre nowhere near coland being at a 1.62 and how embarrassing it was to come to that realization and how how how much we're worse how much uh we're not helping children I guess the best way for me to put very kindly and very eloquent um so 1.62% over 11 years

104and yet we're still talking about no wonder I should say we're talking about going into the erf again no wonder we're talking talking about reducing four buses and the first thing I think of when I hear the bus conversation again is you know you know and I know one of the things that always came up was was how many emails we got when the buses were running late and to be honest with to hell with the to tell with the emails you get where I get frustrated are the people who Tony I think you were one of them where your child is not getting off that bus until what time hour and a half correct schol gets out at what time 315 per Elementary School and the fact that kids are getting off the bus

105and getting right to dinner kids are getting off the bus and missing time with Mom before she goes to work simple things like this it's the human aspect of I think education it's the human aspect of being on a board of education it's a human aspect of being a town manager that has not been fully invested in over the last I want to say 11 years and uh how frustrating it is that we have to have people come in this room and and and hope that they're they're saying something that's going to stick with us that's going to stick with us I'm pretty darn proud about how we go about our process yearly what I'm not proud about is having a Town Council yearly year after year after year and a town manager who co-sponsors

106it who doesn't give a damn about what we're talking about and I'm sorry to be so so frustrated and animated about this but I save it for this moment so I'm not this way outside of these walls I promise you just Monday it was asked how do we get to this how do we get to this 2.99% and I don't know if at any point of the Town manager to be specific Audrey's not going to want my recommendation and I don't think anywhere in that answer was yeah we take the board of bed into we should be taking the professionals opinion in in into account we should be taking the people who are spending hours each week dozens of hours each month and diving into these line items that's why I'm not going to ask

107you about these line items again because you work too damn hard to keep going through the same stuff over and over again just to be shot down for the things that the kids need the process is flawed nowhere in this 2.99% I know it's not passed I know it's not passed so I'm going to be very careful about how I express myself but nowhere in this 2 point where is it 2.99% in my opinion not just as a resident not just excuse me as a board of ed member but as a resident of t for the last 24 years my entire life nowhere do I think the town manager took into account the Board of Ed or the superintendent's input and I'm not speaking for anybody else but Jen regisford in this in this scenario

108and I hope everybody will Express their opinions and and whatever I'm not speaking for Dr will I'm not speaking for any of you I'm not speaking for my good friend Lisa right here I'm speaking for Jaden regiser because it's frustrating as a former student which is why a lot of these a lot of these instructional rounds it was interesting last year I haven't been able to get to any this year last year I was able to get to the elementary school and the uh Birch Grove I think it was the first full year Birch Grove might have been over maybe the second full year Birch Grove was open because the middle school and the high school i' actually seen relatively recently believe it or not because I'm I'm 24 years old I was there you

109know shame on me though because of the 1.62% over the last 11 years I should know better that yeah they since I've been there some of the things Mr sh I was happy to to hear his name frankly and and I I wish I could laugh about it I was happy to hear his name today happy to hear kids experiencing the same thing I did learning how to use I don't know what the saw was called because again memory but learning how to use a saw for the first time and and taking measurements and angles and and understanding how to you know I we still got a thing in my arbro that my brother made in his class that's about 4 foot by 4 foot and it's these things that are going to get left

110behind and so Tony I appreciate your question just a minute ago because this impacts that that impacts this eventually all of it is going to impact all of it and I heard somebody and I can't it might have been it might have been Audrey I can't remember who said it talk about eventually we're not going to have a school district it it might be hyperbole it might be this it might be that to me it's Truth at some point the dwindling just like you see in local towns and local local leag Billy you know a lot about this when you see leagues get less participation less participation eventually that's going to kill the league so at some point you need something that's going to spark it in my opinion in this scenario what that requires

111is more than people speaking up more than people speaking out but people taking action and and John I completely agree with you and voting voting for a referendum that they support and so I'm a little frustrated because never have I seen a list and Dr I'd be interested to see if you put a list although I know in 2017 there was a 10% increase there was you know all these different things I have never seen a list like I see now and I know it's not on the screen for everybody there's a lot of red a lot of red a lot of reduce reduce reduce so to put it bluntly I'm frustrated if that point wasn't receiv received um now a couple questions pull funding the pull funding model for clubs what does that look

112like so for example I know I know deca's National you know uh um buyin price is different from that of maybe a student counsil you know or these different you know Honor Society whatever it might be might be a different starting point that you have to start at in order to have a chapter or a or a local um local a local Club at at at the school what does a fully funded model look like for any average Club in high school you said $1,000 almost $1,200 for sports which is asinine 1,500 thank you 15 thank you $1,500 for sports for opportunities for children to do something that they might not want to go they might not want to go to school today but damn it I get to go see coach I get to

113go to the field I get to go work on my swing sorry I got into it again when to recircle here I appreciate you helping you there how much what is a fully funded so just do so quick I did that for athletics I didn't get that get to that so we have um 4 5 600 about 660 kids 660 kids um participating in your total general cost it would be about $222 if you had no board funding and I'm giving you a rough amount rough you could you could average that up to 250 per kid maybe for the club yeah if you're if they're funding it without anything being done out of your operating budget and I heard it over there per club right that was that was my question per kid per CL

114per kid per Club per kid per Club 22250 r so but this the average is the fair is all I'm asking for right now just because it's the simplest you know simplest way to get that answer um imagine taking Deca National Honor Society student council imagine helping helping students with disabilities want to play a sport that they've never gotten play play before all these different things and you're paying $300 per kid per Club to do so it's asinine it's ridiculous it's not something that tent should be taking pride in in my opinion so um my second question here going back to those Power School the power school University reduction I think it's 14 excuse me 13,700 by getting rid of the trainings this year for staff to do participate in those trainings whether it's the

115power school it could be let's there's there's other trainings in here and I'm going to do my best if you can help me out here let's see here God there were other trainings in here that I what yeah I mean you can look at if you look at the conference travel contracts there you go different things that would go um certain things that are contractually obligated to people individual contract people like me are being taken out of they you know that kind thing so that's my question what does that mean if they're contractually obligated we're taking them out well that's for somebody like me I'm giving it up I hear but other people the training is not something you know you'll notice that under that path they are contractual but the only PE that that

116that's me but how many years have you done this now because it's in in in consecutively taking taking a smaller increase not just in your in your contract but also in in in the trainings that are are contractually obligated to how many years have we been on this stretch here I've been on the board for four years so it's a couple of years yeah a couple of years I'm going to go with two or two two three years consecutive never mind the last I don't I think you've been 14 14 15 years a superintendent so I don't know before that but the LA since I've been on the board I feel like this comes up every year where to satisfy a budget that the board of V does not condone or support at least at

117first Dr Willet has to take from himself to give you know it's we're putting people in situations I don't know how we have the quality of staff that we still have to be frank with you and that includes our superintendent that includes our superintendent but going back to for example the um the uh Power School trainings if he does not get those trainings this year or if if those people who require those trainings this year do not get them what does it look like for the next year after that I think again somebody mentioned you know we try to stock up beforehand it's hard to do that with training so so what does that look like well again you know I'd rather do that than those people but what I would say is so uh

118we we use software that interacts with power school there's one called clever there's there's all these different things that your individuals have to be trained in how to make sure that power school can you know Import and Export data there's a um uh there's a report right now that's a really big one we have to create a lot of data for I'm trying to remember what it is but it's um it has to do with um compliance with the federal government with respect to um all the stuff federal government wants so that would be an example of you know Power School University would provide trainings and how to make sure that you can Import and Export the information the federal government and having that training is important because you can really screw that up and

119you know we have had that training we would take a year off the training and ask our friends but we can't ask our friends forever because being in the training is much different than getting it second or third hand it's 10 times harder to do it that way so we'd be hoping that you know we've gotten the benefit of a few years of that we'll take a year off of it it it may impact our efficiency we'll have more problems to solve on our end we take on more weight of solving those problems and we may miss a deadline or two so if the board chair gets a communication that we missed a deadline on a federal report I mean it might happen because we're doing our best but um but we're not cutting people

120what is missing a deadline most of the time it's just you get a slap on the hand you miss the deadline if sometimes they'll send a communication to the board chair saying we haven't done it yet Mr hold has not received that because we we are on it but I also know that we're on it because I can turn to the IT people and I can say I want that exported and imported by asking why date and if there's an issue we have meetings to discuss it but if they don't have all of the training that they need to do that or there's been changes they're not availed of then we're g to have you know we're going to have to solve that problem which will take time and that time might push the deadline

121past its uh you know past the date we would typically need to have it by so there'll be little things you know the buses will run a little slower we might be in a deadline that it's better than losing your interventionists or or you know people that are in a classroom you know or any any of the people that support your kids our kids um so I I would gladly give up power school even though I know the IT people will probably take the air out of the tires of my car right now we're saying that but you know we don't want to lose people to you know and that would be one way of helping not do that if we take things from areas like that so again you're prioritizing people here which I

122just I want to make sure that that that constant variable here gets gets mentioned you know the prioritization of people in the buildings in front of the kids with the with with children with students helping them be better human beings be better students um a couple a couple more and they're very surface level just out of curiosity when was the last time the fund balance was utilized specifically on the board of bedside Brian I appreciate your point before that it's been utilized recently just maybe not on the board side per se you know maybe for something else or this or that I you know I don't know enough I'm on the board of that I I wish I knew when when was the last time I won't give a specific number but a large chunk

123of of of town funds and and you may not know this off the top here which I don't blame you was used to to help the board of Ved offset some of these reductions that we seeing in a year L this um I mean I I the only thing I can think of is a few years ago Co there was a federal money that we all use to offset things um but I I can't think of immediate not before that no I no I mean I would say the town does a great job of supporting capital projects and things like that the town side has its role the boad side has its role I can't I I will let you have your opinion on what a good job I guess I guess means um specifically

124when it comes to capital projects I might agree with you when it comes to helping the Board of Education fund a district for children I yeah I'm not there my last question um how much very surface level how much is left in the erf after after after I think it's 100,000 100,000 in the red here that's the next agenda item but um oh I'm sorry no no don't be sorry that's that's what I was wondering is one basically balance after fiscal year 26 allocation if you're going to make an allocation um you know to to technology and energy and so on uh balance after those allocations would be $119 19,6 32 um that includes the 76,2 47 you'd be moving in at the end of this year so your next you know one of your

125next orders of business would be to move the money into the erf if you do that the money going out money going in we leave you with about 119 now if you have end of your funds according to uh the CGS 10 248a the board can now transfer any any amount of funds up to 2% into the erf from any end of your B and that's a that's our later agenda yeah and and I'm sure we'll talk about yeah and well I almost guaranteed we'll talk about it you know later what not but but how often do we have so much wiggle room to even get up to a full two Grand percent now that that actually just as a caveat we that's we didn't we're not at that item yet and we'll talk about

126it more but you can't get those funds until the third quarter of the next fiscal year which is why you can't really count on it for a budget discussion that's all I uh that's all if I don't get another chance to speak again let me make myself hopefully as clear as you know I don't know how many of these budget Cycles left I'll be a part of I don't know how many what I do know is this is the worst list I've been I've seen in the four years I've been on this Board of Ed the worst list I've seen as a graduate of T High School is the worst list I've seen even from when I when I started paying attention while I was still in school this list does nothing to help the

127two students that were just sitting in front of us this list does nothing to help the students of the people who are sitting in the audience this list does nothing to help the people who are watching on online and sure it keeps teachers it keeps people it keeps the people in our buildings which is the priority here which I hope people are understanding you know at least from what I what I'm seeing my my perspective that our superintendent is going out out of his you know above and beyond to make sure this is you know people people above all um un frustrated I don't think the Board of Ed was taken into account with this process I think we I'm not going to say wasted but I think a lot of time was spent that

128could have been spent either with the Town Council or shoot get rid of the joint The Joint discussions between the Town Council and the Board of Ed if you're not going to listen to anything we're talking about that's my opinion and I'm happy for the Town Council to come sit in these chairs and join us I'm happy for us to go whatever but it's getting to a point where I feel like we're wasting breath and I feel like they're wasting their breath and I hope I don't want to keep wasting these people's time and keep showing up to these meetings and expecting a different result because literally the definition of insan and it's going to drive people not to if it's not already so grab and be ni so that's all I appreciate it got

129it out thank you thank you for yoursie um I just had a couple things I uh Jan already asked about the clubs because I was wondering about that like how could we you know keep those fund them I was curious about the bus I was just doing a little bit of math and it looks like for next year one bus is $494 38 per day time 2 * 180 days is $177,900 because it was around 5,000 so that comes to 187 976 we're reducing by 123 which is a difference of 64,000 because contract if you go through the whole thing you you can't it's not the total bus cost the more buses that you reduce you get getting $64,000 for taking off two more buses yeah it doesn't work like that if you read through

130it we don't get that amount for every bus reduced because they have to plan way ahead of time so the more buses are reduced the greater it has less of an impact than a total bus rate amount it doesn't work like that so that they incentivize you to keep the number of buses you contracted for because you get you don't get the same impact as a to you know one full bus when you start to reduce buses that's why that amount is not that that exact number you don't get the same impact and that's they do it so you I would be interested to know what that number is because that that SS like a huge difference number that's what's in there that's the number okay so it's going to go from 4 9438 to

131something so here's the actual price sheet you you can't right now can't take that amount like that if you want us to run the numbers I'll show you them but the amount that I have in here is what you would get back from a two bus reduction you can we can give you the numbers later about okay the contract does have provision in it that tries to make disincentivize you from inducing buses because they have to plan the fleet that they went and that's where you're getting knocked off some Buck there now if we you know you you get more from reducing two than you do from reducing one that's the thing one would be even less right um okay um I think that's it for the moment okay Mr Thompson all right some of

132the questions I've hav been answered already um so I'll touch base on the lawyer and legal pce um I saw that there was a line item letter in the uh Boe question regarding uh the cost for the lawyer per hour I thought I I believe it was Tony had mentioned uh several meetings ago that we were at a kind of a set rate because I was asking how many you know if we start doing whether we do adjust six policies in a year versus 16 policies that I was told though you could just pick and choose we pay one price this that and the other but apparently according to that letter it seems like we're paying per hour for each policy that we are adjusting on top of other legal um issues that may arise

133for the district I get clarification on this whether we set price or we're actually paying per hour you pay per per hour for legal advice you do get access to their module and model policies though for just being a client shiing but they build that into the hourly price or not I mean all companies do something like that but so I'm just saying that you know no matter what law firm you're going to have an hourly rate for the attorneys for their legal advice so just for clarification there not every policy that the policy committee adjusts has to have legal review that's true right some of them are just taken out of that that model policy library that we have AC some of the the policy adjustments just come from that we don't get charged

134an hourly fee for Jessica to review it because that's already been done in that L are they not reviewing it before we put it as an official policy then every some of them like if we take their model policy and we essentially replicate it then we don't send it back for them to riew replicated so the library has been reviewed and approved that's from them they they're expert I just want a clarification on that because if that was the case we're going to say maybe we can limit how many policies we're adjusting but I I understand the the pay structure now thank you [Music] um so uh I know I went on the uh the intervention support the other uh the MTS set of bir Grove um and the walk about uh with the wonderful

135staff and the teachers and saw the students interacting and how the operation went from level one two and three how is any of that going to be what what are there any effects in this budget towards that process that we saw uh Jens I think it was about a month ago now are any of these things going to affect the learning of these intervention to their youngest and most needy children as far as the beginning learning year um yes yeah L of any kind of uh teacher you know basically you're asking about the early years so there's two ask you're asking about the early years right yes so any reduction in the in the K5 level is early years the answer to your question is yes well U I'm not just talking about like my

136kid goes to math he's excellent math I mean he's going to learn what he needs to learn I'm talking mainly on this intervention level the mtss that we saw the walkabouts how kids come off in the morning they go drop their stuff at the at their rooms they come back they do three four five minutes in one room they might go back to the room they might go to another room where there's other intervention people because they need help and not just math but maybe reading or you know they just need the one and that's it for the day that that sort of thing with whether they're in the computer lab or specialized rooms and how's that all play into whatever might potentially be lost on this current list so some of what you observed

137was tier one support right yes you know when they use the software and they differentiate yes people kids doing different things so if we reduce a classroom teacher um you know what will happen is it's it's more more kids for fewer teachers which will push up those sizes there the you know if it's not an interventionist which hopefully wouldn't be be because of what you're saying and again when I say hopefully it wouldn't be I just I don't hope it would be any any teacher but um the classroom teacher would actually would impact most tier one support and the intervention is just speaking of would still be in place if you're taking a classroom te but it would still impact mtss because tier one support is part of mtss those sizes get bigger it's even

138harder in that classroom to accommodate all the kids you know so you saw a classroom that had X class sizes those class sizes would be higher and so you know that that means when you go look at the software and other differentiating tools we got to be very careful not to eliminate the tools that allow them to differentiate like the ex I Exel and you know the Ed learn you know these are the things that you witness them using too but but you know I'm not being GID when I say that I'm answering yes because it it would increase class sizes no matter what direction you point no I want that no that's what I'm looking for you so that's where you'd see it is in that tier one support when you in that class

139be a larger class okay okay now just to be clar clarify though those the programs that were used for this are still in the budget correct you'll notice that we do some pre-investment and that's to try to keep those things in now what you're doing is what Mr Holton talked about past is we kicked the can because next year the the budget will come and that price tag will still be there but we will have uh lowered the coming Year's budget by the pre-investment and that's when you get hit with whenever we do that that's when we face it but yes that has pre-investment into next year to try to help keep those things while reducing next year's budget and when next year comes the objective there would be hopefully we don't have such a

140bad insurance year you know maybe we we can then when you look at next year you look at it and say why do you have a 150% increase in you know I or whatever and it's going to be because last year we pre-investment artificially lowered the amount you know yeah I do understand that right thank you for answering that y um so the other thing I know there was some discussion I think it was Jen or Tony I apologize or Dana was somebody in that side of the room regarding to language so I'm sorry I you you know I just off the hip here uh just talk a language so like my son I know there I think it was talk about how Middle School you know we lose uh if if if potentially there

141was a language lost or language has gone down the study of languages French Spanish Latin whatever it might be moving into the high school levels and whatnot U puts them that uh you know slight disadvantage just the longer years of learning um I know my both of my sons have been put through the um because my wife speaks Spanish and admin on them learning Spanish but they've been through three sessions every year that they've attended Birch Crow they go to one two and three they go to one two and three they go to one two and three for all the sessions year after year is it not Po and this is after school this is nothing that happens during the school year itself because there's no you know Spanish at the or any language at

142the lower levels you know if there's going to be a potential loss here if we can create some sort of club that would offer these after school opportunities just as there is for the younger children at these upper levels I know it's not the most ideal situation but it is potentially something that I believe that can be possibly put forward as a club if there's that many people interested in French or Spanish or whatever might be lost provide this opportunity on an after school club basis to still get children the learning of the language obviously might not be you know level one top tier but you at least get something to help improvise along the way till maybe they get to the high school they'll have a better opportunity of a more full-time structured more

143more structured I'm not saying the pro vir isn't structured it's just more of a learning so I just throwing it out there something potentially that could be done to help offset if we lose something one area that could be put on as an elective after school School type thing I know everybody's available after school but you know we'll deal with whatever we're able to deal with that was just something I think we can think about and also jenet mentioned like these kids um for coding and engineering and all these other things that she had mentioned to possibly see about getting some of these clubs obviously we need to figure out how to pay for them right so it's like you know what what can we do to increase some of these things that some students

144might be interested in but also have the students you know families participate in the contribution to pay for these items if we can't afford it in the budget maybe we can somehow someway you know if we can't pay 100% for but somehow some way offer these things on an after elective type program for coding or engineering or or something that would still benefit in some way but not maybe not the 100% that we're wanting to you know throwing out some ideas and thoughts along the way um but yeah I'm I am interested in bumping up the pay to play I'm not interested in this colum Middle School complete Athletics program going down the tubes um so the FRC charges for district Services how would they you going to so we have third 30,000 on this

145line item would how would those be passed along to the um students or families that utilize the F FRC or how would those that $30,000 come you know how how would the F FRC pay for the $3,000 that we're eliminating it from our budget if we're still running the FRC program it's Revenue excuse me it's it's Revenue you're charging the F FRC for services you're charging your own fol so I I guess the other call the other my thinking is you have to have enough to where we're having the FRC still be a cost effective way for students to still utilize after school versus other potential after school programs that we might get zero dollars yes so we have to ensure that we have a fine line in what we're still charging versus what people

146can get possibly elsewhere it shouldn't impact what they charge EXC it should not impact what they're charging the community it's us charging our own it's like you had three corporations you have the major corporation and two subsidiaries and then your major corporation starts charging the subsidiary for services to put money into the major corporation okay like you're charging your own entity it's not part of your operating budget uh it's a reasonable thing that you could do and so you're taking in Revenue to offset your own budget you can't do that with some but you can do that there to an extent and so I wouldn't go beyond that but uh that would be an amount that is reasonable to charge um The Entity because we do provide it those Services it's a way of giving

147your Revenue it's it's trying to work outside of the box so that we don't have to reduce people you know here I think it's important to know Brian you said kept saying after school so FRC yields Revenue in Further full preschool programs and their after school okay so they charge for there's like three preschool programs during the day yeah I forgot about those iiz so they have they have Revenue coming in via the preschool and via the after school okay so and they're utilizing our fild so then we would be charging them for some of the things like other towns have been brought up that have charged preschool we actually do have that kind of thing we just have it under a different umbrella okay so it doesn't hit your operating budget we we can

148collect all right that's that's that's fine at the time thank you for that [Music] um so I know you had mentioned Mr bu had this inter District tuition adjustment for 105,000 how does what is the the adjustment that we're making for this to had brought up in the past like we in the past um we would budget for the full amount that we assumed we would be charged this year we got a break from the state was 58% of the cost of it okay and we'd only pay 58 um we can't always make an assumption that just because it happened in one year for instance we you know this the the state is giving $40 million to 1609 districts this year that's what they're doing this year we uh I wouldn't recommend banking that the

149state will do that next year because it's just said it will do it this year but what we would be doing is taking a risk and assuming you saying we're going to assume we're going to get the same deal this year or next year that we got this year but you're taking a risk yeah it's a calculated risk but again I'd rather take a calculated risk then lose people but you have to take a calculated you know these are calculated risks um if it turned out to be the the full cost then we would be looking we might have a very early freeze next year if these things didn't go in the direction that we had hoped we would be freezing things very quickly the worst worst case scenario if you overdo it is you

150might have to make reductions in force during year so we don't want to take too many risks I completely understand um all right thank you for that um so I did want to talk about I know it's not a popular opinion but I did want to throw it out there about uh possibly merging the bus routes for the middle school and the high school potential savings I don't know what the exact savings for B see I don't think you're going to get it cuz it's a savings it's a daily rate so you're paying the daily rate for the buses regardless of whether you run three or two or four and so if you take you know if we take a certain time period and we put more kids to pick up in that time period

151Then inevitably there will be more stops and if you're doing a daily rate you're paying the daily rate for the number of buses you have unless you buy your own Fleet that's one of the ways out of the wood on this because bus companies make their money off a daily rate and they also guarantee the number of buses they have so you can't do too much with that now first students been great um but as a reminder we put out to 13 companies 10 companies three came to the table one bid and that was first student so we got a great deal from first student considering all of it but their daily rate so we even it would take a lot to try to redo schedules anyway and even if we could we're taking more

152kids and trying to pick up more kids in a shorter span of time and paying the same daily rate so it will not benefit us much to do that at all yeah but I but what my my my analys from just my thought process we're running like Birch Grove and TI they run two rout or one one route for two schools half half the schools just like it would be the other half now my thought process and it would be an assumption and that's why I look for for the fuel alone if you R eliminate an entire run I do understand they me a few more stops and you and whatnot but I would think the fuel alone you You' cut the fuel from having three runs around town two runs around town you know

153You' cut it in a third and say even if you you Lo even if you you lost 10% of that to extra stops you're still saving 25 % or 23% from from your fuel usage for the entire school system because you're going to run longer routes you're eating some of that fuel I just said 10% right but but I but I I you know we can explore that for future we don't have the data in this time span to really explore that well I emailed like six weeks ago why can't we have the data at this point let's Let each other finish well well first of all you know so this kind of thing is build in aggregate form like I answered today we don't have it by bus okay so that's one thing second

154if you reduce the buses you get about $8 to $10,000 of fuel savings per bus if you average it that's what you get by reducing say two buses right so whether you're going to save much more than that on fuel I mean it maybe maybe there would be some additional savings maybe not we'd really have to look at that and that would take more than 6 weeks to analyze we would need to really look at it over a longer span of time and at in the time span we have right now to make a decision because we can look at it and analyze it with FFC for the coming year after that if we want we can analyze anything but we're not going to have enough information to to to know that in this time

155span we have to make a decision so we can look at it long term but considering you save about 8 to 10 if you reduced two buses considering the fact that you'd have to run longer routes and considering that it would require quite a bit to change schedules because that does have a lot of impacts usually we don't change schedules in a matter of months we look at it a year ahead I have to plan out what that means um because it does have un unanticipated impacts this is something we can look at in FFC for like a future Fe farther out and then get all the data and really look at that but we really wouldn't be able to comprehensively know the impact of that between now and the time we have to pass

156the referend well I thought you had informed me that there was Data of program data that would run the routes plug in you know all the kids and then it will run routes but in terms of all the fuel related savings and the impacts of schedules that takes a longer period of time to analyze CIA for instance you can't push out you know you want to be careful about pushing out later or something like that picking kids up earlier has other impacts on routes we would have to figure out what the impacts of changing schedules was you we we don't have the data per bus for fuel like I like I had answered so we'd have to you know start collecting it that way we don't have the we don't we can't do it by

157the time of the referendum to be able to plan a budget we would have to do that a year out which we can do but you probably um you know it's not something we would have solid answers on between the time you have to formulate the budget I mean I know that you you listen I'm telling you very directly what I can what we can and can't do you can accept it or not but that's what I'm I'm giving to you is the answer to your question well I here's the it's like to gather the fuel data and divided by the number of routes and the number of buses you're running how hard is that to to figure out give me the data I'll do it myself I'm just frustrated I mean you act like

158that this is so difficult it's not I appreciate it is not at all I'm sorry understood I think what what what I'm hearing though is it's not as simple as just a division there in addition to getting the fuel data there are those other considerations the schedules I understand that completely the keeping kids on buses longer than an hour another one is it's just a bigger conversation than simply how much gas would save in to day if I thought it could save jobs I mean I I wish that was something that we'd be able to do in a time where we're talking about because I would do anything to save jobs I'm giving you just a Frank answer because there's too much there have to look at it for the future you can go ahead

159though um I'm looking at the uh the budget tool sheet that you sent out to us and we've got in the uh first the the blue line of reductions that's already taken it's already taken right but we've got each chip Insurance Reserve additional 200,000 and then in the the first red we've got a prepayment for each hiip um with endof year funds of $200,000 so that's $400,000 that were either prepaying or taking out of reserves for each chip how much do we have in reserves for each chip and 2.8 you have a CD plus C now that's just for Talon not for the whole EIP that's for our Collective that's for the collective that's not for the entire egy but it's for okay us okay Collective gotcha all right and um that is where that

160Reserve is where all the claims come out of or is that just literally exactly what it is Reser the reserve is the reserve okay the claims come out of the money you put in year thus the prepayment right if you make a prepayment again you're you're doing the same thing you would be doing with your software or something else yeah you're are you know you're you're lowering what you're paying by making deposit but but there's a couple of ways to do this and the the overall impact though of 400,000 is higher than I would ever have typically offered and it there are some things that we will have to do to make you know to work through that but again it's it's there because they want to try to prevent you know bad insurance you're

161you from losing a tremend you know step and that Reserve would be there if our claims that come in are higher than what we contributed for that year it would be you know you try not to take too much from that and I wouldn't recommend doing this year-over-year like this um but you have a bad insurance year and you have an insurance Reserve so now you know if you project out and you know we have the most most catastrophic year ever it would be pretty tight but you you the probability of you having the most catastrophic year ever is not strong you know so you have that reserve for a reason what's a comfortable Reserve amount what what's comfortable for a town to have in that account well I mean we have always responsibly done

162um our budgeting to have a reasonable reserve for each of not everybody has the reserve we have each you know we in fact one of our challenges has been that we don't want to have too much of a reserve um to to you know speak very frankly 400 is a lot would I do that every year I would not want to do that every year do I think Poss you know we should look at it this year yes why because insurance as high as it is this year and um you have it for the reason of offsetting when those you know is it more than we have taken in the past yeah do I think it's going to bankrupt us no do I think it's going to eat up your entire reserve and cause a

163catastrophic failure no I wouldn't suggest it otherwise um so I mean well as long as we don't go over the contribution we're not even going to touch the reserve other than what we're doing right now right yeah end of year you either add or take from your reserve and unless some I mean I can't even imagine the scenario that would result in us that went bankrupt over this thing but it's more than I've ever suggested in the past more than I think you know some people would be comfortable with be pranked but you're comfortable with it because of the because of experience that I have watching this month right so and again everything we're doing we've taking a certain uh you know there's some risk involved with any decision we make sure with all you

164know um you know I'm looking at the numbers there's over $600,000 in Staffing reduction so I don't want anyone to think that I'm be littling not talking about Staffing reductions because that's just insurmountable um I don't know what we do about that um but I want to I want to talk about the uh the clubs as well um you know those extracurriculars are important for the health of our kids I think the the mental health of our kids um why it just based on the stuff that you've sent us it looks like the cost of the are about $147,000 based on the spreadsheet and the income that we're bringing in from the $40 fees are less than $220,000 so we've got $127,000 shortfall you fund more than you collect right why if we're upping the

165pay to play why are we not looking at upping um upping the the clubs before we look get cutting good it could be one of your options it's just that the the cost of clubs the hard part about is that the higher the cost of a club the fewer people will participate right now my kids were on swim team and it cost me a thousand I'm not suggesting this at all please don't take that this is what I'm suggesting you do but swim team for my kids cost about a th bucks so people are used to seeing some kind of pay to- play for sport but a club you know you're not it's a different thing you know you're paying for your child to go there and participate but there aren't the same there isn't

166the same structure and the same kinds of things happening so a parent might look at a club that's $222 $250 and say well maybe not model you this year because they're not used to seeing a $250 price tag for the model un Club some parents are used to seeing a couple of hundred to you know whatever dollar price tag for sports however I'm not recommending that at all I'm just suggesting that the reason we didn't go clubs is if you push clubs up to 250 you're going to collect them yeah and I'm not push it up to 250 right right like and so there definitely there's definitely some clubs and I and I get it you know being in athletics you know you've got regular games there's competitions you're traveling so I I definitely get

167that that's more expensive but there's also some clubs that are listed on the clubs that are competitive you know Deca is one of them it's a comp it's a there's a competition aspect to Deca um so I I certainly think that should be closer something like that to onar you can with sport but you know someone I mean Jaden probably speaks better to the one that's been in Deca you know I don't know a whole heck of a lot about Deca other than you know what's been told To Us by by our student uh students I think part if you don't mind part of it the amount of you could go on deca's website right now deca.org it's very simple deca.org and you can see how many scholarships are offered through Deca you see how

168many work opportunities are offered straight out of college through Deca you could see how many high school opportunities are offered through through through Deca the benefit students have when they when they you know I think the pay with right I think they have to pay right now is somewhere around 85 or maybe it was 75 when I was in school something around there and everything I get out of that you know I can't guarantee you that I that I do Deca if it's $250 that's just how I I I didn't you know I didn't grow up you know paying for $250 new cleats and and $500 new bats that's just not you know and so to pay $250 per Deca something like that I appreciate you asking this I don't think I would have reaped

169the reward of the you know you know say the scholarships on their website or the leadership opportunities that then go on my resume and all these things if that if that makes sense a little bit so it's a fair question I just you know there's there's there are some complications there that you know I don't it becomes Ane Equity I in question deck is $40 well that's the national that's the national uh there's a national $20 to Bard of vet and $20 State national dues but there's a so there's a national and I wonder what it was probably you're paying about 4050 when I was in high school that cost that cost was I think $85 after Co I could not tell you what it is I could not tell you what what that money

170relates to and all these things I don't know the the the numbers went down as well so um but I remember I remember handing that you know whether it's a check or a money word I'll be frank with you 85 um for de and that's just that's just you know that's how it went so um part of that was the national that's why I think I I think I asked the question I wrote it down somewhere of what the how much of that money is going to National Deca you know to be a a a chapter of DEA or honest Society whatever you know whatever it is and how much of that is going toward you know paying for whether you know the stipend or you know whatever it is of of of of that

171club so yeah I don't think any of our clubs based on this spreadsheet are even paying for the stiens that we pay no like you may notice that different clubs have different fees that the parents Ur already you pay a fee to have the club exist because you have to have an advisor if a club runs a field trip somewhere usually that that is conveyed to the parent you know so you pay for unless unless there's a child that you know needs special help I try to help you know this situation but typically and that's should so when our Deca students travel that's totally on them on them when they go out to California or Florida wherever the only one that wouldn't pay in that scenario is the is the is the the adviser that

172that accompanies them that has to come out of sure our operating right yeah I I guess my initial thought with with clubs obviously I don't want to do anything but we should be raising a little bit to at least cover the stiens and we're not even doing that in any of the clubs that as I look at the spreadsheet and that's not a significant increase in cost cuz the stiens are only like 1,200 $1,500 $1,600 that I saw on the spreadsheet so you TR not everybody pays well so you're try right I hear you you're trying you trying then you know so that the next question I have is about stiens are are the stiens that we pay to all our athletic coach or even these Club advisors are they contract negotiated yes okay yeah

173article I think included in something there 38 article 38 and any is it any teacher I guess I'll go to sports because there that's what I know so you've got your your head coach that's paid all the assistant coaches paid if they're teachers uh well typically you do pay assistant coaches too unless it's a volunteer coach right you have some volunteers but you're paying you're paying them yes you're paying your coaches and most of your assistants Okay so so for for Middle School do you know what the the breakdown I think it was $330,000 for Middle School athletic program what's the breakdown in transportation compared to stiens added at $30,000 okay it's just you're getting back that that amount of dollars if the entire program goes right but I would assume that if you have

174a lot more transport of the high school school it's probably that that would be probably what you're saving the total savings for a middle school organ right well and you know as I was watching baseball trials today for the Middle School um and talking with other parents knowing we had this upcoming I I was wondering you know would we be able to do a middle school program with volunteer coaches that get the certifications that are required by the state to coach Public School sports you can try but not a lot of I mean you can try um I don't know that we would have a volunteer core big enough willing to go through all of that I can tell you Jad now I got baseball covered and probably basketball BB you know show every day

175um but if we're doing it for free we can if we're volunteers yeah I mean yes you can try you know if people approached me and and you know we had some people willing work you guys we would try to put something together but but what would be predictable and consistent would not exist right and that's the thing is people's lives change people will you know will try to do it and they can't do it you know that's why that's why all the schools have these programs right I'm assuming that $30,000 for for Middle School is mostly the stiens that we pay the coaches I'm I'm assuming that's it I'm assuming the the transportation doesn't eat a whole lot into that 30,000 with what we're already paying break it down but you're not getting a

176ton out of it but also if you eliminate Middle School athletics the feeling is at least you have higho and at least you have Town Athletics programs right I'm not suggesting this or advocating for it I'm explaining you're just giving us the that you know but um yeah yeah I there's a lot of work to do I think check um a lot of my questions have been answered um but what I have more of a statement that I think that we need to be cognizant of so everything that we take away has a Snowball Effect right so and I appreciate that we're all kind of spitballing different things and trying to think of different ways to I don't know rob Peter to pay Ball but when when we start eliminating programs we and and Educators

177then we're eliminating people in front of our students which limits the opportunity to educate the students and opens up the opportunity for potential tier one tier two tier three tier four special education programs which end up cost us costing us more when we talk about um we talk about the buses for instance and and changing the routes and then changing an entire school schedule even just when we're at the middle school talking about losing one class or one language like having a foreign language be there as a core class that would fix a lot of the problems with the scheduling but then that takes hours and hours and hours of Administrators times to reschedule and redo what that schedule looks like for the six seventh and E grade or whatever I just think that we

178need to be cognizant of what snowball effects that we creating so there's I'm concerned about the lot of a lot of the pre-investment on here because now we pre-investment a lot of it started Co a lot of it that started 11 years ago with the the less less an inflation average um we just need to be cognizant about any decision or any elimination or reduction maybe we're saving money at this juncture but we're not saving money we're only creating a bigger hole for ourselves to get out they said it we've got a lot of work to do I don't know what that looks like um I will say sports I was looking at the supports line and um know some of these Sports aren't offered in town There's track club cross country the tennis those

179different things um the other soccer then soccer stops at the high school levish unless you're paying from the travel business right um but then the ramifications of losing mdle School sports is then you lose the opportunity of having that competitiveness in the high school sports because now you have those folks that aren't ready to they AR transition so like for instance there's no there's no town league that's going to teach anybody do the long jump or The discus or all those things right um and we had our valid toan I think is a champion tennis player what what they were saying tonight so that's after that's you know um and there's a club at the middle school that works with the high school on that I don't know where he started but my point is

180is that was available um I think we need to be cognizant of that it's a pretty ugly list it's pretty brutal I think that conversations need to be had and discussions need to be made and I know where I stand is what did Andy Powell call us you call meeting guardians of guardians of educ guardians of Education right thank you so guardians of education so we need to be guardians of education and really submit a budget that's going to support our students and our staff we heard Audrey talk about it [Music] um but I think it's it's not just our job and the town council's job and Dr R's job about social media and advertising and lawn signs and signs on the green it's bring your friend to vote that tell your neighbor you're at

181a party you tell the neighbor you know there was one day I was I was at an activity for Colin soccer club TRS and I'm like man if I could just take this whole group it was during the referendum or whatever election I'm like man if I could just take this whole group down there there how many people are blissfully not understanding what's going on and how it impacts their their family on no matter what level your family just starting out or your family have retired and it's just you're the only person there so I just think there's a bigger impact and I think we really need to take a good look and just see how our decisions will impact us but I don't have any questions because thank you ktie no you know because

182I came in late I'll review the the meeting and then if I have questions they'll come up another time but I'm not going to waste people's time no think things have already been said so I'll have a look at that Dan thanks Tony um yeah it's unfortunate to see this list obviously um some of the just really quick questions and I'm not I'm just narrowing my list of questions down from what I've heard across the room already um but there was a line item uh as far as custodial cuts um again not level of importance of things I'm talking about but during FFC we already discussed being above budget by over 200 % this year um is that just going to like keep like making that even further Dr Willet or what's the impact there

183what's the thought process around that one light item I just we talked about it two weeks ago so it's top of mine right now you mean uh custodial being over over over budget because of the subs sub custodians because everybody's sick kind of thing yeah exactly but if we cut one are we going to need even more subs um well I guess the think is you know it's not great now and we're using these Subs to cover and we continue to use the subs to cover um I think you're you know we're just looking at a terrible uh budget situation this year and the objective is to try to spread it out a bit so you're not losing teachers so yeah again it's a calculated risk right we would have more headaches we would use

184Subs it would be difficult to manage but we still have more classroom teachers you know okay yeah thank you just want make sure I process yeah thanks I think just pre- buying anything whatever we can from the current Surplus that we have makes a heck of a lot of sense to me uh I know we talk a lot about the last 10 years and the last or 10 12 years 1.6 1.7 uh love the fact that this board is you know we far exceeded that number last year and we're currently trying to do it again this year um we're seeing the effects of doing the increase that we did last year this year for sure we froze the budget uh the border of Education when I first joined uh FFC as well as the board

185in November I want to say right now our budget still isn't Frozen as we're heading into April I know the years are very different obviously but I think things are trending positively unless I'm looking at all of those numbers wrong so we're it's heading the right direction but these cuts are crazy um none of us want to see it but it'd be awesome to potentially start looking at just the s in my opinion I would love to hear the superintendent's thoughts or Dr Willet your thoughts on you know obviously what is the best route forward that's going to be the least impact to everyone um I'm always open I I know this is a long list but whatever we can add back and then the only other item is just um SRO is one thing

186that was a big ask from or a big sticking point with the our part is at the Town Council level that's an easy area I would say that we should get some funding there from the Town Council for what they're asking us for um let's use whatever fund balance or whatever it is to kind of open the checkbook and take one line item off of this decrease list but I know that's a drop in the bucket compared to what we're having to do here but any solve is worth taking a look at here from what we can get from that that end all all my other questions were answered honestly so I do appreciate it everyone here that's it Tonia thanks okay so I wanted to wait until everyone went around for two reasons so

187the first one was is that I was taking notes as everybody talked and Dana kind of touched on this and I think we're realizing I'm going to jump around a little bit guys I'm not as organized as I could be with this because I'm trying to put things in buckets but everything's everywhere which is kind of also being the point where it trickles into everything but so first thing I just want to knowe is that there were I believe if I'm counting correctly 32 line items of reductions that were already encompassed in our adopted budget so these are everything we're talking tonight is an addition to 32 reductions um something screaming at me is that you know I think I think we all believe a lot in education for a lot of ways but I

188think that a lot of people probably generalize and um this is aren't we trying to increase aren't we trying to give students the opportunity to go to college or into the workforce like isn't that our ultimate goal we want to get them all the way through our system we want to graduate them we want them to go on to further education or to the workforce and we want them to be able to have the skills to do that there's a lot of things on here that we're even thinking about or any moves we could make to adjust them is going to decrease our students opportunities for college it's going to decrease their competitiveness um you take away clubs you're taking away so many extracurriculars these kids do you have kids pay higher amounts for clubs

189you're again diminishing the opportunities for a lot of kids to be able to put those on their college applications forget about everything that they may take from these clubs some are just for fun some are skill related um I know we're not getting super specific into some of the staff Cuts but take away some of these positions we're looking at in the high school again these are things that people are that students need to enhance themselves to be able to apply for colleges to make themselves competitive against other students in other districts who aren't doing this um so you know Deca uh Audrey mentioned it she talked about a bunch of deca things right we talk about Deca all the time the thought about that club going away opportunities for kids opportunities for them to

190get into schools opportunities for them to get scholarship through schools not everybody can pay for their own education I couldn't I did it all on own and I just finished paying it off um to Bill point you know I also think another thing with clubs is like my son is in Deca not going to Deca right now because he's playing baseball if Deca was $250 he wouldn't still be enrolled in Deca so he could go before baseball and after baseball so then I still paid whatever I to played for baseball a lot of these kids do multiple things and they can do that and some of us can afford to allow our students to do multiple things because of the prices so again you're going to you're going to limit the kids that can do

191these things um and then limit opportunities gymnastics that we just recognize tonight they're already paying I think like $2,000 each I think we have hockey that's kind of in the same boat um parents are already paying a lot for these things um something else that was mentioned you know Dan just brought up that was the answer of we'd have more subs but we're we want to save heads of course we do but then we also have to think about the fact that look at when we talked about four parah vacancies and we had a parah come on and explain to us how that's not good for kids because these Subs are not trained to be Paris and now we're taking away opportunities to bring in actual Paris and those are the kids that are those

192are the people that are with our most needy children and the less experienced people we have the more children will flip the more intervention we don't have the more children will go into special Edge all of these things are not what's right for kids um and they're they're going to cost more in the long run to Dan inest Point um there's a hole in almost everything we're coming up with and we're coming up with them because we don't want to lose these things you know we talk about the buses you know when we think about everything that would enccompass putting two schools on the same schedule is that what's best for kids if it is then that's why we do it we don't change the dynamic of the way that we run our school systems

193because of things like this I'll get to more of why I don't think that's necessary in a minute but it's not we're not making decisions on what's best for kids you know we we're going to decrease two buses okay I see the reasoning in that too we were here last board and the board before I think and kids were on buses for a long time and they were in the cold on those buses for a long time and when buses break down another bus has to go and get them and they're in the cold or in the heat for a long time um there's just so much we the reason why we did what we did was to try to take some of those things away because it wasn't good for kids and it wasn't

194good for families and now we're going to go back to that again I understand why we feel like we're being forced to but it's not what's best for kids so it's not an easy thing to do we have to also be careful about talking about bosses and talking about maybe we don't agree with pieces in the contract this is the only bus company that came out to bid for us it's all we've got and the data at the time and I was the board was invited to be in the transportation meeting and I was the only board member who did that to sit there and listen to the fact of the national concern with buses because they're in the same positions everybody else is in and they're not taking small fish that easily so we've

195got this one bus company okay need to make some of these things work that concerns me mtss yes we got to see the younger kids doing it yeah it was it was great it was so important but I think and I don't want to screw this up but I think what we heard in the rounds when with the administrators was part of why we wanted to enhance mtss is we don't have enough of it or I think any of it in the School the older kids need it too we need more support there we just added another case manager this year because we're exceeding the amount of hours our current case managers can handle because that's how many kids we have in special education kids in the high school and again I learned this at

196the administrative rounds they were being moved from a social or a case manager that they had had to another one to adjust for schedules that's daunting for a student in a family who has special needs trust me um I I I get the anger and the frustration but I think I think we're also displacing some of it I think Tony can attest with me that we talked to Dr Willet about this constantly he's the last person that wants to do this and he's scrubbing and he's scrubbing and he's scrubbing and Tony and I are asking him to scrub and to scrub and to scrub so as we already mentioned some of us went to the I don't know of course everybody who attended some of us were there in person we went to the um

197Town council meeting on Monday night when the Board of Ed budget was presented and there was a discussion that some people have slightly mentioned about how the process works from the town's proposed our adopted budget to the town's proposed budget and what we basically heard was that the superintendent's proposed budget that he spends mons wor because we again know how long that took him before that came out the the hours we spend in this room all the Blood Sweat and Tears all our upset all our frustration all of our questions um the Q&A that Dr Willet spends hours and hours and hours with those long answers to all the work that we do the word that was used irrelevant irrelevant it's not about anything that we talk about it's not about anything in our budget

198books it's about a number and that number is specifically about raising taxes every almost every counselor but one both parties agreed that this process doesn't work it's not working they said various things and people can correct me but they said that it doesn't work they said it should change they said it wasn't good for the community etc etc every town counselor de we're wasting our time um the town coun the town manager stated that each failed referendum last year led to reducing the Boe budget that's a fact what isn't a fact is the insinuation that that was a necessity there's nothing in this referendum process that shows what department the community is voting for to get more to get less nothing there's no way for them to express opinion in that refer referendum process it

199is based on a number that they people do or don't want their taxes raised to that is the only thing in there so choosing our department every single time with the most significant I want to say only Cuts but I think there was a tiny little something in the beginning was a choice it was a choice and it was against everything I saw almost everything I saw that was in correspondence to us to the Town Council public participation everyone said throy don't feel motion to go past 10: second discussion okay Jen Brian bill hi hi Jen hi Dana hi Dan hi Katie hi okay so um so yeah they decided to keep cutting us and even though the Tommy under stated publicly at one point that he could find reductions elsewhere and they they just

200cut us at the end um so you know I and like I think everything I saw was overwhelmingly in support for the Boe not to lose more money every single time that's the only feedback that's the only feedback that's given is the emails that come in to us and the Town Council and the public participation that comes to us in the Town Council there's nothing in have done so you know and again this idea that the community doesn't want to support our schools I I don't often talk about votes I know we have a town counselor who does so I'll just say this I know for certain that there isn't a person that voted for me in my first term or my second term that thinks I'm okay with this that thinks I'm going to

201advocate for any of this that one person guarantee it call me if you voted for me and you thought I was going to make massive cuts to the education system so getting to my larger point the we've got to find a better way to do this this isn't working it's Groundhogs Day some of us have been doing this for two years some of them been doing this for a lot longer and I bet you that we're all sick of this process and we're tired of feeling our time is wasted and we're tired of letting the students in the district down and we feel like there's nothing that we can do about it except what limb are we cutting off next what Limb and will it come back next year is everybody no say it doesn't

202come back the kids are noticing it doesn't come back sixth graders and seventh graders and eighth graders were telling us it didn't come back I always Le rounds with a full heart I left TMS rounds with heartbroken and you know what I why I was heartbroken because those kids had hope those kids sat there and they asked us to enhance the things that are they're not asking for HTML encoding they already have some they're asking for more they're asking to advance themselves in middle school and we had to look at them and take notes and thank you when I know we're not adding a thing for them we're taking more away so the reality is is that there's there's more funding that the town should be considering we all know that the The Bard of

203vet average is 1.6 over 11 years the unassigned fund in the town is doubled in 10 years it's over the percentage what a good amount over the minimum amount of percentage that they're supposed to keep in that unassigned fund there's other Reserve funds there's tax stabilizations fund Municipal stabilization fund there's unassigned funds for certain departments apparently why it's a tough year it's a Ral year okay why aren't we looking to offset other why aren't other departments going into their unassigned funds why aren't we looking to take more from our unassigned funds or these other funds where's as Brian mentioned where's that 800,000 going is it going to significantly try to help our district other towns help their districts or any Department that's failing failing is a funny word I'll get called out on social media

204for that one anyone that's looking at this amount of significant Cuts year over year over year and taking away from the experience of children you you some of these positions I'm looking at that we could cut in the high school I can't even believe we would think of increasing those class sizes my kids are in those class sizes there's 28 kids in them standard co- teing and now we're going to increase that but you're going to have more kids in special ed no mtss support to help them so what we need is the process isn't over right just like superintendent proposes a budget to us the town manager proposed a budget to the Town Council that's where they are they don't have to take that budget and they don't have to go down I I

205I'm sorry I wasn't at the Joint meeting I had some personal reasons that I couldn't get out of but I heard that it there wasn't a lot of questions being asked um I know that two counselors Chris Mar and Jen buckler attended our rounds with the administrators and had the opportunity to talk to our administrators they were there the other counselors were not for whatever reasons we don't have a lot of attendance at our meetings again I think we see some of the same on here we need a real conversation with the people that are making these decisions these are elected officials we're all elected officials here we were all put here by the community we need a real conversation with these people there are there were four counselors that were cut that kept reducing

206our budget last year we need a real conversation we need to talk to them about what these impacts are we know what the impacts could be now we're seeing the same thing year over year over year and it's only getting worth what's next I really want to believe that the two boards in this town can come together and and talk about options and opportunities this shouldn't be the end of the conversation about it we shouldn't just have to cut based on whatever conversation they're having that they're saying does not include this information so here's my second reason I waited for the end I'd like to make a motion to action the Board of Education chair to reach out to the Town Council to request a special meeting to discuss options and opportunities to support the

207Board of Education adopted budget request and to discuss the effects of a budgetary reduction on the toal public schools district prior to the Town Council budget of Puka do I have a second second discussion can you read that again J late at night to action the Board of Education chair to reach out to the Town Council to request a special meeting to discuss options and opportunities to support the Boe adopted budget request and to discuss the effects of a budgetary reduction on the Talon Public School District prior to Town Council budget approval basically before you make any more decisions can you talk to us about what we're going to lose and can we at least look at it can you at least look at the items and see if there's anything that you're willing to

208help us out with here before we go further Lea did you get discussion you didn't get a second yeah I did okay Jaden I did I was just curious don't they have access to this list I mean surely they do no not to today well well after this meeting they will because it's in the meeting right it's public the list is not it's on the border on the you have a tool for the purpose of discussion you've made no determinations and you you've actually not instructed me you know there's nothing you're publishing you're having a conversation based on information I mean certainly I can help in any way you want but I think you are you have decided not to make any determinations so you know everything is subject to change based on your deliberations

209and while we're in discussion I think personally why why I'm going to support the motion I don't think this has not been enough you know the the the content that's been provided to the council has not been enough so far you know everything that's happened I think everything that Jen just mentioned I won't speak for Jen from my perspective why I'm going to support this it has not been enough so far and so whatever we can do to again get get get in front of them and have a conversation with them I completely support let's let's do you know I'm that's I go back to it a minut I'm GNA need you to come to every meeting so I pointed you John uh but we we go back to that that initial one you know

210how do we get the word out how do we get people to understand what their dollars are doing what we've been doing the past couple years isn't reaching we've got to do something different if that's asking for a special meeting if that's giving the council the opportunity to understand more that they don't know know that you know what I mean I agree BR how so the Motions about these potential cuts that are going to be made the motion is for for me to approach the Town Council about having a meeting to discuss opportunities to fund uh the board of education's requests and the effects of reductions to that well that's what my so before I even finish that what I was saying was that is this is this list this potential list is what of

211reductions as you're speaking of in this motion to discuss the potential reductions are going to be presented to the Town Council or what do do you want them to know that we might lose all of these list of whatever it come out to be 40 50 items teachers uh pathway ways all Middle School sports I mean the list goes all every Club in town is this I mean I think it unless they see this list it's just more jabber that they won't ask any questions at at the at at another meeting so my answer is yes I want to talk about all of this we're going to have to talk about it the same way that we do theater there's obviously larger reasons we're not putting it public to right these are people's jobs you

212know nothing is permanent yet so no I understand I think part of what Dr it's doing is maybe not instilling fear before we get to a certain place right too so I think we would have to discuss it in this way we'd have to let it be something that they could VI with us and to be quite honest with you Brian I'll discuss whatever they want to discuss as long as they have a discussion with us and T's point they're we can give them all the materials we've given them lots of materials they're not looking at it they they told us they told us that they're not so I I would agree to you I'd love for them to look at it and come to their own decisions but they're not and to Jaden's point

213to Jaden's point I just want to respectfully disagree with your words it's not that we're not giving them enough information it's that they're saying that they're not using that information they're not utilizing that information or at least some of them are not and therefore they all said that this process is not working almost everyone there I can name the exact counselors if we want but they were on both sides the other thing I have to like Counterpoint or whatever but I I I do want to State though even though I I was at a p this statement about the bus bus company and what not I'm not talking bad about the bus company whatsoever I'm trying to find funding so we don't lose these things that's my only thing that that's to answer that I

214I don't think that that's your your intention but I also know that sometimes people take from our meetings different things than we intend them to so that's why I was just saying that like when we talk about things about maybe being sounding unfair or dollar amounts what not that are in contracts we just have to be careful about that because again they're our only bus company right now and we can't run a school system without a bus company that's all I didn't I'm is saying anything bad do a good job yeah the motion on the tapable all right well I just wanted to clarify a point I didn't want it to come across that I was saying something that was portrayed that that I was being negative against the bus company and it's not so

215thank you so you only are going to go and speak with them is that what the the whole board to attend this I would like to have a public meeting the direction as I understand is for me to approach the council to organiz okay hearing none you okay d yeah all right po goldfish Dr wallet's got candy over here so vote Jaden hi grey hi Brian hi Bill hi I Jen hi Dana hi hi Dan I Katie I all right motion pass okay so being cognant of the time understanding we have still one more action to do I'll look around the room for any Gob backs on the current agenda it I would just like to say one thing not a go back I just I'm appreciative of the conversations and I I know it's

216been a little or I think everybody's either had questions or statements but are bringing something to the table that's a conversation we well and I think that that's something that's going to help us progress thank you for coming thank you good you know I think having these conversations whether someone's idea is shot down for a reason or taken if we don't talk about it then it's it's like the question not ask so let's keep asking that question let's keep working for J is my all right Dr Willet board action educational Reserve fund okay so you have access to this um your own system okay um so educational Reserve fund as you know um each year Board of Education after the third quarter of the fiscal year when the audit is complete and move funds into

217the educational Reserve Fund in the past under ordinance 86 chapter 8 there there was a process involving the council now the board can uh make a motion to have those funds moved into the RF independently so um you know it still has to happen after the third quarter of the F school year because the audit has to confirm that those funds are actually available and that they are what we thought they were so at this point um the erf balances of March 13 I'm sorry March 17th was 143 38460 erf transfer approved by the Board of Education in this meeting uh of 76 would create a total of 219 63237 keep in mind that the budget process right now currently has the potential for allocating about a 100 to offset energy costs and actually this

218was written before some of this stuff here too so the another 100 might go to um the tech if you're off you know offsetting the tech initiative so this says 119 632 but as I'm reviewing everything we're doing if you took another 100 you'd have 19 , 632 if you only took the 100 for um energy it would be 119 632 if you take 100 for energy and 100 for offset of it one to1 initiative you'd have 19632 this was done before put in here so that's your status um the Connecticut General statute that now gives you the independent ability is 248a the provision is there and what You' need to do tonight is uh make a motion to uh move that money into the erf Dan as FFC chair do you have any comments

219Dad yeah no I I absolutely support doing this um just because of the update in the statute here we were potentially able to you know do this um just based on FFC um I would say uh but we wanted to talk about it here so I think it makes sense so nothing further though thank discussion all right I will entertain uh the motion Board of Education pursuant to G oh God cgs1 d248 hereby authorizes the deposit of audited balance of June 30th 2024 of 76247 77 into the Board of Education Board of Education educational Reserve fund second second discussion hearing none jie hi Frank hi Bill hi hi Jen hi Dana hi Dan hi hi all right Dr will make the deposit all right public participation two-minute limit comment limited items on this agenda as

220always if you would like to speak please raise your hand to be recognized give your name and address for the minutes going twice all right Dr will we will close public participation points of information uh would anybody from the board like to speak just like to thank everybody for heing the motion and just like to point out that that was a unanimous vote anybody else Dr Willet tell us about our future I would highly recommend going on the last construction rounds of the year uh May 1st and signing up early is always great because we get to how when you're coming and you know make accommodations for that um it probably will not be 9 to 3 the whole day but it it'll be you know a good chunk of time as it usually is

221um in co- teing you'll have a really good opportunity to get to dive deep on that which I think you'll really enjoy um all of the stuff that you've seen I think you you've been you've really enjoyed that I guarantee you you'll love this it'll give you a really good sense of what we do um and again the heavy lift is done by the Admin the teachers you know the other staff some thanks to them but uh I think really think you'd find this extremely informative do we know it's going to be a cross District we'll be traveling around co- teing is a cross District so there's no one school that's why it's a district one you'll see uh you'll see different environments awesome all right everybody thank you I know it's a late one

222I appreciate each and every one of you for what you do have a great day motion to Second discussion Jaden hi weie hi Brian hi Bill hi hi Jen hi Dana Dan hi Katie hi you the door locked after you me I did no