Torrington Board of Education Facilities & Technology and Budget Committee Meetings

001this facilities and technology committee meeting. Roll call, we got Jeff, Joe Oh, 5:31. Roll call, we got Jeff, Joe, Lena John Mr. Burger I'd like to do approval of the agenda. Uh yes, so moved. I'll second. All those in favor? I. The agenda is approved. Approval of the minutes from last meeting. Second. All in favor? We'll move to public participation. No. Anyone here? All right, discussion next next steps, technology. Take it away. Hello. Um so, first thing I have is the Parent Square update. So, um every few months I'll switch up the social media updates with Parent Square. Um and I thought that now would be a good time because in the recent weeks we've used it quite a bit for some weather-related closures and things of that sort. Um so, I thought it would

002be a good insight um as to how we're reaching our parents. Um one of the things that jumps out to me in particular across all of our schools is that email is still our um our method that we reach the most families at home. Um a lot of families do have the app still. Texting we do have, you know, um some data for that as well, but you can see that at every school email is by far the um top way that we reach our families. Um I don't know if anybody has any questions on the packet. Um I'd also like to um say that last meeting I did mention that there was going to be a food service Facebook page coming. Um that has been created and content is being collected for it. So,

003once that is up and running, um we will certainly share on the Torrington public page, the public schools page um on Facebook so that we can um you know, share the the views amongst that and we'll see what Kristen and her food service team have been up to. Are there any questions? Yeah. Yeah, good job. Uh just a quick question. On these graphs, is there any report you can generate that shows um year-over-year improvement or, you know, quarter-to-quarter improvement? It's the numbers are awesome seeing the engagement with the people, but it's hard to tell if it's a significant improvement or a you know I'm not sure, but I can certainly look. That would be great. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else? Yeah, they do look good. >> [clears throat] >> So, if we're all set on

004that, I'll move on to um tech update. Um in the packet, you'll have a breakdown of our protection plan that we offer to all of the students here. Um it was asked that I kind of give an update on how that's going. Um so, you can see um I broke it down by school, the participation, what was collected from families, um as well as the amount of breakages, and what is being billed home. Um so, compared to previous years, we are doing pretty well. We've collected, you know, almost half of what we've billed out, and we're almost at the end of the school year. So, that's quite a large improvement um over previous years, even despite the fact that um the participation in the elementary schools um it is a bit lower um mostly because

005we moved to the uh in-classroom cart model where the students don't bring their Chromebooks back and forth to school. Um but you can see as well that that has made a huge improvement on the number of breakages, you know, it's three out of the four schools have zeros. Um or well, the last one's fast, but three of the schools have zero breakages, and there's one with only one breakage for the entire school year. Um so, definitely a huge improvement. Um are there any questions on this? Um, I'm I'm slightly confused by one of the comments. You said that we've collected half of what we've billed, and I may just be misreading the document, but it looked like we had billed $22,000, but we'd only collected 1,900. Um, in participation funds is is what I meant.

006So, we've collected, you know, about 12,500 in participation, and the charges that have billed out are about 22. So, it's about half. So, but a charge that's billed >> [clears throat] >> would be for somebody who was not covered by insurance, correct? Correct, but the protection funds go to a pool of money that are used to purchase um, items to repair devices. True, but it would seem that the important number here would be that we're collecting 9% of what's been billed. That is correct. Um, we have in recent weeks started, um, making phone calls home to try to get some of those bills paid. Um, and even since that has started, I have seen payments coming through. Um, and we are also holding true to the fact that students are not receiving, um, their original

007device back, um, without payment. They take a, um, day-to-day loaner. Have we been meeting the timeline? Just just cuz we we worked on that policy. We we weren't sure how it would pan out, right? Um, so, how has that gone as far as has anybody been restricted from I'm assuming with a 9% payment rate, people have been restricted from attending certain things since we're two-thirds of the way through the school year. I have sent the list to the building administrators of students who did not, um, pay their damages, whether that was, um, you know, anything was withheld from them. I I don't have that information. No, understood. That's just But that if it's not happening, that kind of cuts the legs out from underneath your ability to to run that program, right? So, I guess

008it's probably a different venue for me to ask that question in, but um, thank you for the information. Yeah, absolutely. Um, are there any more questions on this before I move on? Okay. Um, I feel like we kind of just met, but I did want to give a little update, um, into the Arctic Wolf, um, situation that we have. Um, many of you reported the last fishing scam to me, so thank you very much. Um, and I would like to say, so the last time that I presented, um, this data, I think we were at about somewhere between 20 and 30% of a completion rate of staff that were, um, completing the trainings, and since then we're up to 50%. So, a really nice improvement on, you know, the teachers getting in and doing those

009little trainings, and hopefully we'll continue to move in this direction. Are there any more questions? Um, in order for them to be considered successfully completing, what percentage of the courses do they need to complete? I ask because I see that one per week goes out to everybody, which is a I mean, I'll say that's a it's a great thing to get that kind of education, but I would be really impressed if half the teachers and half of the staff were doing the training once a week, and that was what was counting towards, you know, successful completion. My customers have a hard time reading that reaching that rate. So, if you guys have found a way to do it, I'd love to hear how you're doing it. Um, can you repeat the question? >> So, it

010you're sending one educational piece per week. Correct. So, how many how how many of the say nine that have been sent since January 1st have to have been completed for them to be considered compliant? Is it all nine? Yeah, yeah, it's it's all of the data. That's fantastic. >> of the sessions that have been sent out. If yeah, if you're at 50%, that's amazing for something that goes out once a week. Yep, and the they, you know, sometimes have a little quiz attached to it. Um, average quiz score is 92%, which is great, as well. Um, the last fishing scam went out to just over a thousand people. It did get, um, 113 clicks, so that's 11%. Um, but I did have a lot of people report it to me. And to be fair, um,

011they can get pretty tricky. Um, I don't know if you guys saw the e-invite one, but they even had, uh, links that looked like you can download their app and and things of that sort. So, um, very very tricky, and, um, I appreciate the people who have reached out and said, "Hmm, this just doesn't look right." And that's exactly what should should be happening, you know, it's really about, um, just asking our staff to think twice before they click. And if you're unsure, just ask, and we'd be more than happy to look into it. That's great. Thank you. Yep. Anything else? I have a question. Is there are there any repercussions for staff that don't comply with the trainings? Um, not at this time. It If you, um, fail so many of the simulations, they'll

012kind of put you on like a performance plan. Um, so, they'll they'll give you like an extra training session, um, to get you, you know, back up to speed, but other than that, no, there's Okay, so, the ones that just don't click on the trainings, there's no nothing happens to them? Not at this time. Okay, thank you. Mhm. John. And it's certainly not the training model's fault. You did a good job of picking a program because those are varied, there's a texture to them. They're quick and they're useful, so, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Anyone else? You good? That's it. No. If I could, Mr. I have a quick quick tech question, if I could uh, throw it down to the tech department. Um, maybe not for tonight, but could we get, um,

013an average response time or an average ticket, you know, how long a ticket stays open Yes. >> tech department to get an idea, you know, what that response time is you're able to provide from start to closure on most of your tickets. Just trying to help you figure out staffing and how many people you do or you don't need. You know, if you have a 12-day turnaround time on a ticket, it's hard to take people away. If you have a 1.1-day turnaround, it's an option to do, you know. Absolutely, I can get that for you. Thank you very much. Yep. Thanks, Rachel. Thank you. Uh, move on to facilities. Dean. Okay, hello, everybody. Um, first on the list are our project updates. You guys, um, received the packages the other day. A few things were

014added. A few things were taken off. Um, any questions on some of the stuff that we're doing that sticks out or glaring or you have questions about? Add. Dean, is there a way to get the chart to show like if it's a capital capital project versus you know, general maintenance project versus Yeah. you know, just it's hard to tell looking down. Yeah, most most I'm just going to say most of this stuff is been, um, you know, most of the stuff on here is general, but there are some capital on here. Obviously, if you see the chiller, um, and things of that nature that are, you know, in planning. Um, but yeah, I can do that very easily. Yeah, I just like TMS cool down room. I have no idea what the cool down room

015is, and I wasn't sure if it was that could be like a expansion that was a capital project or it could be whatever TMS cool down room is. Yeah, no, it's way less than that. Yeah. Just big name for it, that's all. Um, it's just a change of hardware on the door. On in this new building? Possibly, yeah, we're looking at that. What's the, uh, I only ask cuz the new building stuff, you wonder like what are we changing in a brand new building? Well, the use of the room, um, for a cool down room would be the lock hardware on there. You know, it could be just swapping out with another piece of hardware we have. Okay. That's why I think it's in planning. I really haven't dug into it deep. Just got the

016call on it. Okay. And then TIS wood shop to sped >> Yeah. As TIS wood shop to sped room? Did we take any of the equipment from there and bring it here? Or what's happening to the equipment over there if it was a wood wood shop? So, again, that's something that that we're planning on taking the I don't even want to call it It used to be a wood shop. It's been dismantled as a wood wood shop for years. I don't know how long, but there's stuff in there to remove off the walls. Again, not a ton of stuff. I think some of the stuff we're going to be doing in-house, um, to just get it ready and possibly turn that into a classroom. Yeah, but that way that You bring up a great point.

017That was Is there a possibility of a column for internal or external? Like is it an inside Is it something we're doing or is it something you're Cuz obviously your timelines, if you have a vendor to do it, it would be different, right? >> No, I have I'm going to be honest with you. Yeah, there's I have all of these built-in vendors, in-house, out-of-house. I just didn't, you know, I don't I don't illustrate everything on this particular form for you guys. But yes, I have if it was done in-house or if we have the who the vendor is doing it. Um, there's probably 15 lines on the sheet. Okay. Anyone else questions? All right, move to the capital plan next. Okay, so the capital plan uh, uh we made a few adjustments. Uh we put

018um we put under uh Major Besse Drive, 50 Major Besse Drive, which is the complex obviously. Um we put the um outdoor scoreboard replacement and we put portable outdoor bleachers in the capital as it was asked. So, that's in there. Um you the only other thing I want to bring up kind of just um brought to my attention is we are applying for a drip. Uh that's the name of it, D R I P, a drip um grant that we're looking to help pay for some of the chiller that's on our capital plan for Torrington Ford. So, uh we're in the middle of gathering the information on that and putting it together to see what we need to make that happen. Um other than that there was the when there's no other changes on the

019capital. Any questions on that? Um the scoreboard is shows under 25 Sorry, I that particular one on 50 Major Drive Besse Drive says $45,000 2026 estimate. And then 25 26 is 73,000 which would include the scoreboard, but they all appear in all of the columns. Yeah. Um so the estimate on the first estimate um if you follow the sheet up, it was going off of the 2022 facility study. This obviously wasn't in the facility study, so I just threw I just put estimate next to it in 2026 estimate. So, it stays consistent. So, if you look up to district plan, the next line up you see where it says in that same column instead of saying estimate it says 2022 F study. Yeah. That's the estimate that the facility study plugged in for a number.

020And so that's all that it is. Yeah, so the column that last column that says 25 26 probably means to say 26 27. I'm not I'm not >> Oh, you're right. It just this one particular one didn't follow the trend. >> right, 26 27. Yep. So, that means we're going to do some of it in 26 and some in 20 26 27. No, that means budget year 26. >> Right, no but the 26 2026 shows city total 45,000. At the bottom I I was just confused by this one being if it's just me misunderstanding it, it's on No, the date is wrong on that. What is the other point you're At the bottom of 2026 estimate it says 45,000. So, I wasn't sure if we were going to use scoreboard out of this year's capital

021instead of next Like I wasn't sure if you were splitting the funding source for those two. >> No. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, make that adjustment. Okay. Any other questions on capital? Yeah. Um next on the list is our district um maintenance uh ground maintenance specifications. So, we went back to our lawyer just you know, the Board of Ed's lawyer and we we gave him all the information on the previous contractor, the contract that was up and he suggested to go out to bid. Um not necessarily because well, he just it his total idea was go out to bid, it'll be safer, it's probably the best bet at this point. Okay, so what I did is I put together we got this message on Wednesday by the way. So, I ended up putting together as much

022stuff as I could um and I had already started this, but did not really plan on was anticipating that um we were going to extend, but obviously it didn't happen. So, um we put together a bunch of different terms and a and a much more um detailed specifications that was previously in place. Now, what I get what I sent to you guys uh Friday night or you got Sunday, um just you can you I'm sure you looked at it, but what I gave you today was just a little bit more work that I had time to put into it. Um so, the one I handed out to you guys it's got some red on there. Um on the first page, those are some small changes I made. Uh in here some some of the time

023frame got changed. And I also added a bunch of aerial photos you'll see in the back. So, when this does go out to bid, they're going to know, you know, exactly what lines we're talking about, especially when it comes to tree and shrub um to keep those lines maintained in a little bit better uh specifications cuz it was very vague in the last um the the last specification I read. So, I wanted to get it nailed down. I know that I know that this is you know, been um a lot of questions that people ask about our our landscaping. So, as you go through it, you'll see again some some of the changes in red, not a lot of additions, a few things here and there. Um Does anybody have any questions on or comments

024or would like to add or subtract or take away from this again, this is a rough draft. I put together this so we can at least start talking about it tonight cuz I know there's a lot of ideas out there. Um so, any questions? Uh sure, a couple. A couple actually. What percentage of this bid scope of this scope is the current vendor doing now? So, the current vendor is doing everything um except um or in partial uh number four, athletic field maintenance. Okay? Athletic field maintenance, they are taking care of obviously the turf we have now, but we are adding four more acres of turf on here. So, again, this scope has gotten a little bit more detailed, not much. They were doing all of this stuff anyway on that field. That's why our

025field looks so good uh just because of the maintenance we've been doing on a weekly and and monthly and you know, I don't want to say above and beyond, but um you know, I've had reports from different people, you know, other fields turfs that were done about the same time as ours don't look anywhere near as good as ours or have the lifespan that we have out of it. So, uh this is pretty much just keeping up with it on that end. Um um but again, on the on the non-turf end of it, they're doing almost everything, but it's again, it's I think um I think a lot of it kind of got lost in the weeds. No pun intended. Um as far as what the description was and exactly what the lines were and

026and what it's supposed to look like and when you're supposed to do it. Where this is is add a little bit more structure to it. Yeah, more details isn't a bad thing. I hope so. Um so, in and I'll just tell you so, the yes they are doing some, but if you turn to page five at the bottom again, that's I had to handwrite those in cuz I didn't put them in. I'll fix that. You noticed that? I wasn't I was just trying to explain. Um if you look down where it says Torrington Intermediate School and I have a bunch of question marks there Yeah. um cuz the these are things that I want to talk about tonight also. Um and these are some of the things that really aren't going to be done anymore.

027Uh my bullet points so, the baseball softball fields prepare for game ready conditions as soon as the weather ground conditions permit. That element is not there anymore because of the turf. Um We're not using this those fields at TIS anymore because we have the turf. >> I guess I guess that could be a question that we ask first. So, I checked with Little League. I checked with our schools. Um we really don't need two baseball softball fields up there anymore. So, it gets to the point where do we plant some grass and keep it as an open field and maintain it that way or do we continue to maintain it as a baseball bringing clay in every year. Lining it if you have something. We don't have anything planned to go there. In other words,

028all our sports are here. Uh you know, overflow? I don't know. Um you know, this year again, this year might be a little iffy with the fields, right? Be nice to have another field to depend on if we had to. Um but all in all I I I don't see a reason why we keep it as two baseball diamonds, especially to maintain it. This isn't the field out front along the main entrance. >> Mhm. And do any of the Little League associations use those fields or are they just used for soccer? >> yesterday who handle both the girls side of softball in that and they they don't. >> They use the one on the far side. >> over there. Now, have they in the past? I think I remember going on the field playing baseball

029or my kids going on there playing baseball with Little League. I don't know what happened and you know, it could be it could be, you know, attendance. They don't have this as much participation anymore, but you know, I checked with the entities. The one place I did not check and I will go to the Park and Rec to see if they have any I know soccer's out there, but that's not changing. Uh because it's going to be a grass field and it's got to be lined and all that. So, that doesn't change. So, that's my one of my questions is if we get rid of that we plant grass, there's going to be a cost to plant grass. It you know, it's not free to plant grass, but we won't be maintaining clay and fields

030and lines and backstops and everything else that's got to go over there. That's another point. Probably take down the backstop, too. At that point. >> would you take down all the fencing and all that like >> I can't. Would you take down all the all the fencing and all that all the fencing and all that? >> Well, I I would There's really the fencing is the perimeter of it and I would not I would leave that, but I but the backstop fencing, yes, if that's what you mean by that. Oh, yeah, I would yeah, I would assume taking that down so it's open field. You You or maybe keeping one field and getting rid of the other one is another option. Yeah, could do it in phases, you know, do get rid of one field

031one year and see if the other field gets any use and then a lot a lot of options there, right? A lot of options there. So, again So, no, we wouldn't be doing any of this stuff if we turned those into grass or we'd be doing one field of you know, getting ready for game conditions. Again, that that changes too cuz maybe that field that we do save is just a practice field. So, we don't have to really you know, we got to keep it safe. We got to bring clay in every year. We've got to fluff it up. We got to we got to maintain it like a baseball field, but maybe the lining and all that doesn't have to happen as much as it has you know, for our middle school and high

032school teams. Um So, that's that's what that kind of part at the bottom is to give a little explanation of my thinking going there. Um So, I guess what I'm asking is uh and and and we just again, uh sent out to our lawyer our lawyers this the the Board of Ed lawyers are our backup information, all the legal contract stuff to get that updated to 2026 so we're not using some of the stuff that we ran into with the middle school bid, the roof in the middle school bid, which wasn't a huge deal, but there was some stuff in there that wasn't in line with today. It was old contract language. They're looking at it now. He's going to take a look at it on Monday. He is in the Bahamas right now. Um

033and he made sure he told us that when he called us, but uh so, uh once we get that back, I would like to clean this up and get this out to bid as soon as possible, obviously. It's spring and we normally start some of this stuff, if you look at the dates within, you know, 3 weeks or so. So, I hate to rush this stuff like we had to do the snow bid, but it's the situation we're in again. So, I'm not sure how we can go forward with it. Um then I've got a couple of questions then, Mr. Pergola. Um one have we considered splitting this up so that people are breaking it out? I see that by individual schools, but have we considered allowing ourselves to pick multiple vendors? And the the

034reason I'm asking is that this scope of work pretty narrowly limits the number of vendors who can complete this level of work. The number of bidders will surely be fairly small. Um So, I guess my three thoughts are have we looked at allowing, you know, some some of our smaller contractors to bid on individual schools and hey, maybe one contractor comes back and can do the whole thing and that's the most cost-effective, makes it easier for sure. But there may be some savings to be had, especially for some of the smaller schools. Um secondly to that point, is there a possibility we can in-house some of the smaller schools like Toringford and for I'm sorry, Toringford uh Southwestern Forbes where there isn't an enormous amount of landscaping to do? Is there a possibility to save

035some cost that way? And then lastly, the athletic field maintenance I wonder if there's some value in splitting that off into its own bid cuz I'm guessing there are many many vendors who can do that type of work, but maybe not the landscaping work. Those are my three points on I don't know if anybody else on the board has anything to add to that, but those are my three thoughts. Well, can I start with the last one? Sure. Yeah, no, I did think about that and actually I spoke to Mario about it a little bit. Um and there really isn't that many people who do the turf as opposed to landscaping. So, the problem, you know but I still think it it may be worth pulling that out, but but you get into you you

036get into where's it start, where's it stop on the property? And if you have a separate contractor doing turf as opposed to the whole the whole kitten caboodle on one property right? There could be a problem there. Um And as far as the other schools go and us doing it in-house, I know they took that away. It's Yeah, it's really not in their contract now. Um they've been fantastic and they're out there doing stuff you know, they're they're trying when I say that the custodians have have been going out doing more and more outside just to keep the place, you know and I tell them the the the the the the landscaping contractor can't chase every leaf down when it hits the ground, but but we can. So, get them out of the doorways, get

037them here, get them So, we do some work to keep the entranceways and stuff like that clean. As far as doing a full-blown maintenance of it you know, again, we don't have the equipment um uh time, the manpower um it it'd be a whole shift that I think it'd be a What was the second one you said? Um So, there were the the second one was splitting it up into allowing multiple The first one was split into multiple vendors. Second was bringing it house. Third was athletic fields. Yeah. So, again, multiple vendors Yeah, I think you're probably you may, but you're probably going to get your best bang for the buck in bulk. When somebody comes in and they have all of the schools as opposed to breaking it up. Now, I don't know that.

038No, you could we go out to bid that way? Uh I guess we can word it to get it that way. >> Yeah, it could be worded that um you can quote all or any portion of it and we will we will consider a bid for an individual property for sure. But we're not maybe we're not obligated to take it versus a complete >> Yeah, you may you may have some of the ones who bid the whole thing adjust their pricing for that. Because it's not the whole in volume. Yeah, there are all kinds of possibilities. I'm by no means an expert on the subject. Maybe somebody else on the board has some experience with it, but >> if it's worded you could do like separate line items for like lump sums for each school.

039This school cost 20 grand, this school cost 30 and then you have your total at the end and then you Yeah, I had I had that in here broken out that way, but >> mean. Yeah. But I think it's considered Yeah. I mean, I guess we could use it that way. And but put we'd have to put it in the wording in there saying yes, you this could be a a bulk job or it could be individual school and then it's up to them if they want to stay bid. >> Yeah, that's how I mean, just keep it itemized like that and then you can use the numbers how you want. Yep. Just make that clear to them. Okay. Uh the athletic fields thing, how would there be a difficulty in dividing? I mean, you're

040either standing on the turf or you're standing on the grass, right? I mean, if you're talking about having two different vendors, one for the athletic infield stuff on the turf. I I know what you mean if you're talking about somebody doing one half of the school versus the other in in landscaping, but I mean, this is like the turf versus the grass, right? I mean I'm just trying to keep our options up. We have a tough budget year, obviously, so the options may be helpful and and if we get by the school, maybe there is an option with the union to to handle some of these small ones if maybe it's a great savings to us, maybe it's not. I mean, we're even the infield on the on the fields. I mean They're they give

041us training, I believe. Well, Mr. Longabucco's here, maybe he'll answer this later, but they probably provide training on how to do this maintenance to the fields as a part of the installation and the bid spec on that. >> Well, that's part of our part of the specification I put together is they do have to have um you know, training on how to do it and we spoke to thanks to Mr. Longabucco's help, we have contacted FieldTurf and there's training videos and stuff like that. We looked to see if there's some sort of certification and there really isn't, so it's it's there's a little bit of a learning curve for somebody new who's done it. Um But but most of the stuff that's done weekly, again um you know, the the the the the blowing off

042of it, the the maintain it, the garbage and stuff like that. Um you know again, we to get somebody here weekly is is part of it. It's part of it where where somebody's larger out of town company sometimes. And I'm only saying that because what happened with our snow removal this year. I think it had a lot to do with the distance they had to travel to get here to do this. Sure, I'm talking about the infield. Some of that maintenance, the ongoing weekly or monthly maintenance to our nice turf fields. If that's a $60,000 a year cost, let's say, to maintain it throughout the year. I mean, that's another custodian full-time. So, do we have the opportunity to do some of these things that we're going to get the training for anyways and let

043them be done in-house and look at something supplements your team, which you know, you're you're never shy about saying hey, we could always use extra bodies to keep the place in order. So, that's where I'm going with this is that maybe there's a possibility to Okay. keep somebody else in you know get some extra work and benefit to the district and to your department out of it. Okay, any other questions on this? Yeah, I have a couple if you don't mind. The um under the 50 middle um major vestry THS, TMS 50 major Yep. Paint temporary soccer lines on the varsity baseball field. We're painting the new turf? Say it again, please. It says paint temporary soccer lines on the varsity baseball field, tick lines for layout. We're we're painting the new turf? Yeah, there's

044temporary paint purposely made for this for practicing. Okay. So, what what is it? Just plain carpet out there, Mario? Or I thought it was a multi-purpose field that would be pre-lined. Okay. Um For the maintenance of the new turf. Kind of like similar to our current landscaping, our grass outside or weeds, whatever you want to call it. We weren't allowed to touch them for a certain period of time because of the the contract. The new turf going in is the installer part of the bid process required to maintain that field for 1 year or a certain period of time or they they install it and they're gone? They're gone after Say again? They're gone. Yeah. But we have a contract stating that open that up. They come in and do maintenance for Yeah, but I

045understand that. That's a Board of Ed bill. I'm I'm I'm thinking landscaping outside, we we couldn't mow the grass out here for a year because that was under the bid process. Whoever planted the grass had to maintain it for a period of time. Thanks. So, I'm just wondering with installing the turf, the people who install it, they're not required to maintain it for 1 year or or anything like that. They roll it down and they're gone. So, the maintenance of that becomes our responsibility day one. Besides the weekly cleaning going out there and doing stuff. So, you know, So, our you you were our expectation is this this contract, they're going to go out there weekly and clean the turf. Yeah, as you if you go through it, you can see what again, what is

046needed, Glenn. So, you again and I've learned that you don't want to overdo it with some of this machinery on here either because you flatten it and it does more harm than good to a point. But, to keep the place looking top notch facility, I'm expecting a weekly or every other day depending on what's going out there and out there to keep this place looking like it's brand new. So, it's in here, the wording is weekly maintenance and if you look under weekly maintenance, it kind of tells you what's expected to be done. Thank you for providing an updated um sheet here as well. But, we had a groomer, but I guess it's it's saying it's at its end of life. >> Yeah, it's it's it's there. You got to change the times on it

047and you got to do some other stuff to it and it's a it's the I I I don't want to say the first version of it, but it's from from the information I gathered, it's nothing that I would it's here. But, I'm expecting the the contractor who wins this to get the proper equipment to maintain that field out there. So, we got a groomer when we put in the first turf field, but this other turf that's three times the size, we didn't get a groomer. Well, again, this is a question I don't have. >> Was that in the turf or no? We're getting a new groomer with all that for $6 million? Yeah. Yeah, but but again, you know, I know it's specialized equipment, but I wouldn't want a contractor, if he's going to be

048here for a 3-year job, to purchase it, maintain it, keep it maintained as his piece of equipment instead of us buying it, having to worry about how they're treating it, how they're handling it, what is being done or what needs to be done with it. Just adds another layer to it. >> Well, essentially, we're going to be buying it. Essentially, we're going to be buying it. And then when he's gone, he takes it. Then we buy it again with the next contract. Or you maintain it. So, I can go get this one repaired. Again, it's 12 years old, 10 12 years old, spend five six grand on it. You know? Well, I don't I don't think we were suggesting that, Mr. Pergola. I think we were suggesting that maybe to what Mario suggested, if there's

049a device out there for $20,000 that we can own that also does the magnetizing, which I believe was in the spec to keep it clean. >> Yeah. We're we're trying to help you have, you know, the modern equipment to get the job done with the least amount of manpower cuz equipment is cheap, manpower is more costly, right? Time time is usually the cost behind most things. Um so, we're just trying to find a way to get you the tools you need, whether it's a vendor or yourself doing it in house. If you need to go out and touch it up really quick and you don't own the piece of equipment, you can't do that without the vendor coming out. So, we're we're just trying to find ways to be creative for you. Yeah. No, I

050got you. Any other questions? This may be crazy, but have we ever done a case study where what would it cost the district to handle this in house? No. You asking if I have ever done a case study? Yeah. Go ahead. If I may, I think that's a a great idea and I've been in districts where we've had it in house, but that entails bringing on a whole maintenance division. The way contracts are written for custodians are very different than a maintenance crew. Mhm. So, it it if we were ever to explore that, you know, that's a whole maintenance division that would handle something like that or going back to the table and try to reach another agreement with the custodial union to say, "Would you be willing to do X, Y, and Z?" And

051then obviously, as several board members have already mentioned, the machine costs, right? So, the machine costs would be uh pretty pretty high for the first year and then obviously, we would see the savings thereafter. But, to get all of the equipment needed and to get the manpower to do it with the size of our facilities, I think the question and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mr. Berger, but I think that would be a whole maintenance division. I think if you have a maintenance division that handles that, then I think it's worth looking at and exploring and how what's the number of people and what's the cost to that. That if that's something you'd like us to explore, I mean, I think that's viable to look at and say, "We would need

052X people. Here's the cost of the machinery. This is what it would look at." I guess we can if you ever thought about a maintenance division just for the outside landscaping that can also warped into other divisions where we're paying outside contractors as well, such as an electrician or a plumber. You know, they they would become part of the maintenance division as that department may grow. 100%. Dean and I actually had a conversation about that 2 weeks ago. I think if you have an in-house HVAC guy, if you have an in-house uh electrician, I think if you have an in-house plumber, you save a lot of costs and you know, even a general maintenance kind of carpenter. However, those price tags on those individuals, because those are highly skilled trade individuals, kicks it up a

053little bit and then you know, it is we have to just do an analysis if the cost is worth it. I am thinking the way you're thinking. I like when we have it in house because we can utilize that and we don't have to go out for things like filter changes, for example, or something of that nature. Um but, if we want to globalize the whole maintenance thing, um you know, I can definitely work with Dean and we could put uh something together for the board to review. I mean, that takes obviously a lot of time, but we would definitely be willing to do it. Him and I had that conversation 2 weeks ago. Um you know, cuz like I said, I come from districts where we've had that in house and it does have

054a huge cost savings. I'm just thinking about what the what we're paying for the current landscaping contract. Plus, we're adding a significant amount of additional scope. So, that number is going to balloon and what whatever that value is would be a good starting budget to launch a maintenance department if it warrants it. I don't know. Yeah. You cuz all the values that we wouldn't know as far as, you know, all your health care costs and workman's comp and all that stuff that you would have to include in that overall what? I would be interested, but it's it's really up to the committee if they would like to Yeah, I would say I'm interested, especially if it can be used. I mean, I would look at it as what are we going to pay for say

055a portion of the snow removal can be helping out with if we have a maintenance department, maybe reduce some of the overtime costs that were mentioned in the Q&A. Um you can handle some of the landscaping and the lawns and the sports fields linings. I mean, there's got to be a cost all of that that can be quantified into and maybe we can get some people who can do some more things and you know, you're always you're doing a great job trying to improve the place, Mr. Pergola. This might help you you know, take it even further. It it it may. But, I I you know, they they took it out of it for a reason also cuz I don't think it was. No, times have changed and I understand that. And like the boss

056said, that's a it's a you know, it's going to be a month I don't know if starting outside is the way to go with it. I would think starting inside is the way to go with building a maintenance crew because the inside work is there 7 days, you know, all all year round. Outside work, whether it's snow removal or yard work, again, it's not it's not there every day. I can keep somebody busy in in the buildings, no problem. So, I don't know if I would start it with an out outside maintenance crew before I started with an inside maintenance crew or a multi-purpose crew that can go back and in out. So. Okay, with that said then, if you would rather if your vision is start with the inside group, then perhaps we can

057do an ROI analysis to see what we're spending on outside services for inside work versus outside work. That would give us a good indication where the starting point should be. Mhm. Okay. I guess that would lead us to Mr. Berger down the the road of this is a probably a 3-year contract to ask. So, depending on how we phrase this right now, we really do set the stage for when maintenance department could pay for itself, right? If you have a 3-year contract with the lawn service and you have a 3-year maintenance contract with the snow plow, which we don't have, but you'll certainly bring to us in the spring. We try and figure out who's going to do it on a permanent basis. Those contracts only expire every couple of years. You don't get a

058huge window. You I guess we could cancel a contract, but that wouldn't be in the in the faith that we've been expecting our vendors to give us. But I think and if I heard Glenn correctly, Jeff, I think you're not wrong, but I think even hearing Dean if if the snow and the maintenance were separate for now, but the in-house so, you know, when Dean pays for HVAC to come and change you know, the filter, when Dean pays for electrician to come and change a light bulb, when Dean pays for whichever, he can do that cost analysis very easily and say, "Look, we can bring these two, three, whatever specialty people on and it would save X dollars." The The bigger component and if we want to go over there, I would say that's going

059to be 3 years out anyway or and/or get out of a contract with the clause that we have in there that we can part ways at any time. If the board was so inclined to say, "No, that really worked. Now let's bring in all the guys to do the cutting the lawn and to to plowing." But I think if we were going to start first, I think that's the more manageable one to start with and present to the board uh from a cost analysis perspective as to why we would possibly want to bring on extra people. I can understand that point of view, although I mean, 3 years is a long time. We We decided to redistrict the schools and and move 2,000 people around in 11 months before, so I mean, to that point

060you guys have been very good about if it has to get done, we're going to get it done. Maybe we can look at the athletic fields. I still think the athletic fields are the easiest one because we have We're talking about a $20,000 piece of equipment to have, I mean and that one's a pretty easy one to do in-house. The training is going to happen one way or another, but I'm only one member on this committee. I'll defer to see what everybody else thinks as well. Uh I mean, I don't know. Personally, I kind of like I I kind of like Dean's idea of starting inside and then outside. With the outside, the way I look at it is you you It's not as simple as the staffing. There's a lot of equipment involved and

061then with equipment um, you know, you needs to store the equipment, maintain the equipment, uh train people on the equipment, probably insure the equipment. The you know, there's it it doesn't just stop there, so kind of get your feet wet with the indoor stuff, establish some sort of a system and kind of build from there. How about on the turf stuff, Joe? Uh yeah, the turf stuff. >> That one seems like a $20,000 piece of equipment. Yeah, no. I mean >> Training's already free, so Yeah, with the turf stuff, I mean, same same idea. With yeah, that maybe would be a good for in terms of the outside, a a good stepping stone, a good way to kind of again figure out the system with the outside stuff, get the piece of equipment, train somebody

062on it, see establish some sort of a system in terms of maintenance, where you're going to keep it. Um yeah, I think starting with the turf would probably be a good a good first step with the outside. I'm just thinking that that number four's bid dollar amount's not going to be $9,000. It's going to be a So, I think it's going to be a fairly substantial amount, but so that's why I think it's a good a good place to start. No, I think it's um something worth looking into, yeah. Right? So, I guess can the bid doc be written that we reserve the right to not award the job? So, if we if you if you split it off to athletic field maintenance going out to bid as its own item, right, Dean? And what

063if we we'd also do the ROI on our own to see what we could do it for? Maybe we choose not to award it and bring it in-house and on that particular number. I mean, that's the only one that I think the my COBOL folks here on the board seem to agree with, so maybe we go out to bid on the landscaping and maybe we look at maybe we'll give you an option to bid it, but we may not actually award that one. I'm not sure. >> So, keep keep all of 50 Major Baisey Drive separate or just pull out the turf? I think we're just talking about the athletic fields and the athletic maintenance for the turf, right? >> Yep. And maybe the number will come back and it's $7,000 and it won't make

064any sense, but we won't know you won't be able to do that ROI unless you know what the cost would have been. Right. So So So, put it out individual schools and at this particular complex individual school and break out what the turf is. What the turf maintenance is. I don't think we have any other fields that we're really maintaining, right? I mean as far as athletic fields, only you just said that all we're going to use is Major Baisey Drive, so it would just be athletic fields. >> I'm asking everybody to to to bid and give me individual prices. With Major Baisey Drive here it's going to be landscaping and it's going to be turf. Sure, or you just pull the turf bid out and make it its own bid entirely, but I mean,

065whatever you Yeah, but I think it'd be easier if they just keep it all in and then we can vote verbiage in we can award all or part thereof at our discretion and we can cancel at any time with, you know, 60 days, 30 days written notice any portion thereof. So, yeah. Pull Pull it out and we'll have >> you would you entertain the idea of uh lump sum price also? No, I'd rather see it itemized. >> No. No. No. No. Itemized and lump sum. Well, yes. And if the numbers don't add up, if they look at the job and they say, "I'm going to do it for a discount price, 5% off the top if I get the whole job." And that number's available. Do you want to see that number also? Sure. If

066somebody wants to give I get If you give me the whole job, I give 5% off, I mean, that's that's part of the competitive process. >> I'm just using that as a example. Sure, 5, 10, 12. Hey, maybe 50% off. Whatever it may be. Yeah, that's certainly you can do a lump sum, sure. Okay. So, I guess everything else in this specification is Do you see anything else in here besides that that we should make adjustments to before we You probably just need to decide on the intermediate schools fields before it goes out to bid, right? So, what is Well, you you know, I guess I guess you know, uh yeah, we do. We do. With that said, I I don't want to get ahead head here, but there was some possible changes with the

067athletic department. I think if that position fits into the budget, perhaps we let that new person decide if they're going to expand the athletic program in grade in eight grades four through six where they may be able to utilize that space instead of Okay. Covering it over now and then, "Hey, this is what you got to work with." Yeah, it's an >> I don't know. Just Just trying to think ahead of what changes you guys are proposing in the budget. Maybe, you know, maybe that guy may have a different vision or gal. Four, five, and six utilizing the baseball field. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if they're planning on expanding sports or athletics into the grammar schools. I don't know. Who knows? That's That's Yeah, whoever it's going to be leading that department, that's their

068choice. So, we'll leave it in as keeping both baseball fields and maintaining them. Or that or you just don't leave them on the field, don't maintain >> going to be utilized, there's no reason to maintain them. I would say we turn them over so they don't grow in with grass a couple times a year, but that's about it. We don't need to line them on a weekly basis or do anything like that, but maintain the clay so it doesn't grow in. Have them turn the field over twice a year. I don't know, but that's I think they're you're saying that you don't need to put new clay down, just every once in a while scratch it, so grass doesn't grow up, yeah. Yeah, and again, if it's being used as a field, you you got

069to put clay down. If you have programs out there legitimate programs, we're going to have to turn it back into a safe baseball field as opposed to turning it cuz you're going to see by turning it again, Glenn, you know, obviously you know that two or three years of that, it's going to it's going to be a mess no matter what if you're not out there doing some deep maintenance of it. And the other option is to just not fill it in with grass, but not maintain it until the new athletic or however the athletic director thinks. Uh that that creates a bigger problem for you. You're talking about a few months Yeah, if you let it grow in, it's a bigger problem. Till September? Yeah, it'll grow in. I don't know. Whatever you guys

070think. I'm I'm not I'm not super sold on that. >> Well, I'll put it in there. I'll just um I'll put it in there to to maintain it. Um I don't know. That That's pretty maybe an internal discussion for you guys what, you know, what the superintendent and their vision is with an athletic department if and athletics in the grammar schools. >> So, you want to leave the decision up to us whether we're going to turn it to grass or not. I'm just saying maybe we should not force someone's coming in, not force their hand with what they have to work with. Maybe give them some options. >> All right. Okay. All right. Um so, again, time of the essence with these adjustments to this end of it and our lawyer looking at the back

071end of it or the front end of it. I don't know which which which way it goes. That could possibly use the front end of the contract and the bid documents. Um So, you want us to move this to the full board? >> Yeah. Pending pending the changes that will have you'll have before the Before when? I I get I guess we'll put We'll bring it to the board complete. Yes. With the changes on it. Gotcha. Okay. Got it. I just have one request. Could Could we make sure the final version is given to the full board for review more than 1 minute prior to a meeting? I'll do my best. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Dean. I'll make a motion to send this to the full board with the full changes being presented to the board.

072So, with all the changes we've asked for. In a complete document. So moved. I second. All those in favor? Second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. All right, we'll move it to the full board. Passes. And snow removal. Dean? Snow removal. Okay. Um Yes, you Any questions on this? This is what we put together to end the season. Um Did we I know there was this was a whirlwind thing for you guys. Did we end up talking to a bunch of small vendors or did we just go to the big guys and say, "Who can do it?" Yep. These two guys right here. Smaller guys. Did have discussions, didn't want anything to do with it, too big. Um at the global level, right? Did we ever ask anybody about You need some major equipment to

073do the snow removal. And some of the smaller guys At some of the bigger schools, right? I mean, we we can talk about this next year, but I think the option kind of exists the same way in snow removal as it does landscaping on a on a more permanent basis. >> Yeah, I have I have many different ideas when it comes to snow removal for our next go around. Many ideas that we'll talk about, um including that and a few other ones. So. But this is where we stand with this one. Anyone else with questions? >> So, I'm so I'm sorry, Dean. So, this is what was for to finish the rest of this year. That's what this proposal is. >> Yes. Yep. Okay. So, the extra equipment down below, right? The loader, skid steer,

074triaxle, and all that stuff. That's not utilized for every storm. Is that like a The upper numbers, are those like a flat fee to clean all the schools if it's a half inch to 3 inches is X. Yes, down below is and we utilize this or we started this when the last contractor left in the middle of the blizzard where we had to do major snow removal um from the sites. We either had to move it on site to a different location or removed a lot of much of it offsite. We brought it up to the intermediate school and we found a spot up there to put snow. So, that's what those fees are. So, the second large storm we had the blizzard where the guy left us and then we had the other large

075storm, we had some removal of snow um uh on site. So, we had to get to bring in a loader and things of that nature. Which again, and I I know we're not going to talk about it now, brings me to the type of equipment they're using also to eliminate some of this. So, I was able to get these guys uh to bring in a very large snow blower and try it out instead of pushing snow, building piles, to actually push snow and then blow snow further into the property so that we have many, you know, room to continue to add instead of I don't know if you guys drove through the school, but it looked like we were in the middle of uh you know, the Arctic with these snow piles all around, which

076is wasn't safe, it wasn't good, it was it was what it was at the time. So, again, those are some of the things I do want to talk about, but yes, Glenn, to your point, that is not every storm, that was only on my call where I thought we needed stuff moved, uh parking spots opened up, um vision going around corners cleaned out so you can see going around corners and different things of that like that. And is there like who determines, all right, hey, it's 3 inches or >> Uh there's a there's there's a there's a stra- there's um um I can't think of it. There's a service that's they get >> to that service or are we taking someone's word for it? We're I have the reports from the service. That's that that

077um the official snowfall. >> Yeah, the official snowfall, what it is in this area. And believe it or not, there's guys that get paid to go around and measure. Yeah. Cuz it's, you know, it's a big difference from 3 inches to 3.1 inches. It's like, whoa. Yeah. That was me and it was I would say every storm was 3.1. Well, I'm glad you didn't bid it. So, as long as there's checks and balances, so we're not just taking someone's word for it. Yes. Okay. Who is doing the work now? It's both both are listed here, but Uh Jesperson. Jesperson was was uh um again, 12% cheaper on some things and, you know, came into You got to look at different things. Now, for the majority though, for the majority of work that has to be

078done, it looks like they're about 12.9% not including the loader and things of that nature. That's where we got a little closer, but again, that's not every storm. Every storm we have to salt. We have to salt every storm. Um regardless if it's a half inch or like we had the other day, we had a we had to salt even with the delay. So, if they come out for 6 inches, you know, during the cleanup process, you are cleaning it up and you're probably dropping salt again at the end during that slushy period. Well, yeah. How does that work in this >> Well, this would be salt only. Okay, but for the storm, salt is included in that. Okay. So, when they come out. Yep. Any other questions? No. All right. Topics for future meetings.

079John, I know you have one. No? What about the emails? About the emails? Question for you as chair of the committee, that we had parent emails going to junk mail and we really shouldn't let that happen. That was why, but I privately had asked you that. Okay. Anyone else? Well, I guess just the standard uh comments for the good of the order. Go. Nothing, thanks. Good meeting. Good meeting. effort and uh lots and lots of fun work ahead. I'm there. Donna? Great meeting. Thank you. Good meeting. Good meeting. Thank you. And motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. And at 6:32. >> All right, we're going to call this meeting to order here in about 30 seconds once Josh has got us ready. We're ready. No worries. I'd like to call to order this Torrington Public

080Schools Budget Committee meeting on Wednesday, March 11th at 6:36 p.m. Uh roll call, we've got the entire committee and central office folks are here. We're looking for an approval of the agenda. So moved. Second. All those in favor? All right, next is approval of last month's meeting minutes. Anybody has any changes they're looking for? Otherwise, a motion to approve. Second. All those in favor? All right, public participation. Anybody here in the building like to speak to the budget committee tonight? For the public or anybody online, Josh? Okay. Hearing none, we will move on to discussion next steps. Review and approve monthly financials, over to you, Ms. Labby. Good evening, everybody. Um So, everyone had received the monthly financial packet uh to date to the end of February. And we are in great shape. I did

081just want to point out a few um answers to some questions that came up at our last budget meeting. Uh one was regarding the supply line item. And if you look if you want to look at the roll up on page nine, you're going to see for the supplies that were 80% spent. And traditionally in the schools, they're asked to spend down by 70% in the beginning of the year, have that 30% buffer um throughout the year. Uh so, that's actually happening and I did check in with the schools and a lot of that balance you're seeing is the uh non-instructional supplies. And then there's some uh supply funding from the cleaning supplies, um which we're sort of holding as a placeholder right now in case we might need to do a budget line transfer

082for other areas in maintenance. So, um I just wanted to address that question. And then the other question that came up um was the E-rate balance um or what we actually received for funding. Uh so, you'll So, we basically have two categories. Category two is like the hardware and category one is more the wiring. And we do receive um $56,000 for the hardware traditionally. Um and we put in 14 uh thousand. So, it is a match and for the category one, again, it's about 15,000 and um we receive approximately 100,000 uh towards the connectivity. So, I just wanted to give that update. Uh we also had a question um regarding dues and fees and also technical services and um licenses, which I had sent out to the individual board members that had asked those questions.

083So, does anybody have any questions about those updates? Uh quick question on the E-rate, where does that funding show up in the general budget? Technical services. So, it does come in as an offset? Yes, it does. Great, thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else have any questions on the answers to last month's questions? Um I just had a follow up. Did you say you sent you sent information about dues and fees? Oh, thank you. Dues and fees. Yes, the the dues and membership I had sent um directly, I believe to your um Board of Ed at email. Okay, thank you. I could resend as well if you haven't received it. Great. Okay, then as far as the packet goes, uh nothing out of the ordinary um that I haven't mentioned already, but on page 16, um

084I did want to point out there was one um area of unemployment. And we uh were trending over on that on that line item. And we did some deep diving. I worked with Ms. Jolty on it and we discovered that um the Connecticut Paid Leave Insurance, which is really a wash, um it comes in and out of our budget uh through uh the employees non-certified uh payroll. And what was happening is we were paying that out of the wrong line item. So, we have uh since then corrected it. And um I appreciate uh her help in digging deeper into that line item. So, so we're we've rectified that and we've made the um journal entry, so the next budget you'll see um that'll be more on track. That I believe is it for um me.

085Does Anyone have any questions before I ask a couple? No. Uh just a couple. I was just flipping through. I think we talked about this once before and it was the perfect attendance incentive, 5190.06 and 5210.06 on page 15. And I this may be me misremembering. I know we we noticed that it was in the wrong account and there was a reason that it had to be transferred later, I believe, but Wendell, when does that happen? Is that an end of the year reconciliation? I I looked through my notes and I just couldn't find it. Correct. So, I think it was being billed out under um the benefits line item and we wanted to move it to a salary line item. And I believe the um perfect attendance is paid out quarterly. Uh so, we'll

086be seeing that number moving. Yeah, it was an end of That's it must have been it was an end of year move. Okay. Correct. And the next one was school resource officer on page 16. That's 5340.10. I thought they were billing us twice here. I know they haven't been great about that. Sometimes they send us bills for years past. Um but I wasn't sure if we had any idea if if we were going to Sure. It's sitting at zero. It's hard to know if we're going to go over or under if Yeah, that we usually we tie that out exactly to their salary in the beginning of the year, so we we have the correct funding in that line item and they usually do bill us in June sometimes. So, but we have it. Okay,

087uh next was 5430.10, snow plowing contracted services on page 17. Um just with all of the snow plowing stuff that's come in, do we have an idea of how much of this we have been billed for yet cuz trying to get a judge on how far over we are going. Yes, so I know we just had some expenses come up recently. Um I'm going to defer to Mr. Prebola who could probably give you a little bit more detail information. Yeah, I don't have the exact number in front of me, but we do have received some bills already uh coming in. Um um a lot. Jenny, 100 grand any Yep. Yeah. Plus plus on top of what's already in here. >> Yep, depending on what, you know, I got to go through some of it still.

088I just literally just received some of it before we came to the meeting, so. Okay. Not enough to And just from a budget perspective, have we heard anything else from the prior vendor? Have we Are we clear on that? Are they Is that issue gone? Are we expecting to have to absorb any more of that in the line item? Well, he sent us an invoice for snow removal or something like that, but I'm and today went around to look at some of the damage that was done also. So, I am I'm you know, I'm just going to counter that, but I guess we're waiting for the lawyers to kind of deal with this. Okay. Thank you. And then I had one more. I know actually you answered it already, so no, I'm good on those.

089That was my questions. Okay, thank you. Anybody else have any more questions? All right. Uh need to get a >> [clears throat] >> motion to approve the monthly financials and send them to the full board. So moved. Second. All those in favor? All right, I. Then we'll move that on to the full board later this month. Next up, budget line item transfer report or requests. Those are on page 21 of the document. Anybody following along? Take it away. Sure. So, uh what you have in front of you on page 21 are the recommended transfers, line item transfers that we feel pretty secure doing at this point in the year. Um so, what you'll see on the first line is we have general maintenance um moving some money to landscaping as we know we did go

090um slightly over, we're actually over in that area. Um and we do have some economies of savings in the general maintenance uh budget, so that's a safe um transfer that we're recommending. And the next second line for tech services, we also have some funding there that um we were able to have again some savings by doing three-year licenses prior to this year, so there was some savings there. And we're uh recommending that go over to cover um some of the licenses and warranties. And so, um the other area is tech services again. We were saying that we would like to transfer some money into some instructional supplies um because that line item is sort of going down. And then a very tiny little transfer um for a school that wanted to um use their subscription

091money for actual library books. and so uh that was uh being requested as well. Are there any questions? Any questions from other board members? Uh my only question was on the instructional supplies 5650. The line item for instructional supplies didn't seem to be running short, I guess. So, what was the What were we going to spend the line item transfer on? >> Yes, that's a great question. We um and I can defer to Ms. Bienz, who will give you a little bit more specific details. Uh so, instructional supplies, I usually um allocate for anything that a student would use in the classroom, whether that be um headphones for testing, um cases to protect their device, um things like that, um mice, anything that a student might need and would utilize for instruction. Okay, that makes

092sense, but the request is for $115,000. What in the line item's not running over or out of line with over, so what are we It's just a lot of mice, and then I get it. We have the needs for all these things, but I was just trying to get an idea of what we were what we were transferring to accomplish. Yeah, I'm going to just verify if it was non-instructional or instructional. You're feeling that it was non-instructional. >> was the one that was a bit higher. If I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so that's currently at 23,000, and we were um and the other in the instructional's at 61. Oh, okay. Maybe I have it backwards. So, so you would have um you would have at least, you know, 170 to do some not um some instructional

093supplies that were needed, maybe in anticipation of a shortfall for next year. Yeah. So, to buy like I got it. So, we'd have to find things that we could purchase ahead, I guess, but it would have to follow the rules of a pre-purchase, obviously. Correct. >> So, that's the license isn't kind warranty count. I saw that one was over, so that one made sense, but this one here I just wasn't sure what we were going to spend now nearly $200,000 on. Um I can find it. Great. >> [laughter] >> Um Anybody have any questions on on that will will we will you let us know what we're going to spend that 200,000 on just so we're Anybody else have any questions? Okay, and the library books one certainly makes sense. Um a book in somebody's

094hand certainly feels different than reading it on a screen. Mr. Euclid will be proud. >> [clears throat] >> All right, I need a motion to approve the line item transfers. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you. That is motion passes to the full board, and Ms. Bienz, if you could just let us know what those items would be, that would be great. Next on our agenda is our favorite 2627 budget discussion. Um I guess maybe the most appropriate thing to do would be to open the floor to our questions first from anything that's already been presented, then if we could, maybe Mr. Wilson, you could take us through the um budget cuts made after 218, we can start to discuss those. Does that work for you? All right, anything that anybody wanted

095to talk about from the Q&A or prior things, there were some inquiries that came in along the way. Anybody have anything that jumped out at them that has already been presented before we start on the new stuff? Uh I wanted to >> Microphone. Hold on. Thanks. I wanted to bring up the THS Dean versus AP position, which was the THS department head's concern for an open discussion. So, are you looking for Well, I maybe I'll I'll I guess I'm going to assume you're looking for more information on it. Uh well, they submitted a letter that was read at the last board meeting, and um I think everybody was here to hear that. They proposed uh changing the Dean position to an assistant principal position. So, I Don't hold me if I paraphrase you. I think

096what she's Ms. Leya is looking for is what was the rationale behind that change, and what's the administration's position on it? Understand. Um since that letter, um the department head who sent the email was spoken to uh by the principal as well as by me to understand the rationale. Um the administrator's union brought that suggestion to central office, as we suggest as we shared at the budget meeting. Um the rationale behind going to a Dean and leaving three APs was because they believe they can handle that load. The issue that they're having is with the discipline issue, which the Dean would handle, and bringing the AD on, the AD would also take over the health department as well as the PE department. So, that will alleviate and give the other uh APs as well as

097the principal more time to spend with the departments. Um that one person who actually had penned the email on behalf of the lead teachers, I know personally shared with me, I don't think he'd have a problem sharing with you, he appreciated the clarification and understood it better that that time would be well spent. Um and then I know he had a follow-up with the building principal. So, um the rationale came from the admin union. Uh central office approved that because we do believe that there is a need for an AD. We do believe that with our PE scores, um and with the push for our health, that person will oversee that, as well as now the Dean will handle the disciplinary component, so that the principal and the two APs will be able to work

098more closely with those uh departments. So, any disciplinary issues dressed code or disruption in classroom would no longer go to an assistant principal, it goes straight to the Dean? That's correct. Does that clarify for you, Ms. Leya? Yeah, the Dean would handle all low-level discipline, correct? Okay, so the teacher who wrote the letter on behalf of the department heads, and the department heads are all in agreement that that they would they would be okay with the having the Dean instead of the AP. Uh in my discussion with the person who penned the letter, given the explanation as well as the follow-up discussion that was had with the principal, that is my understanding as we sit here this evening. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Anybody else have anything with items that were already on the

099list? Okay, I have a couple. Uh we talked about the scoreboard and the bleachers. In the prior one, you guys pulled them out, which is great. Um when I did the math though on your revised one that you sent out, the math didn't quite match the 73,000. It was the deduction was was less. I wasn't sure if there was maybe we're getting somebody else's purchasing some of those pieces. There was a discussion at one point. Maybe there was a donation or something. So, it was like 74,000 in your presentation, Mr. Pergola. In the in the revised version that came out today, that the line item shows that the change to that account was less. The request the the request was not lowered by 74. I think it's 50 Yeah. 46,600 [clears throat] in the budget.

100You're talking about in Dean's presentation? >> Yeah, he he showed it as 74,000. We only lowered it by not even the cost of that or maybe the cost of the bleachers. So, no no big deal. If you guys don't have an answer now, look, it's not the end of the world at all. I I see what happened. So, the original quotes um that came in for when we received the budget packet uh were looked at again, and unfortunately, like everything that goes up, this too went up. So, the the quotes that Mr. Pergola has in his capital plan is a more current version. So, we can only cut the 45 from the original because that was all that we had anticipated at that time. Great. Well, thank you for the clarification. Um other prior items?

101Uh yeah, the one back to the clerical overtime. We had a we had made an adjustment. I I had asked the question in the Q&A. Um but then I I've gotten a follow-up since um overtime stuff. I'm talking about the various departments and their overhead uh for overtime. A lot of that clerical overtime, you guys have explained, was a part of the move. It was a massive undertaking to move um people from, you know, 2,000 people around Well, 2,000 kids and probably a 250 staff members around the district. Do we anticipate really needing that to increase that dollar amount again for next year if we don't have that redistricting load for staff and students? Or is that something we can go back to? Now, I'm starting to head for pennies, but I I realize that

102the city's not giving us even $4 million, so Well, thank you for that question. So, if we do a little look back on traditionally, um the OT for clerical has been underfunded. Uh so, I feel that, you know, by righting the ship, moving it up a little in anticipation that there still will be some need for, as you said, you know, for bussing and and things like that um for this clerical to be there. I think that it's safe to go up, and we I don't believe it was a huge bump, but it was um you know, something that we saw necessary just looking back at past data. Okay, I trust you guys' judgment. It wasn't a huge difference. I just when I would heard what the one of the significant reasons behind it was

103the redistricting. So, thought I would ask that. Uh the other question I have is on the athletic position. Um actually we can talk about that in a minute. Um I have no other questions about prior. Anybody else have any questions about prior? I see Mr. Wilson has the PE on the next document, so we'll cover it there. Anybody else? All right. Mr. Wilson, if you could go through or whoever you from your cabinet you'd prefer to do it. Sure. I mean, I can just go through kind of the high-level. I mean, obviously, you know, any cut is a a substantial hurt, right? And we we take that very seriously. And I know the board's position at after the 218 meeting uh was to kind of uh trim down some specific areas and also to add

104in another area. So, what this sheet represents in front of you this evening and I do have my cabinet members here who can talk to any specifics that I possibly won't be able to answer, but you know, if we look at the first one, um I believe it was board member uh board chair Corey who talked about special education and you, uh Mr. Putnam. So, when we went back and uh Dr. Baker really fine-tuned it, we would be comfortable uh with lowering that amount by 274,800. Um once again, uh you know, that's just based on cost analysis year after year. Uh it would be very lean and very tight, and we know special education, depending on students who come in the district uh at any moment, could uh cause that to to be a problem,

105but we do feel comfortable that we could do that. Uh the next item is legal fees for expulsion. Uh this um comes with the possibility of the board reconsidering and allowing stipulated agreements. And if the board were allow stipulated agreements, it would be a $75,000 savings uh to the board of education for expulsions. Uh the one instructional coach, um while once again, you know, we don't like to lose anything, but that would be 90,000. Uh the two teacher residency program, um we have not seen the interest as we would have liked. Uh we do love the the program, but we have not seen the interest, so we said, uh because this budget is lean, we could uh eliminate that. And that's the dollar amount that goes there. The five academic interventionists, once again, they're very

106proven. Uh the results are proven, and everything is um moving in the right direction in terms of growth. However, we also know that we need teachers, right? And we need teachers uh first. So, that academic interventionist component, that would be spread across uh the the district, that's why we had placed that on there. And as I said, anyone from the cabinet could speak to any specifics afterwards. The half-time PE, um that was because we're bringing in uh the athletic director, and that position can be absorbed with the current staffing that we have right now uh at the high school. So, that half PE would be eliminated, and we would be have a savings of the $75,121. Uh special education teacher, um we we know that you know, we once again do not like to eliminate

107any staff members, but we feel that and Dr. Baker was able to um write some write that teacher into a grant. So, because she was able to re- rework and write that person into a grant, we could save it in our budget. Um the two next two are the custodians, and we heard from facilities that people may want more custodians, right? And we agree, but um once again, every bargaining unit on here and every uh department, you know, really had come to the table and you know, to look at where cuts could be. Technology would be the next one, a level two tech. Um and I know, Mr. Putnam, you asked at the technology meeting for Rachel to do a ticket analysis. I don't know if that was what preempted your question. I'm guessing it

108was. Um a central office secretary, um the food service finance secretary, which we currently have in budget, but that would be absorbed totally in food services. Um the health insurance employee contribution, this was just an adjustment that was made that uh we had put that number for the new premium amount and put that into that line item. That's just really a cleanup, if you will. Uh instructional tech supply, we moved to capital, um as was we were instructed at the last meeting. And then the one we just talked about, obviously, being the equipment. And if we have to alter that to a higher number, uh we will. Um and then we added the additional 250,000 as was the board's pleasure uh for the snow removal, because we did not want to underestimate or underbid that.

109And I hope the board appreciates we kind of gave a cheat sheet uh to the right of where you would find it in the actual budget document, so that it just kind of correlates and um goes pretty smooth and uh with the flow. But if there's any specific questions, as I said, if I can't answer, my team is here, and we will gladly answer any questions, but I would like to reiterate, and I know, and I don't want to throw you under the bus, Sandy, but uh Sandy's sitting right here, you know, we had this very conversation, and I told her I would share with that, you know, any cut's a hard cut. Uh any cut we take very seriously, and I know the board takes it very seriously, but it is uh brought to

110the in front of the board this evening for the board to discuss and to basically say yay or nay. So, that's all I have, Mr. Putnam, but if there's specifics I can help with, I'd be more than happy to. Sure. I think it might [clears throat] be a decent idea to just roll through these one at a time. They won't take long. With the with the group between Sandy and everybody down the end of the table and us just to bounce them off each other. Uh um Dr. Baker, thank you for the special education budget item reduction. I know it's a difficult one to make um because it is so unpredictable, but I think uh would be important for us and the board chair to present to the city that we have taken these steps

111to reduce that we call it and it's a surplus, but it's not. I mean, you you never know what you're going to use, and you have to carry some buffer. So, if we're going to lower that buffer, the city we need to be made aware that look, we're not going to freeze our budgets. About a decade ago, the budgets used to get frozen in November uh for unexpected expenses. So, it'll have to be a partnership with the city that look, we may have to come back to you for more money, but thank you for that uh reduction. Um Anybody have any questions on special ed reductions? Next one on on the list was legal fees for expulsion. Um I appreciate the suggestion. That one requires a conversation of the full board. Um I know there

112has not been I'll speak from past discussions, there has not been much of an appetite for that one, but really, this committee doesn't have the authority to um authorize any kind of a deduction based on that one. So, I think for now that one probably needs to go unless a discussion at the full board level were to occur. We've got some of the board members here tonight, but anybody want to weigh in on that one? I don't see that one as being a topic that can be discussed in this meeting. Mr. Kisco. I agree 100%. Anybody else on the expulsion one? So, certainly, uh Mr. Wilson and your team, we could bring that to the full board for a discussion, but I don't believe this committee has the authority to authorize that one. Uh next,

113I'm going to take these uh we'll take in instructional coach and academic interventionist. I'm going to take as a bundle here, if we could. Um A little bit of history on some of these line items. This Board of Education made a fairly costly mistake about 10 years ago when we eliminated a ton of uh coaches, we eliminated a ton of pairs um in a horrible budget year. I mean, that was like 10 I'm standing Mr. Megan shaking your head, you remember this one. It was a horrible mistake, and it did result in the prevalence rate heading off, and you we didn't have the ability to stopgap, you know, a regular ed student who was starting to struggle and support them and bring them and keep them in the regular education program. Now, maybe I'm misunderstanding

114the purpose of the academic interventionist, but it would seem to me like that's a that's one that is saving some money now only to spend it later. Um Anybody Oh, thank you very much, Mrs. Ferguson. Um did Of course. So, I agree with what everything that Sue just said, and what this board did, not particularly the individuals sitting here when they made that decision several years ago, we saw what happened. And one of the things that continually is asked when you go to the joint meeting with the Board of Finance and the City Council, how do we get the label and the designation of Alliance off of our backs? One of the ways we do that is by bringing our children up to grade level where they need to be. The individuals that support that

115are those academic interventionists. And we support our teachers. Um I have two students who I worked with from cycle one, cycle two, which is basically until the end of December. Those students when we gave the um Dibbles test went from red to green. They are no longer receiving intervention services. They are on grade level where we need them to be and we want them to be. It would impact a significant number of children to not be able to provide the service at this time. We are struggling at times with our academic interventionists to provide the tier three instruction that is needed for the students that need that level of support. Um we do tier two. We do tier three. Um so and that tier three and those intensive supports also do keep us from many

116of our children having to go the route of that special education referral when we look and cost-wise long-term, this is a a savings for us and I think we need to look at it that way and the impact that the individuals have. Thank you very much, Ms. Megan. Anybody else have anything on that one? Mr. Kisco. When I go to schools as as part of a school improvement committee visit, that's one thing we consistently hear from principals is how valuable the coaches and interventionists are to student success. I I think it should also be noted that as we sit here today in this you know pre-city budget uh meeting, what we're looking for is to go through these cuts and we don't we don't love you know a lot of these cuts of course. Um

117and I'm we don't have to we don't have to cut something that we don't think is cuttable at this point, right? We're trying this committee is charged with coming to a number that they feel comfortable going to the city with. I don't know that anybody I wasn't comfortable going to the city at 5.5 or 5.3 million dollars. There is no chance they're giving us that. I mean it's beyond zero. They would laugh at us. But we need it. I mean those are the things that we that we needed and we put together a quality budget every year. If we could have everything we needed, that's what we start to present and your cabinet and the team has done that 100% um the way we ask. What we're trying to figure out now is what can

118we live with? What are the things that you've suggested and your cabinet suggested that hey you know what, you're right, we could survive without these. We're going to end up cutting them anyways when the city comes back and gives us whatever they're going to give us. So let's do it ahead of time and make an an honest effort at the budget process that we go to present to the city. So I'm not saying that if we say no to these today, that we're not going to have our hand twisted and forced later. But if if this group believes that those items are essential to the success of the students and the staff, we shouldn't cut those right now. You also made the comment about the teacher residency program not being used. I'm a lot more

119comfortable saying you know what, that's a $166,000 suggestion that we're going to have to cut one way or another. Let's do it now, be proactive and show that we have made an honest effort at the budget. So don't take my comments about um you know what we should and shouldn't cut as wanting to cut them, but you know what at some point we may be forced to. Right now if we need these people, they should stay on the list at least in my opinion. Sure, Ms. Megan. I think more important not more importantly, but as importantly is what the intervention support does for the confidence and the desire for children to want to come to school because they are being successful and they see they getting a lot of support, they see themselves as successful,

120they see themselves as readers and that then alleviates the not wanting to come to school and our attendance issues. So I think that also needs to be said. So we'll take a quick poll here on if we take instructional coaches and academic interventionists and put them together, could we just get a quick straw poll for anybody who would be for or against that cut? Ms. Leo. I I I believe that they are more effective at the lower levels, but I believe that they would be more effective as classroom teachers at the higher levels. So maybe compromising and cutting a few instead of the six total. Okay, one vote for an alteration to the arrangement. Mr. Klish. Uh I am against. Um uh I I'm against removing these. Mr. Cronin. Yeah, I think maybe like half

121of them. Kind of like what Elena is saying. Okay. Um I'm going to reach down to get the get the opinion. I think I know what Ms. Megan said. Oh yeah, I Yeah, of course. Great. I I would be against at this point cutting them. I think they're too valuable to the long-term prospects of the success of the students. Again, we may be forced to have a different conversation when the time comes. Um so we're split on that one at the moment. We can revisit it at the end for a total. Uh teacher residency program. Anybody for or against? I mean it sounds like the recommendation is it's not being used, so Ms. Leo. I would be fine with cutting that item. Uh for. Mr. Cronin. All right, so we will remove we will agree

122with the removal of the teacher residency program. Uh the half PE teacher. My question on this one before we talked to the folks is was that a $150,000 position? So that this makes more sense. The athletic director then, current athletic director, which was a stipend position, was only teaching a half class load. The other class The other half of the salary was being used for athletic director type activities and there was a stipend on top of it for whatever the MOU may have been for. That it makes sense. So they they were in essence doing a part of that athletic director job. So did there were no actual PE teaching PE classes or there were just health classes or I mean how are we Will we be able to maintain and I'm asking this because

123we have a big push in the Mr. Wilson's brought brought with the report and everybody brought with the report on our very lackluster PE scores. With the same number of sections, we're not going to make gym class have 55 kids in it. Okay. Um everybody good with the half PE teacher cut? Yes. Yes. Yes. All right, we will agree with the half PE teacher. Special education teacher, you guys said you've been able to find a grant to put that one in? Yes, well then I don't think we'll get any arguments from the board. Anybody against? So we'll go with the special education. Uh next is the custodial summer and regular custodial position. Um I'm going to ask this question. I was the one in the Q&A who asked about the near $100,000 increase to the

124custodial Q&A and the answer that was presented was in order to keep the building in the the condition it is, we are understaffed. So if we cut custodians, are we just going to spend it in overtime? Well, I mean you know, as as we've said, right? It's what we tried to do in this list and everyone from the cabinet tried to put their heads together and everyone tried to take something from their department to bring to the table because you know, everyone who just assumes budget cuts wants to always go for the top, right? And you know, or the most, you know, whether it be teachers or administrators or whatever the case may be, whatever one's purview is. What this list did was and as you know, I'm going to not going to speak for

125Dean by any means, but the same sentiment that Sue, myself, that you just shared, very begrudgingly brought that forward. And you know, can he make it work with one less? I mean, I think this year has been a tough a tough year and the board has seen that overtime number go up. So to answer your question honestly, Mr. Putnam, yeah, I don't I don't see that. I think the overtime is going to Yeah. creep up to to keep the level of cleanliness that Mr. Pergola has already established uh for us and that we we have seem to like and everyone does seem to appreciate. But, as I said, that was placed in there for that very reason. So, I guess my question would be that's a $75,000 rough cut there. We have a almost $100,000

126increase to the overtime budget. Would would the would it be better for you, Mr. Pergola, if the board said, "Hey, you can't have $100,000 in extra overtime and we have to make adjustments on the other side to that, right? For, you know, whatever it may be. Maybe we can't offer the buildings for free to the entire community if if it's costing us. Maybe we have to change some of the rules of allowing use of the facilities if that's where the driving cost is so that you still have a a person." I mean, I'm trying to find the right answer here. What the committee's charge is to find the right answer. We you went to a long time many years ago with a lot less custodians and in the last, say, 5 years I think we've

127added somewhere around eight. And to your your question before was we still could use more. What's better the over If we're going to get forced to cut something, is the overtime better or is a less person the lesser hit to your department? I don't think the overtime is something that you can actually say, "Let's just take it out." Because not just of outside events, but snow removal. Again, I know we don't do it, but if you look at a lot of our overtime and all the snow we had this year, we had these guys coming in on Sundays, on holiday Look at the snow pattern we had this year. It's awful. It's either holiday or Sunday, so it's double time. So, if you break that down, you look how much we spent just on snow

128removal. So, it's tough one to cut, overtime, to be honest with you. I know that's not answering your question, but I I I uh I I don't think that is a like a variable that you can even consider cutting cuz if it snows and we have to do that or if there's an emergency, you you would have to open school. How about if we take it outside of weather? I mean, the weather is the variable on all these things, right? I mean, the the snow plowing budget goes over. Now, it can go over because we don't have a contract. These things happen. If it weren't for the weather, is it a I mean, I'm just trying to figure out a a way to lessen the blow to your department if we were to decide to

129do this. That's all. You know, um I'm going to say it would be a lesser I think you got to keep the overtime. I don't think we have enough systems in place now to cover that. Not saying we won't in the in the future. Your your point of maybe changing our facilities use, which we're looking at. Again, it's a process to go through. It's nothing that's going to happen overnight. Um and I think that overtime, and I don't want to say it's going to go down, but there was a lot of overtime with this move that we did. So, there was a lot of that, you know, we we we we're still spending time and not in the buildings at Migeon Avenue cleaning up, right? So, that's time sometimes not overtime, but I got to

130get these areas clean. So, I'll have a guy stay an hour later, which that's the overtime. Which someone that's going to go away. Um So, I would I would you know, I would say the overtime is what I wouldn't cut. Okay. To the members of the committee, anybody have any comments on the custodial? Or anybody from the board who happens to be here? I just hate to see us cut people who actually maintain the buildings that the city underfunds as it is. You know, but we we take the blame for that. I I agree. Anybody else? Well, I just like to add to that, John. I I appreciate that. I mean, we're definitely trying to raise the level of cleanliness in these buildings and the appearance of these buildings. And I I think we've gotten

131a you know, there's a long way to go, but I think we've, you know, I don't want to cut anybody either. And I don't want I don't want to make it sound like I'm looking to cut somebody, but it's a if you're asking me and you know, where we can make it work, I don't know. I hope myself hurt myself. No, thank you. Anybody uh I don't think it's the smart move in this version of the budget based on what Mr. Pergola says. I don't see how we can cut that as a reasonable cut like some of the others, so. Anybody for it before we strike it? All right, sounds like uh no. We'll cut that one out. We will we'll remove that from the cut list. Expulsion tutors, can somebody explain the expulsion tutors?

132I mean, we have that that ramps up as the year goes on. Obviously, as the beginning of the year starts, there aren't a lot of expulsion tutors. We do hire them. I'm just guessing there's a ratio for this number of expulsions to expulsion tutors and they're over at FAST now, correct? All of our expelled students are at FAST. 90% of them. Yes. Okay. So, what would be the What's the rationale behind being able to do this? We are required to educate these students. I mean, if we cut it and we have 40 expulsions, that number is not even a negotiable number. It has to come back. We would we would still be educating them. It's not uh the best model, not a model that um you know, especially in light of recent discussions among some

133board members, but we would go to a virtual platform, which is allowable under the state of Connecticut, and we would have learning monitors as opposed to tutors. And the learning monitors would That's why the cost offset is $60,000 in savings. It would be a full virtual platform for any of the expelled students. That's why that was a tree that we tried to shake. We're not happy once again with anything on here, but if we were looking to save dollars to go to a complete virtual platform with learning monitors, um that would be the savings and that's why it's presented here. Okay. Anybody have a opinion on this one? Mr. Kisco. I taught for too many years to agree that a computer can do anything better than a teacher can. Agreed. These are struggling students as

134it is and I think they need to be face-to-face with a teacher or tutor. Anybody else? Mr. Cronin. I I would be against this one at this point as well. I mean, obviously, if rubber has to meet the road, we'll have to revisit it, but I don't see how that one really isn't We're trying to build a whole thing with FAST Academy and alternative and giving a better education to those seems like it's Yeah, like if we have to, obviously, it was a good suggestion, but I don't think the the group here has any uh appetite for that one at the moment. Um one level two technician for the IT department. Anybody? I mean, I can Rachel definitely could come up and, you know, once again, you know, not what we want, not what anyone

135wants, but, you know, Rachel was just looking at where in her department she could bring something to the table for the cabinet and you know, it would be a stretch for the rest of her techs, but she would be um hard-pressed, but it would be something that she would had offered here. It's not something once again that we want because then the other techs would pick up extra work, but that's exactly why that's on there. I'm [clears throat] going to go with it would be difficult to do cuz the ticket I suspect that the ticket report you're going to bring us next month shows that you are having a challenging time keeping 4,000 devices and staff and students rolling with a group of you guys, I think, eight people in there. At least at this

136point with the one-to-one devices in the district, I would find that one um hard to do. And that topic will come up again uh towards the end of this when we may expand on that in just a little bit. Anybody else have any concerns about I I can't see how they could possibly do that as a good idea out of the gate when they're Nobody's taking the money away from us yet. Anybody? Then, let's strike that one from the list. I am curious, Mr. Wilson, how we would go without central office secretary and food service secretary. The food service secretary I'm surprised isn't cut doesn't come out of the cafeteria budget. That's exactly what I mentioned when I went through the list. So, that one's the easiest one. I don't want to say easy for

137the board, but that will be all absorbed by food services. Okay, I may have missed that part. So, that one is an automatic. Sounds good because it's coming out of food services. Central office secretary, um once again, it's it's in in it's a tough ask, um you know, but when we look at everything and everyone is taking at once again, every department, every, you know, union, if you will, from that secretarial standpoint, um that's why the central office secretary person is on there. Right now, that's a split position. Um that person is working with special education as well as um the finance department and sometimes with the technology. That's the person that's going to be making the phone calls to collect those bills. But, as I said, in order for us to you know, come

138with a number. And, you know, just as a point of reference, years before we had given this that position extra or additional duties to make that person split, that person was uh solely with just the special education department and had been brought up for, you know, possibility of elimination for years, but we've since put some other duties on, uh but in in other words, you know when we're looking at every tree the shake you know and for every unit bargaining unit to kind of I don't want to say take the hit but um that it was spread across um that was why we feel that the that position could be absorbed by the other members of the central office team and that's why that position is on there. That's a tough one knowing how much

139you guys have going on in and then you had we have had in the last several years a reasonable amount of turnover at central office and I know that you guys work great as a team to support each other when that happens. How much more difficult does that get when you have and this person it sounds like this was probably multiple positions at one point um and now it's down to one position that's shared and more work has been piled on top of it. How I mean most of your cabinet is here I mean how how dreadful of an impact would that be to all of you? I mean that's again we're looking tonight for what could we really stomach and move forward with if there's not the ability to stomach it now this isn't

140quite the place to cut it. So if anybody wants to add to it but it doesn't sound like anybody's super excited about that one. It's not like a teacher residency program where nobody's using it. I suspect that all of you would feel that in one way or another. Anybody have anything they want to add? And I appreciate that you guys have brought you know suggestions to the table for them but if we don't have the stomach for that pain and it's not an easy one to endure I mean you take 275,000 Dr. Big out of your budget you there's a chance that's not going to hurt. Um the teacher teacher residency program there's a good chance that's not going to impact anybody but some of these other ones are are difficult ones to get rid

141of in a stage one to Joe. Mr. Kiska? Well I'll say something if you want me to. No I everyone's gone through a lot of trouble to put these on the table and I hope nobody thinks we are unappreciative by rejecting them. Absolutely. And as you said we will see them again under more serious circumstances I guess or more immediate circumstances at least. Anybody on the budget committee feel that the central office secretary is worth cutting at this point? I just have one comment towards Ms. Ferguson. I think there was some might be some legislative changes that went through possibly went through today that make may make your enrollment process a little bit more complex. I'm not really sure what the outcome was. Yeah there might have been some changes that were on the on

142the board today. Yeah. I'm just saying that some of the things that were proposed may make your entire process more complex. Yes. So depending on what the outcome was today we may want to take that into consideration. Okay. Anybody else? I don't see the board is not shaking their head in that we should cut this one now so we will remove that one from the cut list. Health insurance employee contribution amount I will ask Mr. Wilson if we have heard anything from the health insurance company. And our $2.2 million placeholder that 510 is the employee contributions portion of that $2.2 million placeholder. Do you have any update that you can share on the health insurance? >> Nothing as of today. Hopefully by the end of this week and I will make the board aware as

143soon as I get that update. But if I may Mr. Putnam the next three that health insurance was really just the reclass that you had asked us to do. The tech supply was moved to capital as was requested by the board and obviously the equipment. Great then I'm going to add a couple to the end of this one if we could. There was a request for textbooks. I believe Ms. Ferguson asked for somebody to move explained it at one point to the new textbooks at the high school for I forget which program it was it wasn't math was it? So I know that we have most of our alliance funds are already allocated to staff members and we certainly can't cut staff members. Is there a portion of alliance available is a small portion that

144we spend as a one time a year type expense in the state allows is the are the textbooks an allowable expense from alliance if we were to ask them? Is it is it a new math program maybe? >> Yeah it depends if it is a new math program it can be considered. We have a visit coming up with our rep from the alliance from the state you know we could pose this question to them. We have been able to put in textbooks in the past for new programs but if it's something that you know is ongoing obviously we wouldn't be putting them in our grant budget would stay in the general budget. Right. That was was worth it. It was worth a try. I'm just that's it's a large enough chunk of money that it

145offsets a good chunk of the things that we were talking about tonight. Would we have any idea based on what we're asking for would we know before the budget season is over a more accurate number because maybe we can get half of it out of there. We want to make sure you have if it's approved what you need but at the same time I would hate to think it's going to be $300,000 and then have to remove staff members only to find out the books were 125,000. Um next there was a question posed um well by me in a in a visit and then Mrs. Conway also to the board about um serving here in our cafeteria. We had asked about how to improve the serving in the for the kitchen. They only serve out

146of one side currently so I had inquired about what it would take to serve on both sides of the cafeteria. So I did ask for a copy of the cafeteria budget so that before I asked the question hey can we afford to do this? I didn't ask a question where the cafeteria budget was underwater. I see we moved the food service secretary in um so two things as I reviewed that budget I did catch something that startled me a little bit and that was that we have a IT technician in the cafeteria budget. And it was a level three technician which is the highest technician we have here in the in the district. I'm confused by this one it's food services and I know they have a point of sale system but and I saw

147the note that the state approved it but a lot of these dollars are federally funded. My concern and maybe the the rest of the board will weigh in on it but my concern would be that has a we could possibly get into a lot of trouble from the federal funding side if somebody looks at it. I don't I'd be surprised if we're using a full time IT staff member dedicated to the cafeteria service. But I could be wrong on this. I'm just ran into I was looking for the other for the how we could pull off serving on the other side and I saw it was a line item in the staff because I had asked for a staffing report to so how many do we have in each location and figuring out how we

148could make that work but can anybody from the cabinet comment on why an IT person's in the cafeteria budget? I I can do a general comment and Rachel can definitely add. You know there was a need um Ms. Gagnon saw the a need and she actually contacted the state and we are in compliance with bringing that person on board because of the point of sale system because of the because of all the tech concerns that she had had. Um and I know she had worked with Rachel on that to decide what level and what type of person that would be. So I understand that it looks maybe off or wonky or whatever word you'd like to use um but it is a legitimate item that is allowable. I know Ms. Gagnon did do her homework

149and her research on it and I know that person is utilized um a lot uh by the food service department. I don't know if Rachel would like to add anything but I know um that's why the need arose and that's why Ms. Gagnon was able to do it and it helps not only with the food services because it eliminates one of Rachel's people who would have to constantly be helping the food services team but if I missed anything Rachel please. >> So, and I can appreciate that. Um but my concern is that we've put our highest paid IT technician, who would be, you know, the more difficult problems in a federally funded I mean, if somebody came I actually think it's a great idea the cafeteria does I'm sure use some IT services, but you

150only have eight people. Are do we think that the cafeteria, which has probably 30 point of one of sale devices, is chewing up 16% of the IT time? I guess the other piece is we have our highest paid IT person entering school bucks dollars. I mean, I look at either way my point here is that I ran into it I was surprised by it and Mr. Wilson, I will just say that I don't know I speak for myself. I would have liked to have known we were adding somebody a technician to a budget that's, you know, they just seem like a strange place for it to be. So, I was a bit shocked that I had seen it there and I have concerns about the legitimacy of the fund the federal funding on that one.

151So, if you guys have spoken to the state, fantastic, but has anybody checked me currently since we're free and reduced or free lunch for the entire district, I believe that funding comes from the federal government because it's So, have we checked with the federal government? Do we have the letter from the state? This is Look, we do a great job in Torrington of presenting an honest budget and bringing it in. I'm not saying that it's not honest. I'm just saying that I saw it and I thought of it. I have to imagine that others would see it and also feel similarly, especially our friends at the Board of Finance. So, I'm just trying to find ways to, you know, keep us on the up and up and per What is it? Perception's 9/10 of reality

152sometimes. Perception on this one was difficult for me and I was I will say frustrated to see it. Um I will open it to the rest of the board if anybody would like to comment or other members about this position. Anybody? Anybody else? And we can certainly have a discussion, but I would I would like to to be certain that the federal government is good with this. I would totally have believed a portion of an of an IT person would be a the federal government wouldn't argue that, you know, we do it all the time. Like one of your proposals is 0.7 nurse at Fast, 0.3 I think at Vogel. A split position I could certainly see would would be a easy one to defend. I'm just very afraid of our federal funding. That would

153be a massive hit and I know the state's got some funding sources if you're not completely free and reduced lunch, the state picks up some of that tab, but I would want to be very certain on that one. Um the other piece of the cafeteria budget we did receive I did ask in request of Ms. Conway as well about the serving on both sides and they came back they would need eight more people at the cost of $80,000. I'm not sure who we could talk to, but I think there are some opportunities for efficiency there to deliver that in a different model maybe. Um but not not really appropriate for the budget committee meeting. We can talk about them later, but um I think there are some clever ways to improve this the the efficiency

154and the deliverability of those services so that we can get uh some of the additional things the staff here were looking for. Mr. Penny was looking for getting kids outside for 10 minutes and, you know, at the end of a lunch period where they have a bit of extra time, get some stretching out in the outside. Things like that. There's a lot of good initiatives that people have thought of that may be possible. So, we can certainly continue that afterwards, but that would also tie back to that level two technician. We may need to keep that spot in the event we need to move it back out of the cafeteria budget. Um where he did books online, cafeteria clerical. Anybody have any questions about other items on the list? Oh, the equipment we talked about.

155Yep. That was the that's the amount that they carried for it and it wouldn't have been 75,000. Um I guess my other request would be um that as we get towards the end of the year and we're kind of figuring out this budget and where we're going to end up if we're going to have a surplus or not that um we continue down that path of transparency on um capital expenses. I know that uh we have had to we had done something with the phone system at some point as well. Um just want to make sure that we're all rowing in the same direction on this one so that we are, you know, carrying forward with that same level of integrity for the for the city. So, when we sit in front of the city

156council and the Board of Finance, we're not uh getting chewed out for things that may have been avoidable. So, that'll be my comment on that. Anybody else have anything to add for the budget cuts? Anybody around the table anything? Uh that being the case, um if we could have the administration make the changes to the budget and present them on Monday as a level two budget. Uh and hopefully by then, Mr. Wilson, you'll have some fingers crossed, right? Uh because that can be a big one. If that's a $3 million and that everything we've done tonight is like going back to the drawing board. Um anybody have any other topics for the next meeting for an I'm going to do a Monday meeting. We're going to do a Monday budget public Q&A {slash} budget meeting.

157It'll be open to the public. They can come ask questions. We will veer from the common board process of public comment and we'll certainly allow our members to uh respond back and forth with a Q&A. Um anybody have any other questions or items for that Monday Q&A {slash} budget meeting? Okay. Anybody down there? Great. Um that being said, comments for the good of the order. Mr. Kiszkiss? Happy St. Patrick's Day to those of you who will celebrate it next week. Meeting. Yeah, good meeting. Mr. Wilson? Good meeting. Thank you. Slammy? Thank you every everybody. Good night. Thank you. Good night. I'll just take the last second. Please don't take uh, you know, my comments too personal. It's just we have to figure these things out. We appreciate all the hard work that all of you

158are doing every day towards this. I know this is not something anybody wants to do is let people go. The board's certainly not in favor of letting people go that we need to provide a quality level of education. Um so, we look forward to the next round and fingers crossed that uh somebody donates $5 million to the school district. So, thank you all and I'm looking for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. And great. Have a good night, everybody. At 7:41 p.m. Okay.