001Lucille, are you good to start? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, uh, it's 7:01 on Thursday, January 8th, 2026. Happy New Year. Um, we'll call the Wilton Board of Education regular meeting to order. Has everybody had a chance to look at the agenda? Is there a motion to approve the agenda? >> Motion. >> Thank you, Pat. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Pam. Any discussion or questions? All in favor? I. Motion carries unanimously. Comments from the public. The board has set aside time at the beginning and end of regular meetings for public comments for members of the public to share their views on matters involving the Wilton Public Schools and to help inform the board's decision on such matters. Two minutes will be allotted to each speaker in a maximum of 15
002minutes to any one subject. For the record, please also give your name and address. The board considers the views of citizens in its deliberations and welcomes and appreciates public comment. The board listens to public comment thoughtfully and with interest. The board, however, generally does not respond to public comment during board meetings by offering commentary or answering questions. The board also invites commentators and the public to contact the board or the superintendent directly with any spec specific questions or comments. Are there any comments from the public? Thank you. >> Good evening. My name is Jessica Mark and I'm a Wilton resident. Um I'm going to decline to disclose my full address. Um, so tonight I would like to address some comments made during the December 4th BOE meeting regarding parent engagement. I think that the board
003brought up some good points and had [snorts] some realizable ideas to better engage parents of the community. Kevin mentioned that parents are more judicious with their time and I agree with that because we have to be. It doesn't mean that parents don't want to be here. It's just 7 p.m. 700 p.m. is when they're having dinner with their families, helping kids with homework or putting uh little ones to bed. Specifically, I would like to highlight two points um that were raised. First, Mark raised the question of real opportunities at the school level. Talking with parents whose kids went through Miller Driscoll 5 to 10, 15 years ago, there used to be more regular volunteer opportunities at the school, such as invitations for parents to come in and be mystery readers. Currently, it feels like parents
004are being kept a bit at arms length, and communication is scarce. Parents only are informed after the fact, if at all, of certain educational testing, school assemblies, and SEAL sessions. Parents aren't even told if their child goes to the nurse unless it involves a head injury. And we're talking five and six-year-olds. The board is right. If our kids are directly involved, it becomes a level one priority. And if the board genuinely wants to provide connection and meaningful participation as Kevin had mentioned as a goal, opportunities and communication needs to be available. Secondly, um during the December 4th meeting, uh I believe one of the members asked the question, how well is BOE getting the message out? And to answer that, it's not really. Um WPS and the superintendent's office already use email and parent square
005to communicate with parents. Why not use them to send reminders of BOE meetings and maybe provide a summary of discussion points? Also, surveys like the one that was proposed or that was uh conducted at the November 20th meeting can be made digital and sent out via those platforms. Second is what I call the another opportunity is what I call tagalongs. BOE could introduce the BOE at orientations, give a 10-minute presentation at open house or dial into monthly PTA meetings to provide a quick recap. If the board genuinely wants to wants more parent engagement, the structure is there. Why not use it? So, I'll follow up with more detail in email than my two-minute allows, but thank you for your time. Thank you. Consent agenda. Has everybody had a chance to review the consent agenda? Uh
006the consent agenda consists of minutes from December 18th and this um regular meeting and the policy and communications meeting of December 18th as well. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> Thank you, Lori. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Nicola. All in favor? >> Motion carries unanimously. Uh board chairs uh report. Um happy new year. I hope everyone had a restful and restorative break. Thank you all for joining us tonight. Someday long for the late warnings of break. The district is full speed ahead as December to March are peak learning and engagement periods of the school year. Each building has its own life and energy and our kids are learning and thriving under the care and guidance of our teachers and staff. [snorts] I continue to marvel at the
007education enterprise we have built and continue to improve. Every year we get better at getting better. The new year [snorts] also brings us to a new budget season. One of the board's most important duties is to consider and adopt an annual budget and communicate that budget to the community. School budgets are a monetary expression of a district's values, mission, and vision, and they provide for performance, and opportunity. Tonight, the board's budget process begins with Dr. Smith's presentation of his 2627 proposed budget. The workshops are scheduled by cost center as follows. January 15th, Miller Driscoll, Cider Mill and Middlebrook. January 22nd, Wilton High School, athletics and special education. January 29th, digital learning technology district and central office. They will run from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. here in the professional library. They will also be recorded
008and made available. Budget deliberations will continue at the February 5th regular meeting. There will be a joint meeting with the board of finance on February 10th. Final deliberations and a budget vote is scheduled for the February 26 regular meeting. Throughout the budget process, the board relies on stakeholder input. We invite and welcome public participation. The budget documents, including Kevin's presentation, the budget buff, class size report, and enrollment report projections, if not already available on the BOE website, will be posted in the coming days. Please send your thoughts, comments, or questions to [email protected]. The board of finance has a regular meeting scheduled for February 13th, a special meeting on February 19th, and a regular meeting on March 10th. The public hearing on the BOE budget is scheduled for March 25th. The board of finance has set
009its budget deliberation meeting dates for April 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as necessary. Bonding projects will be presented to the BOF at a regular meeting scheduled for April 7th. The deadline for the BOF to recommend a budget to the annual town meeting is April 15th. The fiscal year 2026 annual town meeting is set for Tuesday, March 5th with adjourned voting following the meeting and then on Saturday, May 9th. All of the above will be posted on the BOE website in the coming days. As in previous years, the board plans to continue and build upon its productive partnership with the board of finance and chair Tim Burch. This fall, we successfully navigated a meaningful and reasonable guidance process. And this year, while we thankfully face a less challenging fiscal environment compared to years past, we still face
010constraints that require balance and understanding in order to manage the shared commitments of education excellence and fiscal disciplines. I [snorts] look forward to a thoughtful and thorough budget season that honors our shared commitments with respects and respects the roles and responsibilities of each board in service to all of Wilton. >> Great. Um, you're going to be tired of hearing me speak tonight in about 70 or 80 minutes. [laughter] Just kidding. Um, the only update I wanted to offer as part of my superintendent's report is that we held um the third annual PTA reflections reception and award ceremony last night down in the Zelner Gallery. And so the PTA reflections um contest is an opportunity for students grades K through 12 to create a range of different artworks and areas and then they're displayed at the
011reception and awards are given. like the previous two years, there was a fabulous turnout. Um, no surprise, uh, student artwork is absolutely magnificent. And, um, the last pieces, I'll just take my hats off to the PTA volunteers who spent lots and lots of hours coordinating, curating, organizing, and putting it all together. And so, on the whole, it was a wonderful night and another strong representation of the partnership we share with our parents here in this community. And so I think the artwork's still on display in the Zelnner if you happen to be parked over there or wandering that way tomorrow. All right, you ready? >> Let's do it. >> So, you know, pretty oversized expectations here or anything. Um, first let me just apologize. It was my intention to have um both the slide deck
012and the budget looked to you about a day ago. Um but in reality as um you see and Marian and I continue to go through it. We were tinkering up until just about 90 minutes ago. And so um so I beg your indulgence for that one. Um I'm pleased tonight to be able to present to you the proposed spending plan for fiscal 27. In addition to the slides from the presentation, we have this budget book um which will provide all of the granular details about the proposed budget. New this year is the program we're using to capture and present all of the budget details. Two years ago, Matt Nickerbacher introduced us to Clear Gov, which is a cloud-based budget management software package. On the whole, I think you'll find the template and layout more userfriendly.
013As we've been working much more intensively in the software over the last couple of weeks, we've also discovered some limitations. So from a formatting and presentation perspective, at present in the budget book, we're locked into a portrait rather than a landscape format and we're limited to a maximum of six columns of information. In our backend system, New World, our old backend system, we could publish in landscape and present 10 columns of information. What this means in practical terms is that the forecasted budgets for fiscal 28 and fiscal 29 will now be back matter in the budget book. We're still learning this program. So your questions will really help us as we continue to discern what information we should present and how. After I finish the presentation, I'll do a brief orientation of the actual budget
014book. So Ruth asked me yesterday how I was feeling about the budget. And in truth, I'm actually feeling very pleased with where we've landed. As you're well aware, it's always a serious challenge to try to meet both the needs of the district and the desire to constrain spending and tax growth as much as possible. I think this budget does that. Our choices are informed by our mission and vision. They support our goals and we have a bottomline proposal that matches the budget guidance adopted by the board of finance back in November. To build a little background, as you recall, MP planning group was with us in October and presented a comprehensive enrollment analysis. That analysis is part of your budget book. If you look at the slide on the screen, as you can see, in
015the near term, we anticipate a slight decline in enrollment about minus 20 in the next year and then a little bit more about - 67 in fiscal 28. And then the enrollment is forecasted to rebound beginning in 29. The previous year's analysis suggested we'd be growing in those same years, not shrinking, even though we're still graduating larger cohorts than we were taking in. The difference has to do with inmigration. The previous pattern of inmigration didn't appear this year. We had much less than anticipated and consequently our total enrollment was lower than we expected. So MP planning revised their projections. I named that today simply to say that we need to continue to watch enrollment carefully and we need to ask the question will the current pattern sustain or will we see a rebound in in
016migration next year. One of our primary budget goals is to maintain class size across the district. Looking at the projected enrollment, we can maintain the same number of sections we currently have, K5, and keep class sizes at about the same levels. As a helpful point of comparison, we like to look at our staffing ratios compared to our Durday counterparts. The longstanding patterns remain the same. At the elementary and high school levels, we have a much higher student to administrator ratio compared to our counterparts. At the middle school, only Ridgefield has a higher student to administrator ratio. We're generally in the mix in each of the other categories. And you can see where we've invested programmatically when you look at the library media specialist ratios and the elementary counselor, psychology, and social worker ratios. I share
017this now because sometimes we get questions or conjecture that we are administratively topheavy. I will tell you today we're not. With respect to other staffing, we're not dissimilar to our peer districts. When we think about return on investment, there are a number of measures that we could explore. Student experience, graduation rates, post-secary outcomes, assessment satisfaction, the list goes on. We can also look at some other comparative financial measures and one of [clears throat] them is per pupil expenditure. Roughly, how much do we spend per pupil compared to other districts? Personally, I think this is one we should always keep an eye on. One, it's simple enough to understand. And two, given that we're primarily funded by local tax dollars, we should want to know how we compare and what our outcomes look like. So, we
018look at two sources of information for this data. one the bureau of fiscal services which uses per pupil expenditure to determine excess cost cost thresholds and then edsite which is the state operated database that contains a wealth of really useful comparative information. Edsite generally lags a year or two in the data that it posts. So the most recent data was published on October in 2025 by the Bureau of Fiscal Services. They'll publish another report later this month. As you can see, for the last two years, we have had the lowest per pupil expenditure in our durk. Just as a note of um clarity, we don't include region 9 or eastern and reading um in these dur comparisons, although they're part of dur simply because they're a regional district. Had we included those um you would
019see that they're among the high end of per people expenditures in the dirt. In also continuing to think about return on investment, I think about performance and opportunity. And in short, we remain one of the top performing districts in the state and in the nation. I'm proud to repeat that we continue to be recognized as a top community for music education by the NM Foundation. Our marching band won the 2025 Connecticut class 3 state championship and our students were recognized with best percussion, best music, and best overall effect awards. Niche.com ranked our district number four in Connecticut and number eight in the nation. Niche also ranked our high school number seven and middle school number three. US News ranked our high school number five in the state and our middle school number three. Each of
020these reflects the very high quality of our programs. With respect to student achievement, this is a lot of information you've seen already, but in the context of a budget presentation, it bears repeating and celebrating. On the whole, our students perform very, very well academically. Among the many highlights, our students had the second highest average scores on both the Connecticut SAT, EBRW, and math sections and had the third highest combined average score in the state. Our students ranked third in the state on the NGSS exam in 11th grade. 97% of our AP test takers earned a three or better, enabling them to be eligible for college credit. 123 members of the class of 2025 earned the seal of the state seal of biiteracy signifying proficiency in two languages. One member of our class of 25 was
021selected as a presidential scholar. 10 others were national merit semi- finalists. In our younger grades, our students performed also very well academically and often at the top of the states. and our graduates continue to earn admission to some of the most selective colleges and universities in the United States. So that's some of the context for this budget proposal. With every budget, we ask how can we maintain and build on our success? With respect to budget priorities, this budget aims to support our goals of raising student achievement, narrowing the achievement gap, and strengthening community wellness and belonging. We propose to do that by maintaining our current levels of instructional and support, modifying some elementary programs to better target those students with very acute social and emotional needs, maintaining current class size averages, continuing to invest in
022professional learning, and continuing to support the vision of a learner through ongoing revision curriculum revision efforts and the introduction of new courses at the high school. In addition, this budget continues to address special education cost increases and address some immediate facility needs like building a new sidewalk in the rear of Miller Driscoll, repairing in floors at Middbrook, expanding our interior uh camera coverage, addressing a couple of exterior door replacements at Middlebrook and here at the high school, and then repairing some bathrooms and replacing some bathroom partition. conditions. In terms of budget assumptions, we assume that on average teacher salaries will increase about 4%. Our administrator salaries will increase by about 3%. Currently, uh we're on the cusp of negotiating with secretaries, pair professionals, and conso and custodians. So, those increases are to be determined. As
023we do annually, we assume that we'll pick up savings through staff attrition. So, we include a $400,000 offset in the salary line. We're estimating that utilities will increase by about 4.5%. Our medical insurance will increase by about 6% and total transportation will decrease by about um.3 of a percent. That's great news that we should celebrate. Um, even within that transportation line, the STA contract is increasing by about 4 and a.5%. Uh, but that's more than offset by the savings we're picking up through changes to our indistation transportation plan. As we noted already, we assume a slight decline in enrollment and we expect to see the federal title dollars continue, but understand that they may not be guaranteed. In regard to some of the revenue that we generate over the course of a year, there are
024a number of areas that we generate funds and those funds are used to offset costs in the respective locations. Miller Driscoll prek tuition is expected to generate about $352,000. Pay to participate fees for high school athletics is expected to generate about $154,000. High school parking fees about 30,000. Our high school prek tuition program will our tuition will generate about 27,000. Building rentals about 25,000 athletic gate receipts another 21,000 and then club and activity fees across the district about another 25,000. [clears throat] So I want to talk a little bit about special services. Our special services program accounts for like a fraction under 25% of the budget [clears throat] and services about 16.6% of our total student body. Historically, special services is the largest and also the fastest growing part of the budget. This is common
025across most school districts. This portion of the budget also addresses our most complex and often our most fragile students. Because of our desire to serve all of our students as well as possible and our desire to try and contain costs as much as possible, we've created several high lever programs in recent years. You're well acquainted with them already, but I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the magnitude of the financial impact. The term that best describes the financial impact of these programs is cost avoidance, which simply defined means the amount of money we would likely be paying if these programs did not exist. So consider outplacements for a moment. The range of current out of district tuition costs run from about 76,000 to about 160,000 on average. That doesn't include the
026tuition costs for students who require residential services. Those tuition costs can run well north of $200,000, even close to half a million dollars. Transportation to out of district placements can range from about 55,000 to 160,000 annually. When we think about our indist programs we created, our goals were to improve student outcomes. We know and we believe very strongly that we can do a better job of educating the vast majority of our students here than many of the out of district placement schools. As important, we believe our students deserve to be educated here. And we also believe that we can provide a superior experience more cost- effectively within our continuum of services. Our two day school programs, Genesis and Community Steps, illustrate our beliefs very well. Our current per people pupil expenditure at Genesis is about
027$41,317 and our current per people pupil expenditure community steps is just about $49,000. Our current in district transportation cost is about $240 a day. When compared to outofd district tuition and transportation costs, I calculate a cost avoidance for Genesis students within a range that runs from just about $69,000 to about $145,000. And the cost avoidance for community steps I see is about $61,000 to almost $145,000. So the magnitude of cost avoidance per child is pretty enormous. We run other inbuilding programs that meet similar goals but are harder to tabulate cost avoidance because we utilize our full-time building staff. Programs like the flex program at the high school, the DBT program at Middlebrook, our collaborative centers that are in each of our schools that support our students on the autism spectrum are all incredibly powerful at
028serving students and keeping them here being educated among their peers. Building out this model this year, we've begun a pilot at Miller Driscoll aimed at strongly supporting our students who are exhibiting really complex social and emotional concerns. Earlier this year, we reassigned our social worker, Maria Stream, to this work, and the early returns are very positive. For a number of years, we have been witnessing [clears throat] and trying to describe to you a change that we're seeing among our youngest students. namely we have more students at the youngest ages exhibiting high levels of deregulation in school. A major part of this budget proposal this year seeks to address that change. Before I get into those specifics, I want to circle back to industry transportation for just a minute. This was one of the good news
029highlights that you saw on the previous slide the incredible costs of contracted transportation. Two current contracted runs are costing the district $572 a day combined. We also have other more infrequent runs that we contract out and are costly. As you know, last year we bought our own van and hired our own driver. This change has yielded remarkable savings. So, we're looking to increase that capacity. So, we intend to purchase another van this year and hire another driver. That's you'll see in the fiscal 27 proposal. Together, we expect that change to yield enough savings to actually lower our total transportation costs. So, in this case, we're not just avoiding costs, we're actually saving money. >> Kathy, how many times have I sat at this table and said to the board, "We're actually saving money." Not many.
030Think that's important. >> Great job. >> [cough] [clears throat] >> So in terms of budget priorities, what I hope to do here is identify for you um what within the total spend is new spend versus what's more typical budget growth of contracted increases, inflation, etc. Uh you'll see the actual new spend is a very small part of the total budget picture. So in the left hand column you'll see some of our strategic priorities. I'm not going to read on the list on the slide. I'm going to read in the um order you spend. So, first we propose to convert our two curriculum coordinator positions from 10-month WA positions to 12 months positions as our district goals continue to prioritize data-informed instruction and rigorous academic oversight. This change this change is going to enable us to
031overcome several barriers. The first is supervisory authority. Elevating these roles to administrators will grant the coordinators the capacity to conduct formal observations and provide evaluative feedback, promoting stronger fidelity to curriculum implementation across the buildings. The second barrier is conflict of interest. Under the current model, our coordinators are often placed in the difficult position of being peer colleagues to those they are tasked with leading. Reclassifying their roles as administrators strengthens the cohesion of their responsibilities as instructional leaders. And then the third is operational continuity. Transitioning the coordinators to the administrative contract enables them to work through the summer months, providing essential time for curriculum development, professional development planning, and resource procurement without the limitations imposed by the 187day teacher contract. That's new spend. The second is restoring a6 payroll assistant to our finance office. We run
032a comparatively small department for the size of the budget we manage. The current department includes a CFO, an assistant director of financial planning and operations, a general accountant, a payroll bookkeeper, and a point4 receptionist. Up until this year, we paid for a share CFO, but that individual worked primarily on the town side. When we reorganized earlier this fall, and Laya stepped formally into the CFO role, she was also doing double duty as support to the payroll officer. Among her many current responsibilities, she's also managing the ongoing transition to Munis and bringing clear gov online. At some point, we'll be moving the HR payroll function from New World to Munis and managing the change while continuing to ensure a smooth payroll function. So, this change is going to be critical. Additional support will relieve pressure on
033Laya so she can focus on the most important responsibilities of her job function. That point six is new spent. Also as new spend is the request for a 1.0 special education pair professional. We have [snorts] a request from the special services office based on student need. Um 1.0 social worker. The $120,000 that's actually proposed in the budget doesn't represent the whole salary, just the portion that the budget's absorbing from the grant that's expiring. We've absorbed the other third over the last budget cycle. Um, and as I mentioned earlier, this year we reassigned the social worker to operate full-time at Miller Driscoll. She's running the DBT wellness program that directly and intensively supports several of our most emotionally complex students. We're developing a program to help these students be successful at Miller Driscoll and keep them
034in the district. So, that's new money in the budget. This next one is smaller, the 0.1 high school prek para. We have a request from the high school to slightly add the FTE of the current pair in that role. They requested a little bit more over time to ensure smooth operation of that program. Though it's only a small dollar amount, it's also a new spend. And the last one that's new spent here is boys volleyball. Um, a couple of months ago, Bobby Rushton attended a board meeting and presented plans to introduce a boys volleyball program. Boys volleyball began as a club activity in the spring of 2024 and has grown in popularity. This coming spring as a booster club funded program to play [clears throat] FCA and Cak schedule. In addition to meeting local demand
035for the sport, formerly adding this program will bring us into full alignment with FCA schools. So on that list, the remaining FTE are either costneutral or offset by reductions on other lines. The next one is 1.0. know WHS dean of student life. The high school administration believes they can create this position within their existing FTE. So there is no alleged implication. Dr. O'Donnell has put this request in front of us for a number of years and we've deferred it. As he wrote, a dean of student life trained in restorative practices and positive school climate efforts will help students learn from their experiences and develop more effective social and behavioral skills. Responsibilities include creating and implementing school programs focused on wellness and engagement, creating and managing a restorative practice program for students who require inschool suspension
036and detention, addressing disciplinary referrals, addressing attendance concerns, coordinating and overseeing student recognition programs, and relieving some of the responsibilities from current administrators so they can reallocate more of their time to instructional leadership. Bob will present a more comprehensive description when he comes for the high school budget workshop. The next two are a 1.0 BCBA and a 1.0 Orton [snorts] Gillingham teacher. These staff members will work at the elementary level. They will address acute behavioral and early literacy needs. They'll represent another dimension of our continuum of services and their programs will promote keeping our elementary students in district. their costs are offset by a reduction of $453,000 to the special services contracted services line. And like Bob, when Melissa comes to the workshop in a couple of weeks, she'll go into a deep dive about these
037roles and her intentions. I've already mentioned to you the 1.0 van driver. Adding a second van owned and operated by the Wilton Public Schools will actually lower our current transportation costs. The cost of this position is more than covered by the $18453,000 uh reduction to the special education and district transportation line. In the next two um columns, we can talk about what we've either um reduced or deferred in the initial budget proposal. So, we always are making choices and the balance comes from trying to advance our priorities while managing the overall growth of the budget. The board of finance in my opinion for the second consecutive year established a reasonable growth target of 3.6%. So in an effort to meet that we made reductions and we deferred proposals for other additional FTE. Most of the
038reductions are modest and some of the lines we either held flat or only slightly. The largest reduction you'll see is in out of district tuition. The original proposal allowed for four additional outplacements, but given all of the in district work we're doing, we felt like we could reasonably reduce this line. This is probably the most vulnerable line in the district circumstances could emerge tomorrow which require additional outplacements, but our trend over the last several years has been very positive and we have seen an overall decline in the number of children who require outplacement settings. [snorts] And on the far right side of that screen, with respect to the list of deferred requests, many will look familiar as they've been proposed and deferred in previous budget years. Of that entire list, the one we should talk
039about is the addition of an instructional coach at Middle. That was a position that was removed from the budget [clears throat] a few years ago. Chuck and his team feel very strongly that the ELA staff would benefit from the support. And given our history in that building with an ELA coach, I want to ensure that the conditions will enable a coach to be successful. As shifting often occurs over the course of a year, we may find ourselves circling back to this item with a plan to accommodate an addition, but we're not there yet. Those are the highlights. The total budget request amounts to $100,459,485 which represents a 6% increase over the current adopted budget and conforms with the board of finances budget guidance. Departmentally, as they already noted, special services consumes about a quarter of
040the budget, followed by the high school, then the district in general and Middlebrook, Sagmill, and Miller Driscoll consumes about 12% of the total budget. In terms of growth, the total district operating budget has the largest growth comparatively. Most of which is salary, some technology, an increase in digital resources, and then a change in paying the fully loaded cost for all of the SRO's that we cover. No surprise and really no change here. 80% of our budget is allocated towards staff. salaries and benefits combined to a total of $80 million 679,000. While the remaining fifth of the budget is all of the other operating expenses and within [clears throat] that chunk, transportation is the largest line followed by contracted services and then home placement tuition. [clears throat] Um the next few slides I call ugly slides
041are really not intended for presentation. um but I offer them for the purpose of helping you more easily uh track um changes. So these next several slides detail all of our FTE by location. The total FTE change budget to budget is plus 7.6. The majority of those positions are offset by reductions in other lines. They don't represent new spend necessarily. So to call out just a couple in this current year we restored a third instructional coach to Miller Driscoll to support the implementation of the reading curriculum. We achieved that with the dollars we held in the budget for an anticipated 42nd classroom teacher at Cedar Mill that we ultimately did not need. So the dollars were already in the budget just not the FTE. Similarly, we're showing a 0.1 PE edition at Blisll, but those
042dollars were also already in the budget in the additional timeline. You can see we reduced the cider mill reading intervention line by point4. We're not actually reducing the reading interventionist, but re reallocating a portion of that salary to the federal title money we received. There are no changes at Middle Brook at this point. At the high school, we've increased the 0.1 of the preK parah and we increased the attendance secretary by 0.2, but offset that increase by a reduction in overtime. This next slide captures most of the special services reallocation which we've talked about already. Um we are going to see a little bit of shifting at Genesis and some of that shifting will be covered by the reduction in the contracted services line. And then lastly at the district level I've already talked through
043the changes to payroll and the additional van driver. It's another ugly slide for you. So one of the benefits of using clear gov software is that we can now easily show a more granular distribution of the entire budget. In order of magnitude, salaries and benefits are the largest and on the opposite end staff recruitment and staff travel represent the smallest expenditures for you. These I don't intend to go through in any great detail tonight, but do want to provide a snapshot of the budget allocation and corresponding changes. Beyond the growth of salary and health insurance lines, we have growth in our building repair lines. Those funds address some of the needs I identified at the start. So, we going to install a new sidewalk as I mentioned uh in the rear of Miller Driscoll. We
044have several sets of exterior doors where the door frames are rotted and have to be replaced. Um, we have some bathrooms that are in dire need of repair. I simply can't wait for our capital planning to catch up with and then we're continuing to move forward with our plan to expand interior camera coverage. On this slide, you can see the contraction on the individual transportation line and the out of district tuition line. You can also see the growth in our digital resources line. This comes in part with the addition of speakology which is an interactive tool, our high school world teachers plan to use. We'll be using Spanish [snorts] for our introductory Spanish classes at Middlebrook. And then the remaining are the general cost increases of the suite of packages we currently use in addition
045to some strengthening of our cyber security apparatus. To close out the presentation, want to return to context. So looking back 10 plus years, when you average together annual budget growth, you see very modest growth over time. That's one of the factors that contributes to having the lowest per pupil expenditure in the DUI and being 59th in the state. Last piece I'll offer to you just as a point of comparison. Um just the district around us uh is engaged in budget and based on the feedback from my colleagues so far I expect that again we'll have no broken budget. So, if you're ready, we'll take a look at your budget books. So, as I mentioned at the beginning, this is our first run of a budget book using clear depth. Clear clear is intended to be
046an online format, so not everything translates seamlessly to paper. We'll make available to you um tonight or tomorrow the online link so you can have both formats if you like. We'll also put it on our website, make it available to the public. For those of you that have been looking at board of ed budgets for a long time, you should find the table of contents pleasing. [laughter] >> Wow. >> Right. So, you know, it's doing its job and send you the key sections. Um so just you know kind of as a as a a broad overview here the front matter consists of introduction and executive summary an explanation of the book's content an overview of the budget development process. Uh we've also included a number of the district highlights and um contact you just saw.
047Um as you move through you know beginning um we're on page 42 you'll find a complete report of the um detailed budgets and um we begin with Bristol you found middle high school and then the um district department overview followed by um special education and then we broke out um the middle school preschool program the genesis program and the community steps program. Um, as we did in the um, New World book, each of those sections begins with a summary that um, highlights um, student success, program excellence, and then strategic priorities. So, you have some narrative to open it up and then you have some summary narrative that follows um, each of the details. And then within the appendices, uh, we included for you, uh, the class size report that was shared back in October, as
048well as, um, MNP plannings, uh, 10ear enrollment projections. Um, as soon as we, um, finalize fiscal 28 and fiscal 29 um, forecasts, those will be included, too. they'll be, you know, more easily and more readily available online, but we'll publish hard copies and have you have them in your uh paper copy books. So, as we've done in the past, as you go through the materials and generate questions, you can email them to Ruth and to me. I will log them and uh the staff here will respond in writing. Um that document will grow over time. will become one of the artifacts of your budget deliberation and then we'll review it at um each of the public meetings over the course of the next month and a half. Um you'll also have the opportunity at each
049of the workshops to hear from the principles and other cost center directors to as they dig into some of the granular details um in each of their respective budgets. And with that, >> take a breath. [snorts] I know that this represents a tremendous amount of work. >> Um, so I want to say thank you. You staff, Lucille, especially navigating a new system. Um, we've been hearing about this new layout for a while now, so it'll be um exciting to kind of dig in and um see how it works and, you know, make adjustments as as we go. Um, I think that it's really um tremendous that we were able to um stay within the um guidance that was given by the board of finance. I think that it is really telling that over the last
050couple of years, we really have worked together to come up with a a reasonable and data driven process that um puts us um in a place where um we can come to the numbers sooner and then really look into the um specifics and see where the trade-offs are and then as as move forward from there from your um proposal. So I know that you know we are bound by by money and time and um these are these are endless for us. So um we really um what we're able to do with what we have is um tremendous. So um I look forward to kind of um looking and seeing how we're moving forward. And does anybody have um any um preliminary thoughts or so? Thank you for this. This is a ton of work. So
051all of you that contributed to this, this is an amazing document. I'm remembering the last meet finance meeting where you proposed the budget and you were at 4%. And it was Stuart's last meeting and he talked about his concern about the fact that we were always so low on per pupil expenditure and how he worried that we could become an outliner in that that way that we would be harmed eventually by being so low and being so thoughtful about being so low. And I just his his voice is resonating in my head now when I saw where we are in the jur. And is that something that we should start worrying about? >> I'm not worried about it. And it's a choice, right? We we >> Yeah. >> All of this is always, you know,
052trying to manage what we think the board, what we think we need. And so, you know, I I didn't give you the exhausted list of tradeoffs that got us to 3.6%. And there are many, but we, you know, I think this group um does and has done very well. And I think we have a practice of incremental improvement. And hopefully you saw very clearly in some of the prioritized allocations that we're looking to continue to focus our attention and zero in on some of those areas that really require a more um intensive remedy. I I think you know the other piece that in all of it when you start to look at um you know comparisons over time of other district budgets, we were just talking about this an hour ago, but um knock on
053wood, one of the areas that we have performed very well in is around our healthcare costs. And so, you know, our costs have been somewhere between 6 and 8% annually for all the years I've been here. And I mean that's I came out of Bethl where we had a year I think we were looking at you know one proposal was like 25%. And so districts have had those moments in time where health care costs are in the double digits and you know that sends some of their their you know bottom line budgets soaring. And that's why you also see um some of these districts kind of flip-flopping between, you know, being, you know, you know, fully insured and moving to the state partnership plan and then moving back. Um and so, you know, just as
054a point of comparison on that, no, we look at the state partnership plan very carefully every year because from a, you know, kind of consumption point of view, it's a very friendly plan. But here in Fairfield County, the the town is on it and you know what I'm told is they're looking this year at 12 to 15% cost increases and they had high cost increases last year. So that's one major part of our budget and because we've been pretty healthy as a district that's restrained I think it's cost and and contributes to the the I think in general, Pam, to just the idea, I mean, you do want to make sure over time you're not cutting away to a point and then then you hit, you know, a tipping point or you hit an erosion
055point because it's always harder to build back than it is to >> um down the road. >> He just didn't want us to be [clears throat] that district. it was just >> behind in some area and he just had a concern that we would eventually might be the outliner just being so low >> in in terms of our >> surrounding dirt. >> Yeah. And I guess too I I would I I look at that, you know, that number not in isolation but in the in the relationship to our student performance, the opportunities that are avail, you know, I we're adding boys volleyball this year. Um there I'm sure there are other you know differences programmatically in some other places but um you know at a 30,000 foot view I'm not sure that we're we're missing
056major components. You know there's certainly things wanted to get you know really cutting edge. We could do lots of things differently if we wanted to double our spending. Um, and maybe that's something we could talk about. Um, [laughter] but you know, [cough] that's late. [clears throat] >> Okay. Any other um preliminary um observations? We'll have lots of time to live with us. And the first you know budget workshop again is on the 15th and that's uh Miller Driscoll Cider Mill and Middbrook. Um again also Kevin reiterated any questions that you have starting today you know send them in to Kevin and to myself [clears throat] they do get formally um logged on a sheet that log um becomes a public public record. The answers are posed there too. We work a similar process with the
057board of finance. Um so and feel free to start rolling them in as as they um as they occur. I have a question. Um do we have data on the demographics or the enrollment from the new housing that's been built in town? We can we can get we had Yeah. So the last bit I looked at was uh maybe a month or two ago was the um student dress match at 141 Danbury Road was the Riverside complex and I was looking at that um >> in the context of the projections and um they were spot on. >> It was like within a street too. Um, but we can we can get it for all of those by doing a test. >> Yeah, be interesting. So much budget cycle to see. >> I'll log that one.
058>> Thank you very much. You're >> welcome. >> And here end on a high note. Recommended graduation date for the class of 2026. >> Dr. Smith and Chairwoman Duca, it is with great excitement and pride that I recommend that the graduation date for the class of 2026 will be Saturday, June 13, 2026. Congratulations in advance to the Wilton High School class of 26. With your approval, we'll announce this to the school community tomorrow and to the parent community. and you are all formally invited to the ceremony. We hope you all attend. >> Any questions on the graduation date for Dr. Odon? >> It's going to be a beautiful Saturday in Wilton. >> Um, is there a motion to approve a 2026 graduation date of FA Saturday, June 13, 2026? >> So moved. >> Well, I'll
059take Pam as first, Nicola as second. Uh, all in favor? Hi. >> Hi. >> And congratulations to the senior class and to families and parents and guardians. Um, graduation will be on June 13th. >> Thank you. Are there any other um comments from the public? Lost Heartel16 Washington Post Drive and uh you guys have an opus going on. This is nice job. Very nice job. Um I do have a few comments. One is a little touched with envy since you know my position in the town and we are not as advanced as you in the uh uh budget process. uh a couple of things. One is as you went through your budget, you started with great uh things, great accomplishments, but I didn't understand the drivers of those accomplishments. So, when I think of great
060school systems, I say they generally have great leadership. They have a community that supports them, that gives them great resources. They've got great teachers and they've got students that seem to get it >> and uh you know and with the within the leadership piece there's you know setting of the culture, the financial acumen, uh the performance expectations. So, but that's from my head and my experience. You have a certain set of things that you look at and drive really hard to get you to where you are today. I didn't see them here. And I've known you long enough that they are there and they are sometimes they're a little more explicit. In this budget, they're a little more implicit. So, that was uh one of the thoughts I had as you set this up and
061and present it to the community. The second thing is you have great financial numbers and one of the things that people say is this. How are you versus the rate of inflation? You have your increase over the last 11 years what 1 point something percent. >> 1.95 >> the rate of [laughter] over the last 10 years is 2.85. Every year you're 1% below the rate of inflation on average. To come back to your point, Pam. >> So drive that home. We live in a town that doesn't believe it has two nickels to rub together. >> Yeah. >> And I've lived through that for years. I've been part of this town for 30 years. Um and we are very careful with our dollars. So to say we're almost a full point below the rate of inflation
062is saying something. >> Yeah. >> A third point is you have an increase in headcount full-time equivalency uh full-time uh whatever. Um [snorts] your headcount for for students is about flat. I didn't hear a good rationale for that increase. There's tweaks. There's movement, there's investment, but I didn't get the sort of like in the gut, you got to do this. Um, and then you also talked about uh how you talk about administrative heavy. What I heard you talk about is the emphasis on clientfacing services. So I'm not sure if like a guidance counselor counts as administration or clientf facing. Uh so think of that and say these are all the resources we have supporting our students in very specific ways and and I think that will um carry that argument a little bit better. Otherwise,
063you know, I've watched you guys over the years and uh and Michael went through the uh the school system and he's doing great. Uh except that he's a scientist and uh and in this world, scientists um are a little bit in jeopardy. Um I do have a question for Bob. What's happening with the debate team? >> So, are they doing well? Do they exist? What? You know, >> they exist. Yeah. >> Good. >> So, the history is Michael, my son Michael and Tom Deck sort of recreated that debate team and kept it going. So, they actually, those two students, we had a kind of a posity, a sat to oversee it, and Michael and Thomas took over as leaders with with guidance from us and they just they they rocked it. They were amazing. >>
064Yeah. So, I'm a big believer, >> still very strong. [snorts] >> So, that those are my comments. Uh >> very few questions, just a few suggestions. Uh I think the school's wrong. >> Thanks. >> Good to see you, >> Lucille. Any other comments from the public? >> No. Do you need it? >> No. >> Okay. Thank you. >> It's going to change. >> Thank you. I'm just future business again. workshops January 15th, 22nd, and 29th. Again, 6 pm start and then a regular meeting on uh Thursday, February 5th. Uh meeting is adjourned at