BOE Budget Workshop (26 January 2023)

001it's 102. we're going to call the Board of Ed Workshop of February January 26 to order we're going to make just a slight adjustment in the agenda so the folks from you know bro can go first and then get back to the building no problem thank you for being here thank you for Pinch hitting and so we're kind of presumptuous and assuming you're going first Middle School people yes thank you you are a great minds think alike we also want to thank our central office staff who leads us every day as we strive to do what's best for kids story wishes that he was here today to present his budget his leadership passion and diligence makes a difference at Middlebrook every day Karen lamentia's support and organization is instrumental in putting forth his final product

002we are also extremely grateful to Marianne salvato for her tremendous knowledge and willingness to always help we are presenting a budget that we believe will lead our students staff and school communities needs for the next school year we all recognize these needs are greater and more complex than ever before as we strive for excellence in academics and student continued growth in all areas our budget while lien supports the Middlebrook mission statement and our students Journeys as they build the attributes of the Wilton Public School portrait of a graduate as we look forward to our next school year we will focus on the following priorities schedule change we require a budget that will ensure to the maximum extent possible students can focus on learning and teachers can focus on designing outstanding lessons and continue to create

003and maintain supportive relationships with students we recognize that these relationships augment the learning process our priorities to support the instructional core and to consistently deliver our rigorous Academic Program to continue with the district and school priority of facilitating the growth of contemporary multi-literate Scholars balance healthy human beings self-navigating expert Learners courageous ethical leaders creative entrepreneurial designers and active socially sensitive citizens to meet and exceed the academic social and emotional needs of our students including the continued impact of the pandemic in addition we will continue our investment in school climate programming including the web the web program and training solid web leaders and summer days to adjust to the new schedule including social emotional learning we intend to Prior prioritize professional learning efforts for teachers and academics social emotional learning and diversity equity and inclusion in

004the area of program Improvement we support a new course specifically a stem class which would be included in our stride offerings as we all know new courses generally require summer curriculum days materials supplies and professional learning costs turn the mic over to the cult I get to do the nitty-gritty stuff um so big picture year over year in Middlebrook is typically at about a one percent increase I'll go into that a little bit more later but this year we're at a negative Point decrease and currently we are at 29 311 decrease from last year's stock and budget um budget to budget our teacher FTE are proposed to go down 7 FTE to 91.5 and our student enrollment is currently projected to be at age 16 which is 79 students down from the October 1 report

005um we're not asking for any new positions however we are looking to reallocate for the new stem course from our math applications position to a stem course for that FTE as we began the Middlebrook process in the budget we began automatically cutting 10 percent and looking at what where we could get a little bit later in all of our categories um as of January 10th we further reduced 9925 from the instructional Improvement that would include a PowerSchool University TD for some of our secretaries web training language arts um training social studies and math a little bit from each one and then also we had put in two thousand dollars for supervised Resource Services for landscaping that was out of public budget actually we do have some increases mostly driven by inflation as many things are

006I said nine dollars for pepper the other thing at the store I didn't actually but nine dollars remember um language arts training 2 600 math texts 3 800 3 900 and those are consumables workbooks which are these increases um art equipment 1400 that's for the new Kiln the other one cracked uh family consumers science supplies science texts LLC Contract Services and supervisory training for a total of 22 051 is the increase um and then I have our year to year over the last 10 years but our 10-year average is an increase and this is proposing a negative 1.06 would you mind I'm just talking the board through is some of the other administrators have where you've made reductions or where you guys have been lean if there's been an impact on teachers or others what

007that's been and then if there's anything as you guys were you know kind of building that didn't even make its way to me right right if you would just if there's anything like that and just talk about that um I think as we were looking forward to um you know continuing to improve in stem that's something that we reallocated but I think if we can continue to build that that would be something to be looking forward to I also think that we're looking at three language arts teachers and as interventionists if that's the possibility to continue to support as we move into the new schedule um and then just something that's not necessarily in our budget but that we continue to Value you guys supporting and talking about is some of the bonding for our

008building and our facilities and to continue to improve because we are putting Band-Aids a lot of places and we have to really look big picture as we look ahead great and some of the other just um changes that you see as we move in the last year's budget to the originally proposed and revisions for some professional learning costs that a real updated to the special district professional learning project including in language arts so those reductions that you just spoke about in PD have been reallocated not the ones that Nicole listed but um one that was specifically for language arts in Teachers College I guess I'm just going to tear a Band-Aid off and if this schedule change doesn't get voted through with them just it's it's surprising to me to see a budget that has

009a negative 511 000 plan with the assumption that this is going to get passed yeah that's not them that's me I wrote that assumption and and so the answer to your question is this um we would look at um still reducing Staffing and so it would be incredibly messy I shared with these guys a doc the other day just if we were to like we have with our elementary schools and even the high school just follow a pure kind of enrollment reduction pattern what that would mean is we would reduce if we kept so we'd start with kind of a class size average Foundation of around 20 to 21 kids give or take so looking at that we would go Department by department and so across grade level what that would mean is you know

010somewhere just over maybe three three and a half staff taken out of sixth grade in the core areas I think about two and a half and then one and a half in eighth grade proportionally what that would mean mechanically would really be to undo the team you know so you would have you know two plus full-time equivalencies trying to cover three teams and so you would have both teachers and kids now bleeding across teams and we'd have to really get into the mechanics that's the next step of doing the full analysis but you know that's one big piece of it the other piece that we have to look at are that other stride instructional areas and so for a school that's you know right now just a little bit bigger than Cider Mill for example

011we have we run PE classes where we have two full-time PE teachers we run three and a half at Middlebrook and part of that reason is they all have full schedules but it's the the distribution of kids and so we'd have to look at how we we distribute kids kind of moving through each of those areas we'd look at our and then we look at music you know one of the the gifts I think that this District provides its students and families is the way that we provide instrumental music instruction and so our kids get to work in kind of very small ensembles you know three four five ten kids but when you're talking about um you know an entire cohort of kids working off team the rest of those kids have to be distributed

012someplace else so you've got you know multiple sections of art running multiple sections of PE running if we're going to look at Contracting staff and we also have to look at change How We Do music instruction in those areas and I think you know all of it is going to be very highly disruptive so what if I guess like a Blair very black and white and I know nothing in this budget is black and white but so you remove 511 000 of teachers of FTE it's the equivalent of seven right now okay so the equivalent of seven I guess I'm like where's that cost Savings in here like what's picking up the 500 it doesn't look like it's it's not and so that's the um for several reasons on an FTE front um it's a

013wash because we're pulling the FTE that are currently sitting in the s or Grant that's going to expire at the end of this year into the budget so you have the two classroom teachers at Miller Driscoll got it so the answer is going across so this this that's what I keep looking for yes if you go to if you go to the um so you should see um I mean you see that you should see you know I think I'm actually missing the the front summary page so at Middlebrook you should see a reduction in um dollars in FTE but then it's you know the other areas and Marianne you can maybe you can help me out with this but I'm looking for is Middlebrook has that reduction of like the 511 yeah yep so

014where is that like I can't figure out where that is Middlebrook to Middlebrook hold on Marion so you're dropping seven at Middlebrook but you're not necessarily picking them up in that location so you have to look overall throughout the district where are you making your FTE changes to see where your of that comes from the ftes that were in the covet grants are inspiring you're talking dollar for dollars yes so I understand that that's the cross the essers but like so if you're pulling you're giving 500 let's just saying really basic accounting terms you're giving five hundred eleven thousand dollars back to the Middleburg budget I'm not seeing where that's being taken out of the middle book does that make like I'm not seeing a big line item for 511 and I know it's not

015gonna be one line item I'm not seeing 10 line items that add up to 511 right so if you go so actually like if you want me you only see the reduction of the 511 on the one line which is the language arts teachers right so you see the reduction come down there yeah I think you can see a reduction come down you should well the reason that you're not seeing it in math so much is because depending upon where the remaining teachers fall on that salary grid if they Advance a certain step their advancement wipes out the reduction yeah and the other office like if you if you like go down the column the 23-24 change yeah and you just look at the it's the um the collection of the increases that offsets that

016reduction that 14 000 15 000. it does if you go right down actually so the last is kind of like the insurance is 190 000. I'm just like it seems like I'm just not saying it seems like you should see it a bigger number yeah I know I know what you're looking for yeah because I've looked at it a few times it's just like I almost want the Excel document to like and I'm not saying that I'm questioning the math it just it's a big minus and I'm not seeing a big plus yeah so like right I totally see what you're saying so if like the 58 377 increase in insurances right and I get that and um salaries plus the 20 right all of those totaloupe there's 22 in the boiler and air conditioning

017repair another 12 in Social Security yeah that would be actually be interesting Marion maybe that's something just so I have the Excel document up yeah just by highlighting the column that's kind of what I was looking for that the formula is doing what we want it to do yeah this is coming out to the same number okay got it thank you yeah yeah isn't that I mean that's a that's it's brutal like that's that is the story you just mentioned this year yeah right well it's just in response to some of the conversations that have been coming through our emails and conversations that people have been having that this is a cost saving this is actually like not even a cost saving this is a cost neutral so this really it's not like we're oh

018we're saving the whole school budget by no no and I think the um you know another way to to look at it if if we kept you know the seven FTE that are proposed to be reduced in this budget that's you know we're approximating about three quarters of a million dollar ad right you know so that would be another way to look at that right right because of insurance and stuff because this is just salary on that one line insurance is a separate line right all right other questions for um foreign [Music] that clearly didn't make it into this budget what would be your top three priorities if we were further reduce soon no no yes what were the things that you really kind of the top three things that you really wanted in but

019the budget just doesn't yeah I mean I I think we're this is as lean as we could get and I think anything else would be a value-add I don't think we're greatly taking away from what students will need I think um anything else would be um more you know if we could even get more creative but more um the mental health support from the grant that might be coming I think that you know if we don't get that that will impact us as kids come up to us in the next few years um I also think that um some of those trainings obviously for PD anytime you can give teachers more trainings you know they improve their skill set and improve what the kids need and then you know again it's not our budget but

020all of the Building Services the facilities and you feel confident that there's enough resources in this budget to if there is a scheduled change to implement it with Fidelity and um with proper you know teacher resources we do I think the PD we have in in the time now and over the summer I think the time you need to give to teachers is what's going to be the most valuable um for them to plan and to meet next year and to really organize and um meet the kids where they are and bring them forward um I also recognize in conversations that we've had from the administrators of other middle schools that have implemented blocks that the doing that is sometimes the best learning that happens so yes having um a real um toolkit of different

021instructional approaches and strategies and activities that help to transition with different learning during the course of the period but also it's through the living that fills the practice and the success yeah so I just want to make sure that as we're living it it's starting if it goes through the living is starting from a place that is already um solid yeah we don't have what we need I worry that if it doesn't go through the other options are scary you know I think that would give us some more a greater impact I mean our first if we just go look at FTE in general to reduce every budget every I'm sorry every uh schedule we've looked at our number one priority was keeping teams um and if that's impacted that would really impact our students

022and our teachers and The Arc of their development over the three years that we have done I totally agree with you go ahead based on Nicole's responses so do you feel that these changes that Middlebrook are budget driven I think that they are curriculum based in what we think the kids need to develop to for the teachers to develop to deliver the curriculum it in that to meet the standards in a different way in language arts and to really dive deeper into the curriculum what I worry about is if we don't move forward with this schedule that does meet our needs and we look at it purely and those teachers or whatever we look at the reduction course that would be professional yeah here's the here's the thing let me I'm going to just answer

023that question with Nicole because and I want to be crystal clear about this it was Kevin's decision to reduce to assume that the schedules is going through and I'll tell you why you know in a second um if you look historically over the last 10 years at Middlebrook and look across all of the schools every other school responds more sensitively to enrollment fluctuation Middlebrook does not because of the team structure it's easy to actually account for a slight increase in students because you can add a point to to your teacher teams we've done that but once you get below 1.0 it's really hard to do that because how do you account for a point Aid across a team and so the team has protected FTE even though enrollments declined you know we I went back

024and looked from 1516 to um through the projected population for next year it's 178 student reduction in that time Horizon in any other school we would reduce staff we would and so I think um you know I think we have to account for enrollment change at Middlebrook through looking at the staff I think that's a responsible thing to do I think what's elegant here about the opportunity in front of us with the schedule change and I've just you know listening to the conversations around the schedule change has been fascinating to me because we've got people talking about distribution of minutes you know increments time but what we're not talking about is learning and how kids learn and you guys saw today in the classrooms of the high school the benefit of the block you saw

025it because in every single class we were in kids were grouped and they had time to collaborate and the Middlebrook teachers have been telling us I just heard a comment from Karen brenneke yesterday that came out of the sixth grade reading IET they don't have time because they're just feeling so compressed in that 41 minutes and as we're thinking about the opportunity with the schedule change we have to go back to what we value around and I know that you know a lot of them are really fearful they're primarily you know fearful and resistant because of the loss of their colleagues and then the um operating in a 84 minute block is new to them so there's a lot of unknowns but it's not unknown to us as a district and I think we have

026ample evidence of the success of that and then you couple in the um you know budget challenge we have in front of us um we we know and we've been told and you know Karen's repeated we can deliver a good thorough Ela curriculum in a workshop model with an apartment half the size by integrating reading and writing to me that's elegant you know we're not losing we're actually gaining um yeah it's the human factor of the staff that I think is hardest for people to to manage and I and I know we don't want to get into this conversation now but to me it's not the loss of staff it's the actual schedule another schedule so it's it's an enemy again like I'm okay with the I agree with you that I think that middle

027book has been able to like buffer these enrollment declines so I'm not not even concerned about the lack of the loss of staff at Middlebrook it's um what the day's gonna look like so it's like two different things and in in talking to several teachers that also seems to be you know and I think I've had teachers say to me they're making they being the administration are making it sound like it's the loss of staff just an interesting yeah yeah I mean you guys are in the building so you can offer your own commentary based on your conversation our teachers are incredible they do an amazing job they are so dedicated and I think they're concerned with the unknown like Toby just said um I also think that given the opportunity to have their kids

028longer to be able to dive deeper to be able to wrap around a little bit more in the small groups I truly believe they can they can do amazing things and I think once we get a year or two into it the flexibility and their their creativity will come out um but you know I think it's been a hard few years and this is another change and when I have teachers save me like it is you're miserable it kills me so I think our teachers are motivated by what is best for kids and that that they have questions and all that too and as they're all said it's going to be in the time and the experience that's going to support change those festivals well more to come on that yeah February 2nd to really

029get into um you know with Jory again hopefully he's back in one piece and go through some really fine-grained details about what it looks like in all the other wise and where Force and Kevin um for the line item for the coaches I know that there was a we're going after the teacher and learning committee is reviewing this survey that we said recently yeah so I haven't seen that survey yet it closed um last week last week so yeah so we'll review the the um the next meeting perfect [Music] other questions for um Toby or Nicole let them get back my last question co-curricular activities that students are really really engaged in and awesome have really generated by student interests and my student favorite teacher to help out and be an advisor it's busy busy

030at Middlebrook after school on Monday Tuesdays and Thursdays as well as in the morning and so that increase is just like so through contractual um got it all the teachers yeah [Music] if if I'm not mistaken there's also an increase in there I think there were three new proposed clubs that were potentially being put forward that there were three proposed clubs that were included in that yeah so that's intact are you guys able to share with us how many students are in each we could give that information okay thanks and it is an exciting thing that um that students can join at any time so if you have an after-school commitment or maybe a sports activity in the fall you can't give us one more day Club but then [Music] fine thank you thank you

031thank you okay thanks appreciate you coming over of course thank you thank you for all your efforts have a great afternoon everybody thank you okay well thank you for the opportunity um this is actually a presentation of the digital learning um Tuesday regarding technology so this is the other part of it um and I'm you know I'm going to start with um I put together a couple of pages that include some data I'm going to go through as well as um kind of like an outline so that um you can kind of follow along and see what the story is when it really comes to your learning um I started about seven years ago when I started we didn't have the one to one that we have now so it we've come a long long

032way I like to do the um you know the timeline of what has happened in Wilton in a very short period of time but you know taking us through that and going to thank you and going to being ready for the pandemic and lockdown and remote and all of the things that we are now like trying to forget that actually happened the last couple of years um and where we are right now is actually a really interesting story so I'm going to start with just telling you kind of like my thought process and putting together the budget when um having us you know he did with all the Departments and I know the department spoke about this we talked about a very challenging Year and that we really needed to come in at the 10

033reduction that meant a lot of a lot of work behind the scenes to actually get to that point and I'm going to go through why that was so much work as you can probably imagine with inflation and when you're purchasing these types of resources that inflation that we actually experience on a day-to-day you know when you buy your eggs and you're like oh my God what is going on here it happens with these resources and tools and and things that we're actually buying on a regular basis um so I wanted to really kind of look at it and say how can we actually do what we need to do effectively integrate the use of digital tools but do it in a responsible kind of sustainable manner meaning that if we start with this budget and

034we look at it this year that it's something that instead of it keeping on going up and up and up which is what we started seeing we saw a lot of creeping right that we can kind of like really focus in on it so in order to do that you start with the why right like so I started with our mission and our vision and of course our portrait of our graduate and in the past several months I've been working with a small team and this Future Ready cohort professional learning where we're developing a vision and a plan for our digital learning plan going forward you know we basically call it our digital learning vision for 2030 sounds like a long time from now it really isn't and we're really looking at preparing students to

035embody the attributes of our port for the graduate through personalized self-directed and project-based learning so with that bigger why we kind of go down to where what are the goals so in in this particular program we provide the resources that support learning right day-to-day basis all kinds of things that you know you walk into a classroom and you may see students doing or you may see students at home you know accessing different things so we've got curriculum programs in every single content area that's actually supported by the District budget online textbooks you know so like their day to day like what they do is actually all kind of Incorporated with with digital resources we have lots of practice type of tools you've seen the ixls and you know the lexias and all of those different

036really great tools that help with learning our learning management system you know that's huge our schoology and then we have a number of productivity tools and tools that keep our students safe like Gaggle for example we also then incorporate our contemporary literacies as we came to call it last year when we did our curriculum review for digital learning which is digital information media technology and stem huge mouthful but very specifically we came to the conclusion we needed to update our keyboarding programs we've had keyboarding that started in second grade kind of finished off in sixth grade we have a new keyboarding program that we're piloting this year that we're hoping we do K-12 next year by the way for the same cost as what we've got right now so we're switching keyboarding programs same cost

037getting lots more which is actually going to be the theme of what I'm going to talk about is I looked for things that we could get more out of for Less which is really quite a bit of doing but we got there been in lots of ways digital citizenship has become more and more important right our students are before pre-pandemic to post pandemic increase their use of social media by two hours a day um yeah and it didn't go down so you expected pandemics over things nope they are on social media they're on more so please sorry to interrupt yes when you say social media how do you define that are you talking like inter like Facebook Snapchat yes types of things yes okay yeah I'm not talking about our instructions you're not talking okay

038yeah yeah social media so as a result we need to do more and more instruction when it comes to digital citizenship and what I call really digital leadership you know being upstanders you know being able to see something as happening and actually talk to it and and being leaders um we've used a free program for curriculum called Common Sense Media I know a lot of you are familiar with it because there's a parent component which is really really good but we've used it as part of our classroom instruction um we're a that adopting the Cyber Civics curriculum which is a Diana Graber any of you that have participated in the Wilton youth Council talks where she's been featured it's her curriculum and we've begun using some of the lessons out of there I bought like

039a pilot version of it this year we've got it in the budget for next year to use in our secondary classroom where this has become even more important right like that whole idea of social media your digital footprint you know um privacy all of those things are just so important um a number of media tools that we use on a daily basis are in there and our library databases all of the research and information that even chat GPT can't really bring in so need to have that um I know that um Fran really quickly are we Outsourcing most of that the like when you talk about the Cyber specific curriculum is that Outsource the companies that come in and talk to our kids um some of it yeah some of it you probably have seen

040some of like the Scott Driscoll talks and some of the experts coming in we have a huge series of parent workshops like we started with the bark Technologies in December it kind of goes into March and April but our library media Specialists also teach it like instruction instructed directly in our pre-k5 classrooms it's a unit every year that they devote to digital citizenship in at Middlebrook one of the the um the things that will happen if the schedule gets adopted is that digital citizenship will come back we had a course that was an actual um quarter course um in sixth grade for all sixth graders that actually I don't know um was it last year or the year before we didn't have it all uh this past year we have it but kids are just

041being pulled out of stride classes and they they have the class every like six to eight you know days like they basically come in do a 30 40 minute class and then don't see our library media specialist for another week and a half to two weeks which is not ideal as you can probably imagine so um that will come back and then at the high school we have our digital literacy course that's um done for all ninth graders so it is actually part of our curriculum we try to embed it and work with other teachers with it but that's essentially where these lessons that I'm talking about through cyber Civics are coming in sure the um I was thinking if the schedule changed that we pulled probability and statistics that a stem class was doing

042in its place that's correct where's digital citizenship going then we're still working on that but um one of the things that we're looking at is that it is going to fit somehow in the sixth it's only sixth grade that we need to do it in [Music] yeah um and I'm going to talk a little bit about that much you can see next is that for a quarter that the kids go through the digital citizens yes yeah just five weeks six weeks it's essentially what it comes down to is about 22 class periods they meet every other day in a quarter so it's like it's like half a quarter yeah um so um you may be aware of the fact that we've been working on uh reviewing stem for the district um which um has been

043a great um a great experience we've had parents I know Jen has been on there thank you and we've had some wonderful students that spoke up at the last meeting they were absolutely phenomenal and so basically what we've been looking at is Shoring up our computer science um part of stem so technology and then also looking at engineering and having a pathway for both we've talked about a program called codalicious which is actually a program that supports coding lessons provides professional learning um you know gives a lot of support to the teachers and you know really has a good scaffold across especially grades three through eight um so that's a program we're adding and it's going to fit in with what we want to do in terms of coding if the schedule goes through I

044think you've heard there would be a stem um course that's a second stem course there's currently there's an i7 course that's taught by Adam showpas and essentially what he does because it's 22 class periods half of it is coding the other half is engineering so essentially we're devoting about 10 class periods to coding intent to engineering the engineering design and actually creating he uses Legos in his classroom the proposal is to have at least those 20 classes to vote into coding and programming as well as then keeping the engineering so that is really where that would come in um and I did see it Continuum then sorry to interrupt it like my kids went through private coding it's like you're building upon You're Building upon that's exactly right so if you're starting in third grade

045then that curriculum builds enforce rate so how does it start the first year for an eighth grader so basically we start with our coding program actually in Miller Driscoll I mean this would be I I was there a couple of days ago doing some informals and it's wonderful seeing these kids they they begin doing blockly with scratch Junior in first and second grade and then we continue with scratch at Cider Mill um so what our transition is going to need to be is going from blockly to Tech space programming beginning in sixth grade but like you said you need a you need a Continuum to get them through you know all the coding fundamentals which you know add them to his credit has done a lot with the 20 sessions but when you start trying

046to do the application of with the Legos it's not necessarily a true coding experience right so what you may have had with your uh your children outside is that true scaffolding which is what we're hoping to do with this course they're trying to find this to fix that this is covered by other state standards that cover this yeah computer science standards were adopted by the state of Connecticut like two years ago and um you know we began our review last year so we're really you know kind of like trying to keep up with exactly when it happened so we're um hopefully if if this course goes through we'll actually be able to provide a true coding and programming course I'm very excited about that potential um so one of the other parts of this and

047you won't see it in the budget because we really need to continue working with that stem Review Committee is robotics robotics is really really important and there's a version of it that um Adam is doing right now with Legos we're looking at a lot of other components of it that we're going to work over the summer with him and the curriculum writing process and you know as an example we've done some PD on drones right drones are are cool and kids are going to be very excited about using them but they also have a real practical value they're used in all kinds of Industry right now and guess what you have to code them in order so you know that coding is part of using you know some of these new technologies which is really

048important um so you know as an example we would buy the drones like we need to buy some of these resources in order to support this um the next goal you'll see is around our communication plan which is actually a good news story last year we moved from final site which was um we had them like five or six years in terms of our vendor we went to Gabbert which has in the meanwhile meantime gotten bought by a bigger company called parental Square which is a big communication platform so we're really good at you know selecting really great programs because they got bought out but in the meantime we saved about ten thousand dollars last year and we're going to save another fifteen thousand dollars going into next year because of the fact that we

049won't be implementing next year so we won't have additional startup costs but they are much less and we feel that the product is better so again that's good there will probably be more that we need to look at and some of the work that we'll do in communication will have to do with looking at all the different tools we use for communication and can we holiday can we find something that does what remind us for example which is a you know that text communication system so we're going to need to really take a look at everything that we have and that might you know show some savings um even though it's not in my budget it's in the school budget you've probably heard from the different schools potentially about their Library learning Commons the budget

050that especially it funds library book collections is really important we spent probably the first five or six years that I was here trying to get our collections to a fairly acceptable 21st century sort of you know we went from 1998 to the 2000s we're like at anywhere from 2007 to 2010 now you know as years go by it's you know we're kind of already like getting to that to that getting a little old but you cannot get rid of books if you don't have enough books so even the week process you know gets hindered by not being able to buy new books and then you know in every single Library we have makerspaces Innovation Studios Etc um and then just you know as a note we have been very fortunate our extremely grateful to our

051ptas and what um they're both been huge supporters of our library learning Commons and our Innovation Studios you know we've got the entire podcasting Suite here at the high school that was as a result of what so um that is you know another brand that comes in um we begin we we continually look at tools that we have and we look for ways to either leverage them or to find ways of getting other teams that needs more because it's just the only way that we can actually keep the cost down so what I just went through was essentially we're providing the and you know the curriculum and instructional needs for all of our goals um we're trying to find cost efficiencies which have by the way taken at least one two three meetings with each

052vendor in order to get them to um to rates that we can live with and then we want to like Leverage what we have you know sometimes you don't use something as well as you could and you could use it better and then you know keep with that so um I did talk about how the cost has gone up it has gone up anywhere from five to ten percent a year it is absolutely something that other than looking at the numbers you wouldn't be aware of so I have a couple of examples here that I just want to talk about Newsela you probably are familiar with if your students come home and they're doing their you know yeah [Laughter] um you know what I mean I'm like get your earbuds it's integrated literally in every

053curriculum area because I look at the stats and it's not just Ela using it it's social studies it's science is huge user you know it is used everywhere we have become extremely Reliant in our units of study in our lessons and our teachers use it on a daily basis let's take a look at the costs now um back in 2019 we were paying 14 795 for Miss Ella next year the cost has gone up to twenty seven thousand that's just one tool what one story in terms of what's been going on in this area um Gaggle has become so integral in how we deal with social emotional learning um self-harm so many different issues we've caught and were made aware of so many different problems that students have based on alerts that we receive from

054Gaggle Gaggle provides us with alerts from Google Drive Gmail um you know the docs and also chats so everything that students are doing within their Google accounts if something comes up that is of a concerning nature whether it be professional content or it's a you know as we call it a in a higher level self-harm type of situation we get the alerts the admin get the alerts and it's become really really important it's something that we wouldn't do without it's it's how we do a lot of our business so they the cost that I wanted to show you is that when we first started it was about fifteen thousand um we brought it down to twenty thousand that went up about five thousand and um we've been doing that by cobbling things together like this

055past year the reason you see a little bit um a little bit less than previous years is because we also use bark which is a different service but it's harder because then you have to go to One dashboard for some of the alerts you've got to go to another one for another one makes administrators lives a little bit harder but you know we're trying to kind of put it all together and then just like a new story I just wanted to show you now the answer you're all familiar with Ambiance College and Career Common App are we using having us now because the previous page you said um so reviewing our use of Naviance for College and Career yeah so let me let me just primarily at the high school yeah we're still using Naviance

056right now um so you see that it almost doubled in price in the you know few years that I'm just showing it so I began looking to see if there are other opportunities and we haven't actually gone to anything new but we began looking because when you start looking at what a particular tool gives you it's fairly limited and it hasn't been updated in like 15 years so you start looking and you think oh my goodness maybe I can get more for the money so essentially what we're doing we're looking to see if there are other opportunities out there that will give us more for our money um so that's the that's the um the story on Naviance and Fran quick question this is Apples to Apples so like if you look at Gaggle 2019

057to 2020. yeah we're getting the exact same thing well no it's actually worse well and I will say worse we're getting less for the money um support and this is like in everything that you probably have also experienced support is not what it used to be right I used to be able to call and get a person on the line right I know do not get that I have to put in tickets I have to it's very very different world but like using Naviance are we using more because the previous page you said leverage it more so like that double in price we're not using it more we're not it's just the cost yeah and so it's it's one of the things that we have to do is Implement Student Success plans at the middle

058school and the like the best tool to make that happen would be a tool like Naviance right um and so we just haven't gotten there yet but um we just looked at a comparable product that's gonna probably it exceeds the capacity of what Navi it's actually does and I just keep hearing like and this is a side note but just like that Naviance is taking the place of actual one-on-one sitting with a college counselor which is upsetting to like a parent like yeah so are we I don't know I don't I mean that Bob would have to speak to that you know I mean what what's powerful about it and you I don't know if you've started to look at it yeah but you know it's a database it's remarkable but it's based on like

059numbers there's a lot of data about colleges and um you know professions so you know it's it's all linked so kids can do interest inventories and Naviance that'll expose them to careers they can look at careers and they can back out of that into like you know which college and which major support those careers what are the you know Financial earnings over a lifetime things like that so there's a lot of information there um I don't I don't I'd be too far on the limb to speak to how school counselors are supporting kids in the use of that or you know what they're doing with kids they're just um it's just an example of like can you then take something and make sure you're getting all the features and everything that a Naviance has but

060can you get even more so we're looking at a couple of platforms maybe it'll work out and we'll have more for the same money so if we can get something else for eight thousand dollars it's actually really in our benefit so that's essentially the um the the thinking behind it um the what I just wanted to be very specific about what is new and what's being cut and what we're reducing so you just have an idea um the overview is that we still Reduce by 12 the the budget was reduced by 12 for digital learning um and the cuts were made coming out of many different lines the process was one where I included every school I sat down with IELTS I you know we communicated our Tech IELTS sent surveys out and we looked

061at usage and that's why I gave you this because I wanted you to see you know some of the usage charts that I use in order to come to these conclusions so the new programs were based on our curriculum review and some of the new things that are coming out but when you start seeing some of the things that were cut they were cut based on usage like Discovery for example which is the online videos I don't know if you've seen those but you know um use very little and confirmed by our teachers so as a result I was able to save about twenty thousand dollars so like if I can find things like that that make a difference I can pull those and and make it work Book Creator we had um K-12 the

062usage of it is much much higher at K5 so I kept it there and if there's a few teachers that really need it in the secondary schools I'll be able to work with them nearpod is another good example that over the years was a great tool and we used it extensively during the pandemic isn't used as much but we have a group of teachers that use it extensively so we're keeping some licenses so I can I can reduce licenses and make a difference so you can see that obviously over the course of going through all this we were able to make some good reductions the last page you can see that yeah when we make decisions about um what we're going to keep and what we're not we're really looking at usage data as well

063I've presented the top graph to the teaching and learning committee about screen time obviously over the last couple of years usage went way up but it has been coming down and that's really the good news is that it has been coming down but just to clarify that this is not like their owners look in the library right now it's social media they're all sitting on their phones versus like going on schoology or doing whatever they're doing on their phone yeah but yeah yeah so I I almost wonder if this is down because they're like interesting um and then the top tools will you know give you kind of an idea of what students are using on a regular basis and it's not um surprising um you know schoologies continues to be obviously number one but

064then you have all the Google Suite products and then you see kahood Excel is this ours for students and um question for you friend you said when you were talking about Discovery Education you said when I can find things like that do we regularly reach out and Survey the teachers and say you know here's everything that we have like how impactful is this for your day-to-day yeah so um well part of my process was really working with the teachers and seeing what what was helpful to them I had initially Kept For example social studies Tech book which is a discovered product it was a social studies Department that told me that they used it very very infrequent and how often do we ask the teachers like do you do that monthly year no no I

065don't do it accordingly but it doesn't it doesn't really make any sense to do it except for you know once a year got it is it on budget prep is that your reaching out to teachers when I was creating the budget yes is that typically when you do it yeah right you Zella he met us continue is there something in place of it have you guys found something else in place of it there really isn't and I have actually looked um and I I think they know it that's why it's fine we were in the wrong business seriously yeah do you know it's funny you said that because I was thinking about this when we were talking about France budget and if you look at the just kind of the evolution of Technologies instructional technology

066over time like go way back and it was you know CD-ROMs or Flop like this but you bought a thing and you had the thing until it broke or got outdated and then you bought another thing and now we've really evolved to annual subscription services and so now it's licenses prescription services and so that um right yeah somebody you know 20 years ago to have it figured out is there a way so you have I'm just curious like the top 50 tools is there a way that this like another chart side by side that then these tools are organized by costs by grade like how much they cost oh sorry how much they cost oh so like literally I'm sorry yeah yeah I see what you're saying you know what I'm saying so just so

067you can just look comparatively to yeah it doesn't have to yeah no that makes sense yeah absolutely that would be helpful to the cost per District like how much does school would you cost it's um but in front of me but it's it's 30 30 000 plus but when you look at something like schoology that this is this is what's always amazing to me right it's about 33 000 for the whole this for the whole district and it's used by 50 000. right as opposed to well I'm not saying your seller is in useless it's in the top 50 but you see what I'm saying yeah yeah that's what I mean we're in the wrong yeah talk wow but you know there are a couple of things in here for example learning A to Z

068we had um only 50 licenses to it it was a seventeen thousand dollar and it was a we made that cut after lots of discussion with Karen brenneke and the folks at Miller Driscoll that's who uses it the most um because they had used it extensively over the pandemic because obviously they didn't have access to their classroom Library so this actually gave them their classroom libraries online when we started looking at it we said you know what the most important part of this are the assessments and the usage on the assessments was zero essentially like very very little so we decided that if we can move the teachers and they were all really very willing and a lot of them are doing it already to Epic which is free same kind of program actually has

069more books more ebooks that are available um [Music] and it's each year like Kevin was saying it's not one year where you buy the books and you've got and anybody else have any questions just to physical library books do you have or can you send to the board how many we should be buying you know based on whether it's ala or some other standard and then how many we actually are buying do you want the cost or like how many books think just whatever the standard is and how far off are how far away from the standard are we yeah um I assume it's the American Library Association it's a 20 per student but I can actually do the whole yeah Frank can you do that and then do her school for school yeah yeah

070what happens if you don't actually um go it's all formulaic you don't um go by the formula that collection age I was telling you about it goes right it starts later yeah it's like maintaining things they're not maintaining the collection if you don't do that are we still buying like books for Sora as well we are actually it's in my budget so we do that um because overdrive is actually a district kind of subscription I have money in my budget under professional books for overdrive with Sora um and we we buy all the ebooks for there um the high school makes great use of it by buying classroom sets of particular books that they use and some of the English classes so um and we have um better rates on them because they will they

071will allow us to buy it for like a period of time as opposed to having it over you know over years so if we can buy something for a two-month period we're sort of renting it from them and it it works thank you that's bad any other questions for France much appreciate it Jose you're up welcome I'm sorry with Jose and then uh Kim will be on tap right so just to set this conversation up a little bit so as you know we look at facilities through kind of two distinct budget categories one is that operating Capital um which is in our budget that Jose is responsible for and then there is a whole other category bonded Capital that's a line in the budget that's managed by the Selectmen so um you'll just recall your

072attention to the conversation about the high school elevator last year right where did it go how much does it cost how many years so that's really the bonded Capital so for a number of years we have been talking about and deferring um major Capital Improvement projects um at the Middlebrook so we started we had no logistical innovated and then we were able to do some renovation work at Cider Mill and then we were teed up to do a similar kind of work at Middlebrook and pandemic life budget Etc we kicked the can down the road we've had Personnel change so where we are today there is and done correct me if I get any of this um wrong but so you know Chris Bernie has kind of semi-retired he's focused on the police station we've

073um hired a new uh Clerk of the works and a deputy Clerk of the work so Jeff Pardo has really picked up he works for the town and he's picked up Chris's responsibilities as they relate to the Board of Ed and our facilities here when we met with Jeff earlier this year one of the first and just by way background Jeff has worked had worked for the Stanford public schools for many years and so he's got a really deep background and understanding of school facilities um Jeff had proposed that we conduct 10-year facilities study and planning project that really looks at the high school Middlebrook and Cider Mill specifically and then you know in kind of the most recent round of conversation with him he does want to take another look at some of the

074Mechanicals and things that Miller Driscoll just because codes have changed but the primary focus of that study will be the the three upper schools there is money available on the town side now and so he is beginning that are I believe the RFP process now and we're hoping to do that work you know sometime in the next several months as we go through the RFP process engage in architect our firm and then do the study the outcome of that study we'll get whatever information we get back and then you know we'll have to you know work with the town to prioritize facility upgrade projects and then Target them you know wherever it makes sense in the capital bonded plan so um all of that is to say that work is in progress you're not going

075to see any of that in this budget okay so it's the 10-year study first and then we prioritize and then we you know Peg the projects likely to the appropriate points in the bonded capital budget you'll recall last year Lynn had dropped into that bonded Capital plan placeholder sums and so those will change and get refined over time but I would expect you know probably the first thing we would see is in fiscal 25. we don't have and Don maybe you can just help me with this Jeff had put in front of the selectman a week or so ago a draft of the bonded Capital plan and there are there continues to be school projects on there HVAC roofs and you know we have a a moisture issue in the floor of the Peterson wing

076of Middlebrook that we have to address there's another elevator that needs to be replaced maybe there's like a handsome young man hanging out right outside isn't that your guy yeah that is right so smart and talented right playing chess welcome to Louisville Public Schools um anyway so that I I think the feedback Jeff got was that he needs to prioritize some of those things so I don't think that um one Department bases all right so that draft is not ready for prime time but it will be soon and as soon as is it I'll put it in front of the board all right so that's that's where the just to be clear about kind of the major facilities projects um well Jose is going to walk us through is the um the smaller projects really

077under his purview that are contained in this proposed operating budget um across all four facilities first of all I want to thank everyone for allowing me to be here for your support um I want to thank Marianne for all her hard work that she does you know had the opportunity to sit in front of her to go through my budget and I survived it so now now I'm here so um with uh with that being said you know um a lot of the items that are proposed in my budget are day-to-day reoccurrency contracts or Services um the big ticket item that you'll see in this budget is the cameras we did an assessment it was something that we felt that we needed to address a Cider Mill there's a section of the building in Belden

078Hill that does not have camera access but uh Lewis our electrician already had run all the wiring so what's nice about this proposal is that we save a lot of money from the fact that we have the I.T Department that are helping us out doing all the network drops and working with Lewis and then also having Lewis our electrician I can't speak enough about him he's just phenomenal he has saved us so much money on our district and it's just continues to help us out and always willing to do the work so with that being said that's the big ticket item 233 000 but I could walk you through you know each school we have uh at Miller Driscoll if you see replacement light fixtures you're going to look at that and say well this

079is a school that was just renovated well we ran into some issues with some of the lighting fixtures that are there that are discontinued and they're offering us a newer version at anywhere from 350 to 800 a picture so what we've done is we put aside money and we are installing two by two LED fixtures which we installed over at Cider Mill we're getting them for 30 of fiction they produce the same amount of lighting they're dimmable so these are the things that we're trying to do the offset costs because of the simple fact we can't sit here and spend three thousand dollars in the classroom which was just renovated for five years ago so that's something that we've encountered so if you see that number in there that's uh you know to continue to

080make these improvements we took care of two art rooms already um there's uh the preschool area are encountering issues with the lighting there where half the lights are are not working they're LED strips those strips you can purchase so that's a cost here that we didn't really anticipate having to do but we've come we work with eversource and they've given us a really really good price on these fixtures if you ever had a chance to go to Cider Mill you'll be able to see the pictures that are in the ceiling very very nice clean um you know one big area where we had increases is um if you look for a security specialist it's a contract agreement it's 11 270. um the agreement that they originally gave me was upwards around eighty thousand dollars for

081our schools but working with our it Department they're able to offset some of these costs by doing the back and work checking to make sure that the data drops are working working with Lewis to make sure so we've paid for those services in the past so now we were able to bring those costs down that cost down but it's still pricey you know we have them come out whenever there's a badge reader that's not working um they're able to come out and replace it um if it's a camera our cameras are already 10 plus years old so they need to be replaced and um the prices that we're getting for replacement cameras are outrageous anywhere for fifteen hundred dollars to two thousand dollars but again we could utilize our electrician to be able to install

082these cameras in and again there's a cost savings there um one thing that I wanted to mention too is that we also are HVAC technician who we retired last year Mark Esposito um he's well missed We join contractual Services um it's working but we we don't have that person that we could go to and that builds that relationship with the staff and and know that they could talk to an individual who are trying to go back to uh hiring and outside uh a technician we have a couple candidates we'll see how that works but in this budget and I think Marianne noted it that if we do not have a candidate that we need to transfer the funds to cover uh that uh service contract so we're going to use his his FTE as a

083basis to cover the service contract but again we really want to move towards hiring the person to have someone here um as far as uh upgrades to the buildings I mean again there's really not that much we want to replace Cider Mill there's some gates I don't know if you've been outside the middle of the upper part by Comstock we want to install the gate there a lot of our kids are playing in the playground area and they're you know the balls are running down the road next year and then on the lower section down by the uh the North End we want to try to get that done we put it in a budget multiple times but you know there's sometimes there's not enough money or just it's not a priority at that time

084but I think that it really is something that we really need to to look at um so much of your budget is tied up in contracted Services would you just like summarize briefly each of the different contracts what they actually do so you've got steam in security Specialists commercial kitchens um and then uh Securities Social Security Security Solutions in here also it just so the folks know what each of those things do so um in our district we have two uh companies we have seen who uh Monitor and take care of our fire uh system at uh cyber Mill and at Miller Driscoll so they're responsible for on a smoke detectors fire alarms pull stations so that's a service agreement we have with them that they maintain security Specialists uh take care of our um

085our district the whole entire District the cameras um uh badge readers updates on our uh our uh software which they worked with our I.T Department that's throughout the district commercial kitchens we introduced them this year we have a new uh manager for Chartwells William Thompson he recommended them from Westport they would be taking care of all of our kitchen as far as the equipment they'll come out and inspect and do any repairs that need to be done which is new but again so for that cost they do the repairs or they're just telling you right they'll tell us the repairs that they need to be done and then the cost that we're paying them hourly is at a fraction because we have a signed contract we've got it right um Security Solutions is our monitoring

086company for all four of our schools for the alarm system so they uh basically are the ones that call us when people are trying buildings does fire fire alarms fire at High School in Middlebrook High School in Middleburg is its its is a a vendor that we're using so there's two different groups I try to get them all on get one vendor but it's just that's the system that we have and there's proprietary so we kind of stuck with uh these two groups um uh Security Solutions again is the monitoring company um I put money in here in the budget they're doing an assessment now of our facilities to see what doors need to like uh sensors that need to be replaced because there's a lot of uh zones that we're bypassing because the simple

087fact of you know just wire getting broken so the money I put in the budget for this year is to cover that assessment Furniture because I don't have it in my birthday now to make repairs um and we have as far as contractual side for the HVAC we have main Enterprise who are contractually taking care of melodriscoll the LG units here they're a distributor of that product so we gave them that contract ESC is doing the remainder of our schools they're doing uh Cider Mill Middle book and high school training unit we have a service agreement with them and then we still have a training service agreement for when they did the renovation in 20 uh 2009 I want to say when you did the upgrades to the train so we continue to use them

088so those are basically our our main contractors that we're using in our facilities to to maintain our facilities do we ever try and work with other schools to try and get involved saving like from a bachelor's standpoint um we looked at it from the I try from the cleaning aspect of it the supplies um the the difficult part is a lot of the contractors the other schools are using different products uh equipment that we're using so like the LG's are more proprietary so we have to leave main Enterprise um I've tried to to get our cleaning supplies all lumped in together to see if we can get a discounted rate but it just never really came to to tuition that no one really wanted it because you know the schools are they like the contractors

089that they're using the live service um but that's something I could reach out and see what the other facilities does that ever go to the superintendent level that you guys like buying power it it does and so it's hard to like regionalize that kind of work for the reasons he just described where all the schools are different the equipment's different because of the Vintage but it is it's it's kind of an ongoing thread um you know the state tries to support that so there's a you know competitive bidding list that the state produces and so you know the idea there is when we pull a vendor from that list um the pricing is supposed to be competitive in some of the things keyword being supposed yeah right but it's a challenge um one thing that

090I put in here for the high school that you would notice as far as effective equipment or is the um and I think it's time to replace it so we put it in the budget in the past and I think you know it's time so that's something that I would hope would survive um again the big ticket number is the uh the cameras 235 we have classroom furniture for each building you know we look at Miller Drisco you know what a beautiful building it is but we still have the old furniture that we're using so something that we really need to try to put some money into so that we could support the teachers and it's throughout the district so there's something that we could really use to for the security cameras to be well

091done like a priority list of like if we didn't do them all at once what would be the first round and how much yeah so right now I looked at it as an incremental 75 000 so that would address Cider Mill and when I say dress Cider Mill Belden Hill the issue we have a Cider Mill is that the playground areas we have limited coverage there access so this will take care of those issues over on the Comstock side of it and then also by the north inside and then we go over to the high school and the third floor there's only two cameras um and that's you know something that when we first approached the had the assessment done we were more focused on the exterior of the buildings um the high school one

092thing we want to address is the field house you know since we can't have cameras in the field house we want to put them on the exterior of the doors so that we could get better coverage of what's going on in our building or outside the building we have games that go on and a lot of activities happen outside you can't have cameras inside the build house well we have an agreement with the teachers union that we don't put cameras in instructional spaces and so this has been an ongoing debate with them for a long time you know some of us have strong feelings about you know how that what should be there and so yeah so right now we're we're um you know we're not in agreement about that and we have not installed

093cameras there you know similarly we don't have camps here in the um in the media centers you know another large instruction spaces um do we ever look into on any of this is this a question but when we talk about cameras like and I know it's a totally different level but like ring cameras are like 99 it always seems to me that when you're looking at institutional cameras it comes with a contract and it comes with layers of stuff that builds up that price the the interesting we we have I have used green cameras especially down where the Chartwells is where the service lines are we looked into purchasing cameras like that for them because it's easier for us to install it on their device or their computer but when you look at it from

094you know a building levelized it doesn't have the support that we need and I think Eric will probably you know speak on that a little bit more you know there's a lot involved when we're able to look at a camera and there's a licensing behind it with the ring cameras just it's more residential but we have I have done that and um you know we're actually going to install one at Middlebrook in the Logan area where the chart will snap it just seems like all those cameras come with a company that wants you to buy their camera and now you're signing on a five-year contract and it's just like this circle yeah I think there's a qual there's a quality difference and so there's um the ability to zoom in with some of these you

095know and just and have someone sitting there watching it again and yeah right you have the passive monitor so like right now in my office we have the cameras are rotating throughout the district just so that we can make sure that one that they're recording and then just to make sure that there's nothing really going on so um but uh the quality to get on the quality again kudos to Eric um you know we went from 480i to 1080p now we have the ability to really zoom in and look at a license plate before it was just a blurred image so um you know again working with the IT department we're able to fine-tune things and make the improvements that provide a better place for our students [Music] say can you send us your breakdown

096[Music] so what we had Jose built some years ago was just a five-year plan so we could kind of map out costs and then um knowing that you know we we do engage in kind of deferrals trying to prioritize uh so there were a couple items here that um were added and then removed from the final budget proposal so a proposal to add a gym partition at Miller Driscoll maybe there's something we talked about years ago and we're actually going to try to fund that through some of the Surplus that had been in the continuing ad account prior to the pandemic that account has been expended now because we're covering salaries through the pandemic so that's a I think a nice to have not necessarily A need to have so that has been deferred there

097was also a proposal to replace the motor for the Middlebrook partition and I think that's been deferred also how often are you in contact with are they with Lynn's office for the bigger items some of these bonded items so we're working with him with Jeff I mean Jeffers is very responsive and he's keeping us you know I'm really looking forward to this assessment because again if I really was to identify all that needs to be done it would be a ridiculous budget right right you know so we're in constant communication and met with him today Eric and I met with him today to discuss some uh some uh you know it's like the top three big ticket bonded um besides like knocking on high school down the building is writing High School I would say

098addressing the rooftop Mechanicals on that Cider Mill in Middlebrook you know we've been talking about it for quite some time and I think the number was just off and we're going to do an assessment and get an accurate number so that's the number one for me especially coming out of the pandemic even though we're still in it but you know to provide fresh air and and the way that these rooftop units and we can manipulate them at the high school in Melba Driscoll we don't have that luxury at Sacramento and isn't the rooftop unit the one that shutdowns I don't know per day because it does that the variable frequency drops yes and so right now it's basically on an on off switch it's not because those things haven't been replaced yet yeah so we

099can't we can't not go in and tell the unit what we wanted to do so it's just stuck and we're running it uh pretty much you know almost 24 hours just until we get our frequency drives which I should be doing anytime now and when I would say that I would say the removal of the carpet in the facilities at Middlebrook in the high school we have a lot of indoor air quality issues when it comes to that and we have proof that backs it at Cider Mill you know Cider Mill will remove the carpet and we're we're getting less and less indoor air quality and that would be a bond addition um uh we're also looking at the ceiling tiles upgrading the lighting there's certain parts in the high school where there's not even

100carpet it's just packing and the carpet itself has has gone past its life expectancy I don't even think it's it's functioning in the mirror I supposed to so you know we had a plan in place we were supposed to continue and do a middle book in the high school Cova came and you know there's other things that are pressing but those are my two top that I would say and then addressing the restrooms in the field house restaurants in the field house that are in 1971. they're not even able to accommodate the Staffing track go to track you know yeah there's mines walking around and it also impacts our securities because now we have to offer restrooms inside our building so that we could minimize the flow of traffic so uh those are the three

101I would say that right right and the roof replacement is not finished either so I mean that would be that's right and I understand you correctly and if we Bond all of this nothing will really to this level happen in our schools until the 2025. so it won't be right so you won't see you won't see well you will see in the bonded plan there continues to be money for HVAC money for roof replacement and the I think the elevator is on for next year some of these other things that Jose is talking about you know flooring lighting those kinds of that will prioritize based on this 10-year study and I would expect you know a year out from now is when we'll we'll have a concrete plan and we'll start to see the funding

102appear on that plan for those kinds of things so this summer we're projected to do the roof and Middlebrook that's um that's on the bonding between Jeff put out an RFP to address some of the rooftop issues in the Middleburg Auditorium yeah and in the gym area right so they just this is I mean kind of a it's a bit of a bird walk but here we're also you know hoping to capitalize on some of the Federal grant money that's available and so there was a program announced a few months ago he really to his great credit scrambled to have an RFP we were able to hire a vendor to do a concept paper was submitted this morning and so now that will go to whatever reviewers um I don't know where the arts department

103or someplace and then we'll get some feedback and the feedback will be a recommendation either to continue because it's a favorable concept paper or you know guys and try again schools seem to have furniture on their lists you also have furniture on your list are you are they both It's Not Duplicate no so the Jose's budget is where the furniture lives right thank you thank you so much thank you so it just you know Jose puts about 100 000 miles on his car traveling from this end of the field house to the far end of Miller Driscoll and back um yeah yeah tell Bobby yeah forget that yeah you see I just want these folks need to know so I I got a call from I think it was over the Christmas break or something

104I got a call from the police department at about eight nine ten o'clock at night they're like you got an alarm going off I don't remember which building so I called Jose and he's like yep I'm on my way I'll be there and so that's the kind of servicing response we get from Jose Figueroa thank you thank you which is yours at golf cart the golf cart won't go to Miller Driscoll yeah I'm thinking about it I get the big thing the big picture items like you have to have a school that functions but when I look at what our kids walk through every day it's in their words kind of sad and depressing and that's what you know in a world where we keep talking about social emotional learning and all these concerns feel

105like I know everybody's trying so hard to help them and if they were just in a brighter space sometimes it might go along the way than people actually I know and it's a you know it's I I've heard you Echo that before and I I don't disagree um I think the you know in the big budget picture um it you know it's not to say that these things aren't priorities um but you know to I really want to do it the right way because we're talking about you know pretty major capital outlays and I suspect um when we kind of complete this study you know the magnitude of what we're going to want to do or will do is probably going to be greater than what we were initially thinking and so I think for

106that reason I'm and then also just really again trying to you know just work with the town and try to support all of the various needs you know I think we're we can wait a little bit longer and we know that it's a priority and we know that as a priority we'll continue to grow but I think we you know I think we have to hang on a little bit longer it'll do 2028 yeah well I mean I think you know go back to that whole thing right actually have one opportunity going through each grade and I just see the collect ticking and our kids are getting ready to be gone we have to have more kids so that they can actually be my kids yeah and that argument applies to a lot of what

107we do here right it doesn't and I believe me I you know I am you can ask him I walk around these facilities with my phone in my hand and I'm snapping photos and texting him what about this get this done what about this and so I share your con you're you're you know sense of urgency um does it help to talk to people to start like what helps like yeah well I think that's what we do you know so you know last year we we went through this conversation with the board of finance and I do think you know you know you take Someone Like You Know Rich santoski who's on the board who's got kids here in our schools who's you know he probably sees as well as any of us you know

108where the facility is showing its age and so I I don't think it's a um it's a lack of Desire I think it's a it's a question about like let's really do it the right way and you know when and how much and so um you know I wasn't I wasn't focused in on um like a really good thorough facility to study until Jeff mentioned it and so I just thought that was a really good idea and you know again my hunch is you know we'll probably learn more than we were um suspecting if we didn't go that way um and then I think with that information you know that's when you're really raised the alarm like let's get this done you know and then we try to you know Garner some support for the

109projects whatever they may be all right sorry I know right so um there's some good news I think some some good news um you know it just Dawn shared with me you know on the camera front um I'd heard from Lynn a while ago and she answered me interested in you know trying to find maybe some alternate ways to fund this and she's had a lot of success on the town side with different grants and so um this might be an area of opportunity where we can fund um fund the camera installation separate from our budget so that would be I mean that's you know almost a quarter million there's a quarter million dollars in savings so you know stand by on that one but that would be really good news and relieve some pressure

110I also heard some great news yesterday um Andrea was saying that other schools are looking to come to the gym yeah so we have I think we just took in a second tuition student um I think from Bridgeport and that was you know something again we had talked about at the Inception of Genesis that you know we have proof of concept with the model we know it's working if we have capacity it would be an opportunity for other districts and so um I think she's got you know one or two more maybe in the hopper yeah that could come and so that's you know in the tuition there um is about forty five thousand dollars per so I mean that is real money because the average is 35 is that what it is across the

111district yeah yeah um so Kim Zemo is here and um why don't we take a few minutes we're got about 25 minutes um setting up yeah yeah on the main first page under um summary information yes page two break it down for people what is District so I get your military school Centerville Middleboro Oklahoma high special ed and a district yeah so District would be anything under so if you go into that District tab so it's my office Chuck's office Kim's office and how does it cost per pupil get to find under District right so uh Marianne do you want to speak to that sorry yeah that's okay no I think I'm like looking through them like how do you have a cost for people through districts yeah it's an aggregate of those departments that

112are listed under District a total of what you're expecting your enrollment to be divided by The District's box because the 3742 is your total enrollment right you know and I get that for like you know the cost we can talk about this later but cost per pupil for the high school I get that cost for people that's three thousand dollars for people for the district I just didn't know where that number came from yeah so it's the any cost that we would associate to the administration to The District administration right that's correct our full climate survey now but you will have limited access with that next year because of the cost we won't have the support um move through our data which we'll be doing this year so we're going to try uh using less

113of the suite for the off year of service survey so that's the big shift in the budget and then also some smaller areas where we were doing more prevention work and supplies in working with families our team talk series we were not able to do that staff just does not have this time right now sadly to do that work because of the day-to-day crisis well um high school budget we have a new club that we launched this year home Squad that will come into funding but that's considered yeah but that's under the high school so Kim was you know we've been trying to collect data around just the mental health challenges we're seeing among students you're aware that we continue to have routine calls to 211 and the need for a crisis intervention one of

114the questions that we've been trying to better understand is the distribution of time of our mental health employees so psychologists social workers Etc and how they're how much time they're spending doing crisis response versus some of their more you know kind of land required activities supporting IEPs or doing some more that you know just proactive counseling that comes as part of your team so do you want to just kind of sure describe the landscape without overwhelming people worth collecting too much data uh really because you know we look at the number of incidents but that doesn't tell the whole story because one intervention could take the entire day so having um staff look at a five-day week and really start to kind of look at the hours in terms of crisis intervention versus what they're

115kind of mandated to do through the IEP and 504 process and we're looking our social workers are doing about 40 of their day in a five-day week to Crisis Intervention School psychologists around 29 this is at the secondary level I have a look Elementary yeah we're seeing you know a large increase at the high school specifically in terms of kids getting intervention but that that's you know taking away from having the daily so you know but certainly a shift and an increase that we're seeing but these necessarily when I looked at the budget because this might be a mission for you but these aren't necessarily special ed correct children so it doesn't necessarily but it doesn't necessarily so it doesn't necessarily fall under no and I mean you told me some you know alarming stories

116today and so you know we again we have so we have crisis teams in place in all of our schools and is part of their protocol you know they have what they call a watch list and so they're aware of kids who may have some concerns because families falling apart or some other issue and so you know someone's checking in with that kid just paying attention but um you know this year we've had a number of kids experience really acute mental health crises suicidal ideation attempt and these kids are not kids who you know are outwardly on anyone's radar and so and some of them are not tied to special ed at all and so that's been I think the increase in that number of kids population has been really alarming and especially right now

117somebody was working with you know would be screened okay but when it just pop up at least my perspective it continues to be concerned and I just I know that you guys are doing a lot and I've been doing a lot so I also have a question about whether you feel like you and your team have proper support because if your team is not in a place that can emotionally handle or manage what's going on around you then that affects your you know your ability to provide services as well I mean I work closely with the high school team and they are a very skilled team and I think they're dealing with a phenomenal job you know the sustainability of this I think it's hard when you see kids in crisis day day out but

118um you know if you're confident that they're handling it um the question will be you know I'm going to rest going to continue your eyes you know what what other things we can do I think that the hard thing for this this school is the lack of resources in the community and so we're identifying kids or families are taking kids to the ER and being released it's not it's not the best process but that is the process that's in place um sadly so you know if you're in an acute Mental Health crisis going through the ER is can be difficult um in general and then to maybe not be connected with supports right away and have to wait you know that stress on certainly the family and the student and then we we serve as

119kind of the Gap until we get them into services so I think that's where the tension really is and the outside resources are all filled up so there's hardly anything waiting list to go yeah challenging yeah for sure do you have like a top theater like colleagues in the area do you have a resource in that in that respect where you guys are kind of looking at what's going on and yeah in other schools yes I know that you're not but I'm just you know just yeah kind of a collaboration that resp in that respect yeah absolutely meet with um I personally meet with uh Westport and New Canaan on a regular basis and the group just got a little bigger with um I think it was going to be coming on as the mental

120health uh director for the darien Public Schools so someone that we have worked with through another agency with DBT services so she'll be joining and so trying to share resources and addresses so I saw initially that you had took out an IL right request last year I had requested I have put in the budget for like an interventionist a position and that didn't make it through and I know we're not putting new positions in so I might you know my other way about it was this idea of Il for elementary and secondary in terms of you know having the time to support some of the SEO initiatives in each of the buildings because it's hard trying to do that you know more schools and we have you know people in the different buildings that are

121championing their work but to kind of create a position where you know they could focus on the solely within that building or at least second year at secondary elementary programs that we're doing I think to have time to get into the classroom and you know like the academic coaching but to be able to help help the classroom teacher with strategy yeah yeah what one of the areas that we really think differently about is you know why we're seeing the number of kids we're seeing in crisis and so we've had some preliminary discussions about how we might do that and with some Gentle Family interviews just to try to uncover some themes such that as they may exist but you know one of the I guess one of the questions that um is coming back to

122me is are we adequately staffed and so I put that question directly to Kim and to Andrea and to others and the answer that came back to me is yes we are and the challenge is what Kim described is that the Gap in services in the community and what happens as a result so kids come back to school after not being seen and then it's our folks who are there to try to you know manage a kid who may still be in crisis and right and so they're spending time doing that work and not doing you know some of their other prescribed responsibilities so we've got a do some work internally and try to come up with a process that's going to give us some better insights but on the Community Front there was a

123group that's pretty active vocal you probably saw the letter that they sent to and published in good morning routine recently um you know collectively we're planning on hosting a mental health breakfast and just again trying to raise awareness in the conversation in the community so Andrew Gerber is going to come in keynote there'll be a panel presentation afterwards that's specifically the I don't know if they actually name themselves but um you know Jeff Palmer and Vanessa Elias um Becky Lasher Lara pascalidis yeah Chandra is also you know and so it's there's been some really good constructive dialogue with that group as we've been trying to really get our arms around what's happening and where the gaps are and I think you know in the last conversation we had with this group in my office I

124don't think there was clarity about where they where the problems are and so people are operating on assumptions so we have to you know for months now Kim's been trying to collect data just to help the rest of us understand you know what the patterns are and try to make sense of them and so then this is the next step is to really raise this you know across the community and you know work with Sarah Heath and Company at Youth Services to just to look at the continuous supports as they exist and again to you know just to calibrate them and you know our what you're seeing is that what we're seeing and you know people are being placed you know how do we know that and what are the lines communication and so on

125but also even if we if that doesn't get better then what then then how do we help our staff manage what's going on within the confines of the school so um I think that's also something that should be looked at and tandem because if that's the what's going on outside that we have no control over is not getting better and there's only so much our staff even though if that was better we are at it well staff there's only so much that we can sustain and maintain for those kids that are awesome in places but also for the other kids that who are then having less regular attention okay too awesome it's kind of what what worries me especially if the time Horizon if we're talking about having more mental health protection professional time in

126the community and that's licensing and education you know those are things that don't happen overnight yeah it's a great point you know I can say you know and we should at some point have CeCe combat the screen to the board but you know there was last year through the legislative session there was a lot of conversation there was some good legislation passed we're seeing the evidence of that in the better 2-1-1 response this year but there continues to be a real Focus legislatively health concerns across the state I don't know what form or shape it'll take yet in terms of new legislation but I know there's you know pretty wide interest in trying to do more to support kids and families we did hire our team talk counselor we were able to kind of combine

127muddies for our attendance intervention and team talk to hire her full-time so that gives us a great resource in addition to outside her connection with kids in crisis and the 24-hour care and all that so having her cover is I think going to be a real um and she thought that went into the high school she's not the high school part of maybe she will do a few hours on attendance intervention throughout the District of the primary roles here at High School he's already you know [Music] being outside stories is having an impact on the um just the right the school counselors um you know I think there's a an assumption that they're helping the kids get into college but really they're having more and more of that time taken up with Crisis Intervention but

128they how how are they doing um they're they're busy yeah they're busy as well [Music] you know oftentimes with some of these uh um uh more critical cases were teaming you know there needs to be with school council as well as mental health so you know foreign [Music] and anything else you want the board tonight thank you thanks for all you do thank you oh did Jose left the cameras are critical yeah um from a safety perspective student issues that we deal with makes it really challenging for those chases when we don't have cameras did you team up with Jose for like the priority cameras kind of assessment no I wasn't actually involved we've talked about Traders joined we had the assessment along with um one of the school resource officers okay we did site

129visits at each building but you know I'm on the back end when we're trying to investigate something you know yeah can we spend 10 minutes just asking the general budget questions yes of course um so you know I was reading Lynn saying about the climate of the budget have you started thinking if this budget doesn't go through like what can be put is me it's a really hard I have I mean I started there that was the you know the the 10 you know yeah reduction before you even saw anything for I saw anything because I just was aware yeah I am and I'm um you know I prefer not to go into detail right now but I have some I have some things I think I shared with you already uh when I was

130making assumptions about this budget um assuming that the Middlebrook schedule goes through I built in a 7ft reduction so we're also assuming that we know that there's a total of 10 teachers that could be impacted so you know there were two that were kind of unassigned there's one that we would reassign to a stem and so there are two fde in play right now and so I held those out because I'm anxious to see you know what happens with that mental health Grant and so the opportunity there would be if the choice rather if the grant comes through as it was proposed then we would hire one additional psychologist and then that Grant would absorb another two staff so if we got nothing we have two fde in play to make a decision about and

131so the decision would be you can assign those FDA to something else or you can reduce so those are hanging out there I've been you know I think the the I'm not you know terribly optimistic but I think we have a conversation coming up with our insurance broker on the 31st and you know I think the pattern we've seen is Anthem continues to overstate the allocation rate and the actuals bear that out and so we're always in this push-pull yeah the one thing that's different about this year is that our claims are higher and so I think what I'll be looking to see from them is you know has the pattern begun to wane you know one of the theories was that this was really just a coveted bounce and so if that's the case

132then I would hope that we'd be able to make some reductions in that line um I think you know the other piece that we've just been watching is you know Just Energy so fuel right in those areas and then you know after that you know I think you've heard you know thematically that you know the kind of the non-personnel accounts are as bad as tight as we want them to go and you know people are you know struggling to manage what's there and so then it's it's if we're going to make further reductions we have to look at existing programs and so I have some thoughts about you know what those programs would be um but I think that's where you know you guys too as part of your deliberation you know as you're asking

133questions and thinking about this budget and what it needs to be I would expect that you know you'd be thinking about that too yeah yeah and that's what I was wondering uh two questions the FTE change someone told me that that would impact the high school at all as well yeah so the um the way that it'll work right and I think this is one of the misconceptions that's floating around right now so in our collective bargaining agreement there is a rift process and so every certified teacher is assigned a riff number that's based on degree and years of experience and so um if those positions at Middlebrook are eliminated it doesn't mean that those number of teachers are going to actually lose their jobs right so Maria and her staff been working on that

134riff list and you know it's early but we have some preliminary understandings and I think every building is impacted right so you've got potential changes it filters down well it depends on the certification and that's seniority right right and in a middle school it's Unique because you could have certifications that are k-6 or 712 or all of those it could impact the other all buildings and then I keep thinking about this Cider Mill conversation we had yesterday and I think it's because I saw one of these events the child was running down the street and how can we possibly do something there to help these these kids because I just feel like I feel like this is going to be us before Genesis if we don't do this now it's just going to compound and

135compare yeah so I guess you know I would just I would I would amend your statement just a little bit just to affirm that we are supporting those kids but in terms of the program that Andre was articulating yesterday they need to go through a formal process and that hasn't happened yet like they need to actually commit to a proposal in very much the same way that Genesis and Community steps were proposed and so it's what's the data what's the presentation what are the you know cost benefit how's it going to be supported what are we anticipating and we need to vet it that way I don't in my opinion you know having a conceptual conversation doesn't get us there and that's not to say I don't support the idea or there's not a need

136but we really need to have a rigorous process to vet it and so you know that's something I've already spoken to Andre about and this is my question yeah she's been thinking about it that they can actually now move it into like a process yeah and they should they should you know and I think again this is you know just experientially and you know this is my experience here in Wilton it's my experience with my former our staff in Bethel you know people when they come through a budget process right they're kind of thinking this way and then need shift time changes things happen and then you know what was a priority in January right is not the same yeah and so you know so I have a little bit of comfort based on that

137experience knowing that when we push back at some of these things you know it just it it just introduces rigor to people's thinking and you know really is this really the issue and how do I know and you know so on so forth so I think going through a like a really formal proposal process will help them how long would you expect that something like that not long I know I mean I think they they got an idea I think they need to um they need to really look at their look at their data um you know I guess part of that too we have a lot of staff and special services and so what one of my expectations is and you know would be again is show me that you know every other staff

138member in this department is really maxed out being utilized in the right way and how do you know and what and then play some scenarios out so what if rather than add we took we shift right and that's a that's again that's a that's a conversation that's you know very common here um but you know if we're really thinking about creating another um facet of the continuing Services then again I'd want it to be really you know kind of evidence-based so how long will it take them to get us back up three months six months a year no I think it's it's weeks not months I mean if you wanted to see this part of this you know budget cycle um I could ask them I think if it's possible yes my bigger concern is

139if you end up outpacing a young child yeah I mean that just exponentially is a crazy number yeah I agree and I guess that's what my thought I agree one of my concerns would be yeah but it didn't sound like out placement was kind of on the board yet because that has to be at the end of a very long road to do that for such a young kid yeah I mean we've got some you know so we've had some kids who you know our environment they just it wasn't the right environment for them and so we've had to find an alternative if they could potentially put some work into it prior to this budget it would be great to see that okay yep make it happen and then the Instagram or the um the

140grant when do we hear back from them uh we well we were the mental health clinic we were initially supposed to hear before the end of December that became the end of January and so I would hope soon other questions in conjunction with that I just also would like to have a better understanding of how we came up with the reserve outplacement Reserve number oh yeah yeah like the estimate okay yeah and like that yeah so why why 25 match just uh and then prior to our budget discussion can we or can we add into the budget discussion the survey results from coaching to the whole board I know the teaching and learning studies yeah I haven't seen them so let me um let's I don't know what I'm just going to make sure that

141the whole board is going to come to the whole table reviews that well it's coming to teaching and learning for so I just want to make sure that I might not go to teaching and learning first it might just be a committee as a whole it's on the agenda either we will February I just want to share the information yeah first Tuesday in the month yeah whatever the day Tuesday next Tuesday or the week after that's the main all right so it's the second week in fact yeah so I'll work it's February 7th 7th okay so you've got you guys have ideas of what the budgets are in surrounding towns I've been tracking it and you know I think you know everybody is in the high four or fives you know there are a few

142that are you know I just saw a new fairfield's budget earlier this week is the same as ours Bethel is about the same as ours elves Westport was like five three five Weston was either High fours or low fives yeah everybody's High you know for probably about the same reasons give or take you know whatever is that your main discussion tomorrow they will definitely be discussing budget um we'll also be discussing legislative priorities you know so we're in the um the long session now and there's it's just Fast and Furious you know the kinds of bills that are being on the post and so we have some work to do together to prioritize some of our own Collective thinking you know so there's a just to give you an example there's a proposal that some

143of the Democratic Leadership is really supporting to address the education cost sharing grants that's the equalization that any Equalization Grant not the sped Grant and you know it's in terms of you know the direct impact on Wilton Wilton is one of the towns where under the current law even though we've had a million taken away from us in you know five years ago under the law we're still over funded and so we'll I think lose eight percent year over year so that I think the bill proposes to hold that steady but there's another feature that proposes to have the state cover the cost of tuition to inter-district magnets so the dollar savings for a place like us would be about eight or nine thousand dollars you know for different towns around this would be much

144more substantial for a place like Bridgeport or Norwalk because they have magnet schools and magnet schools but we have to talk about supporting that and you know there's just you know politics are only there so um but we have to look at the right to read legislation so all of the durages districts you know function very similarly in terms of their reading program and so we've already you know kind of gotten together as a unit and had spoken to legislators about that there's a long list so and what else is on here tomorrow [Music] Yeah Yeah by all means okay 305. okay Workshop is over