Avon Board of Education Meeting - 02/25/25

001[Music] all right good evening everyone I'm a stickler for starting at 7 so you'll see us staring at our phones until the minute changes Welcome to our uh February 25th meeting of the Avon Board of Education I would like to start by introducing who you see here up at the table for anybody who's new with us tonight and just make sure you know who's sitting here I'll start with our board members I'm Deborah sh I am the chair we have Dr th singer Vice chair president Dev Jeff fman our secretary pres thank you Lynn Katz present thank you Jeb Sarah Heath present thank you Nicole Russo pres thank you Suzanne zakaris present thank you Chris Campbell here thank you and r Killy president thank you thank you and for our administrators we have Dr caram

002Mulla our superintendent thank you Mr janini our assistant superintendent here thank you Mr medic our assistant superintendent pres thank you m Russo our business manager here thank you and miss sardinis our executive assistant to the superintendent and board clerk thank you so much if you would please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all as you can see we're delighted to have students with us this evening and we thought this was the perfect time to have them play the national anthem so I'm not sure who's conducting them are they good on their own they're all right guys go for it oh we should

003stand again do want okay sorry h [Music] h [Music] h [Music] [Applause] that was fantastic Mr strick was right our sixth graders from Thompson Brook School their chamber orchestra Flawless excellent job thank you so much absolutely beautiful before we delve a little deeper I do like to start our meetings by reading the mission statement because I think it reminds us all of the purpose that we have sitting at this table together our mission is to inspire in each student a joy and a passion for Learning and a commitment to Excellence personal integrity and social responsibility this is also our perfect segue into our recognition for this evening as you can see he's already working hard Mr strick and Mr br OU I would like to invite you up to please um share your accolades of

004your fellow music department um staff have that stand hi everyone thanks for having us tonight good evening Dr carola members of the Board of Education administrators colleagues and members of the Avon Community my name is Andrew Bru and for the past 18 years I've been the choir teacher at Avon High School on behalf of my colleagues Nate strick Paul Johnson Melanie John Meg Ryan Carl sauerbrun Dan vulpi Jane teera Jeff sery Kayla Crystal thirston Rafi Ismail and Don brish we are privileged to be here tonight to celebrate great an outstanding achievement for our district I'm also privileged to work alongside such talented passionate and collaborative music colleagues who TIR tirelessly cultivate programs that not only teach the curriculum but also Foster a deep sense of community and a lifelong love of the Arts each of

005us could share countless stories of students whose lives were changed through their experiences in Avon music classrooms and in turn we teachers have been equally impacted thanks to the dedication of our music educators administrators Board of Education students and families Avon has been recognized by the Nam Foundation as one of the best communities for music education in the country as you know it's common to measure a school district's Success Through test scores rankings AP classes and other quantifiable academic accolades but the impct of music is harder to measure this award is a testament to something we have long known music and all the Fine Arts are an essential part of our students education it reflects our community's commitment to providing highquality music programs and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to experience the joy

006connection discipline teamwork creativity and the depth of the human experience that music brings although these moments may not appear in data they are just as essential to a thriving Community as any academic achievement and to speak more about the community support for music I'd like to hand it over to my colleague Nate strick thank you Andrew it is important to note that music educators are only part of the reason why music has the opportunity to flourish in our community we are so fortunate to have the support of our Administration many of them all of us them are here tonight right uh and our Board of Education and members of this community we as educators are so lucky to teach in a community that truly values the Arts parents who rent instruments encourage regular practicing they

007were schlepping big instruments earlier as you saw attend concerts and recognize music as a vital part of their child's education one of my favorite moments as an educator at school performances is seeing the pride in a parent who has never had the chance to sing and choir play an orchestra or band but who beams with joy watching their own child accomplish something they never did this award is not just a recognition of past efforts it is an inspiration to continue growing supporting and expanding opportunities for our students as arted as Arts Educators we aware that budgets can be tight and that music programs are sometimes seen as Expendable but this recognition reminds us and our community that music is not extra it is essential so on behalf of all the Educators in the Avon music

008department thank you for your continued support thank you so we always like to take a nice group picture so thank you we've already lined you up well Mr brochu and I he's great at arranging so we're going to come over to you um Dr caral and I also have certificates we want to hand you I'm a hugger if you don't know that already so I would love and I know Mr SAU Brun is retiring soon and I'm going to get all choked up but um we are so grateful for the passion that you bring to your work I lived it with three children going through and having that experience and we are so proud of you you should be proud of yourselves and the students show it and the fact that you live this life

009you don't just teach it you actually perform on your own personal time matters so thank you very much [Applause] we I want to try get put words together I'm down here all right we are absolutely thrilled to have so many that came out tonight for that purpose we will not at all be offended if you'd like to dismiss yourselves anybody that came to witness this have a wonderful evening thank you for coming out with us all right as you can see on the agenda we do have special guests this evening and we're thrilled to have them join us so we are going to start with them right away we have our state representative alen caras stra with us this evening as well as our Senator um Paul honig that is joining us to answer some

010questions and give a legislative update so I'll just throw it to you guys is that okay all right do you want us to just kind of go over the questions that we have that we were sent or do how do you want to I think if there's anything you think we should know ahead of time that you're working on that you want to make us aware of and then we can go right into the questions so I'll I'll start with legislative update can you hear me okay or do you want me to maybe a little closer sorry and apologies for my back to all of you feels kind of weird to so sorry about that you have a good projecting anyway so uh I'll start with legislative update and I'm sure Senator hona can as

011well um as you probably know we're in the middle of session we're about six weeks in we're still in the public hearing process so that means in committees like the education committee they are still actively hearing from the public on various bills as we move through the process it's public hearings then it's committee meetings to get the bills out of committee and then eventually those are the bills that hopefully make it to the floor of both Chambers then once they pass both Chambers then obviously they are signed hopefully by the governor and become law last night the house was in session as you probably heard we passed uh in $40 million towards spe the special education um deficit that we have the deficit is about $100 million because there was excess cost expense that was

012not prepared for and so we were short by I believe $8 million um unfortunately because we are still in the budget planning process budget deter in process of the 2-year bium we wanted to try to get that 40 million out now so that towns are getting some relief the hope is to make all of that hole but obviously that's part of the budget negotiation process um the Senate passed it today I will say I was not overly enthusiastic in talking about it last week because we've heard several comments from the governor that he was hinting at a veto uh my hope is that he does not do that for the $40 million towards special education funding but that's entirely possible something that we also shared with with Canton when we met with them a few

013weeks ago was that there is a one-time special education committee that is outside of the education committee this year they are specifically looking at that excess cost and special education because as we all know that's the number one thing that we hear from our towns districts Etc as to the cost of of how just expensive it is so there are things within the committee now like looking at capping special education cost there are things look looking at programs like what can't has done called the Thrive program to bring more special education programming in house to try to help cap some of that cost um towns that are already doing it might be reimbursed Andor incentivized New Towns would be obviously incentivized um we had one town um I'm sure well Paul has a story about

014one of what one of the comments from one of his um districts but um I think that's sort of a good sort of level set obviously and there were some questions that you sent about the federal we have concerns about that but we'll get into that a little bit more as we answer some of the questions you sent us all right Suzanne would you like to start us off Paul do you want to we yeah sure hello everyone I'm uh state senator uh Paul honig um new to the uh District um or new to the the general assembly um and uh you know I Echo everything that representative cavos stra just said uh today in the Senate we voted and passed the additional $40 million uh for special ed um that goes on top of

015the $180 million that was um allocated uh last year for for this uh fiscal year um so that's a 22% increase so whatever you were expecting to get you should get approximately 22% more um than you thought you were going to get um and just like you know the process for the excess uh cost Grant is you know first the state estimates how much um money is going to be asked of it for s excess cost grants and then it allocates the money for that and the issue last year they thought they were um allocating enough money to um fully fund the excess cost grants that was that was the expectation along the way but the reimbursement requests came in way higher um so that that was the uh the issue with that um representative

016cavos stra uh you know was talking about um bringing uh special ed services inhouse incentives for that um one of the uh things I think that is being looked at by the special ed committee is um coming up with some Regional centers that can uh help without placements I know um I spoke to the superintendent of region 10 schools and they mentioned that they uh use the Farmington Valley Diagnostic Center for much of their outplacement and they've found that um being in a Consortium of local school districts enables them to control costs better with that kind of stuff um so I I expect the special ed committee to come up with some recommendations along those lines as well thank you very much all right suzan yeah hi thanks for coming today we really appreciate it

017um I just I did have some questions based on potentially things happening within the government um in terms of dismantling the Department of Education I just was curious how the state was prepared for such things um like how would that impact Avon in getting uh securing Federal funding for public schools I will start with I think it's really hard to figure out how it would entirely impact because it's something that we've never well there used to not be a doe but because the majority of us have lived under when we've had a Department of Education it does make a difference certainly OPM exists and they could be the ones who could still be Distributing the funds um there is a lot of talk though about removing funding for special education which would make our job

018a lot harder in terms of funding that um overall in terms of the budget uh it's important to note that over $4 billion do of our budget which is about 16% 60% comes from the federal government so anytime you start chipping away at that $4 billion it really becomes a problem because obviously we're counting on that funding I'd also say that we we send a lot more money than we get back as a state our money often goes to fund states in the South so we fund a lot of red States as as they're called um I would say that it is the state is certainly trying to plan but when you don't know what could be eliminated are they going to eliminate all programs are they going to go to Choice programs are they

019going to say we don't need special education anymore it is hard to um predict what that's going to be I know that they're having those conversations I know I sit on the Appropriations Committee we're having conversations in terms of budgeting about like okay we're going to go through the normal process as if everything is going to stay the way it is and then we're having a secondary conversation about well if this goes away how much could we absorb I think we could probably absorb about4 to6 billion dollar of the 14 billion which would be you know literally an emergency and tapping into rainy day fund but it's very hard to predict and the state would do everything it possibly can to make towns whole but it would be very challenging and I I spoke to

020our policy person and you know I think that the numbers that I got Avon gets appro approximately 2.3% of their um school budget through uh federal grants about a million a half dollars mainly for special ed um so that you know if that goes away that's a humongous like problem uh so yeah we all are very concerned about this and keeping an eye on it and you as representative cavos de said um with $4 billion worth of federal money that comes into our budget um there you know we only have A4 billion dollar rainy day fund so it's very concerning we're keeping an eye on it I know Governor uh attorney general Tong is very focused on pushing back when he sees opportunities to do that and you know protecting our funding and our state

021thank you there first of all thank you for coming we really really appreciate it and um we kind of prepared questions like I and Suzanne asked the most burning question that I've had as well and I think you did a good job of answering it but if I'm hearing correctly it's it's on our it's on we're terrified everybody is terrified you know across the um the political Spectrum whether we're Democrats or Republicans the idea of losing you know chipping away at our budget we we are already Bare Bones so the idea that this could happen like overnight really um it's on your radar I understand as a legislature what can we do what are you doing besides monitoring is there anything else we can do and should and how do we prepare taxpayers for what

022could be you know a real shakeup do you I don't know if there's an answer but um you know I think a lot of this um these issues are at the federal level and although we have a you know a friendly delegation you know in terms of you know getting rid of the Department of Education um I think it's helpful you know for constituents to reach out to our delegation you know our Johanna Hayes two senators um and let them know how important this is and how um you know devastating it would be if you know some of the things we're hearing about actually happen that that really helps them kind of step up and uh and and and fight back against these kind of changes and keep in mind a few weeks ago when

023um people woke up and they like our DSS yeah commissioner she went to log into the system and literally couldn't get into the system um so that is the kind of thing that could happen overnight where you know you you suddenly it's it's just gone and the funding the tap is turned off um I would also say you know it's there's certainly the funding you receive but then there are programs that affect children in other ways Head Start which you know we may not do a lot with but there are a lot of those kids and and then you've got you know food programs or free you know it all there is a trickle down effect of what is going to happen um I would reiterate what Senator honig said about contacting the federal delegation

024because it is important that they understand from each individual Town what it would mean you know for us it's this much but for other schools it could be a lot more it could be you know it's it those numbers are important and again because we send more taxes than we receive back we certainly want to have an understand you know them to have an understanding of what our expectation is of them fighting for us I think it's actually great that we have a congresswoman who's a teacher or former teacher um and and she sits on agriculture because she cares about kids getting fed so I I think that you know when you think about those pieces those are really important pieces to the conversation so certainly you know the the commissioner of education is preparing

025as best she can but when you don't have a crystal ball it's very hard to know and when things are changing day to day day to day yeah I think you had another question though about ECS which one do I want well I was just thinking maybe we could I know Lisa hamersley is here tonight but I thought that well I didn't know if somebody else was going to answer that but so we're why are we considered why are we considered overfunded so okay and I'm going to ask you to explain it I think I wrote that yep like a third grader like I'm a third grader because so and I I forgive me for reading some of this because I think it would be useful for all of us to sort of be on

026the same page and again Lisa will flush this out a lot more thoroughly in her presentation um the state of Connecticut established the education cost sharing formula in response to the Court's ruling in Horton versus the Horton versus mcal case so this is coming from sat you know some defined law at the time the state was providing the same per pupil Grant to students regardless of the town they lived in so when Jesse Stratton was the state representative she brought in quite a lot of funding into the district just to sort of level set the court found that this education funding system allows property wealthy towns to spend more on education with less effort and therefore it impeded children's constitutional rights to an equal education so this was all to to equalize education theoretically the

027ECS Grant is supposed to make up the difference between what a community can afford to pay and what it cost to actually run the public school system the state was utilizing flat funded block grants to fund K through2 education when the current Formula was enacted in 2017 by the legislature so at that time another court case ccgf versus real was demanding educational equity and the implementation of a formula to distribute the state's uh support of students so the financial support um in response to the Court's decision the legislature once again enacted a formula that is still being followed to this day the governor actually mentioned it in his um state-of the state budget address this year to take into account the number of students the needs of the students as well as the ability of

028local property taxes to support those educational expenses so here's the part that I think everybody needs to sort of get their head around and their arms around the formula is recalculated every year using all of the inputs that go into the formula the inputs are the town's prior year ECS Grant amount the number of students residing in the town the number of economically disadvantaged students the percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged the number of students who are multilingual Learners the number of students sent to Regional School Districts and how many grades the Regional School school district has Town's property wealth the abbreviation for that GPC the income Town residents the median household income the pic index score and then Alliance District status so all of that goes into the formula um utilizing that aan

029Avon is determined is determined to be overfunded meaning that the amount that they currently receive is above the ECS grant that it is eligible to receive under the formula for the following Academic Year so as a result for the upcoming year it's statutorily scheduled to receive a reduction and state support under ECS as the state phases out the town to its fully funded Grant in fiscal year 2032 and I think Paul has a little bit more detail on where the numbers are going I think I think people are surprised because we compare ourselves to right towns that are nearby and we we ask well but they seem similar to us other than maybe you know a few changes share amount I'm sorry what is the amount we are scheduled to get we also havea I

030I um spoke to our policy person and they told told me that uh I think the the last number here was am I reading that 900,000 um and that that was last year last year and and that's supposed to go up to a milion 37,000 so it doesn't actually go down I think no no no I think it goes down to 8 850 8:30 okay thank you what was this question where our understanding was our neighbor and simsberry is receiving 10 million yes you're you're you're right and again it's it has to do with the formula and and so one of the things that I think I would like you to take back in consideration because I appreciate the math I've sat through this presentation from you before and I appreciate it and I understand

031it I think what I've so I'm a government teacher and I tell my students people's perception is their reality that formula implies that simsberry has a 10 times greater need than we do I think our frustration is so I received the valley book today I love that thing when you look at the house old medium income between us and simsberry Simsbury is 142,000 median income Avon's 145,000 I think for most residents in this town that perception right is that we are much similar to simsberry than what the formula tells us I also if the formula were only based on income I I then that would be true again their perceptions their their reality and so we're in a situation where last month this board agreed to officially lay off one teacher later this evening this

032board is going to vote to notify all non-tenured staff that we cannot guarantee them a job why because of various factors and some of them are State I appreciate the concerns about Federal I agree you don't have answers regarding Federal funding that's not your role but you have to understand our budget process to this date inflation aside that affects everybody a lot of factors not I'm not blaming the state government solely for the inflation but I can blame the state for things like requiring the school district to pay public benefit on the utility bill that alone drove our budget up on the utility line 30% I am blaming and I have been very vocal over the last couple months about what I call the literacy program scam that's costing this District $200,000 and truly I

033think it's an insult to the teachers here in the Avon Public Schools that the State Department of Education feels that we don't know how to educate our children but then they want to take the curriculum they denied and use it as a sample and model and so what I ask the two of you to do is try to understand our perception how we view our concerns from the state I get the equation from the viewer of the Avon taxpayer I think many of us feel it's not fair and then to be given all these additional mandates and charges from the state we are about to dramatically impact the quality of Education in our students this coming year and I do blame the state not necessarily the two of you but you two represent the state

034government you represent us and I just need a sense from the two of you how do I explain this to the residents of Avon that we have potential of losing quality teachers because we are getting in our opinion underfunded state says we're overfunded we can't get a million dollars Simsbury is gain 10 million Canton I think is gained 4 million again this community's perception of where we are and compared to our neighbors that has to be addressed and I don't know how to explain it to my constituent so I'm hoping the two of you will give us that insight and I do really wish you take these concerns back to the state legislature and get us some relief so we're not laying off teachers eventually sorry for jumping in I I don't disagree with anything

035that you said um and that is part of why we thought it would be a good idea to come before you and explain the formula because that is you explain it to people it is unfortunate that that is the way it is I don't disagree I think we need to adjust the excess cost formula because in the same way that Alliance districts receive more money because they have more disadvantaged students I think that districts like ours should be receiving more money for special education because the reality is people move here because they know we have better special education people move to West Hartford that for that same reason people move to Simsbury for that reason so we have sort of a special need in a different way than other communities have so that's the first

036thing the second thing is not all of the mandates are State I know there are a lot of them but there are also a lot of federal mandates that we cannot control at the state um I I think you're aware that there is actually a committee now to look at all of the mandates to try to see which ones that we want to get rid of but I will say other than the literacy program I've now served for four years I'm into my fifth I've never received a list of the mandates that the school in either Avon or Canton would like to eliminate but the public benefit charge on utility does impact us absolutely and that's not what I was addressing in that moment but I'm happy to get to that as well the public

037benefit charge that hike that you've seen that will end in May it was 10 months we wanted it to be over 22 months but unfortunately two out of the three commissioners of Pura voted against that which is a problem hopefully soon we'll have five Commissioners so we'll have a more fair and balanced decision-making process but that was because 77% of that public benefit charge is the millstone deal the Millstone Nuclear deal which typically brings us less expensive energy but in this case because of losses and because a again a federal court case decided that eversource has allowed the opportunity to recover their losses that they that they kind of spread those over 10 months instead of 22 we wouldn't have seen that giant PBR rate had it not been for the fact that they put

038that over 10 months I heard the same thing when we went to Canton I think the number was $85,000 so we we are very we are very aware it's the schools it's the town buildings it's it's everything that is being affected including all of our taxpayers and I probably get 5 to 10 emails just on the eversource situation alone each week so we are taking all of this back I have been kind of shouting about power since I got there because I served on energy and Technology the first two years so then my question to the superintendent is now that our state state representative has shared with us that that is going to drop should we then adjust our budget to to decrease our utility line so it doesn't cover the 30% increase I would

039say do we have a guarantee that that pure is not going to put more fees on in the new session which starts next month I don't think anything in the world is a guarantee so I can't really say yes or no to that um I I think that's a difficult question but I I can tell you that that this period of that pbrr ends in May because it was a 10-month process I I think I looked at my own personal electricity bill and I saw my delivery charges go from 13 cents a kilowatt hour to 19 cents a kilowatt hour 50% increase um I expect my own bill to go back from 19 cents to 13 cents at the end of this 10-month period um whether there are you know other charges I'm not I'm

040not aware of any that that are coming on but there right you're talking about your generation rate which you have a choice you no no no I was talking about the delivery charges not the generation rate so then there's the public benefit you you are aware the public benefit charges on the bill that's separate from all that right right but but it's on the delivery side of the bill so when I was referencing the um 13 cents going to 19 cents that was all due to the public benefit charge increasing over you know and being paid back over that 10-month period my answer would be the same Jee I think that I'd like to be able to see us say do that but I don't I think it's premature to decide to do it now

041until we see actual action taken and I state level I think that's my my my big concern because of what we're going to be asked to do tonight what this is going to do in terms of morale for our staff the potential to lose some top quality teachers all because we have tried and and I think you have tried to deliver as thin of a budget as possible knowing that how difficult the budget process has been and I commend you I'm just afraid of the impact is going to have on our education system and our state reps need to understand twofold one we need a louder voice we need some of these adjustments and I don't think explaining this complex formula to everybody is going to appease them because I don't think it makes sense

042to most people you yourself have to review your own notes because it's such a complex and that's not your fault you want to make sure we get it factual but it's so complex that I don't understand how the state would expect and so you you as our Representatives our voice need to make be louder that the equation is wrong because I haven't heard anything change since the last time you sat with us two years ago and explain this process and my frustration is now the direct impact this is going to have that's inaccurate because you did as as the good Senator shared 22% more I mean we you last night we voted for $40 million for the state to have more education funding that would not have been there had it not been for people

043like me and Senator honing saying to our leadership we have to do something now and not wait until the end of the budget process so that is not that's not completely accurate that we're not being loud enough and that is why there is now a special education committee because we have all been very loud about the that that's where the significant expense is for districts like ours when I got here in 20 when I came in in 2021 the first thing the Board of Education chair said to me in Canton is we had twins move in and because their outplacement was decided someplace else that was $500,000 in our budget I took that to heart then I take every conversation I have to heart with your board chair and your super our superintendent to heart

044and I have taken it back every single time I cannot change that formula however so that's why I do think it's valuable to understand that yes Avon is a wealthy town in terms of not just income but in terms of the other pieces of this you know income is just one part of it but Town's property wealth is important and it's in the formula yeah I think um the policy person that I spoke to about this um highlighted the um equalized net Grand list per capita difference between Simsbury and Avon where in Avon it's 222,000 and in simsberry it's 177,000 and she um thought that that was one of the main drivers of the difference in um ECS the other thing she pointed out was um a better way to look at the difference between

045the two towns is not in the absolute dollars but the ECS per student which uh is um still very different between simsberry and Avon but it's six times instead of eight times so I think Lisa might help with that too yes that explanation Nicole you had questions thank you um first off I'd like to thank you for coming here and giving us your legislative update and answering our questions so I do appreciate that um I had sent several questions some of which have already been asked so I'm not going to sorry that's okay even though you're on that side of the table and he didn't subm in his questions ahead of time yes you were good to do that thank you um so basically as has been discussed um the state considers Avon overfunded and

046each year we're going to lose money um I've inquired a lot about the e um CS ECS funding we've discussed it many times we've used simsberry as you know a comparable State I um town I understand what you're saying and I understand the formula as best as I can um I don't think that the formula has been misapplied I don't think it's fair to our town and as our Representatives I ask of you do you think that we're overfunded will you fight to help us get more money especially if you're saying by 2032 we're not going to have any of that you know for a town the size of Avon every little bit counts so any type of any amount of money that we're losing really impacts real people jobs programs and I would hate

047to children and I would hate to see our faculty our staff our students suffer for that when we have other towns who are getting so much so that's one of my questions in terms of fairness you know I think that the court did what they thought was fair um it does not feel fair to us because we live here and we want to educate our children the way we want them to be educated we want to have the best teachers in the state we want to be able to pay them what we think they deserve um so I my ability to Advocate I think is more on the special education side because I think that that's where it really is unfair um because again we are a district where people move here a for the

048schools and B because they're told that um you know they could get good special education help here I will say we have an amazing superintendent we had a previous superintendent that told people with something as simple as ADHD move to Simsbury move to West Harford you can get care you can get Services there I know parent after parent that was told that by the previous superintendent thank God that's not what we have anymore um but I do think that that's where the the lack of fairness comes in if you're going to allow for the fact that these Alliance districts have children that are extremely disadvantaged then I think you have to give every advantage to children who have special needs and need special education and that's the that's you know whether we're capping it whether

049we're incentivizing districts to have in-house programs that can help at least lower the cost and frankly going after PE it's like the Wild West in special ed as I'm sure all of you know when you send an out placement it could cost whatever they choose so that's something else that we really have to get our our regulatory hands around because that's been allowed to go on for frankly too long and it's not I don't think the cost of a program determines how great it is either in terms of those out placements I I agree um senator honig may have something to add um no I I I agree with um everything uh representative uh just said there um you know I also note that you know and I'll check this with our policy person but

050I don't think the ECS payments you're getting go away completely they're they're just going down to the um level that is the actual um computation from the formula as opposed to being above the formula and do we have that number so it won't be zero so I we were way it was explained to us was that well we are getting to the point of zero it's just being okay I I'll with my policy it's being spread out over time that looks like I think actually Lisa could probably answer that question Lisa can answer that for us but when we met with Kevin Chambers Kevin Chambers and he did the formula calculation for us as of a few weeks ago I know it's it's changed a little bit um we would have received fully funded 368,000

051last year versus 99 um but then I think that it would eventually go down to zero that that's what he's the Outlook but I mean that's years in advance and it doesn't take into account all the factors I think Lisa will speak a little bit better to that anyway when we're talking about why we get even though we're quote overfunded why we still get the funding that we do well we're being held harmless right now so our base Aid ratio is below it's 0.5 you Deb do you mind if I ask because it's related to what Cole is asking right now about the so we have a letter drafted for the board to consider they've all seen it we talked about it at our last board meeting um Susan and I worked on that with

052some input from what we heard from the board members also my question for you is we were trying to determine who was best to send the letter to because it's primarily about uh um special education funding and some of it being more about the formula also so everything that you've just spoken to to and you've heard concerns already about and I think you'll hear more tonight is what we have the letter drafted in regards to but we were trying to determine who the best recipients of it are before we take action tonight so I the chairs and the rankings of the special select committee but because that right now is a temporary committee and they may not be there next year I would say start with them but also the chairs and the rankings of

053the education committee okay so that way you'll have sort of hedged bets so to speak got it thank you have yeah I have another um in regards to the $40 million that was passed for education is that now a new 22% increase that we're going to guarante be getting will that affect our budget or is that um well that that's for this fiscal year you're going to get um an extra 22% over what you thought you were going to get yesterday okay um now we're we're going right into the budgeting process where we're going to come up with a banian budget and you know that's going to be one of the things that goes before the Appropriations Committee as to you know what we're doing with the um the excess cost grant funding there so

054it's not guaranteed but you know we certainly support just want the budget for the coming year the governor's proposed budget for the fiscal year coming uh 26 and 27 got it thank you okay but the 40 is applied to this current year 25 this okay yeah so it's and I I think the number is going to be somewhere between 150 And1 170ish thousand for us M and is um the bills for fully funding special education is that off the table is that something we're continuing to support you're going to continue to support continuing to support that supp it for years and I will support it I'm no long there so it is it's critical our districts need it and it's I mean that's they felt like they had sort of gotten to a good place

055with the ECS formula so then the next thing to tackle was special education which is why you're seeing the select committee thank you so the hope is to make real progress this year and I will say the chair on the house side at least she's a special education teacher so if anybody understands a how hard it is and be what's needed I would hope it's her and just I promise last if people did want to Advocate to change the educational share cost um formula who would that like a letter or a petition who would best that go to so if you're sending it as you the board and the superintendent again I would send it to the special ed chair and the education chairs what you have to understand is that when it comes to

056people like us we only respond to our constituents so you are you know so I can go to my colleagues and say I got 25 emails about you and which would be you know a lot in some cases um about changing this formula or fully funding special ed and I even though I agree with you I am happy to get those emails because I literally you know I respond to all of them and I keep a tally of how many emails there are because it makes it a lot easier to go to your colleagues and say so this is what my district really needs right now um so that's who I would say in Avon or Camp that's you know it would be us who would who would need to receive those emails thank you

057you can CC the chairs um if you so choose but you would while they may read them you would not get a response from them thank you all right I just had a question about if there's any funding sources that we're not tapping into that you're aware of are we missing out on anything no and I I actually um I had asked that question just to try to get a handle on it and they said you know the the question that came back was does Avon have a grant writer because they would have more knowledge of uh grants or or future grants that that would be possible so that's us yeah mostly I understand slim I get it okay Nicole I'm sorry um during your presentation um regarding the ECS funding you had mentioned several

058court cases um Can the legislator legislature also change it so if your constituents do send emails to you you work with your colleagues is that in the power of the legislator or does it have to be just from a court the court would have to I guess approve like any changes that we would make to that formula yeah ultimately not impossible but harder are there any discussions about um special education Factor being factored into the ECS formula or it's well because cost is one thing and ECS is right there I have not heard that I also think you heard how complicated the formula is now I'm not sure that that would make it better and it might create too much weight on one side you know but I why I'm thinking if we could get

059it on this on the excess cost side we would be much better off all right well I want to thank you for taking the time to come out and have this conversation with us it's obviously been one we've been having amongst ourselves but it's also helpful to have it directly from you so thank you we appreciate you having us so we're happy to come back anytime we're sorry it's not better news but we are excited for the 40 million that'll at least help plug part of the hole this year yes and hopefully more by the end of the year we appreciate it and thank you for your service too thank you for having us all right so you've heard us mention the name Lisa hamersley a little bit we would like to in invite her

060to come forward she's the executive director of the school and state finance project here to answer even more detailed um questions about ECS funding so we appreciate having her join us tonight too this is meant not only for the board to be educated on it but for the community to learn along with us and like Jeff has shared we've done this in the past but people change and it's always good to refresh everyone on how this works so you had the opportunity Lisa to hear the kinds of questions that were already bubbling up so I think you know that our focus is really on why does Avon not get as much and if you can break it down so that we can explain that to our constituents as well absolutely so do I need to

061hold it or can you hear me maybe CL pull it closer it doesn't matter okay all right thank you good evening um as was mentioned my name is Lisa hammersley I'm the executive director of the school and state finance project would you like me to just say next slide or do you have a button oh you have it okay so next slide um if you have any follow-up questions and I know that there was a question specific to the fully funded um ECS grant for Avon Public Schools I unfortunately don't have that in my presentation I would like to State though it's because the formula is recalculated every single year I wouldn't really use that figure from 2032 um and look at it too closely because it's going to change because your formula inputs are

062going to change but there is a mechanism in the ECS formula that has a minimum so no Town under the current statutory formula receive zero you will always receive some percentage of support from the state of Connecticut if you have any follow-up questions after this conversation please reach out um not only for you the board members but also the public we are here to serve everyone and to help everyone build knowledge on education funding here in the state of Connecticut we also have a fantastic website um that's listed there that I welcome you all to go in and dig in and take a look at um there's a lot of information that we try to present in a very trans uh parent and accessible way next slide please this is an application that we've recently

063developed that we're quite proud of we continue to add more data points to it as well so I encourage you all to scan it and to put it onto your phone it provides um data really at your fingertips so when you're here in a meeting and you have questions that you want to compare your District to another District all of that well not all of it because it's limited in how much we can put in an app but there's a lot of great accessible information right there on that um application next slide please we also are um pretty big education funding nerds and we've also developed an education Finance certificate um it's called The Leader certificate so once again this is another opportunity for you to go ahead and build your knowledge for those of

064you who don't know us we are a Statewide um policy organization we are a nonprofit nonpartisan organization we were uh founded in 2015 we're going up on our 10year anniversary um in July 1st 2025 which is exciting and we do strive to be a trusted resource for all um stakeholders and education funding whether that's Local District officials um policy makers up at the state capital also with the State Department of Education and we essentially utilize data to develop policy solutions to increase funding and an equitable K12 education funding system here in the state of Connecticut in Connecticut um almost well just over $ 13 billion is um expended on K12 education as you can see from this chart most of those resources come from local property taxes um we do have a increasing share of

065State resources and I'm sorry that I don't think that this chart maybe it's just in transfer well but usually we have the percentages um not just those dollar values there and then 8% comes from federal resources the federal resources are unici or um unusually inflated in this chart this captures all of the one time time post-pandemic Aid that districts received so this shows the federal resources at 8% usually the state and prior to the covid pandemic the state received approximately 4% um and so that is a larger than usual um Federal funding source that is reflected on this chart and then once the covid pandemic relief funds are all expended you'll see those start to go back down thank you looking specifically at Avon and how much Avon spends as compared to your neighbors um

066I put the all of the charts together or all the following information together look looking specifically at your neighboring towns not necessarily the towns that look most like you and when I say look most like you I mean the property wealth and the income wealth and the number of students that you're educating so I just would like to put that caveat if you as the board are interested in seeing Avon as compared to what we would put you together in terms of your comparable towns we can certainly pull that information and send it along to you as well but as you can see um Avon spends nearly $300 less per student than the Statewide average once again when you're looking at all of these numbers these are all inflated because of federal onetime federal pandemic

067relief so they're not going to look this way in a few years because most of our very high need communities received significant sums of support from the federal government as a result of the co pandemic but looking at the most recent data that is available and and presented by the State Department of Education as presented on the Ed site this is how much Avon spends as compared to your pairs when we look at spending um academic research uh has shown time and again that when you are trying to educate and when you are educating students that have additional needs going into the classroom they cost more to educate so when we look at spending by District we like to also provide a chart um that also provides a breakdown of the students that the district

068is educating um so down below there you see the percentage of students that Avon is educating that are lowincome as captured with um eligibility for free or reduced price lunch your multilingual learner population uh your percentage of students with disabilities and then also your bipox student population next slide please there's been a lot of conversation about the ECS formula so I'm going to probably regurgitate some of the information that representative cavos de went over but um the ECS formula is the state's main form of um K12 education support that goes from the state of Connecticut it is the state's main way to support K12 education specifically for local or Regional public school districts Horton V Mescal was already mentioned but the state in the state's Constitution there is a clause in there that protects each

069students um um right to an equal education um and that case Horton vcll was noteworthy um because at that time the Court ruled that when you have a a K12 education system that is so reliant on property taxes once again thinking back to that first chart um and you have local sources coming from local property taxes when you have a funding system that doesn't kind of equalize the differences in property wealth by districts you have an education funding system that is unconstitutional and prior to Horton VC the state was using um state was using flat per pupil grants that did not vary by town and so as a result of that ruling um the state of Connecticut generated their first Formula to distribute K12 education support and in theory and I think that representative Cav

070I don't know if she's here but I think she looked at our website it is supposed to make up the difference between what a community can afford and what it costs to run an education system in a town before I get into the the the fundamentals of the formula that is currently employed today I would just like to provide a little bit of context as to when the formula was enacted so in 2017 as you may recall um the ECS formula that is in statute right now was um reenacted by the general assembly at that time the state was facing multi-billion dollar deficits so $3 billion deficit after $3 billion deficit we had a very unique political climate in the state because the state senate was split 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans I actually worked

071in the Senate Republican office at that time um and there was the the budget deficit was looming Governor Malloy was proposing to zero out many communities um and the legislature was just dead set against taking the state's current contribution and redistributing it to communities in addition you had the CF court case that was also coming down and that the Supreme Court ruled required the state of Connecticut to go ahead and to reintroduce a new form of K12 education support I provide all of that background because I think it's important to know that there was a lot of conversation going on with K12 education funding and it was around the time that the state was facing multi-billion dollar deficits and so the general assembly in a bipartisan fashion re um enacted a new education cost sharing

072formula and at the time the state was facing a deficit and it cost almost $400 million to fully fund the formula and so what they decided to do was they phased in all of the increases that towns were supposed to receive according to the formula over a 10-year period and they phased out what were considered overfunded Towns over a 10-year period as well um and so we'll get into the the fundamentals of the formula that have been previously identified um but it is important to note that that phase out occurred when the state was in significant financial distress the phase out occurred in 2019 at a very small percentage and then in 2020 and 2021 and since that time the general assembly has held every town harmless and so those reductions have not occurred since

073the state has been in a different Financial condition than it was when the formula was previously enacted I know that there are conversations and I don't know what the general assembly will ultimately do but I do know that there are conversations and there's questions being asked as to how much it would cost the state to once again hold all towns harmless in this current panium um and which we've provided those figures to them but there those conversations are ongoing so the base of the whole ECS formula is the foundation in theory this is supposed to be the cost to educate a student without additional learning needs there's a caveat here in that this Foundation has not been adjusted um since 2013 so naturally one would would assume that this is an area of um this

074is a flaw within the formula that can certainly be addressed and that you should at least be adjusting this Foundation by the rate of inflation um however when you adjust this in this Foundation amount because it is the base of the formula for all towns it's very very very expensive um but it's definitely an area of concern in an area that our organization is looking to to say hey for an area Improvement that the General Assembly should consider this is definitely a point that they should look at is Raising this Foundation the foundation is currently $1,525 sorry yeah thank you it then adds on additional weight depending on the student population the first is a loow income weight once again captured by free and reduced price lunch it's currently at 30% there's a concentrated poverty

075threshold which is 15% and this additional weight is applied to every student when a district has at least 60% of its students qualifying for free and reduced price lunch so if you have if you are a district and you have a student population where 65% of your students qualify for free and reduced price lunch you receive that extra 15% support for 5% of your population um that concentrated poverty weight was increased uh two bions ago and then the concentrated poverty threshold was also adjusted and then the multilingual learner weight was also increased and it was increase from 15 to where it is currently at 25% so all of these weights are cumulative and the next slide will show you the impact of them so for every student according to the formula that you have that

076is for example a low income um student that qualifies for free and reduced price lunch as well as a multilingual learner the total cost to educate you under the statutory formula is $ 17,860 so the formula builds up how much does it cost to educate the kids in your in your district and it has that total cost and then the formula splits up what is the state and what is the local share as we show on the next Slide the the factor that splits State local share is called the base Aid ratio and it is comprised of two factors one is the property wealth factor which is the adjusted equalized grandness or the equalized net Grand L per capita um and then it's also the income wealth which is captured with median household income next

077slide please Lisa I'm sorry can we interrupt can we pause for a second there because I think to answer their questions that's that's an important slide that you were just on uh when it comes to the enl P equalizer per capita yeah um and Susan I you probably I couldn't get on the network but I think you might have the numbers in front of you because it's the property wealth that's from what we understand very different in Avon than it is in simsberry in part for that discrepancy Y and I have that in a few slides oh I'm sorry yeah can I just ask a quick clarifying question when we were talking about student population when you look at our current student population and calculating that does that also take in consideration the open Choice

078students or does so when you look at it that includes everyone who attends school here whether they are residents of Avon or not that's a great question so the resident student or the student demographics it's captured with your resident student population so it's every student that Avon is fiscally responsible for so that includes the approximately 120 uh non- Aon residents that come into Avon that come into Avon that's correct um well okay it counts half of them yes why half AR because you also because Avon also gets a grant for them in addition okay right but for all the kids at Avon um that reside in Avon that attend like a CRA Magnet School you are financially responsible for their general education and their special education tuition bills that kid that student is counted in

079your resident student count so students who attend out who live in District but attend out of district is factored into that equation as well in terms of counting our students and so forth that's right cuz they're residents they're residents and you're responsible for them half of nonresident students because there's other money attached to them you only get half of open choice because you also receive that supplemental Grant that's correct okay yeah open choice is the only students where it's half that the from the sending district and the receiving District but for all of your Magnet School students or all your Agra science students they're still counted in your resident student count you're welcome so the formula um added on another bonus for our most high needed communities in the state of Connecticut and it captures

080this with using the um the pick index um Avon is not one of those towns but it does capture the top 19 um and those towns um the pick index looks at a more holistic view of a community it's not just um the number of students that qualify for free and reduced price lunch but it also captures things like unemployment rate um and number of families receiving temporary assistance to needy families and those towns just receive additional points on the base Aid ratio so if they were otherwise going to receive 70% for example from the state of Connecticut they might receive 71% or 72% because the state is using it an actual formula ECS grants fluctuate every year um and so every year all of the updated information is put into the formula and um

081there are new fully funded Grant amounts that then the um percentages if you're an overfunded Town according to the formula would then be applied against the uh ACS formula will be fully funded for underfunded towns next year so that'll be the first time that the state is Connecticut has had a ECS formula that it's followed Faithfully um for its underfunded towns and it'll be fully funded at that time these are all the factors that go in every single year with the updated grants um as so you can see that there's a number of different factors that are taken into account yep which other towns in Connecticut are considered overfunded there are approximately 70 70 70 correct yeah there are 70 towns that are considered overfunded um and I can send you that list if you'd

082like to take a look at it um but in total the amount of State Savings from phasing towns out is approximately $8.8 million with an M or B million million y okay so if the general assembly decided again to pause the phase out that's how much they would need to put into the budget to make that happen because Governor Lamont's proposal um did not recommend pausing the phase out he proposes to maintain the phase out and the reductions thank you you're welcome okay I my question is how and why do does the prior year Grant matter because that is a great question because if you are if you recalculate the grant for example and it is determined that your fully funded Grant is $500,000 but you were previously receiving a million the grant will make

083equal percentages reductions until you get to fully funded the grant tries to phase districts out so your prior year Grant amount is important because it allows you to determine the base and then where you're going and then how many years you have to get to where you're going so that the intent was in 2017 that no District would receive in legislators opinions the ones that voted for it at that time no District would receive such a drastic reduction in state support that would really be catastrophic once again thinking back to the mindset right if you have a governor that's proposing to zero out towns and you had the Supreme Court ruling that was ultimately overturned um there was still that feeling amongst the general assembly that they had to respond to this judicial decision because

084they kept coming back you know uh the court kept ruling about the how constitutional or unconstitutional the state's funding system was um and so the the prior year Grant is important because the intent is a gradual phase out one more clarifying question thank you because there's a lot and every time I sit through this I'm like oh I didn't realize that that time so you talked about every year that the factors change based upon the town's data okay so let me give a hypothetical a town goes through a revaluation where the property value is dramatically increase in town does that mean typically in that scenario we would anticipate a higher decrease because the town's property value has shut up is that a fair Assumption of how that works actually and we are finding this now

085that we have towns getting to fully funded we are seeing that revals are actually harming District's grants and the reason why is because in the Years where the revals aren't happening um what is used is a market so what your sales look like in that year it's a market value and so Mar the Market's crazy right now and so the market is doing well and then when districts reval we're seeing that they're going back down so the upcoming Grant would be based upon data from last year or the year before last year so this town is a town that went through a reval would it be before the reval or post reval because my next question is I understand where the money is dropped now from 900,000 to 800,000 if it's based on pre eval

086then are we looking at 2 years a even larger decrease because this town some believe had a significant increase in the property value yeah so it's not the the formula doesn't take into account it's not just a one-year look at your property value they do try to smooth it with a few with three years um so it just depends on the specifics to your town which I'm happy to dig into more um I'm happy to look at when your last reval was what the market value was because there are different too percentages and ratios to your Market value SL to reval cuz when you go to reval we're seeing that there are significant adjustments happening not just to your town but to every town that are a little bit con they're not a little bit

087they're concerning to us as a policy organization and we're trying to really get into the weeds of what metric can be used in order to ensure that you don't have this up and down of Grants because it's um unsettling for communities M and also I just want to be clear clear that we don't decide as a town to re-evaluate our properties that is something that every town goes through that's correct and we almost feel and as I said we've just started to research this because we're noticing this because districts are getting to full funding as I said things aren't as smooth when you're phasing something out or you're phasing something in the phase in helps to smooth things out when you're at full funding those grants are going to go up and down um and

088so when we're looking at the grants now we're a we're alarmed by the fact that this is going on and something that we're thinking of as being an option is to never use the reval but to always use the market value because they seem more consistent and then you're using the same metric so you're not bouncing from one metric to another but please don't hold me to that because we haven't done our analis it's making a little sense because we've had the issue and that's been the criticism I think a few years ago our grant was 600,000 then it was 900,000 and it it becomes very difficult in terms of our budgeting process ab and one of the things that we struggle with is we have to submit our budget to the town in January

089right the town then votes April May I don't know we have all those meetings starting it's all spring and then we lock the taxpayer in and then all of a sudden the state doesn't deliver their money until July and it becomes very difficult because then it's really just a a a Gamble and so that's why I think I'm trying to understand this I think you've explained why we've seen such an up and down and that's not helpful to us so but thank you for that no I appreciate that feedback and I understand that it would not be helpful to you yeah um so it is something that we're looking at um as a policy organization and obviously if we can find a way to make the formula operate so that it's more consistent and smooth

090for districts we will bring that recommendation to policy makers um and work to change the that's really like the under it's so much in the details and so much in the weeds of the formula that it doesn't fundamentally change the formula it just makes the data points more consistent for municipalities next slide please yeah thank you so Avon funding I apologize we usually I don't know if I sent it out improperly we do use between our numbers so I apologize there are no commas here it's bother yeah I don't know uh but it's going to bother me so as you can see Avon's ECS Grant is anticipated to go down if the formula is is phase out is employed from that 999,000 down to 832 but as you can see there is significant fluctuation there

091for Avon's um ECS support so I certainly understand all of the questions that you're that you're asking tonight next slide please I'm happy that the comments are here okay so this looks at Avon's funding for this for this current year so this is fiscal year 2025 um and that Grant of 900 9,000 and in the box below we put all of well not all of them but most of the variables that go into the calculation of the ECS Grant um and so if you're comparing yourself specifically to simsberry which um when I was sitting in the in the crowd I heard as you can see there the equalized net Grand list per capita of Avon you're ranked number 40 whereas Simsbury is ranked number 78 um and then the median household income also is is

092comparable so it's that that equalized net gr list per capita and the Reliance on the equalized net Grand list per capita um that results in that difference in the base Aid ratio and therefore that difference split between what is the state and local share Simsbury is also educating just generally more students or has more students in their resident student count and has a a higher count of low-income students something else that you know you can look at and that we can certainly model for you as well is trying to change that base Aid ratio so that it doesn't have that 7030 split but that it's more like 50/50 um prior to the most recent ECS formula that is currently enacted um it previous previously was 90% equalized net Grand list per capita and only 10%

093me household income so the legislature did adjust it to try to um account for maybe very property wealthy communities but your citizens aren't as um able to pay so that could also be adjusted that we can model out for you as well if you're interested in seeing what that looks like yes so to clarify the legislature could change the factoring and looking at changing the formula to where we would possibly be able to receive more of this funding yeah I mean they could adjust the the breakout or the components of the Bas be ultimately up to them absolutely y thank you as long as I would say that they would the legislature when they make any adjustments would continue to ensure that the ECS formula is still the state's main form of Equalization Aid right

094so that it is still providing more to our low property High need districts because otherwise it it would run a file of the state's constitution of the state ensuring that all kids have an equal education I would just keep that they could certainly adjust the base Aid ratio any way that they want but they would need to ensure that the ECS formula still is an equalization Aid Lisa this is just a technical question we have this um thank you for sending it to Christine is it okay with you if we include this in our materials from tonight because I know people are trying to get pictures and so on on the screen can we put it up online sure after tonight's meeting thank you yep absolutely okay next slide please this looks at the funding

095per resident student so as you can see Avon uh the state support per student is 291 once again it's compared to the town of Simsbury um at almost 1795 and the next few slides I think we show what these amounts are going to be for fiscal year 2026 if you want to mind go in there yep so the same for fiscal year 2026 um just the total support for the for the town and district and then the next one provides the per pupil and as I mentioned the ECS formula uh no town will or no student would receive zero support from the state of Connecticut there is a me excuse me a Minimum Aid ratio um built into the formula to ensure that the state is supporting K12 education in every town can I ask

096you a question about that Lisa because you heard us answer earlier when we met with Kevin the way that he explained it to Susan and I and and the town officials that met with him was yes that there is the the factor that's why we get anything so to speak right because we they can't give zero that's why we get anything now but he did explain it to us that the the the as it was at the time at least the the goal over time was that if you were overfunded you would continue to Trend down until you unless they change something you were eventually at zero it might be however long from now but that's how they're employing the math that's why Susan and I answer the question that way because that was how

097it was explained to ustin town yeah um I statute says that you will never receive zero statute says that you will always have that minimum minimum Aid ratio um Governor Malloy did try to get you towns like Avon to zero um but under current law you're protected that you will not so I'm not sure what Kevin was referring to but thank you I just wanted to clarify because we answered that and we'll have to let the townside know that also because it wasn't the I mean it was a projection for the future anyway it wasn't impacting this year's budget or NE you know we know what the number is at least as of now but it was just theoretically something for us to consider that you know that the time could come where if if

098if the trend keeps going the way it is that's if that's ultimately the goal or anything close to it it then you expect to see as you said the formula continue to keep keep equalizing to Trend downward based on the factors that we if if it if our factors stay relatively steady yeah I have not heard that that is the goal of the State Department of Education or Governor Lamont um but that could be um and just one other clarifying question yeah I don't know if you can speak this or not one of the other things that I I I think we've done to try to explain to people you know about the money and the formula is that if you think of it you know in simplistic terms but it's it's a pot of

099money the the the amount that gets allocated for cost sharing is x amount of dollars and so every year and so the formula also has to work for that back to your point to get equally distributed out by need throughout the state and so when we're thinking about what you might see as the changes it's hard to for us to conceptualize what would have to happen for them to make changes to the formula in a way that would really benefit a town like Avon much does that make sense you understand what I'm asking the money there's still you know for argument sake there's a million dollars it's not that but there's a million dollars and it's going to get divvied up through all of these towns no matter how they work that for me yeah

100so to the extent that you're making changes to the formula in order to significantly increase avons you're going to decrease others you would need to decrease others or the state's contribution to K12 education would need to increase so right you would need to lift all boats at the exactly at the end of the day that doesn't work without State funding increasing which probably is putting up taxes and some other way anyway but or beside the point I guess for redistributing redistributing yeah thank you thank you thank you I just wanted to make sure we were still explaining that next please okay so can I ask one question um if you go back to the previous slide right so for the last few slides I'm seeing the the median household income is compartible to Simsbury and

101A1 is compartible and other factors like low income and multilingual Learners right it's almost comparable but the the the diff What is the driving factor for fi25 I mean comparing A1 and Simsbury to what is a driving factor in f26 is that the same factor which is driving up or I mean what are those factors which which is triggering simsberry to get more eest Grand than A1 specific to simsberry um the driving factor is Gest your equalized net Grand list per capita and the fact that 70% of your base Aid ratio utilizes equalized R list per capita and when you have a a $60,000 difference between yourself and Simsbury it just has changed or it has resulted in the base Aid ratio has resulted in Simsbury receiving a larger percentage than Avon on this slide

102it doesn't show the actual base Aid ratios the actual percentages and I'm happy to follow up with that um with that data point for you as well not just the amounts but also what the base Aid ratio is so that you can actually see okay simsberry and these are hypotheticals because I don't know but like simsberry is receiving 30% of its of its total cost from the state for example but I can follow up with the base a ratios here okay looking at this chart I think it's primarily your it is your equalized net Grand list per capita which is such a large percentage of your base Aid ratio yeah that would be helpful and as a clarifying question right if I understand the base Aid R basite ratio is like the property wealth factor

103is 70% and the income factor is 30% but I'm looking at this chart here the median income for sbur is is a little higher than I mean not the slide the previous slide in the F525 right it's uh since B is higher than A1 um or compartible I'm just trying to understand the numbers here right like in terms of like even though if there is a driving factor which is significantly higher which is driving the Simsbury grants go up I'm still not able to follow right what is the driving factor which is giving eight Acts or 10 acts from Avon to Simsbury as a grant every year so even though we are overr it but I'm still not but the data on the Bas ratio that would be help for you yeah yeah it's it's

104that equalized grand L per capita which is the largest factor that determines the base Aid ratio Lisa I do have a base Aid ratio yeah um so for simsberry for um the calculation for FY 26 it's 16.6 47% okay and Avon was rounded up to one one it was 0.5 one is the minimum one is the minimum round to it yeah okay and also if I'm correct we have to take into account that these aren't only discussing home properties but also retail properties and other expensive owned commercial properties in the town too that's all a part of the grand list yeah your equalized net Grand list per capita is all of the taxable property that municipalities have to tax from so it's everything it encompasses everything yep thank you you're welcome this slide just shows

105you how much our grand list varies here in the state of Connecticut there's a over $60 billion dollar difference between our most property Rich community and our least property Rich Community um and so we showed on this chart where Avon Falls in that ranking as compared to the state medium so just briefly on special education because it's such a large topic of conversation here in the state um while the number of students across the state of Connecticut has declined over the past 10 years the next slide will show that the number of students that are receiving uh services and have an IEP has continued to increase would you mind going to the next slide please CHR so this just shows the fact that while we have declining enrollment our needs of our students that have

106an IEP um continue to increase next slide um you've talked about it earlier today but excess cost is currently underfunded um I apologize again for these weird numbers I don't like to look at them um but the state of Connecticut has in the past bium they increased the um appropriation for excess cost by $25 million a year at the time they thought that they were going to get close to full funding and uh the cost for private outplacement just shot up across the state of Connecticut while the number of kids have gone up across the state the number of students that are outplaced the cost to educate those students and the the past four years has gone up by almost $20,000 per student so there is a rapid escalation in costs um particularly for students

107who qualify for excess cost reimbursement um which is why there's such a focus on looking at this population and what can be done to ensure that there's good policies in place um to help mitigate costs while ensuring that students receive the services they they need and deserve Leisa I just want to reiterate for everybody here that we do our best to keep our students in District which is much more than was done previous years so we are doing that in order to lower our costs as well um but of course it's still expensive but I just want to be clear that we're not outplaced before and unfortunately that impacts us negatively financially which I know you know but that's right it when when we do outplay students we actually get more of that money reimbursed

108than when we keep them in District even though our goal is still to do that is it's it in a bigger in a grand scheme of things it negatively impacts us not student by student but what what happens is if we in um educate them in District and um Miss Dr Fox's team does an amazing job on that sometimes the cost doesn't meet the threshold of what we can apply for the grant which is four and a half times per student which is every year going up because the cost of educating a regular education student goes up so this year it's a little over $889,000 a student so we have to spend more than $89,000 for any particular student to apply for the grant for that student and there were only reimbursed a percentage in

109excess of the 89,000 so so we're hurt for being fiscally responsible in terms of educating our students so would it be cost effective no no it's still the it's still the best decision to do what we're doing and it's still better for our students agreed generally speaking there are some students that present needs that it's inevitable that a any public school district may not be able to meet particularly hospitalizations and and the like but nonetheless our goal is to keep them here and not be because of the finance but because it's better for them to be here with their peers yeah um I don't know if we have anything after this would you mind looking to the next slide Christine okay so that's a lot of words I'll just say generally so I'm not going

110to read that um so the state of Connecticut claims that it supports special education and the education cost sharing Grant um when it reports its maintenance of effort to the federal government however we know that that's not true because if the base of your ECS Grant is the foundation which is supposed to be the class educated student without additional learning needs the whole base of the formula there's nothing in that formula that provides extra support for students with disabilities um and so something that the the special education task force looked at um and something that was also promoted by the 119k commission I don't know if you've all have looked at their recommendations as well um but they have recommended uh the inclusion of a weight in the ECS formula to support students with disabilities

111so that is a topic of conversation that the select committee on special education is looking at as well and if that were to occur and if the general assembly were to pass that policy that chart that I showed you at the beginning of this conversation that looked at the cumulative impact of all of the weights that would uh change to obviously reflect the weight that the general assembly put in place to support students with disabilities but even so for a town like Avon it sounds like that really wouldn't move it the needle I would I would imagine that it would not result in significant sums of additional support given the factors of the formula yeah um but it would at least provide something because currently the state of Connecticut is not supporting any special education

112expenses until you get to that really catastrophic level um and so by at least putting in away there's at least some support from the state of Connecticut from that first dollar so that's just something else to consider and something else that's being discussed um this General Assembly as well the the following charts are just talking about some of the mess that you've brought up previously with with regards to what counts get what kids get counted where and who gets to charge tuition and who doesn't get to charge tuition that's another conversation that's been going on in the general assembly um to try and change and overhaul the funding system so that a district like Avon would not be responsible for paying general education tuition to other operators like a vwag program or a magnet school

113program so I won't go through these slides in detail but they're here for your reference does impact us much yeah Christine you made my night because I didn't like that I know I was like thank you thank you Christine did everybody hear her thank you for joining us at time of night on a on a week night we really appreciate you taking the time and answering our questions it is complicated but I think it just it helps to hear it said again and again just to clarify absolutely if you have any follow-up questions I'll follow up with more information specific to the base Aid ratio and the calculation um please feel free to reach out to us at any time we are here to be a resource to you we appreciate it and we will

114make sure that this is available for the public to see as well thank you again Lisa thank thank you all right now we get on to the regular business business um approval of the Board of Education monthly meeting minutes of January 21st 2025 do I have a motion to approve all right Chris and a second second second by Lynn all in favor I passes with nine now we have communication from the public do we have anyone signed up Christine do we know no we're good okay thank you very much so I will keep moving us our student rep I know Maddie that you have a hectic night yourself so we will allow you to give your update quickly and then we will dismiss you right not that it looked like you wanted to leave no

115um so I did the AHS and AMS report for this month um in terms of AHS diversity week is coming up March 10th through 14th and that's being presented by Avon voices for Equity uh today there was an internship Showcase in the gallery from 6:00 to 7: course selections are being finalized for all the high school students for their classes next year there's going to be a career Expo on March 26 for grades 9 and 10 and the SAT date is finalized to be set for March 26th on March 5th there's going to be a woman in the workforce field trip and that's 8:30 to 1:30 um for both AMS and AHS spring Sports registration is out um starting for the middle school there's an art show that's being displayed all throughout the month of

116February so that will be ending soon then March 7 there's going to be a winter dance and the robotics team is advancing to the state championships on March 1st fantastic thank you we appreciate you staying hopefully you learned something with us tonight but you are free to leave if you would like all right as far as our financial report we didn't have a finance committee meeting this month but Susan did you want to say anything um the only thing I want to say is maybe clarify the additional $40 million that's being added to this year's excess cost budget yes please um I I think there's a little bit of um confusion on how that's going to apply we apply for the excess cost Grant throughout the year we first apply December 1st and then we

117fin a we we give our best estimate of what a student's going to cost through the end of um the school year by March 1st so we're doing that right now we're actually in the midst of doing that so some students placements may have changed the cost may have changed from that very s submission December 1st so Representatives talked about us perhaps getting 22% more than we had initially thought we were going to get we're not even sure what we'll get based on what we submit in March 1st so so it's not that the town will see a windfall of 22% more of a grant Revenue Source we may just may get to what we budgeted because the initial um figures that they provided us were 59% reimbursement percentage rather than the 80 we should

118be getting um and we would have been well below the $940,000 that was in this year's budget for the town to receive his Revenue so with the increased funds we may get back to that point but we haven't even finished putting in our 30 students that we get reimbursed for I appreciate you clarifying that and I just want to say again I know I've said this in the past we are always conservative in what our expectations are unfortunately I've hear stories from other districts where they put in wishful thinking money and then they have to figure out how to fill in that Gap app after the fact we do not put ourselves in that situation go ahead Nicole I just have a clarifying question for that because maybe I'm misunderstanding you so we may get

11922% more of a number we didn't know we were going to [Applause] get um so thanks for we we submit for GR we we base our estimated revenues during the budget cycle like we did for this year based on what our prior year submission is what we think the re ment percentage would be based on the students we know at a point in time we then have the actual Year we're living in what the cost of those students are we submitted for I believe 26 students reimbursement for our best guess at that point in time of what those students tuition Transportation evaluations all their other services would be that at that point in time if we were to receive what they told us which was a 59% reimbursement we would have been 100 to 100

120$50,000 below budget if the numberers stay static as I'm inputting them right now into looking at each individual student what our estimate is versus I already know one student we had an estimate we thought of a placement that didn't happen so what we put in is now going to be zeroed out okay so that's less less cost we didn't spend the money but we also aren't could receive the grant reimbursement for it so once we finalize that on March 1st the state will then let us know with this $40 million what the reimbursement percentage instead of 59% it may go up to 65% which may result in us getting up to what we budgeted already because we were conservative we didn't trust they've been low funding us the last couple years so rather than budget

121the 80% as um Deb mentioned we were very conservative to be in the 60 to 70% range and and that funding is that across the board all districts will get the same percentage no it's a tiered system based on wealth percentage okay so we're in the lowest yeah okay Susan is this what Le um Lisa was talking about when she said we get a portion back depending on the amount spent yes this is the excess cost Grant so this is what we were talking about the $889,000 threshold so in order to qualify for an excess cost cost Grant a student's um cost to educate the student has to be 4 and a half times the towns our particular districts per pupil expenditure cost for the previous year so like the 80,000 or something 89,000 right

122so then we can submit for reimbursement when we submit for reimbursement in December our preliminary we're always very conservative but to the point where we think some students are going to make it if anyone's close to making it we put them on the list right and then Dr Fox and her team work very diligently to find every single dollar that we spend on that student we do all of our IND District students which we had not done in this District before I came we ask for reimbursement for all of those we go through every IEP every service hour delivered if that student has specialized transportation and they have specialized services and they are anywhere close to $889,000 we do all the work and we submit for reimbursement so for example if a student cost us

123$96,000 do we expect the state to give us that $7,000 or they're giving us a percentage of that we get currently 59% of the $7,000 thank you all right thank you Susan we appreciate that all right committee and leas and reports curriculum professional practices Lynn yes we met uh January 28th um the the minutes are in the packet and we're going to be talking about um the course proposal for 7th and e8th grade math tonight and our next meeting is March 4th at 7:00 at the high school thank you finance that's me we did not have the meeting but our next meeting will be March 11th uh negotiations Suzanne um there's nothing to report and no meeting scheduled thank you policy theage y we met on February 11th and you'll see a lot of um

124the discussion that went on that night as new business tonight thank you Capital Region education Council Chris yeah we had the legislative update the breakfast which I didn't get to actually eat the food cuz I had to drop off my twins at school that's okay but everybody was there Deb came C us a State Rep uh senator Paul was there too um our next meeting is on the 19th um yeah and Chris would you like to make an announcement oh yes I was also um to be on the correct Foundation uh we do a lot for funding um and scholarships and great things for the correct uh student so it was a great honor to get that congratulations thank you all right next the chair report I will keep it brief I did attend the

125legislative breakfast with Chris as mentioned it's nice to be in a room with other um board members and superintendents who share a like-mindedness for giving the the best education we can to students so it's always nice to connect in that fashion I do want to acknowledge I'm always highly impressed by The Internship showcase that takes place I am grateful that they do it at 6 o'clock on the nights of our meeting so that we as board members can attend and interview them all they are fabulous I mean there were some juniors in there that have already done two internships so that means they're going to do even more and I'm just reminding them to put it on their resume and they're already on top of it so I didn't even have to say that but

126quite an impressive group and it's always a good array of different options and even the ones that maybe it wasn't a good fit for it was still a great experience because they learned it wasn't the right fit so they can move on to their next interest so highly grateful for that program um I'm going to keep it really brief I'm appreciative of the state representative and our Senator coming out Lisa making the time as well um just to educate us on this information it's good to apprise ourselves regularly because it's a lot of numbers it's a lot to take in um it's a lot to consider so I am grateful that they took the time to join us this evening always enjoy seeing the students and um celebrating so I will move on to the

127superintendent report thank you that was a lot tonight so likewise I we'll speak when necessary as we get um down to the business and um just Mr medic if you speak briefly to the hiring report and I'll point you in the direction of the enrollments and the packet not really anything for me else else for me to say about it right now and then we'll keep moving good evening um at this point of the year we are continuing to fill vacancies in our non certified areas uh we did on board four new individuals uh and our Administrative Assistant PA educator nutrition service positions as we recently had some departures uh from staff in those areas as well uh we will be working over the next few weeks to set up for any hiring uh over

128the summer into next school year with possible anticipated openings but um it's the hire report for February just one uh piece to point out that it's not on the hiring Port you'll see it next time um you see the resignation of the pgs security specialist Paul villo um he's been out on medical leave and that's why it's pushed into the future but in the meantime we do have someone new we just he didn't make the report um Kevin Fuller who you may all know as uh our custodian over at pgs um who is a retired police officer um was happy to take on the new role with us and we're excited to have him with us too so welcome to Kevin as I said you'll see it next time but wanted to make sure I

129said it because otherwise it looks like we don't have anyone over at pgs and we do thank you that's it for me I'm I'm just gonna like I said you can look at the it's we're we're status quo and we'll just keep moving thank you we appreciate that okay we don't have anything on the consent calendar we do have old business this is a policy that we already discussed and we're basically just reverting back um to the previous version of it um so tonight we have a discussion on possible approval of policy 514 5.5 regarding uh Title Nine of the education Amendments of 1972 prohibition of sex discrimination and sexual harassment we already had a lengthy discussion not only in committee but also here at the table as a board discussing that it's primarily related

130to the investigation process um but I will leave it to Dr caral if you want to speak to anything else regarding that I think we've spent a lot of time discussing this so I'm happy to answer questions um but short version of this is as you know there was an executive order signed um that uh requires us to revert back to what had been our previous policy and so this is exactly the same policy that we had um from 2020 and it's needs to take the place of the one that the board voted to put in recently that we were told we legally needed to put in in because here we are so I'll answer any questions about it I don't want to Bel or anything because I know how much you've already spoken about

131it so as you said previously this is um the the largest piece of the uh changes here are in the regulations and they're related to how in investigations have to be done and the training that's required of us as as administrators um to do those investigations um there are some other pieces but they are not um the the what I would call the big big um issues maybe that are still being discussed out in in the world there this this policy doesn't speak to um Sports it doesn't speak to locker rooms it doesn't speak to um anything to do with um sexually based or gender-based orientation and what that looks like in our schools this is really simply going backward in some of the terminology and back backward to what it was in some of

132the terminology and the investigations but any questions you might have any lingering questions okay they do you want to make the motion sure and you know what there are two if you I'm sorry we we put them together because as you know personnel and students they're separate policies because of personnel versus students but they're together under old business so you may need to make a motion to adopt both of of them the personnel and the student M so I'd like to make a motion to approve um policy 514 5.5 the student and 4000.1 the Personnel policy regarding Title 9 of the education Amendments of 1972 prohibition of sex discrimination and sex sexual harassment so I have a second thank you Nicole all in favor I passes unanimously thank you our next item is discussion and

133possible action regarding notification to certified staff of non-renewal of contracts due to budgetary reasons in accordance with Section 10-1 151 of the Connecticut General stat statutes annual notification recommended in advance of budget process to be rescinded as necessary after the budget is determined by the town we have had this conversation um as a board as well this is just making sure that we are alerting people so no one is caught off guard if we are in the unfortunate circumstances of having to utilize this um Dr car is there anything more you wanted to speak to I think I would just say that um as you know we did this this budget very carefully and so uh would not expect to um make a recommendation for anyone to actually be um in the vernacular laid off

134or to remove any of the positions that we put forward in this budget because as you know we worked very hard to um reallocate them um leave the two positions that are have been vacated as at present the special ed uh teachers open so that we can move some folks around because we are trying to maintain all of the staff that we have since we put that budget together there are uh 6.8 positions in total in the district that have already been reduced um as you mentioned that is one person at this time that um we knew well in advance that um it was a wellness teacher that we hired we added on a few years ago and for a bubble of students moving through the grades um we knew that at the time nothing

135has changed in terms of the enrollment um there to Grant additional teaching sections and no one has retired in Wellness so unfortunately we knew that meant in the coming year um we really didn't need the position at this time so we already have notified that person I think I told you that at a previous meeting too we didn't want the person out um unable to find a job in this season when they are being posted so we had spoken to that individual um a number of times before now so back to what you said this is just to ensure um the town of Avon as a whole is compliant with um what I would call if something were more catastrophic and additional people um needed to be um cut from the budget but I I

136caution and saying at the same time that we don't have anyone to recommend to do that with at the time we would have made those recommendations already before we put the budget forward um but this is a legal this is really a legal obligation for you as a board in the town and it's something that had not been done in a lot of years that we were asked about um last year during the budget process before we're here tonight um Mr Moss who's out here with tonight um our aea president and I met with every individual um who would receive one of these letters after tonight's meeting to make sure sure that they understood everything I just said to you too and for me to tell them that if we were worried in any other

137way um that we would be speaking to them again but you know at present our class sizes dictate the number of people that we have working um and unless we were going to talk about things like I hate to use this example because they were just here tonight but unless we were going to you you know we're talk about the Arts or or Athletics or some other programs that we would not recommend reducing the number of people we have right now is the number of people we require so I I just want to put that out there again because they've heard me say that also and to Jeff's Point earlier trying not to lose good people um who are worried and and also just to recognize that quote non- tenard that could mean you've been

138here for three years and 10 months it could mean you've been here for two months so it's a it's a it's a large um number of individuals that we had to meet with because we had a lot of retirements um over the last uh say three or four years it's just kind of the waves of way things go with people's ages and so forth um so we have hired a lot of newer people over the last um three years I'd say so three to five so there are I 70 no 16 I'm I'm doing the math quickly in my head thinking of how many people I was with at each School 52 52 thank you what's that total staff teaching staff 288 52 so 52 out of 200 yes so we met with every one

139of them between our last meeting and this one so that people weren't nervous after tonight do you get a sense I'm always asking about other districts but do you get a sense that other districts are in a similar situation I worry about the yes are they are so I guess that helps a little bit right to know that our people aren't going to get scooped up and I think that when you uh when we continue to see the increases uh in dollars and percents that are coming from most of the towns in the state of Connecticut inflation uh costs of supplies going up um cost of benefits going up you're you're seeing this all over the state that people are worried about the budget season as a whole and so um it is it is

140a fairly common practice to do this every single year most of us were saying there are many of us sitting in the rooms that including the people I was speaking to that um have worked in other districts where they have gotten a letter uh like this we we were saying we had all at one point in our um careers gotten the same that doesn't necessarily make people feel that much better about it nor nor does me telling them I think they should just not upset themselves any further for the time being and put it in a drawer when it comes it's pretty much what I said to all of them but to know that um funding is up in the air and um here we are all right well I just want to say how

141grateful I am and I think the board is as well with the respect that you've shown to the staff we highly value our staff and we did not want this to be a shock to anyone so this has been handled in a way that no one is caught off guard um it's not something we enjoy having to do which is why Avon doesn't typically do this so just say that um I will make the motion as hard as that is to do um could I please have a second no one want no one wants to do that I know I'll second it all right thank you Jee all in favor reluctantly think we have nine okay next discussion on possible approval of the letter regarding education funding on pages 69a and 69b this has a

142lot to do with discussion we had tonight as well as um the statement that was raised by nocole at our last meeting in an effort for the board to participate in doing something to advocate for our town and our budget um hopefully you've all read through it um does anybody have any input as to what's here or if people are comfortable with it moving forward I believe we have a copy that we could sign this evening if we have a clean copy yes if we are in agreement we can make changes in reprint if we needed to also go ahead Jeff I just request that my last name is spelled properly oh where are we there is no C there's a c missing sorry Jee okay then we won't be signing in we do know

143how to spell your name I don't know what happened there okay apologize anyone else have any input is everyone comfortable with us sending this I think it has a little more power behind it when we send it together as a unit along with Dr carola all right soor do I have no that's fine a motion to approve the letter regarding education funding and then we'll just have to sign it we'll get it done oh we can are you okay we'll fix it and we'll we leave that would be great thank you very much and we will still have to we'll have you sign page two because on page one we're going to put in the names um as we you ask send it to I just wanted to make sure you got most bang for

144your buck so to speak in the letter by sending it to the right it's hard to get us all in the same room together so we appreciate you preparing it for us okay so do I have a motion to approve the letter regarding education funding all right Suzanne do I have a second second second by Sarah all in favor I passes unanimously nine thank you all right next discussion and possible approval of course proposal for seventh and eth grade mathematics Mr janini thank you good evening everyone uh brief presentation here just to give you a little background um because you may have seen in your packet an approval for seventh and eighth grade math as courses and been wondering to yourself don't we already teach seventh and eighth grade math so why is there a

145course proposal uh in the packet uh a little bit of background as you know we're in the process of a multi-year Mathematics Study and plan here in the district uh which began with uh K5 mathematics you probably remember last year uh approving a new program for all students in those grades uh and this year we moved that work up to sixth and e8th grade uh so looking to continue the work started at the elementary school into the Upper Elementary and Middle School um their primary uh really focus as a as a Middle grades if you will was both to continue the good work um and but then also to look at what was no problem what was yeah okay I'll keep going um what was happening uh with mathematics specifically in grades seven and 8

146um after many years of vertical conversation with our Middle School teachers and our high school teachers um when I don't know if you can see it probably not yet the first slide just shows you all of the individuals involved in this work in grades 6 through 8 um different than K5 which really is going to be just a few select teachers in uh six and eight because it's just a few teachers at each grade level all classroom teachers were involved in this process um including our administ rators at each school and our 712 mathematics coordinator so I just want to thank those individuals because on top of their busy schedules uh they've come to numerous meetings over the past couple of years um to help move this work along uh you can go to the

147next slide Christine so those are just some of the big questions that were driving the work much like what we did with um K5 what were current trends in mathematics making sure that our curriculum and our instructional techniqu are um up to par with with current trends um and then just really looking at making some programmatic uh recommendations that's not on the agenda this evening it's work that that committee continues to do um and then what kind of shifts might have to happen in the Middle grades as our students come hopefully better prepared through the work that took place K5 you can continue to move that along the sixth grade recommendations were pretty minimal um in terms of major changes the big work really centered around uh including more problem-based learning and novel problems which

148is a big part of the work that's happening uh K5 so that as our students moved on to sixth grade um they continued to be exposed to that style of learning one of the biggest questions we've had from parents of uh fifth graders over the past year is what's going to happen as my child moves to sixth grade and so the teachers at that level have really been working um to ensure that it's a smooth transition from fifth grade to sixth grade um they're looking to also uh work on some placement recommendations as you may know as children move into uh 6th seventh and eth grade they begin to take different levels of mathematics courses which is part of what our recommendation is this evening and so we wanted to take a hard and fast

149look at that process it been a while since we' taken it out um and and just to review it and make sure that it really met the needs of us as a district and was appropriately recommending students for that next level uh we did pilot some materials but again that's still a work in progress uh materials are much more important K5 as our elementary teachers uh teach multiple subjects throughout the day we're uh and don't necessarily have a specialty in one particular area although many of our teachers do have Master's and advanced degrees in reading and Mathematics um whereas when you move into the secondary level our teachers often specialize in something like mathematics they're not as reliant on programmatic resources so there's a lot more flexibility that exists um as we move to seventh

150and eth grade we get into really some of that big work um that took place with that committee and primarily the question was um does the algebra for all model really accomplish its goal and this is where when you are wondering why is seventh and eighth grade math in our packet this evening um the reason being is that several years ago 2014 to be exact Avon moved to an algebra for all model um which meant that all students take pre-algebra in seventh grade and algebra in 8th grade um the the driving factor of that is the goal being that more students take calculus by senior year of high school which is a good goal um but the question is did that really happened did that really occur were students taking calculus by senior year um

151so the next slide just shows our current progressions and that would just um that's okay so currently what would happen in seventh grade you would um oh you went way too far ahead I think that's our last multitasking at 9 o00 here we go all right so currently in seventh grade students would go into pre-algebra or they'd go into pre-algebra honors in 8th grade they'd go into Algebra 1 uh or Algebra 1 honors and we did have students over the course of time that we identified um based on their experience in pre-algebra that were recommended to take algebra over a 2-year period which you see they're listed as algebra 1A um and then during their freshman year of high school would be algebra 1B uh the whole point of this again is getting to to

152calculus so you can see a common pathway that a student might take if the goal is to get to calculus by senior year so they take geometry as a 9th grader Advanced algebra two as a 10th grader pre-calculus in 11th grade and a calculus course um as a senior but as you can see there and this is kind of what we learned through this study we have numerous courses including numerous Advanced courses that our students can take so while calculus is a draw there's lots of other advanced placement and ECE courses that our students are also drawn to by senior year uh this graph just shows the data that we pulled to show um the number of students enrolled in calculus courses uh during that time period from 2014 uh until last year the yellow

153line where you see the red 54 that was the number of students in uh calculus in 2014 and then you can slowly see over a multi-year period that number did go up right so there was a kind of a short period of time that it did have an impact on the number of students taking calculus and then if you follow that yellow line what you'll notice over the last 5 years is that number has leveled out interestingly enough the number of students taking statistics which is the other most popular course for seniors had a dip during that same same time time period and over the past 5 years has leveled out again um and what we know from that is that again while it was a kind of a novel thing to move to a

154cal you know that algebra for all and encourage calculus the some of the novelty of that has worn off over time and what we also know is that by senior year while many students do take a calculus course as you can see in this chart we have several students taking other Advanced courses that are just drawing them in based on their interest so they're taking AP Statistics or discrete math instead of calculus still advanced level just not calculus uh through those vertical conversations with our Middle School and High School teachers one of the things we found out is that there's a drawback to pre-calculus in seventh grade which is you essentially take all of the seventh and eighth grade standards and you merge them into one class so that's great when you're on that track

155the downside is for a student who isn't seeking calculus out in their future they're also missing out on roughly 50% of the seventh and eighth grade math standards during their middle school experience and so as you might imagine As you move into some high school level math courses you may be missing some valuable content um that would serve you better in the other courses that you'd be interested in taking and so where we landed um is uh in terms of those findings is that while you know again had a brief kind of flash in the pan round of success it's worn off over time the algebra for all model um and also that compacting of curriculum might not work best for all students and so the recommendation from the group um in addition to making

156some revisions to the overall curriculum in general was to bring back a traditional seventh and eighth grade U mathematics course for students students whom that would be the appropriate pathway for them um we're still planning to offer pre-algebra and algebra for those students who it's right for um but we felt like we could better serve our students needs by bringing back traditional 7th and eighth grade math so that's why you see in your packet this evening that recommendation for those two courses um we'd like to offer that in the coming 25 26 school year um and we've already been working with Miss Wallace and Miss Hostetler at Thompson Brook and the Middle School to talk about what that shift would look like in terms of course recommendations um so that was a lot of information

157but I tried to move through it relatively quickly but also give you the background on why we were making that shift just want to add in thank you Jess because those of you who were already with us for the um CPP meeting uh we went through this and fine tooth comb um one of the questions that came up there that I I fielded from a few of you before that were not able to be there that night um before tonight figure out answer up front because I know it had been a question for many is regard related to the the current progression and the on the algebra one and the geometry is that still a pathway and the answer is yes so we're not removing another higher level pathway if you will this is just

158an addition to that any questions the group that sparked our interest in in the first place was that group of students that ended up being recommended for Algebra 1 a and 1B um realizing that you know that was the place we started you know we that was not in our opinion the best way to serve those students we'd much rather have them get that core content of seventh and eth grade standards in middle school and then take algebra one which many of us took as freshman in high school and many um students still take today in many districts across the state and the country when their freshman's in high school so a new progression would look much like this um and you would see so also in your packet I'm hoping um is the um

159deletion of Algebra 1 a and 1B uh we no longer want to offer that after next year we have some students enrolled in algebra 1A this year we they would finish in 1B next year and then that would be sunset as well all right thank you I don't that's not on the agenda so we'll have to speak to that so Lynn would you like to make the motion to approve something e so yes I'd like to make a motion to approve the changes to the pathway for grades seven and 8 mathematics as um presented tonight course proposal for seventh and eth grade math y do I have a second thank you remes all in favor passes unanimously and now the deletion of the other two or is this appropr 1 a and Algebra 1 yes

160we would be deleting algebra 1 a uh that would take place during the 25 26 school year and then the deletion of algebra 1B during the 26 27 school year so we are adding this in as an item so we need to move can we say um c 25 2425 69a or something of that nature just toing I think you need to make a motion to add it to the [Applause] agenda it's not on the agenda because it's not it's not it on the agenda it's in the paperwork but it's not and we weren't we just weren't seeing it in the same way bring it back no it's fine they just need to make to follow the bylaws they need to make a motion yes we can add it as K but we can take

161action now if we want to do that okay so um I'll make a motion to add the item to delete math Algebra 1 and 1 a um do I have a second a second all right thank you and now Lynn if you want to make the motion to officially delete motion to um delete delete Algebra 1 a for next year for this and 1 B and 1 B for the following school one B for the following year yes all right do I have a second thank you Suzanne all in favor okay that passes unanimously as well that'll be letter K at the bottom all right thank you could I add one quick plug sure um if you happen to be available on March 4th at 7:00 here um that will be the evening that we're

162going to review um the new reading program recommendation so if you happen to be Ava available and able to join us that evening we'd love to have you thank you all right next is discussion and possible approval of revised policy 5144 student discipline and I'll just make a note that all of the policies that remain on our agenda this evening were fully vetted and discussed in at the committee level um and we had a lot of people in attendance if I'm correct the majority of the board was there I think only a couple of you weren't able to be there but also these are updates to existing policy legal updates you've seen before also so we're just being compliant every one of these policies with the exception of uh the social media policy are uh

163required legal updates every one of the rest of them on the list okay perfect so as far as student discipline was there any question about that particular policy and the main change there is the in school suspect ition going uh to no more than five consecutive school days there are a couple of other small changes but that was the substan of change and that's in compliance with state law go ahead CHR sorry because it takes so long if it's a ex expostion hearing do we have a time frame to get all of the board members there since since it used to be 10 days right yeah so does that allow us time to get everybody so when we do need to have an expulsion hearing it's we're we're under a very tight timeline and uh

164you know it doesn't happen that often here but once in a while and when Christine reaches out yeah we need an answer like the same day is really what it means to be in compliance with the law good question Chris yeah it's it is difficult to notification process but necessary so that okay any other questions all right theage would you like to make the motion sure um I'd like to make a motion to approve the revised policy 5144 student Discipline Do I have a second second second by Sarah all in favor I passes unanimously next is discussion and possible approval of new policy for 11 8.51 social media social networking websites again Dr carel purchasing did I miss out loud okay let's go back to purchasing okay discussion and possible approval of revised policy 33

165300 for purchasing so this purchasing policy um had been changed uh most recently I believe in 2020 and obviously a lot of uh things have changed since then not just law but also uh how much things cost so the thresholds were recommended to be um changed related to bid processes and transfers and so forth um and also there is a clause that the town asked us to put in as a result of a federal audit on their side um related to checking and we talked about this in that meeting also but checking vendors against a federal database making sure that they comply with all federal regulations and aren't investigation for anything on anything Surly or illegal or terrorism based or misuse of Grants or the like so we are that is that is the one

166piece of this policy Jeff that is Avon ising it because um it is not in the model policy from shipment a good one I would venture to guess at some point it probably will be because I don't think the Auditors that came to the town of Avon we'll keep it exclusive an exclusive recommendation to Avon but that is why we have been asked to put that piece on okay any other questions K paage uh I'd like to make a motion to approve uh the revised policy 33000 for purchasing do I have a second Nicole all in favor I passes unanimously thank you now we're back to discussion on possible approval of new policy for 11851 for social media or social networking websites so this is in conjunction which is why I also notice notice the

167number is 0.51 because it's related to acceptable use policies um if this is not required by law but it is recommended and many districts um have put something into effect like this already the cab uh has versions of the policies you can choose from also um both C and shipment and pretty much every other educational law firm in the state recommends that boards have a social media policy for uh employees just to be clear about number one that First Amendment rights still um are held by employees but also that there are limits to what you can do when it looks like you're mixing work with personal speech and so um it it is recommended that all boards put in a policy like this one this is one of the model policies that matches closely to

168our acceptable use policy so it is uh the one shipment recommended you put in to uh go hand inand with the acceptable use policy for employees thank you any questions okay th I'd like to make a motion to approve the new policy 41185 one social media and social NW working website do I have a second thank you Lynn all in favor I passes unanimously thank you discussion and possible approval of revised policy 5131 71 student use of District computer systems it's on page 149 if anybody wants to keep up I'm going to speak to both uh this one and the next one at once uh because one is personnel and one is students and these are really small changes um majority is as you know we just keep having to change these because the types

169of Technology that's out there keeps changing we obviously don't necessarily need to talk about personal cassette players or uh personal data assistance I think we took eight track tapes out of these sometime in the last few years but um that those are being changed I would I keep saying I hope they come up with some blanket word that just encompasses all technology so we don't have to keep coming back and changing these but um there is that and the other major change that's not um something to laugh about is related to sexual abuse uh material they're they're changing the terminology from pornography to sexual abuse material to be clear that it could be also child sexual abuse not just something considered pornography that um obviously um we need to be cognizant of when we're talking

170about using the internet safely for both students and personnel and that is as you can see uh that terminology is related to a recent change in public act in Connecticut public act 24118 an act concerning sexual ual abuse so that's where the terminology changing from pornography to sexual abuse material comes from in both of these next two policies thank you any questions on either of those okay Fage would you like to make the first motion yep I'd like to make a motion to approve policy 5131 71 student use of District computer systems have a second I'll take Chris this time thank you all in favor passes unanimously and the the second one regarding step then I'd like to make a motion to uh approve policy 513 1.81 use of private technology devices by students do

171I have a second I will take Suzanne for this one thank you all in favor passes unanimously all right discussion and possible approval of revised policy 614 6.1 weighted grades and calculation of GPA that's on page 159 so this is this doesn't uh represent any change in practice to us but what it does do is make sure that uh we are in compliance with what the law now requires which is to be clear in your board policy that you do wait classes differently so an advanced placement class uh your grade waiting might uh be higher than a an honors level class or a college prep class for example you have to be clear about that in your board policy and one of the reasons so that's what's on page 160 if you go to the

172last page for me Christine on 162 um one of the reasons that's required to be clear is what you see here um the caap you know I hate the acronyms but that's the Connecticut automatic admissions program which um requires your grades to be turned in um unweighted as a as a way to getting automatically into college so we're talking about Central Connecticut stet Eastern Southern uh Western those uh universities for Connecticut residence for all high school students um if your GPA is X and it has changed a little bit over the years unweighted um you have automatic admission to those programs so um making sure you're clear about the waiting number one and number two having this language here on page 162 makes us compliant with that uh Connecticut General statute uh Public Act 2447

173thank you any questions all right the I'd like to make a motion to approve policy 6 46.1 weighted grades in calculation of GPA do I have a second I'll take remesh this time thank you all in favor passes unanimously okay our final policy discussion and possible approval of revised policy 511 8.1 homeless students so again this is um necessary by law but also just in practice you see our our last the last time our homeless policy was um r visited was 2020 and homelessness is is very highly as a definition in a public school system very highly regulated first based on the mckin vento federal law but also in the regulations and the definitions um which you see you see more on if the difference between our old policy is we had no regulations number

174one everything that uh was passed included just what's in this policy so you see the policy you turn to 164 that's recommended under law is actually shorter but the regulations are more um specific to be in compliance with um state and federal regulations so no the board doesn't approve regulations for that reason because they change over time but I thought it was helpful for you to see them in this packet because some of what was in the policy previously is now in the regulations or it is changed a bit to be in compliance with current law and practice in the regulations so as those update and they do um over time we will make whatever changes are necessary excellent thank you any questions all right page I'd like to make a motion to approve uh

175revised policy 5118 point1 homeless students do I have a second Len all in favor I passes unanimously thank you very much everyone all right communication from the public do we have anybody no okay communication from Avon Board of Education members go ahead Nicole yeah really quickly I know this has been a long meeting and I appreciate everybody's work in providing all the information and organizing the state officials and representatives to come um the end of the day while I am full support of trying to get more money for special ed I still feel that the way the formula works and I understand their background and I understand where they're coming their formula I still feel their formula is unfair to Avon it's actually similar to what um representative KY Gro was saying how on the

176federal level Connecticut spending a lot more money than we're receiving I feel that it's the same when you look at per capita and even looking at the Grand list we're being treated more like greenage but we're closer to Simsbury so I still feel separately from special education which I still feel we need to petition that as Avon residents as Avon officials we need to be vocal about trying to get the state to re-evaluate their formula because we're not as wealthy as the perception is all you have to do is go to the Avon food pantry and you'll see that and it's very sad so hopefully we can continue this work this conversation to try to get more State funding for our students thank you Nicole anyone else all right before you we officially adjourn remember

177to sign the letter before you walk out this evening please that way we have everybody's signature and we can submit that to the state if there are no other comments do I have a motion to adjourn thank you Chris you're welcome second second by Sarah all in favor thank you we adjourn at 9:25 thank you very much [Music]