New Hartford Public Schools - Board Meeting - May/06/2025

001Call the meeting to order, please. Everyone, we're going to call the meeting to order. I need to gavvel, I guess. First time I need to gavvel. Where is it? All right. Are you ready? Ready. All right, all we're going to call the meeting to order. Um, I'm going to call the New Harford Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 6th to order at uh 7:02 p.m. Order of business. I have no changes to the order. I'm sorry, I forgot the uh Let me start with item A. Pledge of Allegiance. If you are able, please join us in the pledge of allegiance. I wrote that story. 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,

002with liberty and justice for all. Okay, my apologies for skipping past that. The next item on the agenda is the order of business. I have no changes to the order of business, although I think in our packets uh was one of the an old agenda. There was a revision made to this. So under the superintendent report, we have a second item. You have the most current one update on 2526 New Hartford public school budget reductions instructional assistant and clear code. Okay. Um for the agenda items, um I don't have any additions to the agenda. Does anybody have anything they'd like to uh consider adding to the agenda for tonight? All right, seeing none, uh the order of business will stay as it stands. Next item is communication to the board of education. Um since our

003previous meeting, I do not believe I've seen any additional communication. Um so the next item is public comment. Would anybody like to address the board? Christine Manini, 33 Red Clover Road. Um, I just want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude for each member of the board of education. I felt that Mr. Susa and the board showed their best intentions and most importantly for the students and of course our staff. I felt that you heard the community's concerns and acted on it. And as a teacher, I felt really supported by this board. I'm thankful for each of you who have dedicated your time for this position and I know that budget time is grueling and I was very disappointed that the board of finance wasn't supportive to you. So I I feel I'm very upset

004about that. So again, I just wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting us because I felt it and I think the rest of the community felt that you wanted the best for each of us, for the students, for our schools, for our teachers and staff. So thank you. Anyone else? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to our superintendent report. Superintendent Susa. All right, good evening everybody. So happy to have everybody with us today, especially our student representatives. Welcome back uh to both Dexter and to Emma. I'm going to turn it over to them because I know that they've been working very hard with Dr. Carol and the Antalini students to uh provide a presentation. So, I'll turn it over to both of you. So before we start, I just

005want to uh tell you that I'm super impressed with Emma and Dexter. They have created a slide deck, which is something new. Our student reps have never done that before. And I'd also like to say thank you to Mrs. Newman, who is our cafeteria manager, for providing the food that you have in front of you, which Dexter and Emma will talk about. Okay. Do you want to come right up in front? You got to talk to the mic. What's for lunch in New Hart New Hartford Public Schools Board of Ed presentation 5625 by Emma Jack and Dexter Serido. Good evening. We are going to show you where some of our lunch foods come from. All of the pictures you are about to see are actually from our school cafeterias. The acorn squash was grown at

006Daffh Hill growers in Southbury. The green oak leaf lettuce from food forthought is hydroponically which means water grown in Torington. This lettuce is free from GMOs and pesticides and is sustainably grown in an echofriendly state-of-the-art greenhouse. A rainbow tray is a tray with fruit and vegetables. We call these rainbow trays because they have different fruits and vegetables that are all different colors. We have these every day. What I love about these is that you get different options such as apples, applesauce, strawberries, oranges, pineapple, bananas, and avocados. For veggies, we have grape tomatoes, carrots, hummus, green beans, and cucumbers. One day we had a taste test in all three of our school cafeterias. This taste test was very successful. We were able to try all different types of foods like beets, rainbow carrots, and different kinds

007of turnups and green and purple radishes. We also tried watermelon radishes. Emma liked the beets, but her teeth were stained purple. Everyone got to try apple crisp made with apples from March Farm. It was really good. What you have in front of you is also the apple crisp. Organic sweet baby potatoes from Oxenh Hill Farm in Sfield. These are organic baby sweet potatoes from Oxenh Hill Farm in Soulfield. Mrs. Newman let everyone tried these vegetables to see if they can guess what it was. Some kids thought it was carrot or pumpkin, but it was sweet potato. I thought it tasted like Thanksgiving dinner. My favorite part, personally, was the pink spoons that they gave out. These are examples of what our fruit and vegetables look like. These were actually taken in our Antelini school cafeteria.

008My favorite lunch is cris crispy chicken nuggets with a warm soft pretzel. My favorite My favorite samples this year were the watermelon radishes, the rainbow carrots, and the baby sweet potatoes. The watermelon radishes were very sweet and fresh. the winners of the survey. Oh, survey page. We sent a survey to all students in our schools to choose a new menu item. The choices were caprese panini shakuri box chicken fillets and backyard barbecue salad beef taco or chicken Caesar salad. The winners of the survey were taco salad and shuderie box. These items have been added to the menu this month. Dexter and I got to try samp got to sample these new lunches. The food was really good. Everything tasted very fresh. My favorite part about the meal was the salsa and chips. The lettuce was

009also very good because it was refreshing before recess. Thank you, [Applause] What an outstanding presentation. Thank you so much, Emma and Dexter. Very impressed with your work and thank you for sharing some of the foods that we are experiencing here in New Hartford with all of the local produce that, you know, I only knew a little bit of. I felt like I felt like I had another whole other education this evening. So, thank you so much for your preparation and for sharing that with the board and with the community, both of you. Thank you. And I understand we have samples before us. So, this is the apple crisp and then Yeah. in here. Okay. Carrots and just carrot sticks, right? And micro greens. So, you're educating me tonight. And apple slices. Any any particular apple

010slices or carrots or just Thank you so much, Mrs. Newman. Just say, superintendent, read the paper, sir. Okay, so there Apple Ro apples are from Rogers Orchard, Southernington Micro Greens from Vibrant Farm, and Banttom Carrots, Daffodil Hill Growers in South Berry. Outstanding. Excellent. Thank you so much for all of your presentation work. And thank you so much, Mrs. Newman and Dr. Carol and all of the Antelini staff. Much appreciated. Thank you. As we continue honoring our students, thank you student representatives. This evening, I was almost late to the board of education meeting tonight because we were also celebrating our Lichfield County Superintendent Award recipients. They will be with us at the next board of education meeting to give them time to to come to the meeting and we'll honor them. But I wanted to announce

011that both Tyler Bashard and Olivia Pratt were the distinct recipients of the Superintendent Award for Leadership and they were selected uh by the staff here at Antelini School. So, congratulations to them and to their families. If you don't know Tyler, let me tell you a little bit about Tyler. Now, Tyler is funny, curious, and a hard worker. He gets a sense of humor from his papa. His favorite subjects at school are social studies and math. Tyler is an athlete who plays basketball, soccer, and baseball for New Hartford teams. Tyler likes to travel and has been to Orlando, Cape Cod, and Texas. In his free time, he likes to play video games and hopes that one day he will go viral on YouTube. During the summers, he really enjoys boating on West Hill Lake. If you

012don't know Olivia Pratt, let me tell you a little bit about her. Olivia is athletic, kind, and social. She is smart, and loves a good challenge. Her favorite subject at school is social studies because she loves to learn about history. Olivia really enjoys sports. She is busy all the time with Torington Pal, FSC Premier Soccer, and New Hartford recreational softball. She also skis and is a dancer. She hopes to go to Miss Porters for high school and then to head to college to study something that she loves, TBD. In her spare time, she creates woodworking projects with her grandpa. So, congratulations again to Tyler and Olivia, and we will see them here at our next board meeting in June so we can celebrate them in person. All right, continuing on with more staff updates and

013and district news. It is it gives me great pleasure this evening, but it's very bittersweet, as we've announced before, to celebrate and honor our executive assistant to the superintendent at central office, the um the ring leader at central office, if you will, um Mrs. Janet Tenzi, and we've invited her here to the board. Uh we're going to present her with a token of appreciation on behalf of the board of education and all of New Hartford public school staff members, students, and our community. But I want to read this first and I'm going to get through this promise. Janet Tenzi has dedicated more than 20 years of service to the New Hartford public schools and it is with a great with a bittersweet heart that I share her decision to retire. I'm excited for Janet to

014begin this new season in her life and like to publicly thank her for her devotion and loyalty to the new Harper public schools for 20 years. Janet will be leaving a huge institutional void as she leaves. Um it just simply cannot be replaced. We will do our absolute best to do so, but I still have her phone number. She has she has been an invaluable asset to our families, to students and staff, and her contributions have ensured the daily operations and success of our district on a daily basis for so many years. On a personal note, I have to fully credit Janet with my transition here. She answered, "I can't even count how many questions." She didn't tell me one time, "You're just annoying, Jeff." U not once. She's been wonderful. She knows the history

015of New Harford public schools inside and out. and I don't know how, but we'll try to figure out how to move forward without her. Her last day is on June the 6th. So, Janet, please come on up so we could present you with the plaque of service award for 20 years. [Applause] Not now. Not now. Here you are. And if the board, if you would indulge me, can we please get a picture surrounded? Yep. Thank you. Congratulations. Can you guys join me here? [Music] Thank you. [Music] There. Perfect. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Kristen. Missed Yeah, that's exactly exactly wonderful. All right, with more staff update news, uh, also bittersweet, our longtime nurse of Bakerville School, Mrs. Marie Kit, has announced her retirement after

01624 years of service as well. We will honor her at our next board of education meeting. Um, we will formally present her with a plaque of service. Um, again, another bittersweet um, institutional knowledge individual who's been here taking care of not just cuts and bruises, but also our hearts and our minds and being a presence of comfort and love. Um, so we will miss her tremendously as well and we'll make sure that we honor her at the next board of education meeting. All right, shifting gears a little bit more over to other superintendent report updates. Number one, um, as a update to CJR, um, I'd like to give Mike Lynch a tremendous amount of credit for this effort. CJR has the ability to continue their work with our students here at our schools at absolutely

017no cost. We will not have the have that individual as a mental health support for our public school students on a day-to-day basis, but the case load that that individual currently has will continue, which is outstanding for the families and the students that are in dire need of that service. that will continue to take place right here at our schools throughout the summer and over the course of the year. Great job, Mike Lynch. Thank you so much, sir. All right, moving on to more information to share with the board of education. The next up is an update on the central office staffing. Um, I've continued to evaluate and I could report to the board that at this time it is not feasible. I'm going to continue to u obtain additional lang uh counsel for the

018position that was motioned to explore that is the position of the executive assistant to the superintendent and also the administrative assistant to the um director of student services. So that like I mentioned before is a very complex process. The job descriptions are extremely different and one is negotiated work through a union. So that work belongs to the union. The other is an atwill employee. So, I will continue to seek counsel on that and look to give more updates um in the month of June to the board of education. Up next, the update to the 2526 New Hartford Public Schools budget reductions, the specific positions of instructional assistant and clerical aid. Again, this is a very lean budget uh with no other room for contingencies as we've met over the course of the year. It was

019echoed publicly. The board of education had absolutely done the uh right thing in utilizing funds from our narlapsing account. Um I have met with the individuals that are scheduled to um be reduced in force and outside any other foreseen developments that is what will stand um outside of anything that develops either tonight with the budget process and referendum or anything else that is unforeseen. But as of this time those positions are reduced. Last on the uh superintendent report is prek. So with some of our information that we've shared with the board that next year we will be absolutely hiring another kindergarten teacher because we'll have a tremendous amount of births. There are currently 66 recorded births at the town clerk's office. So and a strategic move by the board. What we're going to do is

020we are opening another prek section because we have so many students that are on a wait list and that is a strategic move so we don't permit those students to then go on to a magnet school and then be left with tuition bills or other things in the kindergarten and on years. If you've been on the board for a minute, you know how passionate I am about New Hartford public schools that we offer the absolute best education. Magnet schools, all respect to you. You just don't compete with us. So, with this move, it is going to be costneutral because it is a tuitionbased program. It also allows us the ability to um have an individual for more than one year instead of it being a one-year position. So, it's more attractive to hire. And we

021will obviously make a strategic hire as well, looking for an individual who is newer to the profession for cost efficiencies. But, I wanted to report that also to the board of education. Make sure I've got everything here. Oh, and last update here is on the K8 curriculum council. So, we have met for the final time this year. Um, subcommittee work will be worked on next year. That's our agenda. The curriculum council is very large. It encompasses all of our surrounding regional districts, I should say. That's Hartland now is inclusive, Colebrook, Norfol, New Hartford, and Baramstead in addition to region 7. So, it's a K8 council. We are working with the middle school administrative staff um to schedule instructional rounds, but also to really see where we want students to land in seventh and eighth grade

022to have expectations set and then work backwards in design. We're going to be looking to develop grade level teams that are going to meet regionally. We're going to work on a professional development schedule um with our administration so that we can get that underway and our PDA committee as well, which is a very important cog in the work that we do for our professional development. But as a region, we are again resurrecting the curriculum council and looking to do great work to share professional skills, talents, resources within our region. So, we're working smarter. Those are all of my reports for the superintendent report. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Susa. Um, for the board, is there any questions, clarifications you'd like uh on Jeff's superintendent uh superintendent report? Well, just curious the CGR did

023they get funding from some other source? So they can continue to be funded through the health insurance of the students parents or families. So that's how that is going to work. Is there any additional risk there down the line like that we are aware of in terms of how long that funding source will be available? We'll revisit it like we do typically contracts on a year-to-year basis and Mike will lead that. [Music] Oh my goodness, I almost forgot. My apologies to all the beautiful and wonderful mothers listening and that are in the audience. Happy Mother's Day coming up and also happy Memorial Day later in the year. But more importantly, happy Mother's Day. What mothers have every day. I had one more question. Will we see the um student reps again for one more meeting?

024I believe they should be here for June. I'm seeing a nod. Yes, we are scheduled to have them here. So, yes. And as well as our LCSA um students that will be here for next next month. I wanted to say something to them before, you know, it's over. Got it. Got it. Yep. Of course. [Laughter] I was I'm gonna get a t-shirt from Mexico. We're good. All right, we're going to move on to uh the board of education chairs report. Um I have very limited. Again, I do look at Frank shirt. It says I have voted. So voting closes in about 36 minutes. So if you haven't voted and you'd like to and you're here, please go down the street and vote. Right. Um, moving on to the next item, routine business. Uh, we have

025a few items underneath this agenda item. The first is minutes. We have the minutes for March 11th, 2025, March 18th, 2025, April 3rd, 2025, and April 10, 2025. All those were in your uh meeting packet for tonight. Can I get a motion to approve? So move. Motion by Tom. Could I get a second? Second by Dear. Is there any discussion, revisions, or adjustments that need to be made to any of those me meeting minutes? Did you verify all of the numbers in there? Because I lost track. Which numbers specifically? Literally all of like the different Yes. You're saying yes. Okay. All of the different iterations of the budget, the numbers and the percentages. And I did not give a running tally. There was a there was a quick change in one of them, but was

026amended before it went out. Yeah. Any further discussion on the meeting minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. That is unanimous. All right. Next item is the expenditure report. Uh that was also in your meeting packet. Uh we'll start with a motion to approve. So motion by Tom. Can I get a second? Second by Frank. Is there any discussion on the expenditure report? I had a question regarding your projections for the budget as it stands. I notice there's a lot of, you know, obviously there's some unencumbered money there, but um what's your anticipated bottom line? Yep. Coming out. We're coming towards the end. Yep. We are we just recently unfroze the budget so that we feel like we're in a comfortable place. um our projections are much closer than

027to the zero mark than they were based on the budget uh freeze and other reductions that we have made. So we're we're looking at it still on a on a weekly basis as a central office staff, but we should be closer to zero versus the $55,000 that we originally projecting. So based on those measures, additionally, we feel like we're in a better place. Um, again, on a day-to-day basis, uh, un an unanticipated special education cost came off the book to help with that as one example. Um, but there were other areas that we were able to reduce as well, which is very, very helpful. So, great testament to all of the team that's here administratively and central office staff keeping a weekly eye on it and working diligently. Any further discussion? All right. Seeing none,

028all those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. That is unanimous as well. Um Jeff, there's an item, personnel report. Did you have something else to report? No, I blended it all in together. So, I thought so. Y So, personnel report was taken under the superintendent's report. Okay. And moving on to uh tonight's new business. The first is to explore reductions to operational costs for the 26 27th uh school year. Um this was an item that was requested by a board member to be added. So I'm going to open the floor for discussion on this. Uh really this is just again open up a discussion. Uh there's no motions or actions to my knowledge that are going to be taken tonight on this. But I'll take the floor. Please. I'm going to read something

029uh just so I keep my thoughts organized. So, I requested that we add this agenda item to today's meeting to just kick off a discussion outside of an in-ear budget process for us to take a serious look at long-term budget needs. From my experience as both a town president and as a member of the board of ed, I've observed that discussions regarding spending are often limited to action items revolving around the next year's budget, which limits the opportunity we have to have impactful conversations around long-term solutions. The real work that needs to be done is about reducing our operational costs with a considered strategy over a longer period of time. Everyone feels the frustration of budget cuts and there are no easy answers. My goal today is to have a frank discussion where we come

030up with a plan to make a considered proposal to reduce the district's operational expenses to help curb increasing costs in ways that we can control. I would hope that we could spend some time this calendar year identifying opportunities and putting together a plan to reduce those costs, even if those savings cannot be realized in the next year or so. The simplest suggestion here seems to be re-evaluating the number of schools we wish to operate in the district. I do recognize that the town has already gone through a discussion on this eight or nine years ago and that even some current members of the board were not in favor of this approach. I'm not saying that it's the only way, but our resources to investigate and implement other options are limited and also potentially costly. To

031me, my main priority is the services and opportunities that children will have as a part of our school district. My own two children are just beginning to enter the school system this fall, and as Bakerville residents, I expected them to be rolled in Bakerville school. So, I'm talking about my own family making these trade-offs as well. The things that I'm considering when I put forth this suggestion are the following. Capital expenditures to maintain and support three buildings are high. The cost of materials, emergency repairs, and necessary remediation are only going to continue to climb over the next couple of years. The upcoming necessary upgrades required to all of the for all of the boil and tanks for all three schools currently quoted at $250,000 each, all to be done within the next 5 to seven

032years, are going to be a burden to get through and will only cut into our operating expenses further. This gives me severe heartburn. Um there is also a cost to sharing resources across multiple buildings that could be reduced with less back and forth between the two schools. Even human resources who might be required to travel between buildings during the day creates inefficiencies within resource deployment throughout the day. During the discussions around various support staff roles, a common theme kept occurring when this person is out this other person steps in to do the work and they know how to do it. Planning for this kind of redundant coverage is critical and may be reduced by having fewer billings with unique operating rhythms to support. School security is top of mind for many of our constituents. Having

033enough staff to ensure security protocols are properly being followed and that there's always coverage to monitor coming to going from the school is also an important element of operating costs. The staff and equipment necessary to secure two buildings will be a lower cost basis than three buildings. There have been other suggestions to reduce operational expenses, including thoughts around pursuing regionalization with other Northwest regional seven towns to reduce costs on curriculum, administration, and so on. While it might be a road we go down eventually, I think that the level of effort to get there would be much larger than what we can control in our own town. And I'm concerned that rising costs will force our hand on critical student programming and services support until a scheme like that could be finalized and actually implemented. Other

034board members have suggested finding sponsors or advertisers or volunteers that could cover the cost and efforts with some programming communication, but I'm leerary about selling access to our community members as a method for solving this problem or even trying to expand a volunteer program even though because civic volunteers have been increasingly difficult to source and rely on as evidenced in our own town with challenges to staffing volunteer emergency services and finding residents to participate in local boards and communities. We'd also need to find dedicated staff resource to manage a larger volunteer service. Tonight, I'd like to discuss what actions we the board of ed we the board of education would like to take regarding this matter. One possibility is setting a reasonable deadline for a proposal on a path forward to maintain or ideally reduced

035operating costs from the 2526 year baseline ideally starting with next year's budget. But if not, those minimum these but if not at minimum I would request those budgets should be impacting the 2728 school year budget. I propose these longer deadlines in the spirit of providing time to build confidence across our community of stakeholders that the decisions we're making regarding the trade-offs we will inevitably face are the right ones. I think that's it. That's it. I can make a like do I need to make a formal motion on that? Okay. I mean more than I think I think the start of it is what you just brought to the table. And I think the start of it is is is a discussion here. And if we can get ourselves to agree on on on an action

036plan, then we can, you know, look into that. But again, you're more than welcome to make any motion you want and where you want to go. But, you know, I think I'd like to open it up to the rest of the board to get any additional thoughts anybody else might have on a lot that you just said. Sorry. I can email that out to everybody too or like try to summarize it briefly. Anybody have any thoughts immediately, you know, as you as you think about this? This isn't a new topic, right? It's it's it's something that's been brought up before. It's a topic that some of us on the board, some of us in the room have have lived through. [Music] Um, any thoughts? What year was Do you know what year it was when

037Bakerville 10 years ago? It was 10 years ago. 15. Was there a study done? Yeah. Right here. It's about as useless as this piece of paper. It's not. No, I mean a study I'm being serious. I mean, no. Was there any study done on cost savings or anything like that done 10 years ago? There was, from what I'm just going to go off my recollection, there was a bunch of numbers thrown. Pardon me. Yeah. There was a bunch of numbers thrown around from the board of ed that year. You know, you close a school, you're going to save $192,000 was the number, right? $192,000 for closing an entire school. That didn't consider the fact that what are you going to do with the building? It's just it's a town building. Uh it's owned by the

038town. It's maintained by us, but it's got a use somewhere. But in order to demo that building or get rid of it, there's a there's some speestous behind the walls that you know doesn't impact the use of the building now, but if you were going to demo it, it would have to be addressed at a substantial cost. Um, it's also the most populous school of the K through two. There's more kids there than there are downtown just by the way the schools the town's laid out in our district, our district up here versus the downtown. It's just a different uh group of constituents, right? So that that school is always the one picked on, I use that word loosely to to get closed, whereas it's also the most utilized school. So, you know, to me,

039that's maybe maybe that's misdirected. Um, and then we're also, again, I don't want to bite your question. I apologize, but you know, looking at the the 10-year averages, the 10-year average of students is only down 10 from that year they did the study. And it the study predicted it was going to be down to uh 305. That was going to be the but it's at 428. So was there any talk when that happened? Was anybody on the board? Nobody's Kent Penny was on the board. Was there any did anybody look at New Hartford Elementary as an option? This school obviously so big it has to stay open. Did anybody look at New Hartford Elementary as an option to close or was it just Bakerville? At the time, there was still a bond on the roof

040or some portion of the New Harford ele school that didn't allow it to be closed. There was a financial issue with actually looking at that building for even consideration. Again, I'm just going from my memory. I was heavily involved with it. Uh, so Bakerville was the target again. Again, even though because it's the older school, it's got the portables in there that are, you know, past their expected lifespan, but they're in good shape. There's past their expected lifespan. Um, and again, it's it's got more students in than downtown. So, it wasn't really the new Harford Elementary School wasn't the considered target of any kind of consolidation effort. From what I remember too, it had something to do with the sprinkler system in the Bakerville school being not being up to uh standards or up to

041par. Was that one of the issues why they wanted to close Bakerville as opposed to New Hartford? That was one of the discussion topics. Yeah, I think it would be good to just come up with some questions like I mean I I'm coming up with these this off the top of my head, but do we have enough space in two schools to house the whole student population? You got to that's a very practical question you have to ask. That's answerable, right? And maybe come up with some questions. you I was not really invested in that. I remember when the Bakerville thing happened, but because of the age of my kids at the time and stuff like that, I didn't get really engaged in it. I know it caused a lot of heat in the town,

042but I was on the periphery of that. Jeff, how much is enrollment down since um that happened? What are the numbers? What did you say it was? I think Tom just shared only 10 students on average across the district. Across the district, I believe so. Yeah. Since I've been here, the average is 430 for the past three going on four years. But Tom has additional information that's uh demonstrating enrollment prior to across all three schools or across all Yeah. All three. Yeah. So the year they did the study, there was 443 students enrolled the year they did the study and now last year was 428. So that's 15 students down over 10 years. And then looking at Jeff's projection of 66 birth certificates, that's liable to go above that 443 at this point. So declining

043enrollment to me is not really an issue. It's if you want to talk about cost, that's obviously an issue. But as far as declining enrollment, yeah, it's down from 15 20 years ago, but the whole country is down 15 from 15 20. No one's having kids like they used to, right? So it's really it's a convenience item convenience at this point whether you want three schools or two schools. you know people in this side of town who to your point your student your children are going to have to get busted down to the new Harford and that's the consideration that the parents had to take into uh during that time period whether they wanted to you know that was big that was a big issue the little kids uh K12 on a bus for 35

04440 minutes because of the fact that New Harper's very check my son was on one way or another regardless, right? And that's a consideration a huge thing. I want to be very clear that I'm not like advocating for one particular school versus another. The reason that I brought this up is because it's a consistent theme that people keep talking about and I understand that there's a lot of different implications here and I don't know that it's the right path forward. That's why I wanted to like leave the discussion open to say what other options are on the table that would accommodate some of those things that I was hearing regarding the duplicative staff. the again I understand there's cost with closing down any school or like retire turning over to the town but we have

045$250,000 per school cost coming up over the next 5 to seven years so like that to me is a factor in this like if we can something like that needs to be taken into account here um so if it's I don't have a skin in the game in terms of like one particular school um if Bakerville wasn't the right choice and that's something that we should look at but I'm also very cognizant of a conversation or like a point that you brought up probably one or two meetings ago regarding like we don't have the money to pay an additional consultant to go out and like do due diligence across all of these different factors for us. So like I don't know who's going to be able to do that work to help us come up

046with another solution that's targeting that big of a chunk of the budget. Um, and to me again, what we're doing right now is we're trying to figure out how to deploy the funds that we have available that the town is willing to grant us in a way that helps us support our mission. I care more about what my children's experience in the building is going to be in terms of having the right people there, having the right programming in places for whatever their needs are versus what building they're in. And that's why this seems like a logical next step for me. I I think one thing for sure is that the board of ed can't unilaterally make that decision, right? As as you know, you voted today for the town budget and board of ed

047local together. Um, as Tom was saying, back when this came up 10 years ago, there wasn't a large savings. There wasn't a use for the building that they were going to close. Um, that created a lot of angst. [Music] Um, I would think that to do this the right way, it has to be a collective discussion with the board of finance and the board of selectment um to truly understand is there a use. I know our our first selectman has mentioned the idea behind the want for us for a senior center. Is that the right location? Is that what the town wants? I don't know the answer. Um, you know, we talk a lot about downtown versus the south side of town, right? Do they want a senior center on the south side of town?

048Again, I don't know, right? And I I'm not going to speculate what they want or what the town wants. Um, to look at it is, you know, and again, I guess I would I would propose that you we talk about a potential task force, right, with members from this board if someone was willing to volunteer um and the board of finance and the board of selectment. Um, I don't believe that it's going to be free. I believe we're going to have to bring professionals in um to measure the use of our space and how best to utilize this school if we move students to this school, for instance. Um, again, what do we do with um with Oakhill, right? Who's using space within our schools? Is there opportunity to move them over to Beck? Again,

049there's a lot of things that could be thrown out and and strategized and and and weighed, but at the end of the day, is it the right thing for the town? Are we really going to are are we going to see some large savings or are we going to pay the same or maybe slightly less and pick up a senior center? You know, I don't know. Is that what the town wants? Right. So, I think there's a lot of discussions that have to happen. I don't think I I know for a fact we're not solving it tonight. Yeah. And I know for a fact that we can't solve it as our own board of education, right? Um, a lot of the savings would be capital savings with the stuff she's talking about with the oil.

050Well, the upgrade, but again, it's still our building. So, what do you do with the building, right? Do you try to sell it? Does anybody want it? Right. At the end of the day, it's still going to need the oil tanks, right? New Harford Elementary School is still going to need a roof, right? So the capital expenditure for the town is still there. It still exists. It doesn't come out of a lot of that savings would not be savings in our budget though, right? It would be in you're just moving from one hand to another, right? That's that's kind of you know that's we we talk about that often, right? Is it again it's an asset that we that we maintain that we take care of under our budget, but if we were to give

051it up back to the town, the town owns the buildings. Now the town has those costs and those liabilities that they have to cover. Still tax dollars to all of us. Jeff, could you speak of the grant for the roof? It's on the agenda. It's the next time. No, I meant as far as this discussion goes, you were to transfer the ownership of that building out of the school district into the town's hands for would there be a grant for the roof or that would go away because it's it's a educational, right? So, for educational renovations, there's a DAS, Department, you know, of administrative services grant that's given by the um by the state. I'm pretty sure just as any grant, if you do not follow the conditions set forth in agreement, such as this

052building will be utilized for a school for the next 20 to 30 years, they're probably going to say there's going to be a penalty or you have to repay the grant money that you utilize to put the roof on almost 100%. I could further research that, but with most grants, that's the way it works. You violate the terms of the grant, there's a penalty or you're repaying those funds. So, yeah, that's what I would assume. An alternative I mean, if if the closure of a particular building is too complicated or not timely enough, like an an alternative approach before putting together a crossboard like crossunctional task force. Sorry, I couldn't remember the word. If we believe that there's opportunity for us to just do this within our own budget, then that is a better place

053for us to start in terms of a more shorter term. What is the task force within the board of ed to reduce our operational costs without closing the school or unlike unleashing any of that? I'm not sure that those opportunities exist within our budget, but if it's worth it for us to again think more strategically about, hey, if this was our goal for the next three to five years in terms of keeping our operational costs at a minimum or at least like not like keeping it as a percentage of the budget, whatever that is, trying to flatten that out, is there enough room in there to accommodate the rising costs that we can't control? I don't know the answer to that. I think that we kind of circle around this in every sort of like

054budget process and like I don't feel like anybody's particularly like satisfied with the answers and I don't mean that in like as a knock on anybody. I just feel like it's like can we do this? No, we can't do this. Can we do this? No, we can't do this. No, we could do this but it's going to take like X Y and Z and like so actually sitting down as a smaller committee and like working through those items and seeing what we could accomplish potentially within our budget again outside of the budget processes. so we have time to like think of all the contingencies is another thing that we could do that doesn't involve closing a school right now. And if we do that work and it's not enough and we are worried still that

055next year we're going to come to budget season the costs that we cannot control are too out of control and once again banned tag everything else that everybody has stood up here fighting for mental support services are back on the chopping block then what are we doing? I can understand where you're coming from. Um, my opinion is, you know, through the budget process, we've done what you described. Again, we have every opportunity to ask all the clarifying questions and and to understand where all of our dollars are going to through that process. And I think in my opinion, this board has done a great job in the last two years doing that. Mhm. Um, so I don't, again, knowing what I know about our budget, there aren't some rocks that haven't been uncovered, that have

056a pot of gold underneath them, right? To be able to to do I think what you're describing. So, I mean, I would propose and I mean, if if the board wanted us to follow it, I think between Superintendent Sus and I, we can start the conversations with the other boards and have a discussion, you know, if they would like to create this task force to start having some real conversations about what do we do as a town, right, as as a crossf functional task force? How do we as a town, right, continue to provide the educational system that we have, right? And you're right, it's not within the walls, right? The walls don't make the educational system. It's the people and it's the it's what we're doing, right? Not what I'm doing, but what our

057our superintendent and our educators are doing, right? But, um, is there opportunity, right? Is there opportunity that that that makes sense for the town? Right. Again, I'm not a proponent of of of buildings sitting there not being used and paying for, right? Um, my own personal opinion, but that's where I am. I don't know if anybody else has any other thoughts on that. I think it'd be helpful if we get the public's input on this as well because I know from what I hear it wasn't really the case last time. Um, perhaps sentiment has changed a little bit since this recent budget season. So, be good to get their uh their info as well. It's hard to get the public involved when you have 150 people that show up to vote on a major issue.

058So, it doesn't matter how much you put it out there, you get 150 people to vote. If we get lucky tonight, we'll get 150 people. Um, so we have we have tried to get the public's input many many many many times. It's just like I said, when you get 150 people to go out and vote on a major issue, it just shows that people aren't engaged, right? I think the there's there's I mean, to your point, there are clear lessons learned that the town has from the last 10 years ago. Um, transparency in the process is one of them, right? And I think we solicit public input through the process, I would imagine, is going to be one of the one of the things that would come out of a task force if if I

059was to guess. And that transparency in what we're doing is is very important. Tim, I think that we have to move forward with the task force. Um because I don't I don't see I mean, we're going to be right back. This I feel like I've been on I don't know How many years I've been on the board? Five. Four. I'm on eight years. We're going to be on the same we're going to be in the exact same position again next year. You're kind of going to come back with an eight or nine% increase in the budget. We're going to tell you to go back to the drawing board. We're going to have to cut. I mean, it's the elephant in the room. We We have We We can't afford what we have. We can't. We

060can't. Nobody wants to cut people. Nobody wants to cut resources. I keep saying this. We don't have the money. We cannot keep going back to the taxpayers for money. So, either we figure out a task force, uh, figure out what it's going to look like to bring in somebody to figure out what we need to do. We come up with some kind of amazing fundraising plan. I know it hasn't been done in the schools before. We figure out how much money we need for the next three to five years, and we start campaigning just like an annual campaign. We're we're we have to think of ourselves maybe like a nonprofit. We have an annual campaign. We have Giving Tuesday. We have to raise $2 million for the next five years. We never have these conversations.

061We we talk about it, but we never do anything about it. We never figure out how we can get the PTO or the PTA engaged in taking over some of these expenses that should be with the PTA or PTO like the B some of the band stuff, the trip to White Memorial, like all the stuff that I talked about in the budget, stuff like that. We get creative. How can we get them engaged? How can we help them fund raise? But what we're doing is not working. It's not working. The the cost of special ed is going to go up again next year. transportation, teacher salaries, teachers benefit, all that other stuff. It's all going to be the same problem we have next year as it has been for the last four years. So, I

062move if we have to are we making motions tonight? We need a subcommittee. We need a committee of all the different players in town to start having an active conversation about that. I would I would propose to you instead of a motion, let Jeff and I open open discussions with the uh with the board chairs, board of finance and board select and um bring it to them about again exploring options and and strategy and and see what their feedback and we can report back at our next meeting. Jeff, what resources do we have through CABE and through Advance and whatever in terms of consultants to help with this that might be less expensive than or a grant potentially that we could Yeah, CAB has connections with the um NASDAQ, which is a reporting system in

063New England that helps school systems make determinations such as this, such as space utilization reports, consolidation, closure of schools um via CABE and via the NASDAQ. uh for ED advance they also have individuals that have worked within our region for a long time have expertise and I would certainly talk to Jonathan Costa about further exploring um options with him as well and are there grants available for this type of stuff that I don't know but I will explore everything and ask everybody as I've done with everything else do we have an idea of what that would cost a space utilization report would probably consultant are we talking about the consultant to come in and tell us how we use the space or we close a school I'm gonna guess depending on they're going to probably

064base it on our size and our enrollment is what they typically would do. Um I don't even have a guesstimate. I I know a space utilization report alone is $5 to $10,000. The consultant to depending on how often they're going to attend board of education meetings, community meetings, do a feasibility assessment could range 50,000 or more. Is that shared with the town? It I don't know that answer until we start when we have a conversations and it's a mutual benefit across then I'm hoping then the answer would be yes. But I don't know that answer yet. It's speculative at best. We don't have the money in our budget to do that. So it would have to come from another source, right? We won't be able to make it through the 25 26 square. So at

065the town meeting, most of the people who spoke that night were in favor of increasing the budget, right? And then the board of finance went the opposite way. So everyone here is assuming that the county can't take this anymore. We got to do something. That wasn't the sentiment. I don't want any higher taxes, but some people are willing to pay higher taxes to maintain three schools. That was obvious the last time. We have 200 people go out and vote for this budget tonight. 250 maybe. When they tried to close the school, 1,500 people showed up to vote. 1,275 said keep it open. So, you know, how many people are So, we had 50 people that said we don't want our taxation. I'm just saying we're sitting here all jumping up and down that we can't

066do this anymore. Yeah. But the majority of people are like, "No, we can do that. We want we want to have good educational system. We're willing to pay." But that was that was 50 people. That wasn't 6,000 people. No, it wasn't. How many people? But you're not going to get six. There's only There's 7,000 people in this town of people who vote. There's like what 3,200 people who vote in this town. But a majority to me, 50 people, four and 50 people against is not a majority. If 50 people vote for something, four people vote for against it. 50 people win. That's how that that's how it works. Just because you not not everyone showed up. Oh, we we don't know what they wanted. If they wanted, they would have showed up. One thing that

067I mean I understand this nonsense I understand what you're saying but like per the discussion that happened what really spurred me for this was the discussion in the last meeting which I know that you were upset about too where it was like the board of finance said we have to submit this budget and like the direct question from us to you was do we have any options and the answer was no we can go out and vote against it we can't go out we can go out and vote against it which was there 8:00 in the polls that's true I I understand all that and but even if even if the town says no, we don't know what the board of the board of finance is in control of the process from here. We don't

068know what they're going to put back in front of the town if the town says no. We don't know what that means for our budget if that says no. Like we don't have any control over that. And just because people showed up this year doesn't mean they're going to show up next year or the year after that or the year after that or the year after that. And in the meantime, we're still making cuts from what like the original proposal are for the budget is every year. So I just I'm uncomfortable not doing anything within our control. And if we do this work and we go through this study and we like do the due diligence and we say this it is not cost-effective for us to like make any changes here, then at least

069we've done the work. we have made the assessment here and we have a stronger ground to stand on with the board of finance that yes, we did actually explore all of these avenues and like this is not possible. That's the way that I see this playing out. We need to do the work. I want to address something in the media that you just brought up though. I think there are going to be people that vote against this budget because they think it's too low. Exactly. And a couple of people I told that communicated and I want to be careful about what I said, but I suggest I said if that's how you feel, you should send an email because that's not how it gets read. If you vote against a budget, people assume that it's

070because it's too high. I think this is we I was at that meeting you're talking about and there was a big turnout and I think a lot of those people will vote against this budget because they think we cut too much not we the board of finance cut too much from the uh education budget and that concerns me a little and what I guess one of my questions is did do they ever put a anformed question on there like did you vote against the budget because it's too low or it's too high. Does that ever happen? Not that I've seen. It would be a good idea for them to know because I I am concerned just from talking to people that they're people are going to vote against this budget because of the position cuts

071and I don't know what the board of finance will do with that without that uh what do you call that on a ballot when you an advisory question or something like that and we've done those in the past for for purposes of like the the the sewer, right? but not for why you voted for or against a budget. Have you I mean, have you thought about that with this budget? Like what? Absolutely. And I don't know how you communicate that. I just told people I said, "Well, however you vote, if you know, vote how you feel, but if you vote against it because it's too low, I would I agree. You should you should voice your your reason, right? Because we have to remove assumption if you you made a decision, right? Um, but again,

072I don't think that, you know, what I'm talking about, you know, with this with the task for spending money, right? Because we can't spend money, right, that's not ours, right? Is is I think we can have the conversations, right? We can have the discussions, you know, kind of toss around ideas. Does it go anywhere? I don't know, right? The community needs to make that decision. Does it go anywhere? You know, I want to add to that that I think that well, I guess I don't know what the legal ramifications of I've asked this before um of fundraising and if a I'm assuming that a nonprofit arm of the school system foundation would have to be set up so that you could legally fundra the money would go to the foundation but then fund all of

073these things that we're talking about. And could if you raise say a million dollars on the foundation side, could the could the million dollars be used to pay for teacher salaries? Could it be used to pay for white memorial? Could like I guess that's what I'm trying to I've asked that question a lot like what do we need to do? And I'd like to explore that option. um that we act as maybe the school isn't a nonprofit but we set up a foundation that is solely created I whatever for tax purposes whatever we got to do but the point of the fundraising is that all the money raised for the foundation solely goes back to the three SWS that's it goes to the salaries it goes to shortfalls it goes to the roof falls in

074we don't have enough money that that's where that money is being fundraised for um and I'd like to see what the legalities are of something like that related to the schools. Yeah. So, you're already on the right track in terms of a 503 501c3 h must be established. And then the monies that are raised should have purpose behind what they're raising exactly for. Uh if you speak in general terms, it's probably not going to be as well fundraised, right? But if we're looking for specific project work like the playground for example, that's very targeted. If we're just talking about a foundation in general, then those monies can be transferred to a board of education. The board of education can then make those decisions in terms of where those monies will be applied. Those are that's

075actually within our policy right now. So we can set up a foundation and we can specify that the money would then be fundraised gone to the board of ed. So then the board of ed could specify that we wanted to pay for the two teach the the salaries. It could be yeah at the discretion of the board. So that's a legal we were legally able to do that. So why have we never done that in the past? Just asking. Don't know that answer. You guys have been on the board the longest. So I've asked it every year since I've been on the board. why we're not fundraising. Because to me, there are two options here. Close down school because you have too many expenses. You cannot you can't continue this way. Or you start doing

076something alternatively and you start fundraising. And like I know a lot of moms in town, they're they're the same ones that came to the board and they were talking. I mean, a lot of people are pissed. Those people would fund raise. And when you got pissed off moms and dads, they can do a lot of amazing things and you can you can raise a lot of money. So I I don't know why we just don't start going down that path irrespective of what this subcommittee I mean we're going to have a lot of people talking and we're going to keep talking and talking nothing's ever going to happen. So I don't know why we can't just start this now and start it and get going and start coming up with a mission and start fundraising

077because if they're willing to pay for more taxes then they're willing to give money to the foundation. They probably would give money to the foundation. I I can't I can't spearhead that as your superintendent. Well I I'll spearhead. I'm not able to do that. What What do we have to do? Can she do it? I like the idea. She can talk to people in the community. Am I allowed to as a board member? Yeah. About an idea, but then someone else has to take it over. You can't run it. It can't be a 501c3 under your But I can't get the foundation started. You can't get the foundation started. You could meet with individuals within the community to start that leg work. Um and then they would have to apply for their own 501c3. You

078could be an adviser to it, but you're not directly leading it. You're not on their directors. You're not one of their chairpeople, that kind of thing. Doesn't organization like this sort of exist? What's the What's the New Hartford Education Fund? Yeah. Aren't they a 501c3? I I believe so, but I don't know that answer. I'm I'm assuming it is, right? I think their mission would have it would have to because it's it's much more limited in scope. Talking about a I don't want I don't want to spend money on anything else. I'm talking about a foundation solely created because we have to for purposes of whatever is solely fundraising to focus on the need of not having to cut people solely focused on the need of we need better food in the school systems um

079the roof falls in like the specifically for our three schools if we keep the three schools that is what I'm talking I don't want to share that the money and put it in the playground what I want it specifically for the things that we're talking about that we're cutting It's our own foundation separate from everybody else. If if they're willing to change their mission and focus on fundraising to do what I'm talking about, then yeah, let's have a conversation. I don't know. Am I crazy? Is this a crazy idea? I don't think you're crazy. I think that right now, like again, the purpose of me opening up a discussion to have like all options on the table and actually take some action against them. So like everything from my perspective, like I'm in support of

080anything being explored where anybody wants to put their energy and thinks that it's feasible, but I'm like one person. Well, I lost my mission of a security guard, so I guess I could take up the mission of this to help try to figure this out. I feel like it's we have two options. We close stuff down, we get lean and mean, or we start fundraising to support the stuff that we have. Those are those are the two options there. There is. We don't need to sit here and discuss it for hours and hours and hours. You have too much stuff. Can't afford it. What would closing the school in your eyes save? I don't know. I need somebody to tell me, are we going to save actually save money? We have two custodians. That's extra

081money. We have extra teachers. We have extra staff. I mean, in my mind, that's the way I'm thinking. We have a lot of extra stuff. And so, if we closed it down, we wouldn't have that extra stuff, right? You're you're you're again I'm not trying to be condescending or disrespectful, but you're saying you're there's extra stuff. So you're not going to lose any teachers because you're going to have the same amount of students. There's going to be different. True. That's right. Right. So you're not cutting staff. You might maybe you cut a custodian maybe. Right. The nurses already share times. You're not saving on a nurse. Right. So again, you add up all the money, right? So maybe you're saving, you use a number from 10 years ago, $200,000 on a $10 million budget and

082you're closing the school and you're disrupting the community. It's not an answer. It wasn't an answer 10 years ago and I don't see it being answered this year. But again, I'm willing to listen, but I just All right. Well, then our other option is fundraising. So we're So we don't close that. If that's what you're saying and that makes sense to me, then the only other option you have, you do not have the money. There's no money. So, we either have to start coming up with fundraising or something else if we're not shutting stuff down, but we keep talking about it year after year and we just we and then we come back with these massive budgets and then we have to cut and we all feel sick to our stomachs for six months while

083we sit here and work through a budget that we can't afford and then everyone in the community is mad at us. And it's just like, let's just do something like if if we can't do that, then let's start fundraising for a nonprofit. Let's create it. Let's get it done. Let's get let's get going. I don't know. That's just how I feel. Anyone? Where do we want to go? I'm wondering if we should table this until we find out what the results are for the budget tonight. And what happens if the referendum doesn't pass tonight? Now what? Then we're back to the table with us trying to cut more things or goes back to board of finance. Then board of finance provides additional direction. It goes back to referendum. Okay. Can we make a motion to

084start the process of a foundation? Do we do we do that or no? What do we do? We I think everything is on the table. I would propose versus like the immediate action on the foundation. I would propose better a like subcommittee that is focused on identifying like the highest like the highest competence options for either increasing revenue or decreasing operating costs. And again, it's going through those four like basically the four things that have been sort of talked about. It's additional revenue from fundraising. It's closing a school. It's discussing, which we haven't gotten into a whole lot tonight, like the possibility of like if there's cost savings from regionalizing everything, which is whatever. And then actually going again back through the existing budget right now and taking a really hard look at like roles

085and responsibilities, everything that's going into the operating things and figuring out what we can streamline over the next couple of years to keep this part of the pie not growing so that we can protect the services that are the services and staff that are supporting the students. And you don't need a motion to investigate that. You can start looking into it. find out other schools that do it, research the legality of it and all that kind of stuff. So, the thing you were talking about making a motion for, I think you can go ahead and do, right? Well, I don't think it's I I honestly investigate. I don't think it's in legal order to do that. Yeah, I don't think you can. I just want to make sure I'm doing what I'm the Maybe you

086guys need to tell us and figure out your figure out the players in the room and who needs to talk. I mean, for you to do your research though on that anyone. Sure. I would go I would start that process of researching it, looking into it. I I just think the fundraising too might be easier said than done. I mean, how long did it take to get money for the playground? Probably took months and months and months just to get resource to talk to is Jessica. Yeah. I just uh you know I I've never seen a fundraiser make a million dollars before. Not a local one anyway. The Mason Beley Library. Yeah, you absolutely can make a million dollar. You can absolutely do it with the power of the right people in the room. Absolutely.

087Isn't that what happened at Mason? Just a huge endowment. Huge endowment. Absolutely. Can be done if people care about it. We can assign this next leg of work to the long range planning committee. I don't know. Look, I understand that everyone is like mentally exhausted at the idea of even fighting any of these battles. If people don't want to take action on this, I think that that's fine. I I get it and I understand that there's a lot of work ahead for anything else. We just sit here year after year and say the same things over and over again and like we've been asking for there's been input that been what are we going to do to solve this problem? How are we going to protect the programs that we care about? How are we

088going to like do right by the town? And we don't have a good answer for that right now. We're just kind of like flying by the skin of our teeth every year. That's what I would like to hold ourselves accountable to. What's the point of being here? We're not going to try. So is anybody on the board? Do you get does anybody object to Jeff and I opening up a conversation with the other board chairs to talk about cost-saving options and strategies, right? At a minimum to allow them to to understand where we are, right? We have seven people on a board of finance who are making the decision to cut our budget, right? Are they fully educated on our budget and what it takes to run these schools? Maybe at a minimum it allow

089us to educate them about that. Um as well as a three-person board of fi board of select, right? And we can have discussions, we can look at options where they go, right? We need again community input before we do anything with them. We can't unilaterally make any decisions. Well, then I will make a motion to have Tim and Jeff kick off discussions with other boards within the town to whether or not we should create a task force to reduce operational costs within the school. Have a motion by Kristen. Anybody want to second that? I second it. Second by dear. Any further discussion on the motion that's on the floor? All right. All those in favor signify by raising your hand. All those opposed. Right. That motion passes. What do we got? Yes. 61 zero. All

090right. Next item on the agenda is the educational specifications for new Hartford Elementary roof replacement. Superintendent. Yep. So, in your board packets, you should have received um the educational specs. This is part of the process with all of the documentation that we have to submit to apply for the grant at the state level through the DAS. Um Collier is our um rep that is working with us and um additional report out to the board of education is that we've um awarded the architectural contract to Hibbert and Rosa of Middletown. So they will be working together to put together our package that we will sit and meet with the state and submit take feedback make any corrective actions there for the roof replacement at New Hartford Elementary School. The intention of the educational specs is just

091as listed here. It is the project overall project. That's what it's looking at and how it does not impact the daily operating budget. That's the basic premise of this document to say that operational costs are not being taken away from to fund this project. In fact, it has to be a completely separate source general fund tagged in the town's um journals uh for this particular project, whether it's bonded, whether it's reserves, or whatever else it may be used, but it's not a board of education budget reduction to make a roof replacement occur. So, that's the intention of this. This does need a motion. It does need to be passed at the board of education for then um myself and Collier to submit to the state of Connecticut as one of our criteria to apply and

092uh apply for the reimbursement of the uh roof replacement at New Hartford Elementary School. [Music] Can um can I get a motion to approve the educational specifications for the roof replacement summer 2025 uh form SCG-1030. Motion to approve. Motion by Eric. Can we get a second? Second by Kristen. Is there any discussion or questions on this? I have a question on the number seven construction bonus request. It looks like it might have been like a template on here, but it looks like it says we do not house any special program eligible for a school construction bonus, but then it says full day kindergarten not applicable. Don't we have full day kindergarten? We do have full day kindergarten. And these are just items that are listed um throughout um but due to the um class size

093of our kindergarten, it doesn't apply for a bonus. Otherwise, it would have been labeled as a yes. So, thank you for the question. Okay. Other items that are on here are not they don't fit within it or we didn't qualify for otherwise it would be marked. Yes. Gotcha. Okay. Just the formality under that same one. You should change center elementary school to New Hartford Elementary School. Center Elementary School. Oh, number seven. Yep. That's part of the template. Okay. Thank you. Number eight it is correct. Yeah. New Harford Elementary School. So number seven needs to be updated. Okay. We'll do. So the language in number two consideration of consolidation of elementary schools is being explored. So consideration of consolidation of elementary schools is being explored because it was on the agenda to say that it's explored.

094It's being discussed. That is all. Well, then it says this school would remain a primary. If it were to, it's further justification that this school would be the one to last. If there's changes to that, then this no longer applies. It would have to be amended and resubmitted or like I stated before, penalized and grant has to go back. So, there are other entanglements and ramifications to this if things change or go off course for the purpose of this particular building as a school building versus anything else that would be in town. This to me this language is premature to what everything we've talked about. Again, if it's a technicality, that's one thing. But yeah, I didn't see this before. If we're exploring options to save money and all of a sudden, you know, let's

095close let's close New Hartford a second because Bakerville's got three times the students as New Har. Yeah. Strike it out. I I can strike it. Yeah, strike it out. So I will remove consideration of consolidation of our elementary schools being explored and then the second this school would remain our primary prek to uh second grade school. So I'll cross off both sentences. Yeah, because we don't know that, right? [Music] Any additional questions or comments? We're removing a clear story in this project. I'm sorry. We're removing a clear story in this project. Yeah, there are two making sprinkler modifications in the building. Yeah, there would have to be um be there are two clear areas over uh two restrooms which are very um conducive to [Music] [Applause] leaks. Are there any additional questions or comments? All

096right. All those in favor of approving the educational specifications with the amendments to um item number two, paragraph number two for those striking out those two sentences as well as making the change to item number seven from center elementary school elementary. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. That is unanimous. Okay. Next item on the agenda is reports at advance. Dear dream. Okay. All right. Well, we are struggling to figure out how we're going to keep our schools open. Uh the positive coming out of at Advance is that they got a 1.160 one 1.165 million grant to provide electric vehicles and charging stations to support their special education transportation collaborative. Uh they also won a 650k Connecticut DPH smoking and cannabis s um cessation training grant. Um uh so I guess that's

097the positive. Um on the other side, what we've been battling with is that they were just informed this uh last week that their federal student mental health grant has been cancelled as of 12:3125. Uh, as many of you may be aware, um, the grant provides social workers for 30 schools in the northwest corner, including New Hartford and Bakerville. And the rationale for the cancellation is that the priorities of the program are no longer in alignment with the priorities of the current administration. Um, and then they're going back and forth about it all and sending back a uh discussion with them to see if they can change that, but I don't think it's going to change. So, those are basically the biggest things coming out of advance. Yeah. Uh the one other thing that I would

098like to add is that the superintendents in the Northwest um corner are um together advocating to reverse this decision without advance. Um so we're submitting supportive documentation and letters on behalf of all the boards of education um in the northwest corner. [Music] Any questions? Uh yes. When that grant funding expires at the end of the year and likely does not come back, what happens to the social worker services for us? Does Ed advance still continually provide them? No. So, we have to it's going to be a hit to our budget if we want to continue supporting those services. Yes, that's correct. It's removed uh in from the funding of a federal grant via advances awardment of that grant. Unless we've done previous Did they say why they're not aligned with the current administration? Because there's

099language in there. Well, again, I mean, Jeff, you would know, but essentially speculation that there could potentially have been interpretation that there's DEI language in the grant that they submitted. That's his opinion, right? I wasn't able to make the last board meeting, but as Jeff said, they're all banding together to try to do that. I mean, I think it's an issue that everybody's Okay. Any further? All right. Moving on to uh public comment. Uh this is for agenda items only. Anybody like to address the board? Hi, I'm Kathy Eastville Road and one I really appreciate how you're trying to problem solve because this is not an easy situation and I do have comment when Mr. was talking about some of us probably going not understanding the vote of no and yes and no thinking globally

100people think it's too high. But if you were at the meeting where there were quite a few people and we left that meeting with um many positives with uh the counselor being kept white memorial all the things that were being kept. There are many people that didn't see the next minutes that said due to 46 people sending letters we are now reverting back where we were. So, I think that there were a lot of questions today by the few voters that went to vote. I'm I'm really sad because when I went to vote about 4:30 just down the road, only 150 people in this area voted, which is very sad. Um, but anyways, so that was a comment that yes, there is um misunderstanding on what that could what the purpose of that vote was.

101That was my first question. My second question, and I don't know if I could address this or question this, when we were at that meeting, the funds utilized to retain those line items. Um the 120 for the boss, the 50 from the retired teachers, and 66 from the non-lapsing. The 66 from the non-lapsing, I sort of understand, but there was money in that budget and you can't speak for this and I heard you after you saying you have to educate the word finance maybe I don't know legalities but it was disheartening to know that the funds were there and they took those positions away I'm just the lay person in town I don't understand all that but that is a really good question that when it was approved. Why wasn't that set forth rather than

102having why wasn't that set forth as the vote? Because then when people go to vote and they say no, I don't approve your brain, your mindset is actually saying it's too high. So there is a discrepancy among a lot of people that I chitchated with that didn't understand what does this mean? So that was the second and I I get our town doesn't I've been here 47 years. I've been through a lot with town budgets and such and I really really don't know how to go about this. Since you're thinking of possibly closing one school, you know, you have a lot of different things out there on on the table to think about. Since you're thinking, unfortunately, the political background might not be there right now, but so many other towns five years ago built

103big schools. What what if we are actually going to go forth possibly consultation company to review everything. What's to say? Believe me, I love favorable school, but I know a time comes when you have to face the reality of our two small schools really. Um, what's to what's to not think about since you're going to have a committee possible of making a new Harford campus up here on the hill to take While elementary kids have Oak Oak Hill, there are so many developers for the elderly. I'm just putting stuff out there as I said and and just creating a campus for the young children up here on the hill. I don't know any monies. I don't know any of that. Just throwing that out there. But so those are my three questions. Thank you. Anyone

104else? John here frontwood drive. Uh, first wanted to second what Mrs. Manini said that thanks to you all for everything you're doing. It's an incredibly thankless job and truly appreciate everything you're doing to help our kids, our teachers and staff and our schools and also the town because we don't have unlimited dollars. Um, I believe with poly comment you can't respond. So, I was trying to there were some of us who had a question some um I'm not sure if it's a factual clarification that you're allowed to do, but Jeff, you said earlier it sounded like if the budget passes today as it is that there is no way to rework the budget to include or keep the instructional assistant and the clerical aid. Is that correct? Correct. No way. None. [Music] Then if it

105doesn't pass, there'll be a chance to potentially rework. You're saying that too like referendum were not passed potentially do a rework. Okay. Depending on what they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't know door. So it's closed. If passes today, it's the topic is closed. If the vote does not pass today, the door open in some way discussion. Okay. Um just as an observation I and this is where I'm new and maybe it's an offline conversation. Uh I know that we control or you have influence over the local education budget and there's a separate regional budget as I'm sure you've seen the numbers. It's stark contrast to me being new to town regional from 201819 to present has gone from,093 students down to 750. the FTE count throughout the entire time is fluctuated between 135 and 137.

106So again, 193 to 750 and 135 throughout and then uh meanwhile we've been having to do with same number teachers or slightly less FTEES with this cut here. And so I don't know how to talk about the regional budget and put influence there, but it certainly seems there's a lot of dollars being spent and frankly less cuts. Uh, I know it's kind of during the conversations about New Harford doesn't have much of a say over the regional budget, but hopefully with us having more students there, we have more say and you can work with your your colleagues to be able to influence that. And then another point, uh, the as a faculty clarification, was the motion that passed regarding the discussion education possible task force strictly focused on cutting costs or was it cutting costs

107andor increasing revenue? Both. Agree. There's many ways we potentially increase revenue, grants, tax dollars, etc. Um, and then just wanted to second Tim your comment about educating and the the discussion with the other boards about the budget and how what's important to the schools. I think there's just as you said, there's a lot of chitchat out there. A lot of taxpayers don't understand what is actually in the budget or not in the budget, what these different items mean. uh you know folks that are new but folks who have been here 40 50 years don't understand and so I'm not sure where the line is between you being able to educate the town and advocate in certain ways and then we're partnership with PTO and they're involved parents but clearly there are folks that are confused

108and would hope that as we look ahead it's all on you hopefully we can work together to make sure that as the national comes up we're able to make sure that we're able to educate voters and and they're informed on what what it mean or they're voting on um I'll pause Thank you for again. Thank you. Are you all okay if I respond to Kathy's question? Yes. Lot of clarity. So Kathy, just so I understand your question, and again, I'm doing this because of the sensitivity of this budget vote that's tonight and the conversation and the questions are out there. Um, you had a question regarding the $66,000 that was removed from our budget. 12 from the bus had allocated 12. So sequentially what had happened was we proposed the board of education had to

109propose or we proposed the budget to the board of finance that include a list of eliminations from the budget. Um we heard the public community feedback. We had some discoveries between when we originally proposed our budget and when we came back to the table. We had the opportunity because we were able to the discovery with the 120,000 from the bus contract. We were able to then remove some of the eliminations. In addition, as you said, there was a retirement that allowed us to remove some other eliminations. The board then as well has a surplus account um that we that we control, which is is is legally uh something that again, if we have a surplus at the end of the year, we can put up to 2% into a non-lapsing account. A non-lapsing account is

110for all intents and purposes a contingency. The town has their own contingency. Um the board of education had motioned to remove 66,000 of that to fund the two positions that the IIA and the in and the in and the um and the clerk when we went back to board of finance. We had those all back in the board of finance cut and again I think the confusion is it's always that number. That 66 number is what's sticking out to everybody. They cut $66,000. Um that 66 unfortunately when we took the non-lapsing into there was a a true cut to the board of education budget by 122. We lost 66 of our contingency and we lost $66,000. Right. Right. So that 66 that came in was used to again we can't use that for recurring cost.

111So it was applied to the volatility in special education cost. It allowed that number to be reduced in our budget which allowed us to stay within the same percentage of having that 66 available. We reinstated those eliminations when we went back to the board of finance when they made that cut. Again, unfortunately that 66k number still out there. That was the number. All right. So again, that in in in our superintendent and the administration in looking at everything that's in our budget and the lean budget we have, um those were the two eliminations that had to come back to the table. Right. So again, I I I wanted to do that for the reasons of, you know, we we can't respond to public comment, but I I understand the sensitivity we are here. Would anybody

112else like to address the board? All right, seeing none, public comment is closed and our next item is adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjurnn at 8:34 p.m. Motion by Dery, second by Frank. All those in favor? Thank you.