New Milford Public Schools, BOE Budget Meeting 2 - 1/14/2026

001What? >> I feel better after this cookie. I mean, I've been living on raisin brands for a week. >> It's a guessing game. >> I feel better after this cookie. >> Yeah, I know. >> Should be a good >> You went to And I was just like, "Oh my god, she's like, don't say that." >> Sharon. >> Oh my god. >> Stupid's been going around too. >> We are live. >> [sighs] >> Is Leslie here tonight? >> I like how we have the All right, it's uh 6:30, so let's reconvene and uh start the meeting off today with a uh 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. >>

002Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> First on the agenda, uh is there anyone from the public who would like to uh step up and uh say a few words? [cough and clears throat] We'll have another opportunity at the end. So, no takers. Okay. So, let's move on. First item is the more discussion of the superintendent's proposed 2627 budget. What are we going to start off with now? >> Thank you. Uh this evening we will begin with our grades 6 through 12. Uh and we'll begin with Scatter Hook Middle School and Mr. De Meyer. >> Hi everybody. >> Hello. >> Um so good evening. Uh tonight I am pleased to present the 2627 budget for Scat Middle School. Um this year's proposal uh is a story of innovation uh and sustainability. Um and we continue our

003commitment to allocating resources in a way that uh aim to maximize student outcomes academically, socially, emotionally, and developmentally. So our mission is to prepare students to excel in an everchanging world. Uh to accomplish this goal, it's important that we provide opportunities for students to engage in a wide range of valuable experiences. Uh this budget ensures uh that we protect those valuable opportunities from the classroom to the stage to the athletic field and to the digital lab. Um and we want to make sure that those experiences remain robust and accessible. So focus, heart, collaboration and creativity. Um as Dr. Carlado has shared, these ideals serve to improve and increase outcomes and opportunities for all. Uh the SMS budget represents a commitment to that vision. uh which means looking at the whole pile to ensure that everyone

004has a path to succeed. Uh so this budget will ensure that our students continue to have the opportunity to stretch themselves uh in a variety of ways. That would mean as readers um possibly to step outside their comfort zone uh as they take the stage, you know, in with their dramatic production um or maybe to engage in discourse and problem solving in the science lab or the mathematics classroom uh or possibly to play, you know, maybe inter mural football or on the basketball team uh you know, with their friends and their peers. So at SMS we serve 796 unique stories uh 160 students in special education and 72 learners. Our budget must be agile uh to serve students with these diverse success here means moving resources to ensure that opportunities for all include the specific

005tools needed for our aim ILC's and ML IL ILC and MLL programs to thrive. Uh student demographics at SMS are shifting. Uh students are presented with increased needs um financially, academically, socially, and behaviorally. So the SMS budget for 2627 represents an honest assessment of how we can help move teaching and learning forward for our school community while meeting these needs. Currently, we have 135.9 full-time staff members. Uh that includes support staff that work with our students on a daily basis. It's important to note that not all the positions are directly tied to the budget for SMS. Some of these positions are budgeted at the district levels in other support areas such as the Department of Instruction or the Department of Special Services. [clears throat] So, like to tell you a little bit about what we've

006been working on next. Um, here in these pictures, you see a few things. Um, the pictures do go back um towards the beginning of the year. Um, you see some community building there. do some work in the science lab and you do see a photograph from our winter production um because it balances the different areas that we have working on community academics and creativity. So the keys to a thriving school environment um as we take a look at this area we recognize that a healthy culture is a prerequisite for academic growth. Um I kind of describe it as the foundation um for learning and you have to core that foundation before learning can really take place. Um at the center of these keys is the whole child. Our goal is to ensure that every student

007feels safe, seen and supported uh for their first day in sixth grade to their final celebration at promotion at the end of their eighth grade year. So by focusing on the keys that you see here, the queer expectations, student empowerment, teacher leadership, the integration of fun, right? I feel that that's especially important, you know, in school environment. Um, student visibility, students being able to see themselves as they walk around the school in the hallways and in the things that are posted. Um, and community building. Um, we core a strong foundation at SMS. Um, and we work at that. We not only core the foundation, but we work to nurture it throughout the course. So, clear expectations and consistency. Uh, we reinforce consistent expectations for learning and behavior. Uh this provides the stability students need to

008achieve the focus required for deep academic work. Uh student empowerment student youth for a change in our student council. Uh we're giving students a seat at the table. Uh we are allowing the collaboration to shape our school culture and that's something that we've really been trying to improve over the last few years finding more and more ways for them to have some of the things that we're doing. Uh student visibility. We ensure that students literally see themselves in our halls through photographs. um the mirrors that create a sense of belonging. You can see there in that picture, everything is better together. Um part of what we did through our community building work at the beginning of the year is every member of the school community had the opportunity to create a handprint and decorate it

009in any way that they saw it. Um and then some students, one of our art teachers worked on the center graphic that display in our hallway outside the cafeteria and everybody can see their hand on the wall and it was a representation of our entire community coming together at the beginning of the year. Um, and the vast majority of our handprints are actually still stuck to the wall outside the cafeteria, which considering it's cinder block is pretty impressive. >> Um, so when you look at the work that we're doing, a highlight of, you know, the visibility work last year to a unified outdoor promotion ceremony. All right. I thought that, you know, it was pretty powerful to have all three teams promoting them. Um, so by moving away from those three separate ceremonies in the

010gym to one inclusive celebration, we really allowed that eighth grade community to be seen and celebrated together. Um, massive success from a climate standpoint. I think the community really really appreciate it. Um, and you'll see later on in the proposal how we're now formally aligning our budget to sustain that new tradition. Uh, so when we use all these keys together, we ensure that students have exactly what they need to strive um well beyond just their test scores. Um, as we on the developmental, emotional and social uh aspects of their their growth. So this year we also have worked um to continue our you know efforts to improve teaching and learning at SMS by building the ecosystem that you see here. At the center of this graphic is our commitment to the whole child. Um and

011every arrow pointing inward represents a very specific support that we've put in place um to help improve teaching and learning and hopefully help the students thrive academically. Starting at the top, our curriculum revision and new core materials represent a massive undertaking in the math department. Last [clears throat] year, you all supported our um selection process of a new primary resource. Thank you so much for that. Um and this [clears throat] year, we have been working hard to implement um that resource through ongoing professional learning um in and out of the classroom um and through collaboration with our PLC's um It's inspiring to see the perseverance from our students and staff as they engage in higher levels of problem solving. Um they're really starting to pick things up. The level of conversation that we're seeing is

012is great. Um they're coming up with things that they they haven't in the past. Moving around the circle um to new courses, we're seeing direct outcomes and opportunities of your previous support. Um so for computer science, our computer science 3 course is officially live this semester. Um students are having high impact experience as they dive into robotics. Um they're having a great time there. Um and that's a direct application of the the coding experiences that they've had in previous courses um in the sequence. For cultural connections, this new course um has allowed students to strengthen their ELA skills while providing direct introduction to French, Spanish, and German language and culture. Um it's been fantastic. They've been learning a lot about Cornell notes and identifying, you know, key vocabulary and how that links to main ideas

013and themes and what questions they should be asking themselves as readers. Um, and now they've been moving into things like key traditions, um, words, key vocabulary, and things like that in the three different languages. Um, and it's actually been quite the community building connection. Um, because Madame has been very honest with students that, you know, she doesn't know German. she's not studied in before, but there are actually students in the class whose families have, you know, cultural background in in German um and whose families have speak spoke German and they're able to contribute more um in that type of a sense. So, it's really been a wonderful wonderful thing and she's very much looking forward to our winter I Ready scores um to see the progress of students. So, finally, you see elements like learning

014walks, non-evaluative visits to classroom and improve data use. um they're not just administrative requirements. They're tools we use to you know try to provide teacher with high quality feedback um you know on their teaching um and you know where teachers are able to you know hopefully you know provide feedback you know for us as well. Um it's important to note that excellence is personal. All right. So our goal is to ensure that teachers [clears throat] students and families have access to the specific data that they need so that every student has an opportunity to grow at their own pace. So by rotating our focus into support these structures, we make excellence an attainable reality for every child with SMS. Next we'll move into the budget priorities for this year. Um and you know different photograph

015this year but the same idea. Um a whole lot of kids in that picture and that really is the budget priority um is the children um that SMS serves. So when you look at the graphic on this slide once again through the whole child um and what I really want to focus on here is that we want to maintain and strengthen our current program. Um we don't view academics, extracurriculars and athletics as separate silos. They are an interconnected ecosystem um because they do contribute to the development and education of the whole child. to keep the whole to keep the whole child at the center um and supported, we must first protect that foundation. So, we're seeing um pretty high inflation um when it comes to things like our basic supplies. You can see I noted

016two things there um when it came to increases that I found. Um the price of standard composition notebooks have increased 55% from October of last year when I ran the numbers to October of this year. Um and the [clears throat] pack price of [snorts] a pack of wine paper increased by 184%. Um so those were some drivers in the budgeting process for SMS. Uh by being disciplined with the department requests, we've successfully absorbed these costs um to keep our core programming stable. With the foundation of basic supplies secured, um we are allocating our resources to the areas with the greatest level of need. Um it helps to maintain the synergy that we need at SMS, ensuring that programs not only maintain their quality but continue to advance. Um so that is one of the practices

017that I use in my budget is to move the funds where they're needed on a year-by-year basis which is why you will see some swings in the budget book. Um because you know a couple years back you supported the purchase of a kiln for the art department. That was a significant expenditure. You know we need to move funds there but then you know another department may have a need at a different time. Um so to [clears throat] promote academics we've strategically shifted funds to maintain high leveraged digital tools like Gimkit, Cammy and Quill uh with ELA. Uh these help to ensure academic um academics remain engaging um and modern. Additionally, we prioritize multiensory reading materials to ensure that our most diverse uh learners are at the center of our team-based success and have access to

018the reading materials that they need. to promote creativity. Um we have increased the music repairs item line item by 50%. Um we've seen a real surge in participation uh in the band over the last few years um once we opened up the opportunity for students to participate in both the band and the chorus. Um I believe that creativity shouldn't be you know a paytoplay as much as possible. Um, so we're trying to m make sure that we maintain the assets that we have um in order to protect creative synergy uh so that we have these opportunities for students to participate. Um so we need a little bit more money in that um youth and repair item to promote community and culture. You're going to notice a significant shift in the principal's office account. All right.

019Um this is our first opportunity to formally align the budget with our new unified outdoor promotion ceremony. Um so by moving from those three separate gym sessions to one inclusive event, we're investing in the heart of our school um and ensuring that every student is celebrated as part of the whole SMS community. Um but that does require some rentals and other things to make sure that that event um is conducted as it should be. Um so by allocating resources in this way we're not just managing line items but we're protecting the whole child and ensuring that the synergy between sponsoring the stage and the field remains at the heart of SMS. So the other thing that we try to do um through this budget is expand the horizons of education at SMS. Um again looking

020at the education of the whole child. Um the middle schoolers are big ones for change uh for kids um socially, developmentally, emotionally and academically. So our aim is to offer balanced programming that allows children to grow in all of these areas. So as we look to expand educational horizons um we view education through the model that you see here. Um we want to look at three distinct lanes um to ensure that we offer those balanced approaches. All right. So if we look at like student [clears throat] leadership and we look at that as a mirror for kids how they see themselves um by protecting funding funds and activities uh we provide students with mirrors where they can see their own talents and leadership potential reflected back at them. Um by bringing in guest speakers we

021provide a window for kids to see what their academics and the things that they're learning about in school may look like in the outside world. Um, so we want them to see what things may look like for kids and careers and, you know, things that they haven't possibly imagined yet. So expanding educational horizons includes funding in the budget to, you know, look at those windows in the mirrors. Um, finally, you know, if we kind of talk about a window, we talked about a mirror and we kind of think about like a sliding glass door in a house. Um, that's where field trips and athletics would come in. >> [clears throat] >> So through things like unified sports, um transportation for athletics, uh student leadership field trips and things like that, we want students to have

022that experiential learning um as much as possible out and away from the school setting um if we can uh so that students step into new environments and build collaboration. So even as we navigate rising co r rising costs everywhere um we've prioritized these valuable experiences because they're the things that sharpen a student's resolve um and inspire them to pursue their aspirations um and really make the learning from the classroom relevant make it something that they can see themselves applying hopefully in the future. So we're not just teaching subjects, we're preparing the whole child for the horizon ahead. And that's why we feel that we need to, you know, protect these educational horizons and the what are sometimes viewed as the non-academic experiences. >> So I thank you very much for the opportunity to present the

0232627 budget for SMS. Um and I also thank you for your partnership um in making SMS a place where you know success had been at the forefront. Um we've come a long way in the last several years and I I really um um so this proposal really is a collaborative effort. Um we get input from teachers and staff >> [clears throat] >> um beginning in October. Um, and we want to we get that because we want to make sure that we're meeting the needs of the classroom and the community first. Um, so as you can see, I mean, the budget represents a discipline focus. We put the money where um, we feel that it needs to be. Um, and we worked hard to remain fiscally responsible by by moving the funds around as needed. Um,

024so at this point in time, um, I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that you may have. um with the changes that needed to be made because we have the lack of language teachers. Can you remind me now how many kids are taking a language right now? [clears throat] So I believe we have 26 or so taking French. Um and we have five sections of Spanish that were between 20 and 25. So you know it's roughly you know 120 or so I believe in Spanish. It's not all eighth graders, right? Or is it all eighth graders now? So, next year, what will happen? >> Eighth graders, >> pardon me, >> eighth graders again will have access to world language. >> Okay. Um, and I I know we talked about this before and maybe this

025is more a question for Ms. Hollander or Dr. Pllado, but I mean, I think we all share the hope that someday we can go back to seventh and eighth grade, you know, and students having the choice of French or Spanish. Obviously, you can't do that in the middle of a school year. You have to plan ahead. You have to have the the personnel. So, how do you picture that happening? Um would we and I'm not really sure who I'm asking. Uh >> I think you're asking all of us and that's okay because we all have a different piece of the answer. >> Yeah. Because I, you know, it's been on my mind that we don't want to give up on this forever. We want to hope that the pool increases of of teachers and that

026we are able to get back to you know the way um the students get excited about starting a language in seventh grade. I think most of them are. Um so how would you see that coming to be? >> You want to start or would you like me to start Holly? >> Well the only thing I want to say it's a shortage area so it's hard and I a giant shortage area too. I know. Wonderful. >> Yeah. And I I give so much credit to the thoughtfulness that the team has [clears throat] taken to ensure there are offerings. >> The the part that through my time here um have experienced is when you think you're going to have something and then you don't. So it's a very very fine line um because you also want to

027retain faculty who are committed to a middle school age and so you do have individuals in how it sort of is it's 2.0 of vision. We do have the world language at the high school which is um wonderful. We're giving students the opportunity but I wouldn't want to create a a system where we're always hoping and then we are >> constantly shifting. No, I get that. I get that. >> And students are still earning that credit in eighth grade. So, that's that's important, >> which was the ultimate goal between seventh and eighth. We've just um and through your your really diligence of looking at it, we're able to accomplish it by just focusing on the eighth grade. Mhm. >> And if I may add, I I think that, you know, out of the need to

028fill a gap in the schedule, um we identified a real gap in student or real need for students, which was, you know, additional um instruction practice with reading, writing, listening, and speaking. >> So, I definitely agree with the idea of it being wonderful for students to have access to world language earlier in their schooling. Um, but I also would say that I would not want to give up the communication arts course. Um, you know, >> yeah, that leads me to my next question. I think LA it might have been last year when this all happened last year. >> It was actually the year before and we talked before we talked about you know the we're kind of I think you said building the plane as we're flying it or something to that effect. So do

029we now have a curriculum for this communications class? >> Oh yeah. >> Okay. Aren't they following the curriculum for the high school Spanish one? >> Oh, no. I was talking about communication >> communications. Okay. Yeah. The the one that's taking the place. And um my other question was about STEM. >> Um I know we've had trouble getting a teacher. >> Yes. >> So what are the students doing during that time? Now I think there was something about career readiness or >> um Yes. So we hired a person whose job is to um essentially build a bridge to the first year academy at the high school in terms of career exploration, learning about yourself as a learner, understanding all the possibilities that exist in the world. Um so as they're marching forward toward nth grade and

030potentially taking that first year experience, u they have a little bit more background than they would have before. So are all eighth graders or all was taking that >> this year right now? No. Um so it was again a pilot that came out of a need. >> Um and so it was already scheduled um at that point in the year. >> Yep. >> It was not possible to reschedule. So right now it is sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Um we are discussing like what what that will look like in the future. Uh and the answer to that question um is twofold because it is what it will look like in the future meaning the next two years where we have students that have taken some variation >> right >> of what this will be um

031and what it will look like beyond that right >> um but then you know we also have some >> you know variables and constraints that we have to kind of hammer out and discuss uh relative to that when we talk about you know will all [clears throat] students take the class there are some you know, factors that need to play. >> But I think it it was >> the more the more the better. >> It was I think the intention when the freshman the ninth grade experience when I got here was already in the works and Linda was part of that in her prior role was to and many schools have a sister or a complimentary course in the in the middle school getting them ready to think about career pathways. So it is it

032is it is a an appropriate the other thing I which probably goes without saying is all of these efforts are to keep students engaged in purposeful experiences versus >> sitting in a stud. >> I've never done that. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Um >> oh sorry if I >> go ahead. So the good news is that we in the absence of a STEM teacher, we do have many many offerings at Scatakope in terms of computers, computer science, computer literacy. So and then they have their math and then they have their science class. So there is it's not as if STEM has been thrown out the window, >> right? >> I just want to make sure that >> No, no, no. I I understand that. I I know that job's always been hard hard to fill. Y

033>> um last question if I can remember from my notes here. Oh, so which eighth graders get to take language? You said five classes of 25ish. >> So the we have a um cultural connections class this year. >> Yep. >> Um that we are piloting and that is um designed to help students work on their EOA skills while they're getting that exposure to the language and culture of the three languages that are actually offered at New Milford High School. Yeah. Um, and that course is really designed for students that need that extra reinforcement of the EA ELA skills before they move up to the high school. So, we look at a variety of data points, I Ready, the Dibbles, ESbook, we take teacher recommendation into account um when we make those placement recommendations. Um, so

034really it is EO performance that >> so it's much the same as we used to do going into seventh when they would start the L looking at all that information. Okay, >> thank you. >> Oh, please jump. >> Mine is more of a generalized [clears throat] comment. Having come back in after being away for for several years, um I've heard about Greta Coke. I've uh inquired about it and I've heard nothing but uh great things about your school. Uh I know you're there about five years now and you have turned around what what is a very problematic school for us. Um and [clears throat] I what I'm hearing here is is your emphasis not only on the academics but the non-academic part student in essence a whole person learning experience which I think is critical.

035We're grateful. Is that uh >> Thank you. That was a very nice presentation as well. My pleasure. Thank you so much for the second. >> I just have a couple number >> questions. No, no, no worries. And Joe, to piggyback on that, that's what I was looking at when when you mentioned that in your presentation. I couldn't agree more and I I appreciate that emphasis. When I looked at the line item and I didn't have a chance and this is really kind of more Anthony I guess I see the trans the the transportation line for athletics hasn't really changed much. It's up by like you know $1,100 higher. Okay. And I'll give you the page number. So my question to that would be is it because of the overall contract influence or is because of

036the number of opportunities or things that we're offering? >> Anthony can I >> go you can start Linda go ahead. So, this I feel like was one of the first budget years where I actually got to at the time of the budget look at a lot of previous usage history. >> I get it. I'm on page 31 for everyone in just >> there was there was more actual data available to me. >> Okay. >> All right. And I wasn't having to kind of like project as much in previous years. is there wasn't as much data for me to go on based on the coach bucks transportation and what was going to happen with rising costs and things like that. So that's why this year I I've had more data to go on and I was

037able to >> I appreciate that because I'm I like the data as you know and when I saw that it's just in this one line item that there are other transportation I noticed um in this that [clears throat] so we know that a bus contract goes up there's a there's an adjustment there but I was curious because of your reading and and going to what Joe said is it that we're offering more opportunity or is the opportunity remaining the from the threshold of the year before kind of thing. And is it just a dollar amount change? It's a minor dollar amount. I'm just curious because you covered it in your overview. >> Yeah, generally speaking, it's it's the dollar amount increase. >> Okay. Um >> Oh, I'm I'm pleased with all the opportunities. I had

038just one more followup and I'll try and be very brief because this might take um a little bit of Anthony, you probably know this. I'm going to take appendix C4 please and I am going to compare it to the overview and this is just a staffing in general question. We have 140 positions or staff that's mentioned in your overview. Not all of them are reflected on the appendix and you covered that again because you mentioned that they're not all reflected there. Um, is it possible for me to get a breakdown what is off of what is not on this page or will that be covered in other areas because I think I might have determined where could I be correct for example let's just start with a where I'm missing 3.9 administrators were presented in

039your overview that doesn't match what's here on the appendix >> and I just want to be careful like when I kind of circle that's 140 staff meetings there as community members not necessarily at >> okay but it but it's still off by you know 38 people >> so I I'm just curious what the breakdown is it might sound silly I just like to know where the staff are and how we allocate it >> they are as um as the principal said they are all shown as the um actual FTEES on appendix C and then some of them reside in other departments such as uh special ed and especially Department of Instruction >> facilities. I think what do we >> Okay. And some when we get to how they're actually funded, some are are some grant

040funded and things like that. We have to be careful of that. And can I assume things like school psychologists, speech pathologists, those are all in different areas. They're not reflected on this page. >> That's correct. They are on appendix C7 and C6. some of those ones that are deployed and the same will be for the high school later on. >> I correct. So I just would like to know because I like to know and if someone looks at the presentation and they compare it to this there it there's a misconnect and I think our job is to get in front of the message and understand it. Um where's the.5 administrator if it's 3.9 on here and >> will you explain how the administrative structure please? So, um I'm a full-time I have two full-time employees.

041>> Uh we have a point4 assistant principal and a half-time supervisor of special education. >> Okay. Okay. Because it >> so that that halftime supervisor special education is probably in the PPS budget. >> It's in the special ed budget. Yep. >> Okay. >> Y the point for assistant principal as you know is shared with >> Northville >> and the overview in the budget book and Dr. Parlott's presentation. There's been no staffing changes, both negative or positive, in your building, in this budget. >> Correct. >> Just want to be clear on that. >> Okay. Appreciate that. >> Is that it? >> Thank you. >> Not at all. Thanks again. >> Next, we'll have Mr. Ma from New Milford High School and I think probably Mr. Leinsky will come up with it. Thank is getting ready. Thank

042you to our assistant principles as well and our uh secondary supervisor of special education who are uh >> holding it down in the back. >> Ready? >> I am ready. We are ready. Good evening everyone. Um I want to first and foremost uh thank you all for this opportunity to speak and giving an overview of the festival school year. Before I begin uh and Janet just kind of beat me to it. I uh want to give thanks to the crew behind me. Um my team is part of the family. They're instrumental in our day-to-day work. Um from Miss Bergner, um Kevin Vest, Mr. Blake, Dr. Mr. Leinsky who will be presenting athletics later on. Um they are um the fabric uh that holds us together on a daily basis. They have tireless work ethic and

043uh I I really commend them for their day they work and their vision uh and their compassion for our kids in our community. So big thanks to them. Also goes without saying I'm both thank thankful and grateful for uh my kids at school and uh my amazing staff. Um, we've made some dramatic improvements over the last five years. Um, and we really focused tremendously this year on the sense of belonging, knowing our children, um, knowing the students that walk into our classes every day. Um, understanding who they are, what they need, um, to be able to meet them and exceed those needs. Um, because we we know who they are. We we strive to eliminate anonymity. know the children, know what they need, and that's that is a true team effort to get that done.

044I'd also like to give thanks to Dr. Parlado, Holly, um you know, Mr. Turner, uh Mr. Cunningham. These guys are with me every day. They're on the phone whenever I need. Um sometimes Mr. Cunningham can bark at me, Matt. but uh he has a good heart and and I we've made again some some pretty dramatic improvements there with our facilities over the last five years and it's it's a true team effort. So uh with that I'd like to get into our presentation for this evening. Um similarly to how uh Linda started off these are the this is the belief system of what we have here and and when it comes to everything that we do on a daily basis. We want our our children to be competitive. We want our children to be competitive in

045the job market, college and career, um at universities, whatever their heart, whatever beats their heart, we want to be able to provide them with that opportunity through experiential learning, um through real world application. Um and we strive to do that in the halls and classrooms and on the fields and outside. Uh when it comes to how we do business at Milford High School, we embrace challenges. That's something that we've seen grow with our students since we've been able to come back um from the COVID time there. We our children have changed over the last five years and and and really that change has been evident through their returning to our our bands, our chorus, um our athletic field. The level of volunteerism that has really spiked in the last two years uh I'd like to

046say is part of the the thoughtful and intentional programming that we do through our on track work. We want our students to be part of the community, not just I better wake up and go to the high school. There's reasons why I want to be able to go there and we provide for our students through this team. Um we work in regards to respecting and appreciating humans. I'll talk a little bit about some of that programming and how our budget will accomplish that um for the 26th and 25th school year. And while I didn't include this slide, the um state accountability indices were released recently for the 24th 25th um school year. And uh you know, we've gone from three years ago where we had instances of suspension or exclusion. Uh we had been to

047about a 6.9 to a 9.6. We are down to a four point a four number off up top my head right now. I'll get that for you later. But we're we're heading in the right direction. Um our students behaviors are are matching what we're expecting of them on a regular and daily basis. They're coming to school. They're ready for school and our teachers are ready for them. Uh quick breakdown when we talk about new high school in action public schools in action. Uh as of today we are 1,160 students of those students. We've got similar middle school and increase in special education needs. We're a little bit under the district average at 15% of those students and our MLL or multiple language learners population is about 7%. So, um, we've done some very strategic planning

048there to be able to meet with our our ninth grade students who are both MLL and, um, um, special education. We do that quarterly. Uh, myself and Miss Bergner meet with those students and we check to make sure that they've got the things that they need to be successful and if there are challenges, we are able to dispatch the appropriate resources. Um, and similarly, um, Mr. Blake and Miss Neves does that for our MLS students. Um so we have touch points with these students quarterly to make sure that we we give them what they need. We're proud of our ontrack work and I've got some um slides and some data to support that in a few moments. Um we are always working to make sure that when our students do come to school, we provide

049them with uh the empathetic and understanding that everybody belongs through our wingman programming. uh where we also provide our peer-to-peer program that allows our older school students to partner with our younger students um to help them in their transition successful transition from middle school or out of the district or out of the country. Uh we've been involved in this year and it's been a very successful program um for us to be able to help our students transition and be part of that family. the pathways programming work that we've done uh is is proudly growing and providing us the opportunities to go out in the community and I'll explain a little bit more about that and our community work expresses the value and the importance of of having the kids come here and when they don't

050what are the actions that we take to make sure that we reach out to the families and provide resources to help them get here and uh flex which started last year and continued this year continues to be an asset for us and our summit program which is an alternate program we'll talk a little bit about That table below is from um our our book that's been provided for you to from Dr. Parlado and you can see a breakdown of where we were from 2526 versus what we're requesting in regards to the 2627 um which ultimately boils down to about a 1.56% increase. We've got a breakdown of our our staff and um you can give a quick gander here broken into three categories. The top category talks about our certified staff that are dealing with

051our students inside of our classrooms on a regular basis and that includes 102 classroom teachers. That does include our department chairs or lead teachers. We've got our special education department chair who is a true champion for our students and working with our special education teachers and our regular education teachers to make sure that our students get what they need in regards to um accommodations and modifications as per per their their learning goals. And we also have a learning coordin pathways coordinator, pardon me. Um that helps us really with all of our work in school planning to go outside of the school and our night events that are associated with our pathways program. Our support staff uh boils down to two social workers, 1.5 psychologists, we we have a 0.5 vacancy right there currently a substance

052abuse counselor, six counselors that work with our students by alpha range, um 15 pareducators, there's one student school of student care worker that's currently vacant, our speech and language pathologist, which is some shared staff and then our occupational and physical shared with our secretaries as well. the numbers that are in our projected enrollment um are on a decline over the last five years here. We were in the 1300s and I do believe with that last value for the class of 2030, it's going to put us roughly in the the low or or just under,00 students for the upcoming school year. Our work we try to make sure it's done with consistency, it's clear. We speak a [clears throat] but we speak a common language and that's really what we've been striving to do uh this

053year at the Milford High School. To do that, we work closely with many of the principles that have been created first um and worked on at the high school with the vision of the graduate and the vision of the graduate transformed into the portrait of lifelong learning. And we're proud of this. Um it's it's really been um a process where while it started first in the high school and we tried it would directly fit into the younger grades. This is really um a revision or evolution of it that allows all of our stakeholders across prek to 12 plus um be part of this work. And and these are the the guiding principles that help us do everything inside of our classrooms and outside of our classrooms to help create a well-rounded student and learner. Um

054how do we communicate that? It's important that we be clear and transparent with our stakeholders on a regular basis. It's critical. U some of those acronyms that you see up there, I can explain to you very very quickly. uh every single week the team that I mentioned with thanks and gratitude when we first began uh our administrative team meeting uh we meet after school on Mondays and we make connections and we have discussions and conversations not just about the day-to-day business but about our goals about our vision um about our responsibilities and we then use those conversations to um also work into our instructional leadership team meetings ILT our ILT are the administrative team along with all of our department leaders Sometimes some of our district folks join us as well and we do everything

055from projects to see how we can take some of this work and disseminate it through our departments with our um once a month faculty andor once a month department meetings and um that's some of the stakeholders and then regularly we communicate every single um Friday we send out a message to make sure that salient points um very important links are sent not only to our parents but to our staff and to our students using parent square um which I have you know, two-way communications through the app. And it's been it's been so pleasant this year. Quite honestly, it's been a a great addition to our um what's going on inside of our classrooms. That really has to do with the um Newton public schools uh key the instructional keystones. And you can see that graphic

056down below. Those are the principles that we really want to see again, not just at the high school, but across the school district. And when it comes to what those principles are, we use that graphic above as our our our guiding light. When our students need to be able to access or gain access um to our curriculum, uh we want to make sure that our teachers are using these high impact tier one strategies. These are happening across our classrooms. We use instructional rounds to see these things happening. We use regular walkthroughs to see these things happening and it leads to some really um powerful conversations when it comes to written feedback you might re u leave behind for a teacher or a conversation in passing about some of the great stuff we can do. And

057um finally I'm also going to be talking about some of the C uh Connecticut State Department of Education accountability measures. These are the the the summer work where we'll sit down and we'll do a a review and revise of where we are as a school, what our goals are, how our school goals match our district improvement plan, and how our teacher goals are going to align so that we're doing things intentionally guided by those principles to make sure how we're going to be assessed at the state level, how other groups are going to be looking at our performance and the metrics that are um defining us. We're we're doing intentional and purposeful acts, professional learning um to make sure that we as adults are properly prepared. Um this was our ontrack work and um it

058was it evolved dramatically in regards to how this process first started off. We were able to go to a conference two summers ago and from it we recognized that at the high school we had some um absenteeism after COVID that certainly needed to be attended to. We had some behaviors that we wanted to make sure that we can get corrected. Um and we really broke it down to the ABCDS uh and that is we're focusing on our academics with a certain number of credits so you can stay on track to graduate in four years. Uh we are focusing on be being here not just being present in the school but being in your class. um making sure that you're there for the experience because it's rich, it's rewarding, and it's really going to help you

059develop your understanding of the content so that you can be able to use it not just in that classroom to be successful, um but then to follow your endeavors wherever they may bring you once you graduate from the school. mentioned the community. Um we want and and as I've seen, we've had a spike in in students volunteering to be everything from incoming freshman night um to our our orientation evenings and events. Our National Honor Society has really stepped it up and provided extra help for every single study hall that's available for our students. Um they're available to go into the LLC and work with those students. It's really booming. Um so these there's lots of of of profound things that happen. And then obviously the last thing, do the right thing. And we want our

060students to be kind, caring, compassionate. Um, and and we strive to be able to get that done. I put those boxes around the portrait of learner just to make connections because the second part that I wanted to talk about here is our our champions for our kids. And our champions are our teachers. And we use our teachers um through our advisory period to allow our students to go through a student-led protocol where they do reflections on their own goals. How are they doing with these things? Um, and then based on that reflection, it leads to conversations where the teachers can then make suggestions about where they're going for flex, how they're going to use their flex time to get extra help with office hours. Um, how they might be able to to join a different

061club or activity to grow something that they can see because the student has have have shared that. Um, again, trying to make that connection to school. We we really want students to be part of the fabric of the green. And here is some uh evidence from the accountability index. And this is from indicators uh 78 and 9 that is showing our our ontrack progress. Um left to right you can actually see that first value was precoid 1819 and um blue is showing you all students ontrack progress. Pre-COVID it was uh 88 um 0 I believe that number is we had a sharp decline after we returned from COVID down to 82 and all of our students have actually shown a steady rise in increase uh to 85.9% for the last year's cohort. Um what I

062think is most profound here is if you look at our students with the six sixyear high needs um precoid that value was down in the uh 80 I think it's 83.3 and it rose exactly four percentage points um for last year's cohort. uh this doesn't happen by chance. Uh this is with the intentional programming that I've just discussed and shared with you. Uh we we care about the kids. We ask the kids to be part of this process and based off that process and feedback we collect. We act on it. It's not just doing it for for show. Um we take the time to be thoughtful and make sure we get the kids at our adults that they need um to help our students be successful. Part of that work also has to do with

063the L um castlesled standard development that we do on a regular basis. This budget will provide for us to continue the wingman movement. Um this has this year and Mr. Best I think this was the highest number of uh wingman leaders that we had. Um these students are broken down and provided instruction about how to engage with lead programming. This is a leadership opportunity and um they are also partnered with a classroom um teacher and that teacher helps supervise, pass out, do what whatever but our students become leaders and their training helps go into classrooms to activate and motivate students become engaged become part of the programming. Um we collect data from these students on a regular basis and we use that data to change the next lessons. Um the students are involved with those

064lessons and it helps really focus on social awareness, responsible um developing responsibility, um relationship skills and the the day-to-day work that you are essential skills, right? You know, we sometimes call those soft skills, but we need students to be effective communicators, critical thinkers, and collaborative. Uh and the this programming helps us do that. this this additional program, our peer-to-peer work uh has championed from the um March meetings that we have with Sagatoke on a regular basis. In this second year, we are proud to add Spanish and Portuguese native speakers um so that we can partner uh like I mentioned in the kind of the preamble um our our upper grade students who are juniors or seniors who've gone through our our onboarding program. Um we we bring them together um they are they're monitored through

065this pro process. It's creating an instant friend. Uh it's creating the opportunity for our students to feel that they are a part of the community. They are encouraged to be able to um invite their their their peer to all sorts of different events and it really helps our students successfully transition. proud of the young people who have volunteered to be part of this work. Um, as has uh provided a a real strong foundation for our students who are coming from Scatakoke or coming from Sherman or coming from out of state or out of country to instantly have somebody that they know they need to talk to and um the conversations have been rich and rewarding. This this budget will allow for us to be able to continue providing this service. It's my first time throwing

066a video in here, folks. So, bear with me. I'll see folks. Uh, and and really, and I've said that term before for um when I talked to to my team about family and about the adults about family, ironic, we actually did a maybe it's not ironic. We did this wonderful activity with Dr. Parlato during our retreat this summer. And Janet, how many how many pieces of paper were in that stack with all those words? You had to I mean, it was a substantial >> Oh, it was about 95, >> right? And and my final word that came out of that was family. And and you you you put two words down, you take one out, you you don't even think about it. You just do it. And the final word that I had standing was

067was family. I treat our our our people like family. I mean, this they're with us very frequently. So, I want to make sure um that we also focus on the sense of family and belonging. We did an activity at the beginning of the year. Jeeoff, will you be able to activate that for just give me one one second. And I wanted to make sure that our teachers knew who our kids were. So, we took photos from the yearbooks from the year previous and we blew them up. We cut them out and we followed a three-step protocol putting them all up and down um the 1300 and 1100 hallway and asked our staff to go through and be able to put indicators on there about did you know the student by name? Did you know something

068more about that student or do you think that student's [clears throat] trusted adult? And then based off that information, we sorted it and we gave it to our um our our advisory teachers so that they had an instant foundation for who those kids are. Um we also in our first advisory meetings asked our students to give an honest feedback and we took that data and we sorted it by our our advisories and we gave that back to the students. Um how do you define success? What are the best attributes that you've experienced when it comes to a a teacher? And um this video that you're about to see right here was unsolicited and Mr. Blake and I were actually trying to record a little segment for the teachers and one of our favorite students happened

069to pop in. So here's Cortez. >> So >> what's the best part of >> Best part? The culture. >> Nice. teacher, you know, friends, students like >> you have a great weekend. >> There's there's there's a great back, right? And and the kids want to be there and they want to be engaged and it's helpful that that's a big shift that I've seen in the last five years with our kids and our community. And in addition to that, um just recently we were recognized uh at the school um for the uh AP 2025 silver award for our students are our our staff and students performance really in regards to uh the number of students that we have taking it, those who are achieving success with the three or higher um and the college culture. Um

070we actually missed the gold standard um by just a few fractions of a point. And as much as I'd like to say we're going to get it next year, this is the last year they're providing this award. So, uh, I'm proud of this. I was able to, um, call out to the college board in the last nine years. Uh, we hadn't been recognized with any of those. Um, so this is a wonderful achievement for our students to come into school. They're engaging with our staff. Our staff are proudly prepared to help them be successful. So, I think this is celebrated. With some of that work and celebration, we also want to provide opportunities to be able to get to college and career. And so some of those opportunities this budget will provide um while some

071of that work was first really fueled by our our dual enrollment grant that we were able to provide through a a straight state application process. Um you know in 22 and 23 we were one of the lowest in the state of Connecticut in regards of the number of students that were graduating with three plus college credits. Um and there was an article that was released that we were about 3% of our students that were graduating. uh and I I wanted to see if we could change that and we were very thoughtful. We were very careful and we were deliberate in that process and I'm proud to say that for the 26 27th school year there are 13 classes potential courses that students can take um and they include our project lead the way courses that

072receive the potential for credit at the University of New Haven and um Polytech. Uh we've got our our programming, some of which are math and history courses from Western Connecticut State University, English course from Yukon, and we've even have exercise and physiology courses that are with Sacred Heart University. Um and and those students are college students. They are dual enrolled. They are are getting a semesterl long college experience in a full year at at the high school. It's in a safe environment. um and they've got all sorts of resources to be able to achieve success here at a fraction of the cost. So, I'm proud to say that we went from a a few offerings to quite a robust opportunity for our students and for our communities. Additionally, this budget will be able to provide

073um the funding and resources for us to continue our Pathways programming. And um really something that's we're we're blessed to have is a Pathways Coordinator position. Um, and that allows for us to engage with our monthly advisory boards. Um, Miss Hollander is part of that work. Dr. Dwire is part of that work, our school counseling, and it allows for us to go out into the community. It allow allows for us to make partnerships with New Vance Health um to to provide internships over the summer and a week-long immersion, uh, which has doubled from last year to past summer. Uh we're actually exploring a a financial opportunity through H High Bank to be able to provide a small um but kind of a a simple opportunity for our students to do something similar but in the

074banking finance business over the summer. Um there's more coming about that shortly. And we've been working with Columbia University closely with Dr. Parlato and Miss Hollander um to create the potential or prospects for an educator pathways program. Um, you know, besides the fact that we've got a shortage and a crisis um with with certified and and eligible staff for purposes, um, we are right next to Western, we've got many of our students that go to the um, state school systems and also Yukon. So, it'd be wonderful for us to be able to provide strategic courses sophomore, junior, and senior year that are aligned through ECE to provide students with an entry- level transcript to be able to then go into these one this this wonderful and necessary profession. So, looking forward to being able to

075provide that shortly. Um, this started last year and our budget that's proposed to you would allow for this program to continue. Um this this was many years of of hard work precoid of kind of spinning wheels doing some re research. It got derailed during co and now that we've come back we we've been blessed to work um [clears throat] again with with Dr. Parliament to provide our alternate program which is referred to as the summit. It is in the building. It was intended to be 8 to 12. We are currently at 12 and we have a waiting list. Um the the programming provides certified staff to work with our students inside of our classrooms. Uh it provides the opportunity for our students to get out into the community. It provides guest speakers. Um they are

076still able to do the same flex work and uh advisory that we do with all of the students and we have the blessing to be able to have those shared resources because it's canceled down the floor always. So there it's an application process. It's an application for them to be able to to get into this program or can continue for the program. Um, and we're proud to say that we've got success with students, some who were completely school avoidant prior to this program, come to school on a regular basis. So, um, it's it's getting those kids back into school. It's getting them in front of certified staff and making sure that we provide for them not just academically, but emotionally. And my final slide before I pass this over to um for athletics and um

077it's it's really the what you're looking in front in that booklet provides for us adequate FTE to ensure that we've got classrooms um that aren't over overflowing with students. They're responsible numbers to make sure that we can have uh a safe, warm, and a ratio of student to teacher uh that's appropriate to make sure that we can meet our needs. It also provides for appropriate funding for our our current administrative team, clerical, people with support staff. Um, and the other thing here obviously as Linda had mentioned, there's the the cost of doing business when it comes to disposable materials. Um, that's also reflected inside this budget. That is going to change year to year. I don't anticipate that we're going to suddenly see some sort of reversal in that. Um but those are the resources

078that we need um to make sure that we can do business on a daily basis. We also are able to provide the resources and support to allow our students to continue to access the arts which is also indices matri part of the indices matrix. Um and that includes all of our art bands fine arts uh and music courses and our security will remain the same for next year with a one securitas during the school day a.5 for the 4 to8 shift for the adult education. It will include our wonderful SRO that's down there, Officer Bolero, and our two uh SSOs who have been a wonderful addition to our team family. >> Does anyone have any questions? >> What do we want to finish the presentation? >> Oh, excuse me. I'm so sorry. >> Do athletics

079or this >> do athletics? Yeah. Yes, we'll do athletics. >> Both your thoughts. >> Okay. Well, thank thank you everybody for the opportunity to speak about our athletic department um which is a huge part of our school culture and a huge part of the developer school community. [clears throat] Um again just we try to reflect everything in our school mission of what we do in the athletic department giving students the opportunities to develop those life skills that they'll take on with them the rest of their lives. the teamwork, the communication, [clears throat] the overcoming adversity, um working with different types of learners, different types of skill levels, and demonstrating that respect for the coaches, the teammates, the opponents, the referees, everybody involved. Um we're very proud of the job that we do in teaching those

080lifelong skills to our student athletes. We always start our home events with announcements and we talk about how athletics is an extension of our education where we learn the skills of sportsmanship, fair play, and respect for other people. Uh I'm pleased to report uh that this year our school Milford High School athletic department received for the fourth straight year Michael Cup award. um which was presented to us at the CIA sportsmanship banquet back in October for the weird work that we've done in the athletic department with our athletic council members um to promote sportsmanship, citizenship, and community service uh while also promoting positive school spirit and um having our spectators cheer the right way and making the atmosphere one that's positive that people want to be a part of and leave Milford High School uh

081with excitement and enjoyment. That's a big deal, by the way, for in the high school and the sports community. Getting it four years in a row doesn't always happen. Not many schools can say that. >> So, we're very proud of that. And again, just not to be repetitive, but some of those life skills again that um are so important um not only in athletics and in high school, but that we all take with us for the rest of our life. We have 28 sport offerings at the high school currently uh with many of them having multiple levels either freshman JV brushmore um which is combination of freshman and sophomores. We we play some games with with uh those two grades um and for last school year we had 524 student athletes that did participate in

082athletics which was 45 just over 45% of our school population. So again, a huge part of our our school community uh consists of student athletes. We also are extremely proud of our unified sports program. Um we've offered programs of unified soccer, bowling. We are starting up basketball here very shortly this winter. Also unified track in the spring. We've also had our our league does a tremendous job of getting our all the unified athletes together. We've done homecoming dances. We've done proms um which have been which have been very exciting. And then we also have a unified sports and leadership dinner at the end of the night where one of our athletes and one of our partners get presented with award at our at our league awards night um for the the job they do in

083our youth sports program which is um really really special night and again something that we're very very proud of. um not many changes to the budget. The only two items that are the only two lines that went up this year were purchase services and that was due to the increase in referee fees, referees, officials and judges uh for [clears throat] our events. Um and then the other line was um you know just off the top of my head that one oh dues and fees. Um our league fees went up a little bit. some of the entry fees for some of the tournaments and invitationals that our teams go to, those fees increased. Um, so just a little bit of a bump in those two line items for athletics and every other uh the same as

084this past year. And again for uh for this upcoming school year, the the athletic budget will ensure that uh we have the equipment that we need for our 28 athletic programs. We have transportation that we need to these events. We have the event staffing of officials, security, ambulance services, and our game workers, scoreboard operators, um those sorts of things. the dues and fees for our league and state membership and tournament entry fees and the rental fees that we have for the sports of golf, boys and girls swimming, hockey, and gymnastics that are held off off campus. >> Any questions? >> Quick question. I noticed there was three certified staff tech, two language arts and one math. were they um what was the driving factor of >> for the reductions in those areas? >> Um so

085the average class size in English um is was an area where there could be the potential for reduction um based on its comparison to the other four areas and for mathematics we did have less in the beginning of the year. Um similarly when you look at the average class size compared to other disciplines um those reductions would be able to have that still be a reasonable classroom size was >> negative. Yes. Thank you. Uh in one of your slides the projected enrollment um we are seeing in the next three three years a decrease of 50 student >> I thought it was 52 from the >> 30250 um year from 272 total but based on how those students will transition from based on so um 34. >> Okay. and the CSD accountability index [clears throat] >>

086am I correct that we are seeing an 86% gradu graduation rate in 12th grade or do I am I not understand this index >> 84 I have.9% >> for all all students >> yes um our our students who are on all of our students are on 88.9% for gradu graduation for last year's cohort. >> 88.9 >> Yes. [clears throat] >> Is there an understanding as to why we're losing 11% of the students not graduating? >> Yeah. So, so not on track means somewhere along the way that that student has experienced some sort of exper um some sort of event that required um loss of credit and if that loss of credit is often attributable to um truency um school avoidance um the inability to be able to be successful in a class though something that

087we're focusing on and working on improving. That's why we're seeing some other sub groups there beginning to increase. Um but yes that that that number is uh at 88.9 which we were at 88.0 precoid. Um I'm not I'm not happy with that number. It is it has room for growth and improvement but we're trending in the right direction. >> And um briefly some of the things we're doing to try and increase that graduate graduation rate. [clears throat] So, uh, the summit program, um, we want to make sure that some of those students who hadn't been coming to school can be in a smaller environment, still getting the opportunity to burn their towards graduation. We're bringing them back from school, going back into school, only helping a small number of students. Um, but that that's 12

088more students who are are going to have the opportunity through this program to be able to get their their credits. Um, we also had gone through a bit of an evolution in regards to credit recovery programming. um something that had lived inside the school during some of the school programming and it still does exist for some students who have IEPs. Um but we do offer a credit recovery program through um Miss Hollander and one of our English department leaders after school. So if I say my my I have a terrible tragedy in my my life my my freshman year. I miss some school, my father passes away. Uh I struggle to get back and be engaged and be successful semester one. I I I don't pass two classes. Um I have the opportunity through this

089after school programming if I'm eligible for it with a certain GPA and attendance um to be able to earn those credits back in a computer-based program um which will help us get those students back on track. We're changing what that might look like with the program format. Um, but we've been being able to provide the opportunity for students to get that back as well. Um, the social emotional learning, it it was something that I've seen shift over the last few years. Kids came back, they were quiet, they were disengaged, they were disconnected. um the number of students that would um just be a passenger uh in the in in the class is beginning to decline and that's that's because of strategic professional learning that we're doing with our teachers. Um that has to do with

090those 12 high impact strategies. I need to know where my students are. I need to use formative instruments to figure out what I need to do next. And then we need to be flexible enough to be able to use our time um to help those students get what they need to be to demonstrate understanding of the curriculum. If I could just follow up on that point, the school also does the high school also does work and I'm not sure if you're including this in your number, but they also will follow the student after their supposed graduation date that they didn't make and work with them through similar program online and help them exe those courses and they although they may not graduate with their class maybe six months later or four months later or whatever

091it may be, they do in fact graduate though. Yeah, you know, some of the some additional programs that we do, not just with the credit recovery. Um, we we do work with um BYU, which is a credit university. It provides students to take courses above and beyond. Um, and there is structure that's associated with that. Um, but it it does allow for our students to take courses as they get older um to be able to try to catch up with some of those credits that might be lost. And then finally with everything else that we had shared here, we're trying to give opportunities for students to find a path um that works for them. You want to go to college and career, you can take a plethora of ECE and AP type courses. If you

092want to go more in the trades or fields and or be a public or civil servant, we've got different pathways that the students can go through. It's not just you open up a book and you select a bunch of courses. We we really want to be thoughtful about knowing who our students are, knowing where they're going after um they graduate from the school, and then making sure that we give opportunities for them to to meet, listen, hear, and visit when it comes to career connected learning opportunities um through our pathways, our pathways program, [clears throat] >> and that's what I like to hear. Um college is not for everybody. Um, and in this day and age, uh, the costbenefit analysis of college is is becoming a serious issue. Um, and we're looking at our trade

093industry in the United States. Um, the desire for people with particular skills and trades is is significant and and they're actually being incredibly well paid in this area. And >> for sure >> I'd like to see that we're we're we're helping students who find that college is not the pathway for them. At least not at this phase. We're not here to put everybody in college. But I truly believe we're cost benefit analysis is is going out the window. I I [clears throat] can also say and while I didn't include this in any part of the presentation, uh I'm I'm happy that we had the opportunity to work to post and um attain a teacher who's certified and qualified to bring back our um our our computerated grafted drafting wrapping and design courses. Um and she

094actually was a teacher who was with us as a librarian. Um then she came here, she continued her certification. Miss Sarah has returned to our school and brought back life to a class and a program that sat vacant. She's got wonderful vision about how that's going to be reshaped and reworked over the coming years. And additionally, our wood shop, which you all know very well about, um had to go through massive um updates and renovations. And then we most recently have lost that teacher. Exactly. Um and we worked diligently over the last several months to replace that person with a teacher. >> We have someone now. good yet. Um they actually beginning as an instructor with semester 2. So it's u just a few few days away >> on um >> you already started sub

095>> early college experience courses >> in 22 23 we less than 3% were were had three plus college credits. >> Where are we now? Oh, this will be the first real year um this upcoming year 2627. We spent the last two years um collecting interest from staff um and then finding out which staff would be eligible for qualification as a an adjunct professor with the cooperating institute of higher education. Um that process took some time. Along with that process, uh we also worked in and handinhand with um Miss Hollander's office to make sure that we could um follow the course proposal process, develop curricula that were aligned to and or directly from the colleges or universities um and go through that process of getting them implemented. We ran a small pilot last year um with

096some math courses and um we're proud to be able to have those staff ready to rock rock and roll thoroughly for next year. >> And that is is leading into my next u [clears throat] series of questions and they're they're more global in nature. Um we have seen we saw a presentation the other day uh yesterday and uh we saw uh children students from one through three uh back learning phonics which is fascinating um it's a proven program from from a long time ago but we also I also saw and I caught the attention of the fact that one of the programs has these young students reading five books over the course of a period of time. uh Harvard and Yale just wrote uh presented a an article where they said they're getting in freshmen

097at at the most elite level that have never read a book cover to cover. And what a tragedy are we in our English classes and our reading classes having students read an entire book from cover to cover? >> Yes. And it's actually been a focus uh this year particularly um to increase the the the number of minutes that we're having be part of our work um not necessarily in class but as a responsibility coming in prepared for your next class. So um that is something that we do. I'm not familiar with the the paper or the research that you're you're referencing. Um I I will certainly look into it but um yeah I I think that if you go back in the time a little bit Unfortunately, when we put screens in front of our

098our our our young people and we said, "This is going to be the vehicle um that you have your classroom experience, it it really changed practice and expectations about what that teaching and learning experience look like." We're trying we me personally, our teachers, our district were trying to go backwards from that. This is a tool. It's an instrument to help supplement. Um but there's there's nothing that beats actually having that physical resource in front of you, accessing that book. Um I was just in a class on Friday and it was one of the the most refreshing lessons I saw from one of our newer teachers uh where the students were provided some essential questions. They had to read through find citation and quote um different elements from the pardon me the text and they did

099a seminar lesson where each student had to speak three times uh and they addressed each other by name. um they agreed or disagreed with quotation that they used directly cited from the um the book. It was impressive. It was studentled showing evidence of their understanding, being able to formulate their their beliefs and understandings um and defend it with with clear evidence that they're they they know what's going on in that book. We're doing that in our halls. >> And that is what I'd like to hear. I think we have lost our way depending on Chromebooks and and and phones uh because we've lost sight of picking up one of these books and reading it and and and researching citing. Um meaning you had to have read something in the book to site. Um and I

100I I've heard throughout the nation school districts are starting to move away from that um tech part to get back to to those basics of learning. And the last area I'm going to cover, I'm going to turn over. Are you aware of the study done by the University of California, San Diego on student academic preparation? It was done. It was completed in November 2025. >> I can't say I'm familiar with it now. >> All right. [clears throat] And the UC San Diego is a preeminent school. There's no question about that. And what they found is that incoming students were falling below middle school standards in one out of eight freshmen. Two out of five had severe deficiencies in remedial uh writing instruction. Uh, are we here in New Milford working to get past this issue

101of students not having basic math and writing skills going to college? And I say that understanding I'm believe there's a lot of avenues past college. Um, but are we you disagree with just based on what I said with University of San Die uh California San Diego is saying that their freshmen are coming in with significant deficiencies in two basic areas of learning math and writing. >> I'd like Miss Hollander to start and then Mr. Bank a second only because she can provide the K12 perspective and how that helps. >> Do I agree with that? Yes. I think that there is a concern our students um are lacking in their ability to um write to read and um and also bringing that sort of those skills beyond reading or procedural. We've identified that I would say

102to you we've looked at this from a K12 and I can say to you that we are shoring up um I keep saying to Mr. Jamaica, be patient. They're coming. Um, we see the um impact of our strategic planning in our core curriculum and it's it's really moving into the K8. Um, students are going to coming to um the middle school with the ability to think, problem, solve, communicate. And um I my colleagues from the uh K5 shared some of their um story through videos and such. students who are excited about reading and writing about what they're reading even as young as a kindergartener. I can feel very confident about our early years. We're really making some great strides, but collectively we are working to address it because it is an issue. The reason I'll

103address that is because I get to work with adult education. and I have the privilege of working with Miss Martin in her program and um when I share with you today some of her data shows that our Milford residents are lacking in some of those basic skills. So um we have work to do but we have plans and we are making those strides from a a systematic approach not just general ed all students the collaboration including doesn't matter it's all students first whether they receive multilingual support special education support we are making progress >> and that's what I'm looking for that's what I heard yesterday >> yes >> what are I don't know if it was K but at least one through three uh phonics and and somewhere somewhere in there we saw uh young

104students working with fourdigit numbers um was it 404 was the number uh we heard so those basics I think over years and we accept co had had a tragic result and it still does but getting back to those basics um is really you know where I want to see our our the the school's budget really focus Um, I'm [clears throat] old school. We don't teach kids the to memorize the multiplication table 1 and 12. That's the basic of all math. Everybody, I think here how to learn memorize it. We don't teach it anymore. That's it for another day. All right. I won't. But it all goes to where we were spending our money. The problems we're seeing at our major universities, major universities. And I'll say again, I don't think the college is for everybody,

105but if we're sending them there, I want to see they're prepared for the basics. Not the elite institutions, our AP students will generally have what it uh takes. But again, you Harvard, how how English teachers, how do we not have students coming in at the elite level, not having read books cover to cover? And that's these are the basics I'd like to see us putting our money onto and and thank you for putting up with me for the last 15 or 20 minutes. >> Sure. >> Um, shift gears a little bit. I just have a curiosity question about the substance abuse counselor. Is that what the title is? Um, does that person go into classrooms or just see kids on a onetoone? What what's that? >> That's a great question. So, uh, it really does

106vary. Uh, it can be, um, our our school counselor can be part of, uh, a PPT, um, depending on if there's something that's been identified as an issue. >> Um, our school counselor, uh, our substance abuse counselor is available for any of our students that have nicotine dependency. Um, so that there is a school-based consequence that's, you know, the rules. Um but breaking the rules doesn't necessarily stop you from nicotine dependence or THC. So um it can be small small group work. It can be individual work. Um I know in the past there has been the prospects of being able to use um her in uh regards of presentations at the the younger grades in middle school. I'm not sure if that has slated for this year. Um but she really is an asset for

107us based on u identified individual needs. >> I was you know when I read that I was thinking in terms of confidentiality issues and a lot of family conversations and maybe even some legal things. So this is quite a quite a position really. >> It is uh I'm I'm happy to have it. Um this is my 11th year as a principal. I hadn't won previous uh as as an assistant principal or a principal. Um, and it really was just kind of one of those things like you're providing resources um or cessation counseling through outside groups or agencies. Um, she provides that for us internally. So, it's it's quite a wonderful benefit for our kids in our community. >> Can I follow up on that? I you mentioned um Mr. Ma, good evening. We have six

108counselors. What are those six counselor positions? What are they? Are they >> There are school counselors. So, one of them is the department chair, right? >> Um for the the um school counseling group. >> It's guidance. That's what I meant. Guidance. >> That's exactly it. I didn't want to miss Okay, so you cut to the chase for me. >> Like I kind of I knew where you >> you knew where I was going because I I didn't want to say guidance counselor. >> It's guidance. Yeah. >> Yeah, that's what they used to call them. I didn't want to, you know, go there, but thank you. Um so, and they're not grade specified. In other words, do we have x amount per grade? It's broken down by account. >> Alpha. That's okay. So, with regards to

109that, because I don't see the change in number, and I'm I'm also tying this with budget, but I'm curious. Um, I know that there was conversations and it's been ongoing about, you know, our counselors both early early on catching our students early, you know, with credits and making sure they're on track and catching what courses they have and what they need because there's nothing worse than being in your junior or senior year and having a required course and still trying to get it assigned to you. It's it's a real struggle. So, um I I I wonder, you know, and I think I'd asked this at another time, having a little bit more drill down of all the good and all the things that our guidance counselors do, and I wanted to make sure that that

110those were all still intact. Part of that, and I don't know if that's part of their role or the overall, in order to have our students engaged, we have to make sure that they're here. And truency is is an issue. It's a challenge. our truency rates have have they got and I don't have the the information in front of me. I [clears throat] know that you covered some of that in the workshop. Have we moved in a positive direction with our turns and our our guidance counselors involved in that or how does that work? >> Sure. That's a a wonderful question. So I can address >> because we want to make sure we have the resources to make sure that we can capture and get it you know whatever we can to make sure our

111students are here if we can. So, uh, our average, even the way that we break it down by alpha, does fall under the recommended max number at the the the nationwide level. So, we we're at a good threshold in regards to the number of of students that we're working with. >> Um, we did go over some we did have some turnover over the first few years. Um, however, I can tell you that we've got a wonderful leader in Miss Demora, um, who is a polyglot. She speaks multiple languages. Um, she does work with all of our ML students. um and she's able to speak to them in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. So, she's a a wonderful resource. Um all of our our guidance counselors, our school counselors, they meet regularly. Um but just like I

112meet with my administrative team, I meet with Mr. De Moa and the work that we do goes back and forth. Um Mr. Blake works closely with our attendance team. Uh where we review data bi-weekly. Um that will involve looking at um our students who have a certain number of absences and meet a threshold. um that will just get your daily communication at 905 or 105 if you were in school or not. Uh it also leads to us reaching out to students, bringing them down to explain why have they've been absent, making sure they provide proper documents. Um and then we we work closely with our our school counselors to make sure that they know which of our students are are on track or off track. Um, when it comes to what they're doing in regards

113of of programming, uh, we do plenty of events outside or after school still that have to do with college and career preparedness, financial aid, our incoming freshman night. They they have a wonderful options for our families and students to engage with. What I think is a more important thing to note is there is a a comprehensive um curriculum that we now use and we strategically push in during our flex advisory periods um with our school counselors to to groups so they can geographically cluster them and over a series or cycles they're going to be able to get to their students. Um and they prioritize based on those who are are are on graduation getting ready for their senior year and then students who are in the lower grades obviously. Um Do I wish we had

11410? Sure. Of course. Yeah. Do do can we make do with what we have? And do I think it's fair, appropriate, and adequate for our needs? I do. Um >> I appreciate that. >> I have just two quick follow these are real short questions. While you have that slide up, Mr. Leensky. Um how much are our ice hockey rental fees currently? >> Between 15 and 16,000 season. >> Okay. And the second line, transportation to away athletic events, is that line item in our athletic transportation line. It's in a separate athletic transportation line, but that is covered under the bus contract. Is that correct, Anthony? >> Uh, not all of it. Some of it is with >> charter buses and all that kind of thing. Okay. So because there was a time as you know just

115coming out of COVID 24 25 budget we got walloped in those lines. I mean walloped. >> I will say that um this winter Allstar probably has been able to cover 90% of our events. >> It shows dollar amount wise. >> We even had to do a transfer or something of the like at one point. So that's why I've asked that question because it was a large number. We want to support our students. we want to support their programs, but when you get hit with 80 grand come March, it's a, you know, it's a surprise. So, I wanted to go on the record with that. So, it looks like we have that planned and covered, which is great. Um, >> and then my my very last question is on the budget itself. It's a silly question.

116And I've noticed throughout the entire budget, Anthony, the um 24943, which are the phones throughout the entire budget, I'm not sure if it was covered in the overview, but we're up, you know, an overall percentage. It's a small number in the scope of all of the schools, but we're up almost 70% across all the line items combined. It's about $70,000 or close to that. >> I don't have the exact amount that was encapsulated in Dr. presentation under the utilities. We added it there to show the increases for phone service across the district >> and I agree you need to have a secure uh you know up-to-date phone system. Um and it's it's categorized under administrative employee program number instead of administrative office. And who's curious why it's done that way? >> I think they're under

117the office of the principal. I think in most locations >> it was it was just out of cur but I understand the would that be considered small capital or not really >> no it's uh service related >> okay >> not not uh not actual goods and those are uh at the locations you'll find them within that office of the principal because otherwise they would have to get allocated to a program like math or science so that's why they're within the office >> so they're not the actual phones >> correct the service the [clears throat] service >> that would be techn that's why I'm asking that that's exactly why because I'm looking at if they're the physical phones and you're looking at technology you're looking at capital and then we look at that a little bit

118different um so I just wanted to clarify >> I'm not mistaken that's coming up I think the future one for the phones >> okay sorry >> was it for me >> I was thinking same thing >> thank you very Next we'll have uh the department of instruction uh that Mer will present. This is part of her role as assistant superintendent of students. >> 43 Is that what we're doing? That's embarrassing. >> No, it's not. I thought you did it on purpose. Start technology. >> Yes, ma'am. >> We're missing one person. >> There's more. >> Two more. >> Ready to go. >> I'm ready. Are you ready? even though we're missing a friend. >> No, I can't this late. >> I'll drink coffee all morning. [snorts] >> All right. Good evening. Uh thank you for this

119opportunity to discuss and highlight the proposed budget for [sighs] the Department of Instruction. Our efforts are guided by our district's mission to support our students to be ready for life learning and work beyond school. This includes our ability to help our students be confident and agile communicators, informed and reflective um critical thinkers, thoughtful and flexible problem solvers, independent navigators of the world around them, growth oriented and resilient learners, create and foster strong relationships to be productive as members of our community. The work of the department of instruction is aligned to the board of education goals as well as the districts that we set at the start of each school year. My efforts have been to ensure that there is alignment and consistency in the systems that are in place for our educators. Our work is

120not done alone. It's not in silos. It's a collective lift. In the department of instruction, our vision is built on a simple premise. Coherency, consistency supports confidence. We are here to provide a consistent system that empower our leaders and teachers to grow their expertise. We are committed to create an environment, a space where our teachers can engage as collaborative partners, understand the why behind our curriculum, and see the direct impact of their work on student learning. Our strategy is to keep the instructional core at the forefront and we ensure that both staff and students are deeply engaged with the values that we live by and our instructional keystones. We believe in being proactive, not ro reactive. We work across all departments to build shared ownership of high quality learning experiences. Ultimately, our goal is to

121clear the path, if you will, so that teachers can focus on what matters most, advocating for every child and ensuring their success. So, with this chart, I I want to help you to get a better sense of the two sides or buckets of my role in the district. A slide that um you have seen over the years and are familiar with. But something I'm excited to share with you is with the addition of the 0.5 secretary, we've been able to address the need for consistency and clarity with our registration process as well as verifying residency over the course of the year to date which is started July 1st. Uh we have addressed 36 instances of residency checks to reverification of student eligibility as a new resident. The central registration efforts have provided clarity for our

122families and consistency in our approach >> including all of grade six. Wow. Right. So it's the 36 investigation so to speak and then we did all grade six incoming grade six. >> Students are at the center of our work. As we work to support student growth, the various parts of the system must work together. This requires careful thinking about the needs in developing responsive strategies. A strength that I bring to this role is including [clears throat] others, leaders and teachers in this work. Communicate and share the efforts. Our new K5 progress report development was an example of this coordination and alignment. Our critical systems must work together not against. >> Excuse me. >> While there are many important operational components to my work, a part of my office is around teaching memory and even some

123of the things that to my office. We have continued our efforts to build and support teacher leadership. I've said this many, many times when I meet with our committee on learning. What talented teachers we have in New Milford. As leaders in learning, we are working together to address needs to look for solutions using various perspectives and ideas. I'd like to take a moment to highlight a few of our programs and support under the Department of Instruction. Multilingual learners. The Department of Instruction overseas the services of multilingual learners. Um as shared yes as shared yesterday, the number of students who are identified as multilingual learners has grown. Our ML teachers multilingual provide targeted instruction based on data such as the last links programming for MLS are grounded in tier one which is good best practices for

124all students. For example, in our f phonics lesson at the K1 level, when introducing a word that starts with the letter P and the sound in English, we show images, real life objects, and students are asked to repeat the new words and be able to become familiar with it in the context of what's going on in the classroom already. The state model requires strong communication and partnerships with our families. In addition to the family outreach our classroom colleagues do for their students, our ML teachers work to ensure there are strong communication systems in place. With the addition of parents square, which my colleagues have highlighted, parents are able to receive messages in their first language. I know the many hats a classroom teacher wears in a given day. The work of supporting our English language

125learners is not meant to be any one person's responsibility. This slide shares the various individuals who are part of this effort. I've been keeping a close eye on the number of our students who qualify for ML programming. Over the past 10 years, our population has increased by 213%. This year, I am not seeking additional support by requesting a position. Instead, we are monitoring each school site and when needed, aligning our available faculty to the school sites with the most need. numbers are reviewed monthly. Our current model is reflected in this slide. The numbers fluctuate. It's winter months when we see an increase an increase in student registration. The ML programming has been consistent and clear. Much work has gone on. We've really worked to solidify and clarify the intake process from the beginning. Um, we

126have really been thoughtful about our classroom placements. We have coherent curriculum now for our ML teachers K through 12. We have progress monitoring and interventions for students who are dy identified both as special ed and multilingual learner. We have data collection and goal setting. We have staffing and program models. And we have professional um development as well for our teachers. Our continued work will be in the growth model plan that's in place by the state. Uh language development plans, clarity and consistency and identification during registration, which is key. Continue our K12 curriculum work and building based programs to support graduation, something that we just spoke about with Mr. and his team. Transition tools and continue to work on the state mandates. Adult education budget funds supports our adult education programming. Milford has a program to

127be proud of and the credit truly goes to Christy Martin. I've had the pleasure of working with Christie to support this programming. This programming has been nurtured and grown to its current place over the years and one to be proud of for sure. As Christie prepares for her next journey, she has left us in a strong position to continue the vision that she has proudly developed. This slide here shows the programming that we are um obligated on the state to be able to um provide for our our families in New Milford, which includes um academic pathways, language, citizenship, and um career career readiness. This chart shows a followup that after they exit from us now um adult education is under the department of labor. We are responsible [snorts] for monitoring where our students a where

128our graduates are after they leave us up to one year. Our responsibility is to ensure that they are engaged in job or continued training or even college. Under Christiey's strong leadership, you can see from these numbers that services and supports from adult education programming are being utilized by the community. Based on our last census, New Milford faces significant educational gaps within our adult population. There are adults who lack high school diplomas. Additionally, there are community members who struggle with English proficiency. And so, as I mentioned, we have academic pathways. We have a high school diploma um classes. We do offer GP for those students who um choose to. We have adult basic education for those students who may for those individuals who may need that as well. We have language and citizenship which is ESL

129instruction in multiple levels and um citizen preparation classes. We collaborate with the workforce investment board, American job core, department of labor. We also collaborate with the adult education programmings in the area for other services and workplace skills. Beyond the classroom, adult education serves more than an educational provider. They support a system. The team identifies and helps students overcome personal barriers to success, whether financial, logistical, emotional. If you've attended any of the graduations, you know that that is true without a doubt. We guide students in planning their next steps, whether it's um entering the workforce, pursuing trade, or continuing to college. When additional support is needed, we connect students with our community resources. Perhaps the most important thing that they build are the what many of our students lack, which is confidence and work ethic. They

130transform uncertainty into capability, helping adults achieve credentials that open doors to better opportunities and stronger futures for themselves and their families. It truly is a special program. Strong systems and structures are the key to this program success. Under Christiey's leadership, she has grown a strong team of committed individuals to serving our community. And again, these again, I I've said this, these are um in a nutshell some of the programs that Christie um offers. Um Christie has been very aware of the interest and the needs and is always looking for other ways to appeal to our students are that come to the adult education. Last year, I shared that Christiey's work secured competitive grant funding. This is in place to meet state expectations supporting the workforce. Again, adult education falls under the Department of Labor. It's

131important to know our funding sources need to be closely monitored. Current and future programming is dependent on the release of federal funds. As we discussed earlier, Christy wore many hats. And as she segus into the next uh next place in her life, we need to separate these two roles and include a facilitator's role into our budget process which I've talked to Dr. Pearlato and to um Anthony to be able to address that because we want to find someone never to be Christy. It will be um choose to fill for sure, but we want to make sure that they're manageable roles so that we can secure an individual who is um passionate as well. Going to talk just for a moment about tuition. I know you know this. Um these are the costs for our participation

132in programming outside of our outside of the new Melford Schools. And so you're familiar with that. the Ship Hog seats, the um magnet and also Abbott Tech Technical High School. So, those are some of the the um items that you typically see. Um we're very um aware of the students who are coming to us that may have been at Chipog and needing to accommodate that. So, over time, the number of seats have grown, but there is a specific um formula that we have to make sure that we adhere to. impact on the budget. So, strong systems are in place. I have the privilege of working with talented individuals. Examples of this are district interventions who have worked as a team to review data, look at research strategies, and think creatively to meet the needs as

133many learners as possible, staying true to the intervention model. My colleagues yesterday shared that our work in visiting classrooms. We focus our visits on what students are saying and doing. We ask in what ways are students engaging in their learning. Through these conversations, we're able to calibrate our thinking as well as see students demonstrating the skills and habits that we have been working on at the K5 level. My colleague shared some videos with you that illustrates our work in the science of reading. The Department of Instruction has been focused this year on strengthening coherence and instructional quality throughout the district. Our primary purpose is to ensure we have consistent student center systems in place that actively improve teaching and learning in every school. We are already seeing the evidence of impact on this work. We're

134seeing improved instructional consistency across classrooms, meaning students are getting high quality experiences regardless of which class they're in. We are also seeing greater efficiency and clarity for our building leaders and teachers and a much stronger alignment between what the district priorities are in the actual classroom practices. A major driver of this coherence has been aligning our curriculum resources in math. We implemented high quality materials to create a unified K8 pathway that reduces learning gaps. In grades K5, we adopted the I Ready core math math materials which provides standards aligned lessons and crucial diagnostic data for differentiation. And in grades six through eight, we implemented SAVIS math to ensure consistent instructional models and progressions of concepts. In English language arts, we successfully launched the bookworms in grades through K through four. what we're starting for. This

135provided structured approach aligned with the science of reading. Teachers are already reporting stronger routines and increased consistency in early instruction. [gasps] Furthermore, we have um commonized our K5 assessments to better find identify student needs and added supplemental vocabulary resources for grade six. Beyond just providing new materials, we're focused on improving usability and support systems. The department has begun revising the curriculum template to make them clear and more userfriendly for teachers. This work sets the foundation for improved planning and accessibility across our school. We're also continuing to strengthen our support systems by leveraging our lab classrooms to build teacher leadership and extend professional learning to all staff. We've increased teacher access to real time actionable data that informs differentiated instruction and intervention and provided ongoing learning to staff for all new curriculum programming. Finally, as I've

136mentioned, we've revised our K5 progress report to be clearer for families and strengthen transparency in line with our instructional expectations. Finally, to ensure coherent support for all diverse learners, we've prioritized [snorts] collaboration between student support networks. This is important. This involves coordinated efforts between general education, special education, multilingual learners, and student services. These teams are now reviewing core materials together, identifying shared expectations, and refining our intervention structures. We've established streamlined support process for implementing interventions, tier one enh enhancements, and multi-tiered systems of supports. Everything from tier one all the way through students who identifi identified as needing specialized programming. We've also improved our communication panels through a shared data pl dashboard, home child meetings, and regular data inquiry cycles with leaders and teacher teams. I'd like to take just a moment to share a little

137bit about our multi-tered systems of supports. This was a conversation from the past. I know especially as we were leaving ESSER and some of our interventionists um were leaving us as well. And so the multi-tered systems of support, another word in another time is called SRBI. This is really those levels of support that are good for all students. Um these are the current numbers as of um just before the break and the number of interventionists that we have in our four buildings. The exciting piece is that we're really writing the triangle if you will. Um we see that the systems are taking shape before that triangle was upside down where we had a majority of our students who were needing that support through all the things that I've talked about today. that triangle is writing

138itself where it's the students who really need that support are becoming that top part and then appropriate leading into special education if it needs to happen. We look at data we work together and have a a professional learning community for our interventionist to ensure that our practices are aligned and we continue this work moving forward. >> May I just interject there? So to Mr. Fail's question before about um you know reading a lot of things about college students going in with um skills, [clears throat] right? So when Holly's talking about multi-tered systems of support, that's where we're catching students with missing foundational skills as young as possible so that it doesn't compound compound compound and by the time they get to high school, they're so much farther behind. So that's the and that's a a

139focus of our state of Connecticut. Um and particularly a focus of this district is to make sure that that we catch students as quickly as we as we can and figure out how do we remediate so to speak those missing foundational skills or something a student might not have understood or they might have been out for a little while. And so that's and we'll um we'll be able to show you how we do those screeners in the fall, winter, and spring to figure out where those skill gaps might be. >> Thank you. Moving into the next phase of the right to read literacy plan requires um a science of reading approach for K4. We'll continue that work. I've presented it to the committee and learning along the way. You're probably tired of hearing it about

140it. Um, but we're going to continue with our phmic awareness and phonics, our fluency, our vocabulary and comprehension. The next steps is grades five through eight in literacy. As you begin looking at 58 literacy needs, the focus should shift to discipline literacy, teaching students how to read like a scientist, a historian, or a mathematician. Our math is also shifting from procedural to conceptual understanding. We have the um classroom mathematics at K5 and we're working to ensure 612 alignment to so that students moving from 8th to 9th are supported as well. Um we're addressing the state standards and regulations. There's continual change from the state department of education and it really requires us to be agile um and to make those connections so that teachers don't feel [snorts] overwhelmed that it's something new. I'm I'm very

141sensitive about that. helping for us to understand it deeply and to present it in a way so that they see that they're doing it already. It's not one more thing. Um for [snorts] this budget overview, it reflects an increase of salaries that has already been discussed through contractual obligations. We'll continue to strengthen the systems that teach and teacher leadership that has been developed. And I'll close with thank you for your attention and continued support in a position that I am truly honored to serve in. Happy to answer any questions. >> How many students apply for the program? >> I >> That's a good question. >> That's a followup. We'll write it on the follow-up list. >> I I think there they have a certain number of seats. I don't know that it fluctuates. I can

142certainly look. >> Yeah, we'll put that in the follow-up sheet. Good one for the follow. >> Okay. Thank you. Right. >> Well, I you know I it just um amazes me how that program has grown because uh my daughter I think she was the second class and as if she graduated last year from Chipog and it was wonderful for her but she was like one of 10 per for a year and now we have 34 and >> that was a real investment on part of the board too given the opportunity of adding more seats and educating the board and the community >> what the options were because when we were presented with adding more seats. It we were, you know, how does it affect our budget and where would we find the money and that

143kind of thing and I I I couldn't agree more, Brian. It's just been really a great partnership. >> The last time I was here, we that we were maybe 10. We fought this issue, but this goes to what you will hear in the theme of me being here for the next two years. It's the skills. It's it's they they may be college students, they may not be, but it's a skillbased learning program, agriculture, and it opens up doors for those who may not be on the college. >> I don't know if we fought it. I think the board pretty much >> No, we we we refused to put money into it and we we fought and we did. It was a budget issue to keep it so low and I was I not so boxed

144then as I was. That's why I'm curious as to how many people apply the seats we have. >> I remember to expand seats. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's what I wanted. We just wouldn't do. >> That's what we did. We fought to keep expand seats. >> They were waiting for you to leave, Joe. That's when Joe goes, we're going to fill. >> And that's Yeah, I'll leave again. We'll give more seats. >> I think I got to give I'm gonna give myself more work than Anthony more work. So, we'll give you a list of how many students go to Henry Abetch, how many students go to Chap. Uh, and >> put it in there. >> It should be in there, but we'll just put it in the in the question document just so we have it.

145This is nice to know. >> Sarah, [snorts] >> I'm just curious how many salaries uh are under the department of instruction. >> That is a great budget book. That's great. >> Um, what I'm working on with um um the business department and um human resources, I have this opportunity. is to better align where people go wrong. >> And so really under the department of instruction right now there are seven people I mean funded like through the um grants but also the positions that you've approved through the curriculum specialist through our data person and also our MLL. So those are the folks that I work with. Those other like interventionists, it looks like it's mine, but they're in the buildings themselves. So I've been working with um human resources in the coding so that they're reflected

146of being in a school um set a school. >> So you think it's seven? >> Yeah, seven. Seven. >> We can get that. We we'll confirm that's seven. So, >> not right this minute, but yeah, >> C shows uh staff allocated to the department of instruction that are um distributed to the buildings, some of them, the interventionist being one of them. >> So, not at the school location in appendix C in one of the departments and vice versa. >> We'll clarify that in Q&A. >> Like I think also tag might is under >> I think so. I think tags >> tag is in the buildings. It's at the middle school and at Saranobyl. >> Yep. >> Everything in the budget book under DOI is on appendix C6. >> Okay. I have a question. >> I

147have a question. >> After you. >> No, no, you go first. >> Okay. with the uh growth on the multil- language learners, how what what what are we looking at in terms of um proficiency assessments and how many of them actually transition out of the program? >> That's a great question. >> Um so um there is we use the state assessment called last link and actually we are in that time period right now where the students are being assessed. It goes from now until the beginning of March. Um, and I I'm sorry that I don't have an exact number, but I will say to you that last year we had the highest number of dismissals, if you will, or move on or out than we've had in some time. Um, so we could get you

148that. We have the level proficiency and where people are at um in all the schools. We can get you last year's number. >> Is that celebrated in any way? >> Um, I I think probably the building level for sure. For sure. I mean, it's a great accomplishment, right? But we also keep once they are out of the official programming, we do keep an eye on them to make sure that they are strong and moving on. >> I mean like for at the student level, is there some sort of a celebration? >> I don't know if they have a you know, >> that's a good thought. >> That's a good idea, Eric. It's a good idea. >> Yeah, I can see why be very inspirational for others. >> Thank you for having that answer. >> Did

149you have a question, Dr. Pearl? >> I did. Um, I'd like you to explain to the board a little bit about revenue that might be generated from adult education or not. So, we know that that by law we have to provide citizenship instruction and adult basic education without cost. >> That's true. >> So, what about the rest of so if I go in for credit diploma? >> Nothing. They don't charge anything. I think in the past history I think there was enrichment um that was sort of put on hold during co for the obvious reasons and then um you know Christie's we've had lots of discussions those courses and offerings have been absorbed by by community itself right >> so there really isn't a place for us to start saying knitting I was over at

150the community center there was a sign saying knitting so a lot of those programs um enrichment programs, if you will, are taking place in our community right now as I'm holding. So, we haven't gone back to those enrichment kind of programs. She wasn't getting um the interest or the students um or the participants that it once maybe had in the past. >> So, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I think it's actually for me anyway, it's a point of pride that we don't charge for for a credit diploma. >> We do not. We do not. >> We do not. and you know going to those ceremonies and going through all that. Just me personally, I'd be hardressed to put a cost on that. Our goal is to get get our students where they need

151to be and some of them don't have the economic need. They're working. That's one of the reasons why they're in that situation. I'd rather see them graduate than charge someone $200. They're the ones that just celebrate it the most and are just so excited to be there and they're engaged and they this is these like >> I just that's a really good point um to >> Yeah, I think it's important to reflect that in the record at the very least and make sure that we all have the same understanding. >> It's a phenomenal program and I I'd like to see as many of those individuals walk across the stage every year. >> Yep. >> You had another >> No, that was it. Thank you. >> That was it. Okay. Do we have any other questions

152or can we move on? Ollie, thanks. That was a really nice >> Oops. >> Mr. Turner is the fastest talker we have. >> Yeah, Mr. Turner's going to flip through it. Picked >> up on that queue right away there. [laughter] >> Don't put in binary. >> We're on page 70 in the DOGA tab. And yes, we will be. So, if you want to jump onto that and I think you've already hit a couple of the things that I wanted to talk about anyway, so you'll be able to jump on film and things like that. >> Sorry. >> Um, thank you for allowing me to present. Um, just it mission statements. A couple of key words. I'm not going to read it to you. Big thing is wide range of educational experiences. What can we give

153to teachers and kids? What can they use? What can we involve within curriculum? Things of that nature. Key word in the second one is safety. making sure that we have safe technology. Um that we have logs that show who's going where, who's using what, if there's an issue, that we can go in working with the principles, vice principles, and taking care of issues and being proactive, having programs like securely that allow teachers to lock down while they're using a Chromebook, and they can only go to these two websites. So, those kind of things have been in place for a couple years. Uh we had GoG Guardian before and we jumped over securely but we jumped over to securely in the past year with a large savings um similar software much better cost. And then the

154last one is just talking about collaboratively. I'm in a school every day. Tomorrow's Thursday I'll be at Hill and Plane. The teachers know I'll be there. The administration know I'll be there. It's a matter of being in the schools, being the next teacher, wanting to be around. What are students and teachers doing? What do they need? What can I predict in the next year technology-wise that I can provide them at a good cost? And that's what we're looking for. Not the things that are just cool this year, but consistency, great monitors, Chromebooks that are going to work over a seven or eight year period, laptops that are not going to go d um down in three years, but most of our technology lasts anywhere from six to 10 years. It's recommended that you travel out

155within 5 years, but our current desktops are literally in 8 to 10 years old. And that's why we're now rotating them out of the system. Um, technology department is nine people, myself, and then there's the eight important people. We have four techs in the buildings. They are the everyday people who are going into classrooms fixing problems, teachers stopping them in the hallway. I need this and it's solved within the day. Uh we have a secretary to myself who handles budgets and day-to-day operations, district database administrator who handles power school and all said programs with it uh along with many other things. Tech 2, who oversees the four techs, teaches them how to do numerous things, works with the larger pieces of software and with the district database administrator, making sure all our software is working

156within all the supports that we have. And then our network systems analyst who I equate to kind of being a referee because you only notice them when something goes wrong. And luckily, our network analyst is one of those persons who's so proactive, you don't even see him. He's just doing the work in the background to make sure we're secure, we're safe, we're updating all our hardware, we're work where we're supposed to be. And we are very lucky to have eight great folks who work within the technology department, >> plus me. >> Um, return on investment. I'd like to really point out the things that we're getting for our money every year and I'll keep it very short. Uh we're going to continue our onetoone program. Grades 3 through 12 are still taking Chromebooks home and

157that is a conversation we're having and education's changing in a lot of ways and we're going from one flight to CO where everybody had to be in front. Now you start to see a shift. One of the things I want to remind you why we have to have a onetoone program in many ways is all state testing, loss links, um all these different things. Uh we're doing what is it right now? Nate testing with uh Sarah and we're doing the middle school which is 50 kids each but they have to bring their Chromebook so that it's ready to go. Software picks up. We don't have to install anything. We just run it through the web. We're good to go. But there's a quickness feature with Chromebooks that allow us to have them ready to go.

158They're also much faster than a laptop or desktop to fix because you can just refresh your Chromebook, it goes back to factory fresh literally a two-minute experience whereas a laptop desktop you could be down for a half an hour hour working. Um, second is AV projects. You've heard me talk for the last four years about being very selective and making sure that we're getting things for principles and teachers that they can use in their schools. Many of our AV areas are 20 or 30 years old. Uh two of them I'll talk about in a few minutes. Um next one would be continued use of grants. I'm very proud of this part of it and I will say that the three grants that we've worked with over the last four years that I've been here, ECF

159brought us 3,425 Chromebooks at no cost. We are using our CEN grant currently with the town where we're adding outside Wi-Fi at no cost to us. It's almost I think it's $350,000 just for the schools. That's the town what they've gotten. >> And you initiated that grant, correct? and I've initiated that grant, working with the town getting that through. It's been a year and a half process, but it's >> pretty much done at the middle school and high school, and I'll have a memo coming out to you in February or March stating this is where we're at and where we're at with it and what else needs to be done. And then finally, Pegpichia grant is the grant that got us this studio completely across the board, no cost to New Milford Public Schools. So

160over the last four years, we've had 1.6 million in those grants. That has not been a dollar spent for New Milford, just grants that we've affected through the IT department. Um, last one is completion of a two-year plan. Last year, we started with capital, replaced about 280 desktops and laptops within a certified staff so far. We'll be doing uh discussion about that for a second year and hopefully we'll be adding 300 to 325 more to finish off all certified staff offices and other parts of the buildings. Any machines we do not complete this year, we will be updating with memory andor hard drives. So any machines with one focus that still has Windows 10 on it have to be completed by December 31st of 2026 as Windows 10 no longer does updates. So that's a

161security issue. We don't want to have to deal with that. And I've tried to be very um to the point with this so that we're not updating an old machine and then replacing it with a new machine with Windows 11 so that we don't have the downtime and also not taking advantage of our staff just doing double the work. That makes sense. So we're trying to replace with like Windows 11 machines and then if needed we'll add memory and hard drives to change things that we have to. Uh the biggie for me is cost obviously. um tariffs and or prices of believe it or not the biggest problem right now is RAM things that memory that makes machine it's up to 500% difference. It's amazing the price. So something that was costing $150 last year

162for a memory chip y >> is up to $600 or $700. So it really is one of those deals where you got to be very smart about what we're purchasing. Next page is one of my favorites to talk about infrastructure updates. Every year I bring this up. Um, our infrastructure over the last four years has been phenomenal. We are [clears throat] actually running out of items to buy for. So, inate I'm allowed to buy switches, access points, um, and get a 60/40 split. So, if we buy a $100 access point, we're paying $40 for it. All our servers except for a couple have been updated. We're going through a very five-year plan with that, making sure we're there. Phones, we are also looking at that. I think Dean brought that up a little while ago,

163Wendy. Um, we had a big uh update this past summer, which if you look at page 70, you'll see we went down a large percentage. And because of that, I think we can keep our current phone system for a couple more years, but in the next two years, we will talk about cloud-based systems. And again, with switches and access points this year, you'll see a memo coming out very soon. I just finished our 470 and in the next 30 days we will have bids on those items. So, we're going to have a bunch of different things I'll talk about then where we're going to update our access points, find those areas that are weaker so that we can make sure that we're hitting all aspects of all classrooms safely. And I will show you what

164a heat map is and I'll show you some really cool stuff that we use to show where we need these items. Next page is visual audio visual projects. You can see on the left side, I won't read to you, but quite a few things have been done between 22 and this year. I'm waiting for bids and deciding if we need to RFP for the North Hill and Hill Plain stages. That will be completed before the end of the school year. Um, also working on for next year's um items when we talk about capital this year, we'll talk about the Saranobyl cafeteria stage as well as the middle school. Either the stage or the gym. We're still having a discussion. At first, it was the stage, but we're starting to see a bigger need in the

165gym. Again, we'll talk about that in the spring. In the future, AV projects, you can see the four or five that we have left. We should be good AV projects in about three years, and we'll be able to take this off of capital for quite a few years. >> Um, couple examples of what we've done this year. Library presentation center. Anybody who's ever been in there can see that the glass wall, you can't really do much with it. This is one of the harder ones to figure out. So, if you're ever in the middle school, take a look at this. It's a popup screen, 100inch screen. I think the coolest one we've done, at least in my career, is a Sarah multi-purpose room. We kept the rounded screen, like a rounded TV. We didn't have

166to buy a projector. We actually were able to buy a laser projector that works on that wall. And if anybody went to the Veterans Day celebration upstairs, the sound is amazing. It's ease of use. Anybody can go in there and use it. It's also great for the wrestling team who's practicing up there. There's all kinds of other events, including the youth agency that will use that room. It's not just Sarah Noble. So, it is a public event. Uh examples of the laptops we're buying and the all-in- ones. Teachers are very happy with both of those dock stations for laptops and the all-in- ones remove a lot of the wiring and space that's required for a desktop. So, very happy with that. So far, one of the biggest areas we've had, if I can get it

167to work. There we go. [clears throat] And this is where Tammy, I'd love to have your opinion. Um, power school when I got here four years ago was one of our biggest issues. It was a brand new school information system. In a perfect world, somebody said to me, "It should just work." And it's now doing that. Not only is P school data because of the secretaries because because of our database administrator because of our teachers and because of our administrators putting in data we now have data not only coming in but going out. So things like securely where teachers have next morning new student in next morning it's there all this data food services with Mosaic that data shows up and not only does it show up saying there's a new student to Mosaic but

168it's then sending us back the information about this student's going to be free reduced or regular lunches. So right away in the morning those lunch ladies and gentlemen are seeing this is a new kid and this is their data and in all possibilities we try to get pictures right away so they see what the child is. >> But more the one that made everybody want to shake AI tool >> one thing I'd like to bring up to it. We are experimenting working with Miss Hollander and we have a committee that we've been working on for a couple year and a half now very simply won't read it to you but the key word is safely we're starting to implement tools for teachers one of them is within our Google platform which is Gemini it's already

169embedded in everything you do in in Google >> so it's kind of just there we also are using school AI which is going to be a front-facing program where teachers can create tutors taking the data that they want to use so that students can have someone or something to talk to to find items. We're still in the midst of seeing how this is best going to work, but this year we're experimenting with teachers. The key thing I want to point with this is no student's just going to go on a Chromebook or a laptop and have AI accessible. So, school AI, for example, for a student to get to it, they have to be in a Google classroom in a space that a teacher opens that they're proactively looking at. The best way I can

170equate it to it is in the old days when I first started teaching, you didn't show a video unless you watched it first. >> That's what school AI allows you to do. you're locking it down saying you can only go to this space and do these things within AI. Does that make sense? >> So that's something I'm looking forward to presenting and talking more about in the future. And then the important stuff is the questions. >> I just have a quick question. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Gemini, which is already built into the Google platform, >> do the students have the ability to jump on to that or is that locked down so they cannot use it? So part of our enterprise account with Google and this drove people crazy last spring. They not only locked

171it down so that the AI part is not there but they also took away things like YouTube. >> Anybody under 18 the things that they can't control. What they did was took away they even took away Google Earth which is kind of a strange thing but I'm sure you've seen where people can use Google Earth for a bad thing as well. So, anything that they didn't deem, and this is Google making that decision, um, third party software or things that they could not make sure that they were able to control the safety for children under 18, they took away. >> Uh, that also includes Google um, Google Translate. >> Oh, yeah. >> So, we've had to work around that. that caused some trouble with our ML classes, things that they didn't give a good reason,

172but it was part of the package that went away from >> Is it Is it because if you're learning another language, you could just easily just go in and cheat and say, "Just translate that for me." >> Translate things that they [clears throat] >> again, they didn't give a good reason, nor did they want to talk about it. They said, "Here's your enterprise account. Here's what's there, what's not." They did add two really cool programs which have some AI tied to it in some ways. One is called Google Vids. So you could go in and create um almost like a PowerPoint presentation, but if you're stuck on something and you want to make your point, it will actually make an 8-second video for you of what you need to do. So you can say, I

173want a squirrel running on a track chasing a carrot or something. It creates it for you. It's really cool. So those children who are visual learners, they could actually create that video. >> It's insanity. >> And then um the other program is called Notebook LM that was added in the enterprise which which allows kids and adults because it's there for both to take I could take this presentation and put it in and it comes up like a podcast where you could say the young man and young lady talking. They'll go through and make points so that if you are an auditory learner, you could actually put in your data and it will come up talking to you like you're at a podcast. >> Yeah, >> I'm actually really curious to see how it's going to

174work with the new graphic design class that they're going to be doing because it it's amazing. I mean, you could take floor plans and just renderings and then say, "Make this lifelike." And, you know, from a graphic design perspective, if you can't get it just right, AI, I can give you 50 different versions and ideas. >> When I taught fourth grade, one of the biggest problems was getting a child to pick up a pencil and put something on paper. They could visualize it, but sometimes they couldn't write it. So, in many cases, if you can get that picture, then they can get better description. And I think what we're going to find is the editing process. As children are talking to AI, they're going to edit more. They're going to say, "Hey, I'm missing this.

175I need to speak in this way or that way." So, it's a new learning process is going to come up as well. That that's the hardest part for adults as well because you just assume that somebody knows what you're talking about. But in this case, you have to talk to it like a a a toddler in a way that you're saying, "I need one, two, three colors, numbers, themes." So you really have to have many things in your vocabulary and in an order that you want depending on what you're doing. But again, all this stuff is so new. It's going to grow as we grow. But it is safe. It is those items that we want to make sure that we can use it with. And as we grow our AI committee, we'll start pushing

176that out to children in the next year or so if everything works out well. >> Any questions? >> I think we're tapped out. >> Yeah. Nice job. >> How long you been here now? Five, six, seven. >> I just I just [laughter] seems like 10, but it's only [laughter] >> love it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks. >> My uh >> um public comment Thank you. I lost my paper. I pulled it off. >> There you go. >> Okay. There we go. >> Okay. So, that's it for the presentations tonight then. >> We have the public would anyone from the public like to uh [laughter] speak? >> No. Okay, cool. [clears throat] >> I'm sorry. >> Minutes. Minutes. >> I'm going to put you on the spot. >> All right. So, so listen, we're

177going to be um this is another recess today. We're not. So, our next [snorts] meeting is a Tuesday, January 20th, >> 6:30. >> All right, everyone. >> Thanks,