001Good evening everybody. Welcome to tonight's budget workshop. It is March 9th. Mr. Angli is not here, so I guess I will take attendance. I'm going to massacre her name, so I will just say Angela, because I always admired the way Justin says it. Joe Abdella, Victoria Salon, Stephanie Kolnick is not here yet, but I hear a door closed. Jesse Luebman, Angela, Alex McNaughton, Justin is not here, but Stephanie is here and Justin is here. They're both here now. Jen Potey is here. Jane Sargent, is she online, Ben? Here. Here, great. Pete Tagley, Mary Weber, and Christine. Jane waiting is not here. Okay, great. Hi. No, you're fine. Great. Moving on to public comment, even though it's not on the agenda, of course it should be. And so, obviously talking about the budget, is there anybody
002here for public comment for the budget? Anyone? Moving on. Okay. Well, thank you, and we're pleased to kick off our budget workshop tonight. And I'd like to do that by just offering... I'd like to do that by just offering a few more contextual factors that go into that influence the way we craft our budget. And I think can help us create the right conceptual framework as tonight we start to dig into its contours a little more deeply. So, Ben, I'd ask that you put my slides up and I'll try to cue you in so that we're synced when I need you to click up there. So, when I spoke to you last week, I wanted to focus on the story of our budget and the human side of it and the gratitude we feel for
003the support we've gotten before. And what we're gonna do with that support. And how the budget will be a reflection of our values, our core values, our commitments, and our priorities. Tonight I just want to take a few minutes to focus in on a couple of logistic factors that circumscribe the budget process and limit some of the degrees of freedom that we wish we had in crafting a budget. There are factors that limit the discretion we have when we craft our budget. umm Part of the budget story involves some factors, that aren't completely within our control so that we see despite our best efforts there are the phrase I use, outer limits to our austerity. I think remembering that, just talking for a few minutes about some of those factors can help us contextualize the
004budget's value and help us develop renewed awareness of where it came from and why it represents restraint. I'm going to just take some time to consider those factors. Again, first factor, and most of us are aware of this, is the impact of inflation. Like everybody else, we consume goods and services. Like everybody else, we're hit by the force of inflation, which right now, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, is hovering around 3.1% based on the Consumer Price Index inflation rate. That's something that has an impact on the market forces for the goods and services that we buy. Nevertheless, overall, it's worth noting we were able to bring in our request at 2.96% below the CPI, below the inflation rate. That's a positive story. However, inflation hits us, and we need to remember that.
005Another factor, thank you, Ben, another factor that limits our discretion is fixed costs. It's good to remember that 97% of our budget is comprised of fixed costs. We don't have the money. We don't have the money. We don't have the ability to wave a wand and impose our will on all the external market forces and legal forces that shape what we're doing. So in a minute, I'll talk about what those fixed costs are and what control we do have. But the overhead costs and the fixed costs that we face are things over which we have limited control and discretion. Ben, this is a graphic that helps you visually determine. It's a graphic that helps you visually depict how our costs are tabulated. And salaries and benefits are 77%. Other contractual obligations are 14%. Fixed costs
006are 6%. Other contractual obligations are things like insurance, transport, copiers, phones, software, our athletic trainer, our medical director, our pupil support services, and so forth. Our fixed costs are our utilities, electric. Heating, oil, well and septic maintenance, refuse, upkeep, postage, dues, fees, capital improvements. You see that little yellow slice up there? Three percent of these costs are discretionary, meaning we have more control over them. And that three percent obviously is a zone within which we have to maintain responsibility, fiscal responsibility for sure. But it's also a zone that has an edge. And it's also a zone that has an extra poignant impact on the experiences of our students. This is a slide that helps us understand by object code, by each category in our budget, the percent change from last year to this year and
007the total dollar amount change from this year to last year. Ms. Grant, could you help summarize this for the board, please? Sure. So when we do our budget each year, we talk a lot about object code and what costs fall into which object codes. And I think that's an interesting point. And what this slide demonstrates is that the areas that Don just spoke about, which are salaries, benefits, fixed costs, are the areas that you can see the change and the percentage increase have increased. But you can also see the areas in red where we have some discretion, where we've made reductions to realize cost savings so that we can control the increases that are happening in the other areas. So another way to put that is when external market or legal forces push on us,
008the call pushes back. We work with our community. We work with our community on all kinds of things. We work with our community on helping us with our survey and our assessment of what we can do to support our children, because unfortunately, that is not what is possible. Don is a good example of that. I mean, he's worked with a lot of our kids. We've got a lot of kids who have been on atown, and he's a great example of that. But our situation is that the most important thing is that we have to do all kinds of things to support our kids. So we have to didn't just sit at home and sit in the car. We have to maintain our board of directors. let them get into classes. But the 3% that I
009talked about a minute ago that's within our particular discretion has an incredibly direct impact on the experiences we deliver to our kids. So we're careful stewards of that money, but we also have to remember that cuts to that category would diminish the caliber of our programs. What you're seeing on the right-hand side of this slide are the kinds of things that fall into that discretionary spending category. So all of our enrichment programs, our after-school activities, our academic support after-school activities, our clubs, the arts, sports, supplies for all the foregoing, professional development for our teachers to make sure they remain equipped to support our students, new courses, cutting-edge new courses to help our students move towards more dual enrollment, more college credit, more elective choice, and be ready and prepared for a volatile and changing world.
010To accomplish that, we need to be ready and prepared for a volatile and changing world. To accomplish that, we need to be ready and prepared for a volatile and changing world. To accomplish that, we're asking this year in terms of new requests, new money, because remember I wanted to focus last time on what we're going to do with what we already got. But the modest requests we are asking for, this falls completely within that 3% band that I talked about a minute ago, is a total of $55,000 against the $29 million budget to move our kids forward, to give them the best we think we can in all these enrichment programs, and curricular areas. And we didn't just ask for that blindly. Even that $55,000 we made room for by finding other cuts. So I
011showed you this slide last time. The key increases in our costs listed on the top of this slide, $1.2 million, the additional funding that we requested is only $879,000. And that means we found savings. So we're asking for $85,000 to get the number down to that amount, and included in that $879,000 is that $55,000 request to help move our programs forward for our students. Okay. There are other factors that influence and impact our budget. One of them is our ability to pay. In any region, any school district, the wealth and affluence of the zone is part of the equation to figure out how funding unfolds. Now, Connecticut devised a plan some years ago, and it's not the only one. It's the other one. It was a famous Connecticut Supreme Court case, Horton v. Meskel. It
012created a plan for equitable funding in our school districts so that your financial support for a kid wouldn't be limited totally to the zip code where they were born. Something would come from the state. But this is a means-tested formula, and more money goes to the towns who need it the most, and less money goes to the towns that don't need it as badly. Our relative affluence, the fact that we can't get funding from the towns that don't need it the most, prevents us from getting as much funding as some other towns or other folks might. This is important for us to think about because our stakeholders rightly ask us, and I talked about this a little bit last time too, are you leaving no stone on term in an attempt to find outside funding,
013whether it's federal or state grants or other aid. And we can and will do that. And now the story here is not all grim, because we do get, ECS funding back from the state, not as much as if we were in a more at-risk district. But for example, in the past cycle, Bridgewater received $187,000 from ECS funding, Roxbury 219, Washington 337. Those numbers will probably be similar in the near future and they represent, in the case of Bridgewater, an additional $50,000 more than they got the year before. For Roxbury, an additional $32,000 and for Washington an additional $53,000. So if you factor those ECS grants back in and also factor in the money we return to the towns based upon tuition in and budget surplus funding, there is a mitigating factor for each town that
014doesn't zero their obligation but impacts it. Okay then, so again we're just going over the factors that affect our finances and the data that supports it. What you're looking at on this slide is relative again to the concept of our ability to pay. For each of our towns you see where they rank in terms of the equalized net grand list ranking out of all the towns in Connecticut. You see the mill rate ranking out of the towns in Connecticut. You see the capital income ranking and you see on the far right the median home property value as of 2023 that's not a ranking that's just a figure a median home value for each for each town I say 2023 because the state tabulates these statistics in quanta and that's the last reporting period 2019 to
0152023 as new reporting periods happen of course we'll give you updated information but you can see when you look at this data that relatively compared to a lot of the state we enjoy a certain amount of affluence and that's important for two reasons one it affects the kind of money and funding and grants we can get from the federal and state government but also it's a factor that constrains to a certain extent and influences our stance and our posture when we're collectively bargaining because when we bargain for contracts with our units one of the key features that helps us know when we're getting a fair bargain is knowing based upon the data and what our attorneys tell us what a mediator would award or an arbitrator would award if we couldn't settle it and that's
016a formulaic thing they would award a number based upon our ability to pay and other settlements that have been recently obtained in similar towns so when you approach a collective bargaining agreement from a standpoint of affluence you don't quite have the same arm's-length transaction ahead of you or negotiation ahead of you as you would if you weren't in that spot okay Ben and then we're getting to the last few factors now the other one of course is our per pupil expenditure and that's another feature of our budget reality and our towns collectively rank number four in the state the fourth highest PPE in the state and this is a feature of our size and also of our configuration of and our fixed operating costs. Sorry everybody. Can you see now? If I were up there
017I could have used one of my favorite jokes, Stephanie, which is I may be a pain but you can't see through me. But I don't get a chance to use that joke now. Between our size and our configuration, the number of buildings we operate, that results in the per pupil expenditures that you see. And when you have a smaller amount of students in your denominator, when you're calculating your per pupil expenditure, that's not something that's going to lead to a low figure. What's the cost that we have to contend with? And again, against all these things which are aggravating factors in how we get to our bottom line, I remain impressed and grateful that our finance director and our business office used all the mitigating factors at our disposal to get us to the low
018number that we in fact see, 2.9 per 6. And then finally, our budget request happens to be one of the lowest in the state. Out of all the 120 towns that we are seeing, ours is the 12th lowest increase. And among those 12, we are not an anomalous outlier. The average, I think, of those 12 towns, the average budget increase that they're requesting is somewhere around 2.3%. So you can see that us coming in at 2.96 puts us in a pretty conservative zone relative to what most folks are asking for. And certainly anecdotally, when I talk to my colleagues in the area, our sending towns, other regions near us, I know that we are one of the lowest, if not the lowest. Nicole's going to give you a sheet, I'll pass it around right now,
019that actually shows you where we come in relative to surrounding districts and the state with our budget request. So that was a lot of perhaps additional wonky information, but after the last talk, which was more about the human side of things, a few folks said to me, you should also be careful to contextualize some of the forces that got you to this number. That's what I tried to do now. And I'm going to shut my big pie hole at this point, and I'm going to invite, I'm going to turn this back over to Ms. Potey and invite the Board to engage in the workshop and ask questions as they see fit. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Don't all jump out at once. Does anyone have any questions? Yeah. I went through the budget
020this weekend, and I didn't get into the exhibits, A, B, and C's particularly, but compared to the rest of the state, I think 5% is, I think like two-thirds of the towns in regional schools have submitted their budgets, and of that two-thirds, the average is 5%. So I think a 3% increase, or a little less than 3, shows that we've done some serious work on trying to get these numbers down. Mary? Thanks, Don. I really, I like this information you gave us tonight. That will allow us to answer any questions that people have in the community and keep it in context of what you're trying to do. Great. Anybody else have any questions? Justin? Thanks, Don, for that very clear presentation, and last week's. While I was writing things down last week, a couple of
021things stood out that I didn't, I tried to catch quickly, and one of them was, I think that you mentioned that there was an expansion of the world language curriculum at the elementary school level. I'm just curious to know more about that, what that program is that you envision, and then I have a second question after that. Yes. So I was referring to, that was in the part of the, sort of the foundation that's been laid before, and what we were able to do in the past several years that led to the inception of that program, and the plan now would be certainly to go forward with it. And I owe you a vision for that, Jesse. I just haven't sat with the principles yet to really flesh it out. But the idea is, that's
022a zone that you've invested in before, the board and the taxpayers. That we can take forward now without asking you for more money. And you know, more to come on how we're going to do that. What was your second question? I apologize. No, that's great. That helps me a lot. Thank you about the first question. The second question was, you mentioned breakout room software. Yeah. And I just wanted to know what that was, and I'll tell you why. It's because, thanks to Kerry's leadership, there's been a lot of discussion about technology in the classroom, and as that committee has continued to meet, we've been discussing what technology is essential for, you know, to enhance our student experience. And I'm just curious to know about that. Yeah, sure. Well, we should talk about that in that
023committee, Jesse. So, first let me describe the low tech version of it. And many of you might have been to an escape room in the past, but the way it looks in education is, a group of kids will come together, and they'll be working on some problem in some class, and the activity will usually privilege some kind of interdisciplinary mindset and creative, innovative thinking. So you get in there, and there's this locked box, maybe, and like a little purple light, and you're just told to figure things out. So somebody figures out to shine that light on the box, and that ultraviolet light now reveals a clue. It'll say something like, this might be a clue where you have to read music to figure it out. So the kids who can do that are sort of
024the experts in that moment. And they read a staff, and it spells out the combination to the lock. And so it goes. And you open the box, and in there are more clues that get into more questions with a higher cognitive load that are actually related to a curricular objective or the standards in the class. But the kids, while they're answering those problems, it could be a math problem, it could be a chemistry problem, it could be an historical analysis, while they're solving these things, they're learning the content, but they're having fun, and the goal is to usually break into something or break out of something. Well, this software lets them, teachers design lessons to have those kinds of experiences, but it's virtual. I guess they're trying to escape from a virtual room by answering
025the questions that the teacher poses that relate to the content. Is that? Yeah, no, it does sound like fun. Is that for all grade levels, or? Ooh, I better find out. I don't know. I don't want to tell you more than I know. I don't know if it goes below sixth grade, but I'll find out for you. Yeah. Thank you. Any other stuff? This one's just a clarification question, just because I had trouble following. I think this is a Nicole question, because there's just like line item transfers that I, in my mind, I was confusing and not able to, you're going to be able to help me with this, I know it. Under special education, the department staff change that moved, I didn't understand totally the note under exhibit C in the special ed. Do
026you know what I'm talking about? How it's like 3% change, but truly it was like a 20-something percent change. I just couldn't follow the line transfer, so forgive me. So what happened in our, when you look at your exhibit A and your exhibit C, so your exhibit A is every single line item in the budget. And what exhibit C does is it breaks them down into department budgets as they're presented to us by the different department heads in the district. So you've got some overlap between C and A, which is what that note is trying to explain. So one thing that Don had showcased we did this year was that we brought our occupational therapists and our physical therapists into the district as employees. They'll be employees starting July 1. So that money for those
027occupational therapists and physical therapists used to sit in the special education budget as a purchased service. So if you were to look at the special education budget online, the fourth line down, if you're on page A of exhibit C, you'll see a reduction of $148,000. So that's the occupational and physical therapy money that was moved into the staff salaries. Now what that effect that has on the schedule C special education budget is it makes it go down artificially. Because really we're not reducing special education, we're moving it. So the special education budget is actually going up by 23.78%. It's just that some of it was moved over to the staffing side. So it was just offset by the move that staffing has to go somewhere else. So these department specific budgets don't include staffing. It's
028really just programming that we're using. Correct. There's no district paid staff in any of the department budgets with two exceptions. There's one line item in special education and one in teaching and learning. And that's specifically programs that both Mrs. O'Hara and Mrs. Snowden budget themselves. One is the curriculum work that we pay our teachers. He's saying he can't quite hear you. Is your mic on? It's on. The other is summer school. Allie budgets summer school based on the needs of the kids. So that remains in her budget. Those are the only two line items that stay in the schedule C department budgets outside of salaries that are actually salaries. Alright. That helps because I wasn't following where we moved to. I knew you could help me with that. Any other questions? Comments? Alright. You want
029to say something else? Go ahead. Sorry. No? So it used to be a long time ago when like that we used to kind of always hone in on I think as a board of ed on where is it? I'm getting lost in my papers. Like the 700 line. Like the properties and programs. There used to be something that we used to call changes. And that was kind of like where we highlighted what we were looking at programmatically or enrichment wise or staffing wise. Those were like big changes that we would highlight or not. And I know you talked about that a little bit in the last presentation. But is there anything else that you would want us to like pinpoint or hone in on programmatically that we could highlight as either you know a change
030up or down? It's funny this year I keep using this metaphor of the little rudder that turns the big ship. And some of these asks in terms of dollar amount are small that a board is dedicated to this one as this one might even say Don are you asking for enough or do you have what you need? Which I appreciate and I wanted to be careful about that and think about that. And I think we do because probably the biggest lift the newest thing we're adding that I think is going to be powerful for instruction is that upgrade to STEM instruction in the elementary schools with the project of the way kits. Now that doesn't sound, you know it's not jaw dropping in terms of the dollar amounts and it's not a fancy robot or
031a fancy AI tool. But these are kits that train even the littles to think like engineers and solve engineering problems with their brains and with their hands. So the things that the $55,000 that I itemized you know for our new asks are all things like that. They're all small things that aren't big ticket items individually. But I think together they aggregate to a lot of enrichment that'll take us forward into the next year. You know and then every year it's another evaluation of where we are and what we need to go forward and every year will present a different landscape. But for this year given again the complete zeitgeist of where we are with our three towns, with our committees, with our board, with the needs for our kids. We think this budget delivers what
032our kids need in a way that's palatable to the taxpayer. I've got one more question. It's sort of the other direction. What did we not put in the budget that you'd really like to have in the budget? Well some of the big cuts that could have been in this year that reduced our spending and I think it's appropriate. We were going to, there's a need to in the near future repave the lower driveway at Chippaug. That was a $90,000 cost. We took it out and deferred it. We were able to shave back on our teaching and learning budget because again years ago we spent a lot of money on the new ARC reading program and so that budget remained appropriately for the past several years elevated in that amount to meet that need. But now
033we're able to reduce that budget back to actual spending needs. So that's a savings of $40,000. That's $130,000 right there. Nicole can you help me itemize any of the rest of them? So one thing I think that wasn't asked that we decided to postpone but you will probably see in our request next year is an additional school psychologist. Our school psychologists have really full plates and they even at times have to leave our district and go to the private schools which makes their lives that much more hectic. There's a lot of student need that we'd like to address and I think that would be a good way to do that. So that will be a request that you see in the next year likely. Thanks for reminding me of that and taking you all the
034way behind the curtain on that. It started with a conversation by the fact that you might Joe you remember initially Ed Advance lost its funding to support the counselors they had placed here. So that sort of put us over a bit of a cliff and we were how are we going to recoup that? Can we recoup that? And during budget discussions with the principals they mentioned that they were going to be able to help with that. And then we talked a little bit with Allie and said what's the best kind of person to fill that role? All the needs that we have and in terms of support services we have a real need for another school psychologist to do the increased amounts of testing first of all that our kids need to help identify them
035and figure out what accommodations or modifications they might need. That kind of testing that needs to be done a lot of it in house. And then we just have always increased needs for counseling services for kids who are at increased risk. So there was a time when I thought I would move that forward even this year but then by serendipity Ed Advance got the money back and we have those counselors back. Now they're not the equivalent of a school psychologist but they're a very good measure and they're wonderful. I don't mean to short change their word. They're wonderful. But I do foresee in the near future that we're going to have to move that forward. Yeah. What would the cost of adding the psychologist this year be roughly? It's hard to say. We would have
036to hire and it would depend on what level of experience we hired. But our school psychologists fall into our teaching contract. So it would depend what step and experience we were able to hire. Thank you. Just ask a question. On the line on the page about budget by department, the Board of Ed department budget seems to have an increase. I just wonder what we can do to tighten our belts or what that money is going to try to reduce. Is that the $9,000 line? That line, Jesse, you can't tighten your belt anymore. Your belt's plenty tight. That line is paying for professional services that we are hiring to help us with our residency determinations. But thanks for offering. One thing that I, if I were sitting in your chairs, I might ask about recently in
037the last two years we've raised our capital threshold from $5,000 to $10,000 with respect to auditing. And what that means is that projects that we may have listed in prior years under capital facilities are now in our operating budget because they either don't meet the threshold or they don't meet the definition of a capital improvement. They may be a replacement or a repair. So as you were looking through the budget documents, you may see some of the maintenance and general building upkeep lines increased. So I thought I'd just kind of give you a highlight of some of the stuff that's in those lines that would attribute the increase. So if you want to follow in your exhibit C, I guess is the best place for you to look. And if you look at page 11
038and you look at a few of the building upkeep lines, you can see that they're increasing by $13,000, $16,000. Some of the things that we're doing within those spaces, we need not particularly exciting facility things, but the maintenance area lighting at Chippaug, we have shop lights that are from 1970 and they need to be replaced. So that's an expense of $3,000. The pool exterior bulkhead door needs to be replaced. It's a safety concern. It's $4,700 estimated. The... Senator, because it's the door attached to the building, not to the pool. We are in, there are, I'm not entirely sure what those are. And Don O'Leary could share his thoughts here, but there's something called swamp cooler panels in the greenhouse that are on a replacement cycle and it's time to replace them. So those have to
039be changed out every five years or so. This is year six and that's at a cost of $8,500. We have to do some work with some ceiling panels in the planetarium. A cost of $1,500. The doors in the mall that lead from the art rooms have to be flipped on their frames with fire magnets added to them. That's a directive from the fire marshal. That's a cost of $12,000. We need to, unfortunately, when we built out the dog grooming area in the agriscience room in the barn for dog grooming, they dropped electrical fixtures that you can plug trimmers and those types of things into. And what we've found as we've started to use them is they don't have enough amps. So while we should be able to groom a dog at each station, we can
040actually only groom three dogs at a time and there's nine stations. So we have to upgrade the electrical there. That's a cost of $4,500. We have to re-pipe the waste lines in the central office restrooms. That's a cost of $4,000. At Washington Primary School there's a blower unit in the gym, ACHVAC, that has failed. That's a cost of $6,000. There's interior fire door repairs necessary at Washington Primary. That's $2,500. In all the buildings, we're on a painting cycle where we paint two classrooms per year. So each building has money budgeted in that budget to paint two classrooms. And at Booth Free School, some of the property on, some of the fencing on the side of the property needs to be replaced. That's a cost of $7,000. There's a lower classroom door that needs to be
041replaced. That's a cost of $1,800. At Burnham School, there's some exterior lighting controls that need to be tended to. That's a cost of $5,000. So there's lots of items embedded in the actual budget now that you may have seen in prior years on the capital facilities side. But now they're actually in the operating budget. So when you look at the lines, you can't actually see all of that work that's being undertaken within this budget. Under animal science, what is this $18,000 in animal feed? This new exhibit sees page seven. So one of the things we did in our agriscience budget this year working with Mr. Kermines was to move, separate some of the funding into areas where they could have single access to budget lines. Some things were getting commingled and it was getting, causing
042some confusion about what items were for what purchases. So the animal feed, if you look at that whole section, you can see that livestock for animal service was reduced $4,000. And instructional supplies, large animals was reduced $12,000. Those two lines used to be where animal feed was purchased. So what we've done is create a separate account for the animal feed and reduced it from there so that they can better track those purchases. Okay. Thank you. That reminded me, I just had one other question. Just a clarification on the reduction of the fourth grade section at WPS. That's for the third graders moving into fourth grade, right? Because they are a single class and currently we have two fourth grade and two fifth grade classes. Is that right? Yes. Just the attrition of one class. The
043size is going down. We're only going to need one section. Right. Because that's the upcoming third grade class. That's already one class. You wouldn't separate that. They're just moving up into one single class, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. I have a question. Yeah. I don't know if Don and Nicole would be able to answer this. Do we have it that all of our outside doors automatically close and lock? Is that done now? I don't mean like the, well, maybe the front door too. But all the outside doors like the doors to, that lead into the school from anywhere. Do they close and lock when they? Exterior doors close and lock. If someone were to walk out the door, it would close and lock behind them, yes. Okay. That way. And if it malfunctions, we know right
044away and fix it. Like two or three years ago at Chippaug, it was reported that one of those doors was not closing. So right away we fixed it. So we're careful about that. That was one of the things that at, when I went to look at the new elementary school in, I think it was Darien, that they had, that was built. One of the things that they did was all the outside doors not only closed and locked, but if one was open, an alarm bell went off. So nobody could prop up the door and leave it open to get air or for any, you know, go to their car and come back. That wasn't allowed because then the security officer would go and check on that. We don't have an alarm system at this point.
045But we do have clear expectation that no doors should be propped. And if somebody, you know, weakens and thinks that they're just going to do that real quick on the way out to practice, you know, constantly custodians and administrators are going around making sure that doors aren't propped open. We don't have an alarm system right now. I knew that. I just want to make sure that they did lock when they closed. Yes. Any other questions? Comments? Thank you, both of you, for all of your hard work. Oh, we thank the board for its attention and its time. Now, I sent you, can I talk about this next thing here on the agenda? Yeah. Yes, you may. So I sent you all electronically just a grid of, some brainstorming here, some potential ways forward to correct
046for our snow days. Now, I'm going to pass this hard copy around. You can take a look at it if you didn't get the it's two pages. Can I, while you're doing that, can I make an announcement? I had a senior reach out to me via email, which I thought was pretty great. And a senior from Chippa, I've got lots of seniors in my life, a senior from Chippa for his senior project. And he wanted me to read this tonight, although I didn't see him out there, but he sent me he asked me if I didn't, if it would be okay for me to read this. And I said, of course. Yeah, I'm going to read it. I'm going to read the whole thing. So you'll know who I'm talking about. So I'm assuming that
047maybe I'll have lots of seniors email me now since I'm a, I'm a sophomore. So I'm assuming that maybe I'll have lots of seniors email me now since I'm a sophomore. And I'm not a sucker for for this because I love this, so it's fine. But so so he wrote this to me. So he said good evening. A senior here at Chippa. His name is Dade Munson, is hosting a photo gallery for his senior project, the colors of our mind in the Chippa Mall around the planetarium. The theme of the gallery is love and loss, and it will be open for the duration of the meeting for anyone interested. Stop by and ask any questions and leave a comment on the note cards provided at each table so that was what yeah I'm actually very
048interested so please feel free to go over there and look at the he's gonna yeah so I just wanted to share that since I didn't have a food board report I just wanted to say that and we'll we try to keep published publicizing senior projects with towns and with the board that's a big thing and they're excited to try to bring them back to their form of glory in terms of the public coming in and watching the projects and say and Jen's been a big help on that with that um so gang I gave you this little grid it's it's not the final word because oh yes the thing is we can't really decide anything tonight I hate to say it and I don't want to jinx this but it's not clear that there won't
049be another snow event or two I hope not right now it seems all all is right with the world but John Baggioni our meteorologist says that there could be something wicked coming our way again in a week or two so we have to really wait and see but the idea is to just take a look at where we've been and start thinking about some options actually Angela gave me an option that I didn't think about to put on this grid that maybe we would put on I'll come back to her option in a minute but basically we adopted a calendar last year you might recall and the calendar says that we can keep going until June 26 before we start taking days away from April break that's what we forecasted and the calendar that we
050that we published and that the board passed so that's an option right but I don't know that you need me to read this at you I don't want to but but there's a flowchart here the least invasive option or the most depending upon the way you look at it is to just stay in session right now would be until June 24th if we don't have another snow day and finish the year that way and for each option you see a pro and a con what what could be good about it what could be bad about it and it goes forward from there the board could forgive several days up to two because you can't forgive below the mandatory that the state requires of 180 so we could this board could forgive two days doesn't not
051saying you should you could some boards have already done that I saw that Westport did that but there are pros and cons to that too and then going on from there you could forgive two days and we could hold school on June 19 and make it a programming day and you could follow that schedule a day for school because the principal teacher says that for the day and the instructional day so you could do that but you're willing to be very respectful and respectful the history that day so the kids develop the proper reverence for the day in addition it to its being you know an instructional day and then going on from there we could do all that plus turn a few of our half days in the full days of instruction I don't
052want to confuse folks that wouldn't give us more credit with the number of days served which are also mapped out in your chart and then finally at the end is we could subtract some days from spring break either as a standalone plan or in concert with any of the options above and i think angela mentioned to me on the way and she heard some districts were starting by being in school on on good friday maybe it's always harder with a religious holiday for folks i don't know but you heard some boys have done that right angela so so maybe that's something that's like in the hopper as well i just think i wanted you to see what some of the options are knowing this group you'll be smart enough to give me a few options
053that i didn't think about angela already started doing that and let's take a look at what happens over the next couple of weeks and then maybe try to make a call and we think it's safe to do so who knows these days but i would hope by early april it's safe for us to make a final decision i hope not it could a lot of our trouble this year was with timing you know it was just the worst possible time so that on any given day an early dismissal or a delayed opening wouldn't have solved the problem and hopefully we won't have too many more of those you know if the timing isn't so bad we can get a day of instruction in and not be further burdened but so this is just a framework
054to start the conversation and i think maybe in future meetings we should revisit it when we have more sense about what the weather's doing and try to try to make a call as a board and i don't know whether anybody has any questions or comments or input right now justin i don't understand and maybe i'm just dumb and not a finance person but i don't understand the loss of 104 000 and i'm wondering if you could well it depends on how you look at it if you look at it from a technical accounting standpoint we pay folks um a per diem rate for 180 some odd days some of those are teacher work days but some of them are instructional days so if you don't hold some of those days you're going to have to
055pay for those days technically from an accounting perspective you're paying money for days that never got that you never got worked as one of those now you could take a holistic view on that as a teacher you might and say i don't buy those beans the way you're counting them but that's the theory for it behind it yeah supposed to keep at don't give up on me justin ask me again well i i guess so obviously being a teacher um i if there's no school i still get paid like you know for the winter and the winter is about to pass and i would be working for free and you know i'm going to be working for free for the next few weeks when we've had the snow days so the last balloon paycheck would
056go out arbitrary date let's just say june 9th so that would mean that for the next like 10 days of school i would technically be working for free because i've already been paid for those services or do i just not grasp any of this no i think what you're saying is exactly right but you're being paid now but you weren't in school right you're so you're gonna Well, if you forgive the days, then you never provided those days you're being paid for. I work from home, I think. Does that make sense? This is just sort of a chart to consider all the niceties. It's not an expression of values or belief on my part that, you know, about what kind of microscope we're going to put our teachers under. I'm satisfied, worked plenty hard. It's
057not an in-your-face value judgment that I would want to offend God knows any of our teachers or you. It's just a balance sheet so the board knows all the facts and wouldn't feel later, gee, I didn't know everything that was going on. Another question, too. Yeah. How do the teachers feel? Like what's the kind of the mood or where are they in this, in our particular district? We've opened conversations with the bargaining units because no matter which way we go, we're going to have to do that. Like, for example, suppose we are open on June 19th. The custodial unit has that in their contract as a holiday. So we've approached them and if we go that route, if we do that, they would agree to an MOU where they would come in and work on
058the 19th and then take the following Monday off. We deal with it that way. The SVEA, again, it's early on. I haven't presented them with this whole scheme. But the general idea of working up to the 19th, coming in and giving instruction on the 19th, and then having the year end there through the other methods discussed, forgiving days, teaching half days, whatever. Right. So the SVEA was conceptually on board with that. At least their president is. I haven't gone further with it yet because I'm not in the position to really weigh it down yet. Tom? What otherwise was supposed to happen on those half days that will not happen? So the costs for those half days are not insignificant. There are days that were mostly dedicated to professional development for teachers. So they wouldn't get
059those professional development experiences. In order to deliver the instruction that we would recoup on those days. So that's listed as a con for that option. There's no easy way out of this. We're going to have to figure out the least of all the evils for us. But if that professional development was already happening at the end of the year, is it possible to include that content in other professional development days at the start of next year? Or spread it out? How you could make it. If folks had to collapse it into sessions, we've got a genius over there. I'm sure she would figure out how to do it. But these are days, these are half days that would happen between now and the end of school. Like March 26 is one day like that. So
060we would lose that afternoon. And then what would we do? How would we deliver that PD at another time? We would. PD is all very tight though because you have your state mandates that you've got to cover. And then our wish list for leaders of their own learning. And Ed Camps and things that we're trying to do to move forward. All the promises that I made to you last time. So it's just a game of whack-a-mole. So I think putting the kids first is the rule. And then a close second is making sure that the teachers get their professional development. Because I explained to you all, I read a book and it's true. The book says if you don't feed the teachers, they'll eat the students. So you have to remember that. Yeah. Well, if
061we take away the two days for education. Educational instruction. Why couldn't the teachers use those days as for personal development? Say that again, Mary. I'm sorry. Well, if we have full days for the instruction. The days that we were going to have half days. And then we're going to cut the school year by two days. Why couldn't we use those two days for the teachers to do their personal development? You only have a set amount of contractual days that you can bring the teachers in. And forgiving the two days would. There would still be some teacher time left at the end of that segment. But it would be in their contract as different as breaking down their rooms and doing other end of the year things. Right, Carrie? That would be supposed to be instructional
062days. So why couldn't they use that instead for professional development? What we would do if we do this plan is we would take a day that's a half day now. So the kids leave at 1130 or 12. Right. And the teachers have two hours of professional development. Right. They would teach that afternoon. Now you're saying they can make that PD up. When do you want them to make it up? The two days that we're not going to have instruction and they would have off. Why can't they be used for professional development? Oh, I see. I don't know. You know. You know? I think the goal is to shorten the year for teachers as well and to let them start their break also. If we brought them in for professional development. Sure. I don't know the
063legal answer to your question. I'll find out. To me that seems like they should have the professional development and those are two days that they were getting paid for. So why not use them if they needed them? Okay. I'll investigate that. Thanks for. Maybe you could use one day and use and do the two half days of professional development in the morning and in the afternoon. So that you don't have to, they don't have to do two whole days. I understand now. Thanks. For the last option subtracting days from the April spring break. Mm-hmm. Is there any thought to possibly putting out maybe a survey and seeing if there is enough attendance for it? I think a survey can never be a bad thing. I mean, and like right now. Let's see. I didn't do
064this exercise, but if we had eight snow days. So if we said we're going to start by attacking spring break, that would eat up a lot of it if we were going to do it that way. But I don't, can't think of a reason why we wouldn't float a survey now that you mentioned it just to see what folks were thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously some people have already made their plans, but if for some reason plans can be changed or canceled or diverted or, you know, something. You know, and you get like a high percentage of students and teachers. I mean, it would make sense to try and do that. No? Sorry, Joe. I think a survey is always a good idea. So I'll look into that. Yeah. Can I? I think my concern for
065the seniors, I think that April plan benefits the seniors more because my concern is our seniors are graduating June 13th. If we go to June 26th, they're losing about two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a nice way to get those students out of a very difficult space of instructional time, which, you know, by June 13th, they probably all know where they're going after they graduate. I would hope. But I wouldn't want to shortchange that. Well, there's a lot to that also, Angela. I mean, some of them are still taking probably AP classes and have to worry about getting that curriculum in, make sure they got the instruction in so that they're now at AP exams and classes are over by mid to
066late-May, but still could be in play. what i really don't think any seniors coming back after graduation right well i don't think they're losing any i don't yeah i don't think they lose well if it were if it were a normal year right uh or or the year like we've had in the past where there's several snow days and it's not that big a deal we don't change graduation the seniors graduate and then we make it known that they're welcome to come be with us several days after graduation and we provide programming for them and they elect shockingly not to it not to come so that's a thing but angela i think is saying that normal condition would now be compounded by an extra seven days or so where you're just losing whatever instruction they
067they might have gotten so this is the thing this is why i like this this is a starting point for us and there are you know the pros and cons part we should all look at because for every benefit we're perceiving for every option that we think about there's a corresponding detriment and we just have to weigh it all so what's the next step are we voting on this i mean not today but what is i think i think we should wait until at least the next long-term threat that baggioni's or as i affectionately call him johnny b is um putting out there which i think is march 17th sorry to ruin anybody's st patrick's day but it's too far away to know if that's real i'm hopeful that that's not going to be a
068real thing right and then we get past that and we should feel more and more confident that we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan and we can make a plan because the weather is more stable just wanted to start the conversation now Don is this something that you and other superintendents discuss and is this something that you all collaborate on and say okay you know this is what we're you know this is what we're gonna do and you all kind of decide or is it something each district decides on their own we do talk about it and sometimes our interests align
069and we make similar choices but very often even in surrounding districts they have a slightly different number of snow days than we do you know however they called it whatever their situation was so it's not always perfect but whenever a policy question like this is under review I do caucus with two superintendent groups and that will be part of what I post keep you posted on yeah what will this happen what will this do with our sending towns should we try to coordinate better with them maybe too I don't know if I can answer that question. I think it's a good question. Well anything we do that we have to take that into account because because of the busing and normally we have that worked out with them from the start but when you have
070exigent circumstances like this you do work that out with them going forward and I think as soon as we know what we're doing will be on the phone with the sending town so that their bus companies can make adjustments. I have a question when you when you're talking to the other superintendents you mean in terms of deciding what are you deciding. I wouldn't decide anything with them but we discussed this and we all share what we're thinking what our boards are thinking what we options might be sometimes somebody will brainstorm something that you didn't think about you know you just sort of in terms of what when you're closing or when you're making. Well on on a weather day so I don't know if anybody wonders what goes on behind the curtain on a weather
071day if it's a day that's too close to call then you have a 4 a.m. phone conference and. With. With our meteorologist we pay meteorologist to deliver a specific local forecast that's targeted to where we are. And you talk with him you talk with your road crews you talk with your grounds crews and you talk with a consortium of superintendents we caucus with the Litchfield group. At 410 a.m. and then at 420 with the Western Connecticut group and everybody just discusses what the conditions are like in their town what they think they're going to do. Now those are not uniform discussions is not like somebody. Decide something and then by Fiat everybody else all the dominoes fall everybody just keeps everyone apprised I might say I'm closing today because my road crew said it's icy
072in Washington and. You know the fellow region 14 might say my road crew says it's okay I can get by with the delay or whatever it is but we do talk with you confer. This is something where when we have a superintendent's meeting somebody will raise this I guarantee you what it where are you it's no days and what are you thinking about doing and the benefit is that we can all collect ideas in case somebody. Thinks of something that the other folks didn't think of. Because I just feel like sometimes what is happening in Washington may not necessarily be the same weather that's happening in even Bridgewater so that's why the road is can be really tricky and so I think that sometimes. And I think we've even said this I know that you
073know when my husband goes to work he's going through Roxbury Washington Roxbury and Bridgewater and then he'll get to Roxbury or Brookfield and it's a totally different. Weather pattern on his way to work so I think that it can also be tricky talking to other superintendents because you can easily get swayed by what's going on in other towns and you're having a very different experience in our three towns here and then if you're. Making a decision based on what other superintendents are doing I think sometimes it can get a little dicey yeah I'm not aware of that happening, so I think that's but. It does. They're all listening to the same. Weather guy but then they're all listening to their road crews and most times the road crews are I think they're the they're the
074guys yeah right now I haven't noticed too many times where the where the decision was. Too different among surrounding towns but they're not it's not synchronous you know, like everybody will report what they're doing and then every 10 or 15 minutes somebody will report what they're doing just so the group knows and it's not always the same and then it can be frustrating for some folks because I do have to make our call based upon what I think. What I think. Is the coldest I see is nastiest place at that time yeah so you could be sitting in Washington feeling like everything's fine but in Bridgewater the back roads are I see and. Yeah so it's it's there's a lot to think about I can't even make a decision on what to eat on a
075menu so I don't even know how it would be to. Delay or then it's like two hour delay three hour delay one hour 90 minutes I don't I it would be awful for me so I don't know how you do it. Well I take some lumps as how you want to take some lumps. Don't we all for different reasons. Thank you. Any thing else decisions discussions yeah can we get a basketball score up to. Sorry.