Board of Education Budget Workshop 05-26-2026

001like this. Perfect. Thank you. Welcome to the special meeting uh Tuesday, May 26, >> right? May 26, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. U like to make a couple of statements before we get started. I'd like to uh thank everybody for coming. I know it's a little bit early, 5:30 in the afternoon. Um, but one of the things that we have to do today is get this done. We have to get it done today. There are specifications um that we were a little I don't want to say confused, but we're unsure of as far as timing. Um, we if we had our meeting, which is scheduled for Thursday, it wouldn't have been enough time to get it in, to get it approved, to get it out for referendum. It's everything is so time constricted um with these

002processes that you really have to be careful of how you do it and what you what you get done and the timing that you get it done in. So we are required uh before we leave here today to have a budget um approved and moved forward so that it can be distributed parts unknown and put out for referendum. Couple other things um I'd like to to mention. First of all, I'd like to thank the the the board of finance um for taking the time to make uh some difficult decisions. I I wish as many as the other board members here wish the decisions were different, but they are what they are. And we are going to um do our best to provide an educational system that still thrives while meeting the standards set by the

003board of finance. We are also just like every other board uh in this town, our board of volunteers. We are administrators. We are teachers. We are lawyers. Uh we're retired law enforcement. We are business people. So we have a wide range of interests in a a wide range of things that we do in our lives outside of this. And we all come together uh for the interest of the town and the interest of the students to do the best we can. Now, everyone may not agree with what we do or how we do it, but one thing you cannot argue with is the success that the school system has had over the last several years, whether it was, you know, something as simple as having a student become governor of the day, opening up a

004daycare, which has been incredibly successful. um state championships sometimes repeat state champions whether it was sports, music, acting, problem solvers. I mean the list goes on and on. Um you know there are 169 municipalities in the state of Connecticut and if you try to figure out it's a little difficult to figure out how many schools because the way the schools are broken down but there are hundreds and hundreds of schools in the state of Connecticut. North Haven had three schools of distinction. I don't know anybody else that did. North Haven had a blue ribbon school. There's only four. How many states? >> Five. Okay. Five in the state. One landed here. Why did it land here? By accident? No. Because blue ribbon schools are not determined on a year-to-year basis. Blue ribbon schools are determined

005over years of continued excellence. And without that continued excellence, you're off the list. We stayed on that list and we provided our average price per student to educate is one of the lowest around. It's like fourth lowest in our DIR and if you take the 18 surrounding cities, we're right there as far as bottom of the pile and yet we still have all this success. Our grade scores have been our our um mandatory scoring test scoring is higher than it's been in six years. Again, that does not happen by mistake. So, you know, people can complain. They have the right to complain about the size of the school, how we pay for certain things, what we choose to have and not have. What you cannot ever complain about is the success rate that we've had

006and that we continue to have with the school. We have some other grade scores that are coming up that we expect to have. um we expect to show quite an increase in that also. So you know I would like to thank all the teachers, all the administrators, you know, all the people that are involved with with getting our kids ready, getting the schools ready. Um presenting it in a way that is the envy of most ths in the state. Um and I just I can't say enough how much we appreciate you. There are very very very difficult and um upsetting decisions to be made. Um you don't get to a million7 in cuts without hurting feelings or being upset yourself by having to do those cuts. Um none of us here want to be here

007to do that. That is not We didn't all sign up saying, "Man, I can't wait to come in here one day and drop a million seven off the budget." That is not what we ever intended to do. Uh again, town's people have spoken and they say that they want a change in the way money is spent. Now that's fine. I'm not so sure that they meant they want a million7 from BOE and a million from the town. I think that could have been much different. I've spoken to Mr. Freed about it. I've spoken to anybody who would listen to me about it. Uh that doesn't seem to be the way the board of finance wanted to go or at least most of them wanted to go. Um, I am not one to fall down the

008rabbit hole of uh Facebook and any other conversation. I try not to. U people are entitled to their opinions. Um, you know, it's easy for me to say, "Oh, I know that's not exactly correct." You know, because we're in it. We're we're in the meat of it and a lot of people aren't. So when you know when your state rep says, "Hey Ron, you didn't get a lot of funding this year because Hartford says you're topheavy." And I say to him, "Well Dave, who who said that and where are we topheavy? Please let me know um so I can address the person that that said that." Well, that that's what they're saying. And that's not really an answer. And the problem with that is as you repeat that through town meetings and general daily conversations,

009people hear that and they're like, "Oh, well the state rep says you're you guys are topheavy. Senator says you're topheavy." I I have never gotten an answer other than you guys are topheavy. That's not much of an answer and it's not much of a conversation. Um I've always asked for more and I have I haven't gotten it. Um, a couple of the other things that happened at the board of finance meeting the other day were um, a little questionable maybe. Um, you know, I I have a lot of respect for Len Pasano. He was a great senator here for a long time. Um, you know, and he made a couple of comments that I was a little confused about because he's been out of the process for a long time. You know, I've been here

010for, I don't know, four years, maybe a little little longer. been chair for maybe 83 or four years. Um I've never spoken to Fazison. He never introduced himself to me. He never reached out, showed concern about, oh, you guys are spending too much money. You're doing it wrong. I have some ideas. And I would be open to that conversation anytime. And I I invite Mr. Fano to contact superintendent's office to please schedule a date where he is available to come and speak to us. I would love to sit down and explain to him that, you know, yes, uh, when you were a senator, maybe the cost per student was lower and now the enrollment is lower and the cost per student is higher. Maybe that has to do with the millions in unfunded mandates that

011we get from the state every year. Maybe it's because we haven't really gotten any money from our rep and from our state senator every year. I mean, we got 175,000. Cheshure got 500,000 more than that. I'm pretty sure Czecher is very comparable to North Haven when it comes to the way it's governed, uh, its size, its wealth structure, and everything else. So, you know, I don't know what to say about that other than we're not getting that money. I wish we weren't. It would make everyone's life much easier. But, um, you know, again, to Mr. Dr. Fzano I would say you know maybe you are unaware maybe maybe you are and don't know the extent of it but there are a lot of things that we are now required to do especially after co um

012that there was never a requirement for and there is more um special education and mental health awareness that we have to take care of on a daily basis than ever before. students are more um confused than ever. They are more violent than ever. And there are things that we do today that were never done before. And that all cost money to get these kids educated and working in a positive fashion to move forward with their lives. That's all I would say uh to Mr. Rosano and and please take the opportunity to call mute with myself and Mr. Stur at any time. The other uh one of the other things I like to mention is uh Sally Boi and her and her constant misrepresentation of how we got to where we are on the budget. I'm

013going to do it simply and um quickly, I hope. Um, on the day after Christmas, we were informed by B&B, who is our insurance company, that in order to cover our increased workers cop compensation claims, we would have to add $3 million to our budget, which was shocking. And we immediately asked Bronner Brown, please re-evaluate that. it doesn't seem possible. They were like, uh, it's been re-evaluated. It's the number. On January 15th, we had our second workshop to create the budget. Our budget number was approximately 5.6% until we added the 3 million, which brought it to 111. So, that 3 million were uh funds that number one we did not expect and we still didn't believe, but we had to carry it. March 2nd. Um between March between January 15th and March 2nd, we were

014asked by the first selectment to please sharpen your pencils, meet again, see what you can do. And we were for that. And on January 15th, we met on our second workshop and we brought our um I'm sorry, on March 2nd, we had a workshop and we lowered our request to 9.9%. That still included the $3 million from Brown and Brown. On 311, we had our regular meeting. on 317 Brown and Brown got back to us and said, "Guess what? We were off by a million4 and a million4 came back off our budget request." Now, we got that call from Brown and Brown on the 17th of March and immediately we called the town selectment and we say, "Listen, Brown and Brown's coming. We do numbers. Our numbers going to change." Now it's not for me

015as the board chair to say okay we can subtract that number from that so it'll be 7.05. It's I can't do that. That is not my responsibility. My responsibility is to bring the board together present the facts vote on it recalculate and then inform the town. I don't have any authority to do that on my own. It has to be done through scheduled meetings. So we had that meeting on 42 which is basically two weeks after our notification. We dropped down to uh 6.75. Correct. Uh 35. I'm sorry. I'm writing. 6.35. On 412, the board of finance gave us another $500 um aotment to put towards trying to save some teachers. That put us back at 7.08. That's the timeline. So when she says, you know, how dare they? They knew and they held on

016to that information like like why am I holding on to that information? There's no gain for the board of education to hold on to any information. When we had that information in Brown and Brown, we contacted the town right away. Same thing. But I can't in good operation of this board just say, "Hey, Mike, not only that, but now our our budget's going to be so and so this particular number." I cannot do that. that has to be done as a whole by the board. And if Sally Buy remembers her days in the board of finance, she would have remembered that. But she likes to talk about how she was a member of the board of finance and she was a third selectman, but yet conveniently forgets that those decisions can't be just made by

017any board chair. They have to go through committee. And she constantly neglects to say that. And it makes it sound like fishy business is going on. You know, the other thing is, you know, we got a million dollar check from the insurance. We get a million dollar check from the insurance company. God, I wish we did. They called and said, "Take a million off the expectations, not here's a check." That never happens. The same with our bow uh our budget at the end of the year when we have unencumbered funds basically to surplus. Last year we had 235,000 something something to that effect. You know, she made it seem like, oh my god, you know, they overcharged you $235,000. That was on $70 million. That's I think a less a half of 1%. And I

018would like, you know, we all do budgets where we do budgets for our homes or for our kids' education where we've all come in less than half a percent. I I would Dare to say that doesn't happen. Fact remains, if we were worried about showing none, we could have went in a spending spree the last week of June and spent that money. It's not like we don't need stuff. Could have bought chairs for hair. These chairs are lousy. We could have bought anything. We could have bought a microphone system. We could have spent it on the kids. We could have done anything. But no, we took that money. We put it back into the next year's budget where it gets absorbed. Like every year we have unovered funds. We do not have a bank account

019for extenduating circumstances like the town does. When the town has unencumbered funds, they're allowed to put it into a bank account. And that's the general fund that he was talking about the other day where there's 11.8 million in it or or such. We don't have that. I've asked for one and they said I can't get it. And I've asked for one because if we had one and I had a million, $2 million tucked away in there, I could easily pull it out to balance the budget. >> But we're not either allowed to have one or I've not been given permission to have one. That that's for sure. But our unencumbered funds go back into the next year's budget and get absorbed into that. So there is no continuation of these monies that we collect and

020have in our back pocket to throw a big party at the end of the year. That is not the case at all. One of the other things they talk about is, you know, maybe the uh education system needs to do a deep dive into what they're doing and how they're doing it. And again I would fall back on we are fourth in the dirt fourth lowest in spending. We are bless you about fourth highest in achievement plus all the other achievements I've mentioned. What d do you need to do to know that you're doing things at an extraordinary level for an extraordinarily low price? I don't I don't know. I don't know how else to answer that that question. Um but again I would if Mr. Fazado would love to meet. I would appreciate that

021that meeting. So with the discussions of deep dive, there are decisions that are easily made and there are decisions that are not easily made. I want to talk briefly about the ID program and how unpopular we know it was, but how difficult it was to get off that program. two years ago when the state came to the board of education throughout the throughout the state and said this is the way we want to start teaching these classrooms and it's different than the way you're currently doing it with IB. So I met briefly with um the superintendent by myself with Christian and I mean as as a board I was the only board member there and I said listen if if you want my advice start phasing it out. If this is how the state wants

022to start to go with the way we're teaching we need to phase it out because it's not going to work. And he was adamant about it's going to work. We're going to make it work. I used to be a ridge. I know how much the people love the program. the kids love the program. I need to figure it out. I said, "You're the boss, man. If you can figure it out, you figure it out." And he did figure it out that year. It was painful and it wasn't really the way he wanted it figured out because it was costing us time and and money and effort that was way over any other effort a lotment that we had always put into the program. But he admired that program so much he kept it up. So

023when the second year rolled around, I said, "You sure you want to keep this program going?" He said, "Absolutely. I want to keep it going again. We're going to keep pushing." And the more he pushed, you could see that the teachers were burning out. Uh the classes weren't quite the same. We know parents were upset because, you know, that thing is 58 years old. It's it's a life on its own, right? We we know that it has its own heart rate and pulse. um regardless of whether it work or not and people don't want to see it go. Um I I again advised him at the beginning of the year it needs to go. He said no. He tried and tried and tried at the end of the well two months ago where we knew

024it wasn't going to work anymore especially with the way um teaching had changed and the responsibilities that they had uh to keep grades singular. um it became impossible. The problem was we waited so long to change it. We had to do it in short order because we were already prepping for the next year's budget. When that announcement came out, we were already into talks about what's going on today. So unfortunately by being stubborn and trying to get this thing to work and work and work, we kind of put ourselves in a box where it had to be ended so that we could move forward with this year's budget and reallocating of teachers and locations and making sure students were getting taken care of and how we were going to do that. Is that a great

025excuse? No. No. I'm just telling you what happened and and why it happened. And I know people are upset. I have family members that are in the program. They were upset. But you know, we tried to present the teachers, the teachers union, the principles, and the administrators to explain, listen, this is really why it it doesn't work anymore. Please believe me, we're not just saying it so we can move on. This is really what it is. And you know it turned into well the BOE forced the teachers into saying things they really don't want to say and and so on. And believe me when I tell you that is not the case. We don't force teachers to say anything. Teachers, believe me, they they're pretty free spirited. They have their own mind. They're going to

026say what they want to say when they want to say it as well they should. And that's the way really we we kind of like it that way. That's the only way to get information flow back and forth. So, you know, if there is someone to blame on the ID, you don't blame me because I I could have been much harder in saying, "No, the board of board of education is not going to finance that any longer." But he had hopes of saving you. So, the only reason you had it as long as you did is because of this man, not because of me. Because it would have been gone. I got to be very honest with you. Because I knew it was coming to an end. He knew too, but he wanted to say

027that and I don't blame him. That's about all I really have to say about what was going on with the meetings, statements made by others. um some misunderstandings about message when it comes to ID program when it comes to explanation of the budget how we got to where we are today in the time frame and the discussions that were had to get here. uh none of it was easy, but but here we are. And I hope that that at least laid some explanation on the table that everyone can kind of look at and understand. Maybe maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't. But I just I want to put it out there because it's the truth and I'm never afraid to answer a question or is anybody on the board about what's going on. I've had

028many of unpleasant conversations. We've all have or had children go through the system, through the sports programs here, through any other extracurricular opportunity back when mop mop and miners was around. I put all kids from Mob Miners. So, we've been here a long time. I know I've been a resident of this town for 56 years. I've been a homeowner in this town for 40 years. Take my mortgage to be paid off. Anyways, I've been here for a long time and I've seen a lot happen. I've seen the school system go up and down. Uh, a lot of things change. We are on a projected rise. We've been on a rise. And I don't care what anybody says. All the facities in the world can say what they like. They cannot say that this school is

029not successful and the envy of many other schools in the dirt and around the state. That's all I'm going to say about that. We're going to move on now to try to figure out the budget. Raven, do you have anything you want to say? I know I been on for a while, but I felt the need to maybe try to get some explanation out there. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to have the um administration go over the proposed cuts. Now, just before we get started, I just want to remind everybody these cuts are miserable to make. Nobody wants to make. I have to give uh the administrators a lot of credit. These are they're talking about people that they've worked with for years and years and years. They have relationships with outside the

030school. They have good relations inside the school. Anything that happens here is not a uh an effect of that relationship. We didn't hide anybody from a deep dive because we like them. We didn't put anybody forward because they're not our favorite. That's not what happened. We have to take a cold hard look at what is going on and make some really, really tough decisions. So, as these decisions are talked about, if we can please refrain from any kind of um emotional outburst about I it's hard. It's hard. I've been laid off myself. It's not easy. It's miserable. Um but we have to do what we have to do. So, with that, I'm going to leave the administration to start to talk about our first options. >> Thank you. All right. The board has two forms

031or two charts that there are a couple places. The first is the portrait one uh that actually Ron walked you through from the 11.14 down to the 708. That's something we're all familiar with. We've seen that. It also has a timeline if you look to the to the left the dates that Ron gave. >> Excuse me. Patrick, I apologize. There's 25 people all week. Ron, would you mind just speak up a little bit so people do my very best. >> Thank you. The other chart outside uh the other chart, the landscape one is the one I'll be referring to and talking through the board with right now. And those are the proposed reductions to reach the uh the $1.7 million uh decrease to the budget, which brings us to a 4.53% overall increase for 2627.

032So, we'll start with the green. >> The green is >> Yeah, I'm I'm not going to be yelling. I'm here to talk to you all. So, I mean, this is how I talk. >> On the side, if you want to hear, >> I just I didn't mean to interrupt you. >> Huge crowd. They can come squeeze in the best I can. Yes. >> We'll wait another minute. If you need another minute to kind of file in, that's fine. I don't want to set on fire. You saw a big chunk out there or no? >> Well, I can't I can't help that. I can only >> There's somebody behind you in that door. >> Okay, we're going to we're going to proceed. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. >> All right. Referring

033to the top of your document, uh you'll see the the four green lines at the top. Those are administrator reductions. There two positions that are being proposed to be reduced. It's the athletic director position and the director of buildings and grounds. You can see there are four lines there uh because there's a new stipen put in for the athletic director and as for services for the athletic directing and for services for the director of billion grounds. They are listed at $25,000 each, but that is the full elimination of those full-time positions. The next grouping is the red. I'm going to highlight them quickly and then actually Melinda's going to go into a little bit of depth for everybody. So, there's the coordinator reorganization and consolidation. That's the elimination of four coordinator positions within the district.

034You'll see there's a savings of $244,000 there. Along with that are their stipens for every coordinator at $81,000. And coordinators also have summer hours, so those will be eliminated as well at $18,000. There's an elementary cons elementary classroom consolidation. Uh this impacts one classroom at each of our four elementary schools. So that's a total of four positions at a savings of roughly $290,000. The elimination of 7th grade world language classes, again 7th grade only at $26,000 savings, which is impacts three positions in the district. And the final line of the red grouping is to propose new special education teachers that we had in the budget. There's four of those. Those are positions. Those are not bodies currently in the district. That is a savings of $219,000. Again, that's four positions. Would you like to highlight

035some of those, please? >> Sure. With the coordinator reorganization and consolidation, I would like to move and I ready from the grants that we had talked about in a previous meeting and utilize some of those fundings as long as well as different movement that will happen within the coordinator groupings. We still need instructional leadership in our buildings that um work on curriculum that guide teachers, mentor new teachers. So with this reduction, I can get creative with some of the grant money and um utilizing staff that we have in some different capacities, but still be able to keep that instructional leadership going on in the buildings. When Patrick had mentioned about the elementary um class sizes, um we were able to reduce one in each of the four buildings. And I'll just give a small example

036of what that might look like. For instance, if there was um a classroom that currently had 72 students in the whole grade and we had four teachers, we would reduce that to three teachers and it would increase the class sizes to 24 in each of the classes. just as an example of what that looks like. The next grouping is the yellow group. The top line is the proposed new occupational therapist position that is in the group five that we had spoken about throughout the budget. That is a position, not a body currently in district. So, it's a savings of $75,000. Uh the next two lines uh are non-certified physicians. The elimination of the two library clerks, one at middle school and one at high school at a savings of $83,000 and the attendance clerk position

037at the high school for $26,000. The last four almost the last four lines in blue are employer uh medical and dental savings, social security expense savings, Medicare expense savings, and pension expense savings due to the elimination of all those positions. And the final line is a $12,000 uh cut to the uh future problem solvers field trip subsidy. It's not to do with the program. The pro the program will remain, but we do have a subsidy of $12,000 uh to support their field trip that occurs each year uh in June. >> May I interrupt you just to share about the world language proposal? I know initially we had spoken about eliminating world language at the middle school in its totality and I worry very much about that because we have lots of students who are accessing

038really higher level um language courses at the high school and currently at the middle school we teach half of year 1 and seventh grade and the other half in 8th grade. With this shift, we're still going to be able to um give students opportunities to take the higher level languages at the high school for this coming year. 8th grade will teach the second half just as they would have planned normally. During next year and through that next summer, I will work to integrate change at 8th grade where they will teach the whatever the world language courses level one at the high school. Instead of it being broken into two years, they will do it in the eighth grade year and it will get them the same opportunities that they currently have now. So as we

039have worked this that was um a compromise that we could put on the table so that we don't have the same kind of impact to students. >> Thank you. Go ahead. >> Um, so that is the total reduction for this portion uh to get us down to the five 4.53. There's a total of 21 positions. Again, five of those positions do not have current bodies in them because they were proposed for this budget year. I do not want to forget in order for us to get down to the 7.08, 08. Um we also had as everyone knows certified retirees taking the early retirement incentive plan. Those uh eight positions are again we are not planning to fill them. And there's also a one one position of a non-certified retiree that we will not plan to

040fill. So between tonight and those positions that I just mentioned is a total of 30 positions reduced. >> Okay. So again, um I know that was a very difficult job and I'm sure it was very difficult to present. Um so now it's our job to kind of go through these, look at them, um see if there's any changes that we may like to make or not. Um I remind you this, any change we make that adds something to this, a change has to be made to take something out. The number at the bottom is the number and it has to be the number. So as we add 100, you need to find 100. If you add 2500, you need to find 2500. So keep that in mind as you make suggestions. I know everyone has

041some to make, I'm sure. Um I I think you know normally I start at the end um with the newer people and I work our way out. I think um because of the severity of this I'm going to start with the most senior people and work backwards a little bit. So um I think that leaves you Randy as as the first. I mean I'll go I'll go first if you like. I love that. >> Why did I mention that? All right. I have um one or two concerns about the budget. I do not like in elementary classroom. I think I think we're asking too much of the student. And I think we're asking too much of the teacher to do that classroom like that. That is the start of their educational journey and you want

042to make sure that everything that they have is super solid and on track. So that is an issue for me. Um the other thing that I think we can find uh with the move I'm going to suggest uh is the future problem solvers trip. Um so instead of basically saying the future solvers trip problem solvers trip say it twice. Um that should be basically say something to the effect of money back to field trips. There are several field trips throughout the year for the school and that 12,000 should be divied up the best we can or however we see fit at the time. In order to reach that um it's basically 303,000. My suggestion would be that we lose an assistant principal from the high school and we lose one from the middle school. That

043is a it's a big difficult ask. They're all big difficult asks, but it is something that I think that at a minimum we should at least look at um the work that the APs do. I I don't really know how we would cover it. I don't know yet. I I mean there's only one way is you divvy up their work into the existing principal and AP and say you know have at it which is a lousy thing to do but these are lousy times. So as I look at the budget I say to myself we're here for educational standards of the kids and to provide them with the best opportunities to succeed. And one of the ways to do that is to keep the classroom small and to keep that um social to so they

044can develop social skills and they can be given more of a one-on-one chance to succeed. That's my suggestion for the budget. And I think that if you listen to the public comments, if you listen to what's happening at the meetings, what's being said at selectman meetings, what's being said at um the finance meetings is that people are looking for a move in the administration level and I don't believe that that desire um follows into the classroom. I don't think they want classrooms to change. I know that I want classrooms to change. Either way, it's a lousy decision. Um and I'm just putting it out there. Randy, your turn. >> I think I have more questions than statements right now. >> Absolutely. >> Um so I think I'm going to bounce off of what you just

045said to start on. So um classrooms so Patrick I think you said this I'm sorry but I didn't write it down. So with um reducing the classroom teachers one at each building classroom sizes how what what are what would they be with the teacher and what would they be without the teacher? How much have we gone? >> So I um I had given an example of um 72 students in um 73 students in we'll use that one in fifth grade and currently we have four classrooms for that it would be reduced to three and there would be 24th classroom >> 24 in a class. >> Another example might be um a third grade with 45 students. We currently have three, so that'd be 15 in each as it is now. Um, consolidating to two puts

046it at 23 in each of the two. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Those are just a couple of examples. >> So, if we were to increase the class sizes, you're looking at the upper grades, not the primary, not K one, two, one, three, four, five. >> Uh, three, four, five. Exactly. >> And that's across all four elementary schools. >> Yes. >> Um, how many administrators do we have at the high school? We have one principal and how many KPs? >> Two students >> currently. >> Correct. >> An athletic director who also >> and one A. And then at the middle school, we have one principal and two students. >> Just one uh assistant in each building is an 11 assistant. >> And how many students do we have in high school? >> 950ish. >> Sorry.

047>> 950. And at the middle school? 760 >> 760 >> 902 as of March 1st >> high school and 768 excuse me so so I don't like any of this right like I think that just goes for saying and I'm not going to talk about why I don't like any of this because I think we all feel the same way I'm not going rehash all of that that we've been saying for months. Um fact that we have to reduce our district by 30 educators awful. Um but um maybe that's not the right word. Ron, I'm going to push back a little bit on your AP suggestion. And reason I'm going to do that is because >> um I agree with you. small class sizes is what everybody wants. There's no doubt about that. Being a

048teacher myself and in education, we all know that small class size, smaller class sizes better. Um, but I think as a board, what we always have to do is make decisions for what's better for most. And when I think about reducing the administration at the middle school and the high school by an administrator, that ratio of student to administrator increases so much that the impact that that will have on the students across the entire high school and the entire middle school is going to be significantly more powerful than the impact it will have on four elementary classrooms. rooms when we're talking about third, fourth, and fifth graders because in the upper elementary classes, it is common, not preferable, but common to have classes of that size. I know in my own school, we have classes

049up to 26 in grades five. When I was in New Haven, we had them to 28, 30, 32. I'm not saying that that's what we want by any means, >> but it happens. >> Um, and and will it be great for that class? Absolutely not. Is that what the parents, the teachers, and the students want? Definitely not. But we're talking about when we talk about administrators and their their responsibilities are vast throughout the day. I, you know, they're they're, you said it yourself, like we're talking about more mental health and special education needs than ever before. Um, they are the instructional leaders of the schools. They keep the school safe on a thousand different levels throughout the day. if we remove an adult um an administrator from each of those schools, I I worry about

050how continue to move those schools forward. Um especially if we are reducing the coordinators and the coordinators do a lot of the instructional the instructional leadership, you know, that's going to fall on the administrators. when we do we do see administrators it's it it just kind of I I think it just kind of >> just problems. Okay. >> So I I I hope I'm being clear because I feel like >> No, no, you're being you're being very clear and again that's why we're here, right? We're here to have conversations about options. So that's absolutely fine what you're saying >> and I didn't think I didn't think I was going to talk about that. So I'm just kind of like here with that. But um so that's what I was that's kind of my feedback on

051that suggestion. Um just a quick question about the future problem solving. This is just because I don't know the answer to this. The 121 is that the total amount that we typically give them or a partial amount that we typically give >> total. What's budget for >> for just the field trip? >> Yeah, for just the field trip. >> Yeah. It's not the program related. It's not related to the program at all. >> And they typically um fund raise more than that for their field trip. So they would have to fund raise 12 more than what they what do they typically fundra >> what do they typically fund raise for that >> it's been they just kind of compute the cost and then they ask the parents this is how much the >> the trip

052is going to cost and then obviously there's people that can't do it I don't know what happens behind the scenes there but okay >> if there people aren't prohibited going because they pay for it but otherwise it's goes to the parents Um, so I know that Mr. Diana retired a month or two ago, whatever it was. I don't even know how long it was now. Um, how has So, so you're confident that without replacing his position and using this stipad that we'll be able to I know it'll be harder because it's a whole person that we're not having, but be able to cover the additional responsibilities. >> Yes. with support from Christian and myself and the stipen will be able to cover that. >> Okay. And then how with the athletic director, how is that

053going to happen? How does that work? >> Uh the $25,000 stipen will be provided to we have to figure out how that's going to look necessarily. Not sure if it'll be seasonal or for a full year. We see interest. Um but again, more will fall through building administration as well for responsibilities. I'll come back to you. >> Yeah, I think so. I know this was very difficult to put together. So, no one in this room is happy about any of this, right? So, I I just I hesitate to call it a positive, but I guess the the benefits that I see from some of the things that you've done here. Um, you know, we've kept sports pretty much intact outside of the um the athletic director position if this happens. you know, there there is

054some impact to the world language program, but there's still the option for kids to take languages in the middle school, which that was a great concern of mine that if there was no world language program, the ripple effect of that going forward was going to last years and years and years. And either kids wouldn't be taking languages or they'd be so far behind. and especially after like the showing we had with the seal of bi literacy this year and I mean there's just so many positive there so I appreciate you being able to work some of some of that in um you know we also heard from a lot of people about future problem solvers and keeping that intact you know for the most part that program still exists if if we agree to this

055um the field trip you know that that's tough It's it's already speaking as one of those parents that pays for it now, it's already a good chunk. If it's not subsidized, you know, I I do fear that people either won't be able to go. Um, and the concern I always have when we say, you know, we'll fund raise is we're fundraising and we're asking the same groups of people for the same money or, you know, for money for 10 different things. And that, you know, after a while, not only does it become white noise, it just becomes there's no more money for anybody to give. Um, so I I'm not sure where I stand on on that right now, but it it's the least of least of my concerns on this list. I I quite

056honestly the the coordinator position really it it like it crushes my soul. Like that position I I don't think people realize how important that is to the how high functioning the district is. that really it hurts. Um I did have a question about the the elementary school. Are those building level administrator decisions there or like as to what classrooms get how how is that going to be decided? What classrooms get purged? >> It's enrollment based. >> Okay. >> So it could look different in each >> It does. I mean in each school. Okay. Um, I'm I mean, Ron threw me for a nice curveball with the um with the AP positions. I was not anticipating that, but um I do think it's a Ron I do think it's a very fair point to make, especially

057listening to what the public has said and you know I'd like some more information as to what that would look like if we did eliminate those roles and what um really what happens in each of those schools, you know, when when the APS down by one. And then the last kind of thing on here that at least is floating in my mind right now is I think I think the um the buildings and the grounds position I think you know we've kind of we'll be okay there. I am quite concerned really with the elimination of the full-time athletic director position and I don't know um quite honestly I was ignorant to all the different things that the AD does. you know, I had a general idea, but then all the emails and then from, you

058know, um like the head of the I think it was the CIA, you know, athletic director guy emailed us and provided more information. It's a huge huge responsibility that I don't know I really don't I don't know and I'm not I'm not convinced that um a stipen position can can carry all the responsibilities there. So th those are the things that are I guess it's more just >> just clarify a little bit. It's a second position plus the part-timer, correct? >> That we already have. >> There's an administrative assistant. It's a full-time administrative assistant in the in the athletic director's office. >> That's primarily like scheduling and >> buses, transportation, logistics. >> Yeah. Just just so you know, it's not just a one stipended position. That's all. >> And Joe, I could just talk a

059little bit um in particular like about the middle school AP. Um you know, there are a significant number of students with IEPs there. I want to say around 116 to 120 and that requires multiple um PPT meetings, um parent planning team meetings. So that's a you know that's a huge amount of time that you know one admin has to be present that that takes care of a lot of that. Um never mind the you know the office referrals in that age group being you know challenging as they're developing. Um I believe we're close to 76 certified staff there. Does that sound right? Um and those evaluations for teacher evaluation have to be conducted too. Um and th those are kind of non the IEPs and the evaluations are non-negotiable. There are probably um slightly greater

060numbers at the high school due to the the higher number, but those are just some like concrete pieces that I know absorb them a lot of the day. Do I have to turn? >> Sorry. >> So, you know, we've been at this table for a really long time together. So, I say this with like complete respect. You and Ron both used the the phrase the public said they want. >> Yeah. >> And they mentioned um less administrators. >> I I think we're we are listening to the public when they said they want us to spend less money. Right. Right. We are we are spending >> $1.7 million less money which is causing us to further reduce and completely reduce 30 people. >> Yes, >> we don't have to listen to them as to how we

061spend it. I think to a certain extent we need to rely on the professionals in our public school system as to where the least impact will be taking everything into consideration. And I think that if the team up here thought that reducing APS would be least impactful, and don't get me wrong, every single one of these people is a huge impact. So, I don't mean to minimize any anybody on this piece of paper, but just because people outside of education say we're topheavy or that's not the way it was when I was there or 10 years ago or 20 years ago that's not the way it, >> I'm sorry, but there are professionals in their positions right now for a reason and we need to listen to them because they know the needs of the

062teachers and the students in this district. So, yes, we are listening to the public. We are cutting by $1.7 million. But you know what? I do not want to put the safety of our students and our teachers and the instructional leadership in jeopardy because the public has sticky fingers behind screens. I'm sorry, but I I I >> is not a place where I'm >> and and you know >> No, >> you know well enough both Ron and I and >> if I may just speak for you for one secondly >> we're at least the way I'm saying the public is it's been a point that's been raised. I think we have an obligation to at least look into it and discuss it. I don't think it's something that just because somebody brought up that we,

063you know, we have to go by it. But I do think it warrants a discussion. >> And if nothing else, by that discussion, maybe people understand the role of what everybody does in that building and how significant it is to have >> multiple administrators in there. >> And maybe there's room to do one at one school and not at the other or whatever. I I just I don't think just because it wasn't on the paper that was put in front of us that it's something that we shouldn't at least talk about. >> Okay, that's fair. >> Go me. >> Um so I just only have a quick uh comments. Um so unfortunately, you know, this is where we are. Um the public, you know, going back on what both you said it, you know, they

064wanted this number in terms of the budget. Um and you know Patrick and his team has done you know a good job difficult job uh putting this proposal uh before us. I did have a a follow-up comment to what Joe talked about regarding the ad position and it's something that I've been uh thinking about is um whatever you decide to I'm not going to make that decision for you and tell you what to do but whatever the decision you make without position as to who's going to take over if that's the direction is on a higher level somebody who can as Joe mentioned who can take care of the higher level things you know if it's in terms of being present at meetings you statewide meetings doing all the high level coordinations all those things

065just make sure that it's somebody because we have you know run a pretty successful athletic program I want to continue to do that and so whatever decision you decide to make on that position just make sure that my thought is to make sure that that person is able to uh to do that regarding the future problem solvers field trip um Joe had mentioned you know um about fundraising I mean the North Education Foundation is hopefully will be able to help as they always do you know so hopefully there are ways that that 12,000 can be plugged but hopefully because it is an very very important uh trip um so it's a difficult decision um but you know this is what we have to do so um I don't have any any questions you know regarding

066what's been presented except those clarification um you know questions and then is just to make sure that as you're merging those classes says just be strategic about it. You know, I know Patrick did mention that it's based on enrollment, but um you know, just be careful about about the merger and then also just keep parents informed as to you know, their class, you know, that their kids are attending school. Communication I would say is key because the transition will be very difficult. >> That's all I have. >> Thank you. So, >> um, so I also I'm in agreement with Randy on all things always. No, just kidding. Um, but I I do think like I I listen to the professionals here and I trust what they say, but I also verify, right? So, like I'm

067constantly doing looking things up, doing deep dives of my own with my 12-year-old. If anybody would like to do a deep dive on anything, we'll we'll both sit with you anytime. Um, and I was looking at administrative recommendations, right? So for lockdowns, evacuations, emergencies, coordinating with police and fire and the SRO's, building wide supervision, behavioral intervention, deescalation, parent communication, preventing suspensions, teacher evaluations, which are legally required, coaching and support, ensuring classroom quality, scheduling, compliance, and then special education coordination that Melinda brought up. Like I do worry about shrinking those uh AP positions further because we did shrink one last year. Um we used to have three APs at the high school. It's working well now with two APs at the high school and for the middle school I really worry. I remember I was at

068the play with Miss Bankowski and I was a volunteer and I was like I don't know how you do this all day every day. I manage people for a living and this these are these kids are very challenging and I give you a lot of credit for it. But I do think that there are myriad behavioral issues that um that we see that our our administrators are dealing with and we want to make sure that everybody else can focus and learn. Just my two cents on on that piece. Fully hear you though on um a lot of the feedback that we're getting in most of these. I want to just kind of think about where does the work go because there are 30 positions here. There are 30 positions worth of work on this document,

069which is that's a significant amount of our staff. Um, and the work won't just disappear, like it's going to go somewhere else. So, I' I'd love to just kind of understand specifically like which which departments are we losing coordinators for and where that work will go. Um, I understand the elementary classrooms. I I'd like I I sort of understand the the grounds position, but I'd like to just double click on the athletic director position. I'd like to understand better the two library clerk positions um and the attendance clerk position to see like where that work would go. And I'd also just like to ask about the new occupational therapist position. It was going to cost us 75 grand, but the line item that we're budgeting for is 150 grand >> because we contract services out.

070>> So, there's also there's been a lot of discussion about um the positions that the board of ed uh has hired. And I want to just kind of can I spend a second on that? So, as Ron said, we are the fourth we the fourth lowest in our DUR from expenditures. We spend an average of $2,000 less per student per year than others. If we went on a spending spree, we would see it in the money. What we have done is been strategic about pulling contracted services in. Like we're we're doing this in the private sector right now, too. Contracted services can cost two to three times the amount. You don't have the commitment for medical, dental benefits, etc. But when you're in a an environment like a school system, the risk isn't there because

071you're not just setting something up to run a project for a little while. You're setting up children to to learn and to be part of the future. So, um I know that there's there's been like a very surface level criticism of some of the hiring and I wish folks would double click on it a little bit and understand that we actually saved $5 million a year with the RISE program by bringing kids back into district. that did require that we hire some people. Those people are not extra people. They need to be here. Um, so that's one other thing. And last but not least, for world languages, it at the middle school, are we still going to offer the four that we offer today for 8th grade? >> We would um Spanish, Italian, French, and

072Chinese. >> Correct. >> We'd have to do some splitting of staff between the high school and middle school to make it work. That's a very creative solution. I want to give you guys props for that. Um I don't I don't love that we're getting rid of seventh grade language. Um we we've heard all we've also heard from people that starting language even younger is good for the kiddos. I want to just acknowledge and make sure that we're saying that out loud as well. But if you if you wouldn't mind just walking me through like the more of the specifics around um what coordinators are being consolidated. Are all of the coordinator summer hours included in the 18,000? And then just a little bit of where the work is being redistributed when uh when we're looking

073at these consultants. >> I can speak a little bit to that. Um we had already eliminated any summer curriculum writing a few budget iterations ago. >> So that money is already out. So um the coordinators would typically lead in teams of teachers to do some of that work. So, that's a shift that we're going to have to make for this coming year. Um, we have we have some movements throughout the district if we're being completely transparent. Um, due to the budget coming, we know people are applying for other positions. Some people, you know, potentially have taken other positions. So, that's happening all across the board and that saddens us tremendously. But in the coordination coordinator consolidation piece, I would like to just kind of have the freedom to see where everything kind of shakes out.

074And then I want to have representation of instructional leaders at each of the three levels um elementary, middle, and high. And we need to develop um practices where we can go across contents and we can go up and down K through 12 to make sure that we're covering things. Um, so you're talking about moving to like a matrix model of coordination where >> kind of like more like a an instructional coordinator kind of team. Okay. Um, so it's it's very complicated because um, currently we have 18 coordinator teacher leader positions. These are teacher positions. Um, six of them currently are full-time in content areas, core content areas across the district. Seven of them currently teach and get a stipent and have two blocks free in their um their schedule. Some teach fully just because their

075department needed more assistance and then there are five that are um under um special services. So we would we would make changes to about four of those positions in the totality of being coordinators and then um distribute kind of responsibilities from there. We have to like grow a a new team and a new way of thinking about it. Um, if this comes to fruition, there are there are lots of responsibilities that the coordinators do that would seem like no one would know if you didn't dig into them, right? Um, they're instrumental in um scheduling. They're instrumental in our pacing of our instructional units by discipline, our assessment calendars. um they are an integral part of our dual enrollments and our college bearing classes. Our AP testing, many of them actually are some of our um

076higher level AP and ECE instructors. And then during their couple of free blocks, they are able to do unification and um curriculum leadership um in each of their departments. Um, thank you for that, Melinda. Um, that it does make sense to me. When Anthony, this one might be for you. When we're looking to eliminate the pro the proposed new occupational therapist position, which is $75,000, as we said, the budgeted line item is $150,000 this year. If we were to reduce the budgeted line item of $150,000, keep this position in, figure out what we need to do for Social Security, Medicare, and pension, wouldn't we have enough to cover the future problem solvers field trip, or or is it the type of situation where the 150K supports multiple contractors who come in and help with occupational

077services? >> Typically, that's how it is. we have multiple contractors that do come in to support our students, especially at the elementary level. We would have to look at the consolidation piece of it to see where the greatest need is and how we can align that across the district. So, the idea of bringing an additional occupational therapist in was to help from K to transition to help offset some of the hours that we're seeing incre drastically increasing uh very rapidly based off of students IEPs. I don't know if that helps to answer your question. >> I mean, it doesn't. >> I can give you more. I can >> I hear what Ron's saying about future problem solvers. Hear what Joe's saying about future problem solvers. And we're sitting on what's probably a $55,000 expenditure in

078contractors, which doesn't like I sort of have attitude about contractors. Sorry everybody, but like they don't have as much skin in the game as folks who are actually employed by the district and they tend to be very expensive. So, like in my mind, I'm just trying to think that could maybe be a library clerk, too. I'm I'm worried about our librarians, like being able to take a break and and not um you know, and and our kiddos who a lot of kids spend a lot of time in the library in their free period. So, like are we going to shut the library down if we don't have library clerks? And >> we will not shut the library down if we don't have library cls. >> But how how does that work get filled? ex and

079that's what we we need the time to see how the budget develops and who's the ins and outs as Melinda spoke about. We don't know what those are yet. We're kind of in a volatile place in our district where people are are reaching out for recommendations, are looking for jobs, aren't sure. >> Totally understandable that Oh, I understand how they've been treated, too. >> And we're I mean, from person to person, we don't want to lose them, but we we cannot encourage them to to take care of themselves. And we're going to have to get creative around thinking about um duties that teachers have and and covering the library and those duty sweeps and such. Like to be able to kind of look at that different. >> It makes me uncomfortable though to ask our

080teachers to do more. Our teach and I know you guys are with me on this, but like our teachers are already wearing so many hats all the time being like, "Can you go reshelf some library books?" kind of like sort of kills me a little bit. Um, >> us. >> Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. Um, can we just can we just double click on the athletic director position again, too, because we we we've gotten a lot of feedback on that. We have an excellent athletics program, like one that we should be very, very proud of, and I'm sure like we have an athletic director who is uh has received accolades and has been lauded statewide. um for the work that he's done for this district. Like h how do we fill that hole? >> We

081don't. >> Yeah. >> Very simply, we don't >> Yeah. >> We fill partial a bit of that hole. Whether it's from folks up here at central office, folks in the building, and it's a team effort. A $25,000 stipen only gets you so far. We know what the position needs and brings to the table. We'll make do. Um, but we know that as Goldie said made a very good point as and Randy too that there's a lot that we don't know and there's a lot of representation for our district at SEC CIA that we're going to have to figure this out. Make sure that we're in line with what all the other schools are are doing. That position keeps us there right now. So, it'll be a learning curve for us, too. >> Well, thank you.

082That's all I've got for right now. Thank you, >> Marty. Um, a lot of what I was going to say has already been covered, so there's no point in repeating, but um, I don't have a particular problem with the AD's uh, elimination. Um, you know, I I I would rather see someone maybe getting one less class a day to teach to help handle that. I understand the issues uh, with that. uh having gone through high school for 30 years um I can really appreciate what the AD has done for uh the schools that they work in. Um my other issue that I have is with the special ed as uh has been spo spoken to several times. um you know ha having outside contractors yeah they work okay but um the in school my wife

083spent 30 years in special ed and u the relationship that she developed with the kids is you know outstanding um unfortunately she passed away but that's neither here nor there um but doing as as it said doing the IEPs and the other requirements. Uh you you just can't uh have enough people handling that. So, I'm very concerned about the uh special ed program. Um I would Okay, I'll say it because I'm nasty. Uh I would rather do without the sports program than uh lose special ed people. >> That's not nasty. It's a point of view. >> Yeah. Um that's my feeling. >> Why? >> And I'll leave it at that. >> Okay. Nope. Listen, that's why we're here, to get everybody's point of view and then to hash out a final program. Michelle. >> Okay.

084Um, I have lots of thoughts like everybody else. A lot of what I was thinking has been brought up by people. Um, I've gotten some questions answered um, in the past week or so. Um, I want to double down on a couple things that I heard. Um, going back to what Randy said about assistant principles, um, and I think it's really important, and I'm not, again, I'm not taking away from anyone's knowledge at this table here, but I know that Randy works in schools, and I work in schools. I specifically worked in uh, middle schools for 10 years. I can remember when I got hired as a middle school teacher, I worked in Waterberry. Um and I went to the orientation and they asked you know who was going to elementary school and you know

085who was going to high school and then they asked who was going to middle school and the um presenter said a little prayer and said bless you all and you are the green berets of our district. Um because middle school is a whole different beast. Um, and I'm not just saying this from my experience of being in middle schools, but I also did some research on um, typical amount of administrators throughout the state of Connecticut and throughout our DUR when it comes to enrollment of middle schools and high schools. And what I found is that, and this is true of the different districts I've been in, is that schools of size between 500 and let's say 800, call them medium to almost largesiz schools, um, typically have one main principal and then one to two

086assistant principles. And it was very much in line with the larger your enrollment was, the more likely you were to have two assistant principles. Um, so when I worked in Derby Middle School, um, we were very small. We had 300 students. We had just the one assistant principal. Um, but any other middle school I've been at that has been closer to that 700, 800, 900, they've had two assistant principles. So, um I do think for the types of behaviors that we have typically in middle schools um and all of the other roles that principles serve um at middle school and high school level. You know, I I do think that we are working with an appropriate amount of principles currently. Um so, I would be very hesitant on doing anything additional. Um, and if there's

087going to be feedback that we are not um, doing anything with admins, I mean, we already have two admin positions listed on here. So, if we as a district have, you know, 17 admins, 16 admins, I don't know what the number is exactly, um, but taking two away is already 11%. So, um, taking away two more would get you closer to almost 25% of our administrators. So, I am not really in favor of approaching that. Um, that said, I'm also concerned with the class sizes at the elementary school level. Um, I do know that if we've got classes with 16, 17, 18 right now, that is on the low end from where a lot of districts are. But maybe that's part of the reason why we are so successful with so little money spent per

088student. So if >> I would say for sure >> yeah no absolutely >> I would say for sure that's a reason. >> So so as we start to play with these numbers and make these sorts of changes we are not going to see my my prediction is that we are not going to see the same success rates that we currently have. Um I work currently in a grade 3 to five school. Um, and there are some years where we have, you know, 18 to 20 in a classroom and it's fairly manageable. And there are years like this year where our district made decisions to also reduce sections um and we have 23 24 in those classrooms and it's difficult. It is extremely difficult. So um again that said I don't know how we get to

089where we don't have to do that. So, um I don't know. I'm listening. I'm listening to what everyone's saying. I'm taking notes here as people are saying it. >> Um I also want to come back to what Amanda said because it's something I've said frequently as well. I want to know the cost savings for hiring whatever position we were talking about hiring. That actually saves us money because I I understand people look at the numbers and they're like, "Well, what how can we hire if we're if we're reducing?" And I get that. I know that. But some of this come needs to come with context. Like if we are able to hire somebody and it saves us money so that we can save something else or save somebody's position, then I want to know that.

090So that comes back to what Randy said with um yes, you can tell us that we have to cut $1.7 million, but you're you can't really dictate how we're going to do that. and and if there's a way for us to hire somebody to save money like so that we can save somebody else then I want to know that. Um I hope that makes sense. I'm not >> trying to not make sense here. >> Um what else? Oh, I did have a question about >> the additional money that was added by the governor. Um you know, everyone got a list of what those allocations were. I know that North Haven did not get a lot. Um, and we were all disappointed that we didn't get as much as someone like a Chesher or a Wallingford,

091um, who got four to five times as much as we did, but it was said that we would get $176,000 of that money. Uh, my understanding from what I've read is that that is for next fiscal year starting July 1. It's supposed to be available to us. So, is is there a plan for where that is put into this equation? >> So, that those dollars are not actually part of the operating budget. Um, we're still receiving feedback from the state of Connecticut on how that money will come to us. The July date is is right now approximation. Um, there wasn't a tremendous amount of clarity and we attended the conference with the state a week ago, I think it was. >> Um, and we will be in communication with the town in regards to receiving

092those funds. >> Those funds go directly to the municipalities. They don't come to us. >> So, it's going to go to the town side and then they have to give it to us. I >> half. >> Well, I mean >> it depend like >> that's that's still part of the clarification. That's part of the clarification that we're still waiting from the state. There is a chance that we don't see anything. >> There's a chance we see more doubtful. Chance we see nothing. >> Okay. Well, that's disappointing. Um, >> yeah, we're not allowed to put any of that towards our budgetary response for next year because it's such an unknown and I doubt July one is the date >> either. I doubt I'm sure it'll be much later than that. >> Okay. I'm sure I'm going

093to have more, but I'd like to listen to what the rest >> Okay. >> has to say. Um, a lot of my have a lot of notes here. A lot of them already. So, I thank the other board members for bringing those up already. Um, I do worry uh uh about the coordinator positions like all those the task. Where did that fall down? Because I do I'm very concerned about um bring out our teachers. Our teachers are amazing and we have them as teachers and I don't want I want to respect um their work. Uh for the world language, I didn't want to touch the world language at all. I you know I'm a very bad advocate for it. I understand that it's a big chunk and I don't I honestly don't have an answer

094on how to um supplement that. I know. I I'm very thankful that we've at least got it down to so that we can still have the eighth grade because that higher AP level languages in high school is so important for some kids getting into those higher level colleges and getting those scholarships that they need um to be able to go to um you know further their education. Um these are just thoughts in my head so I don't know if I've really thought about perfectly well. Is there a way maybe to instead of cutting it like that way or like we lose seventh we keep eighth but maybe down this way maybe like the lower attended >> languages and I we did look at that um French and Chinese as being the lower enrollment languages um

095and that may be something we consider in the future holistically as a district but we have students already committed at this point they've already taken the first half of their middle school piece of it And we also have students at the high school level in French and Chinese are even moving up like we have Chinese five, French five, you know. So there would have to be a very thoughtful way of um doing that over time where we slowly um >> I don't want to do that at all. >> Right. So it's not clean to just it couldn't necessarily work in this scenario as it right. We would leave I'm sorry we would leave students >> you know in year three, year four, year five and just cut it from them and that >> is not

096good either. >> And eliminating those two languages those students still need somewhere to go which will increase class sizes somewhere else. >> Okay, that's good. A good point. Um uh something else with the language. Um, >> I need to flip the table. >> Um, I'm also concerned about the occupational therapist. Um, do we know exactly how much it would cost to send the students out if we don't have this occupational therapist? >> 150 a year is a contract that costs roughly, right, Anthony? Is that about right? So I I don't understand how >> cutting this because then we have to add that like >> we understand >> like I you know that is a big question mark for me and how that even kind of works. >> And we also focused on bodies that we

097have like those aren't bodies. Yeah. >> So they're positions. So in order to save actual bodies, we we focused on those just solely positions. It it's >> not a good tradeoff if we think people and that's what we're thinking. I'm also a little concerned about the classroom size of 24 students. Um there's uh literally teachers in this room right now that have had my son who has been um as we all know free spirited and we all know what that means. And um and I just I just picture a classroom full of Alex's, you know what I mean? And that poor teacher. And like there not being like correct me if I'm wrong there's no aids or anything like I know there could be an aid for a special ed student if that was in

098the class but that par has to focus on special ed student so there isn't any you know I remember when I was a kid going back there was like a like a an aid hearing or something. >> So all our par educators are >> par for the class >> are assigned to special education students. We do not have any class >> we don't have general paras in the Yeah. So that makes me kind of uncomfortable. Um, I understand that there are some schools that do that anyway, but that it doesn't make it a good decision with the tradeoff with the administrators. How many kids are at the high school? >> 902. Okay. Um, >> very uncomfortable cutting down to one assistant principal at the high school level. But the middle school level, I know it's

099a smaller, this sucks. I don't want to cut anybody but um the middle school level I kind of is a little bit more palatable just because there's 200 less students in there but there is that point of that it is a different world and you know in the middle school when it comes to um just the age group the kids are in there. So, how much would it, you know, save us if we went down one high school admin, no, one middle school administrator, but kept the high school due to the higher amount of students? Like, is that saving a lot? >> It's only 130 kids difference, not 200, don't they? Um, I ask I don't know. I >> just cut it in half, Jenny roughly. I mean, for rough numbers. >> Yeah. Um, questions

100about Bill have been answered already, so thank you for that. When it comes to the athletic director, um, >> Jenny, can I just jump in one second? I just asked Christian to figure out the enrollment for the high school next year. We're at 902 right now. The enrollment for next year will be 959. >> Okay. >> To be projected, the eighth grade is just a little bigger than the seniors leaving. I the balance of do we do the elementary teacher and have the higher classroom versus do we minimize the um the assistant of principles like both of them makes my stomach turn but I do have to think about inside the classroom and the kids directly being affected and I know they'll also be directly affected in other ways with having only one assistant principal

101but like you know I just think at the elementary level the kids they're you know they're just trying to learn so much. It's such a developmental thing. I I almost would support going down on the system of principles in order to to keep the smaller. I kind of agree a little bit more with Ron what he was originally saying. I don't want to do any of it, but um push come to shove that would be I believe the better of the two evils here. Um but like I said with the athletic director, I think everybody knows I am a family of um artistic theater nerds. I don't know anything about athletics. I So, I'm going to have to just lean on um the other board members who are more familiar with the effect of losing

102that director position. Um and kind of just support, you know, their opinions on that. I don't really have a personal opinion myself. Um I think as of right now, that's my only questions or comments. Um yeah, that's all I have for right now. Thanks, J. Tom. >> All right, I get to that cleanup. Uh, I got a lot to say. Um, I'll start with just picking up on some points everyone made. Um, class size, I can't make make up my mind. Um, it is an option. We have to do something. Um, we all are talking about what we want to keep, but at the end of the day, things have to go. Um, so class size, um, it's manageable having a big class. Um just because you can doesn't mean you should. Um I've had

103a class of 25 26. I've also had a class of 20. Uh there is a difference. Um I really like to keep that student teacher, you know, relationship. Um whenever I think of cuts, I think of, you know, does this person have a direct relationship daily with the student? That's the way I think of things. Um so teachers do. Um, I know we're not cutting positions, but it's it's it's changing that that that makeup and that shared uh time. Um, so I'm impartial to that. Um, I do know that we owe the students the best education. Um, but we also we were all voted in by the town. Um, so we do owe the town um something. We do need to listen to them. Um, we all kind of campaigned on being, you know, fiscally

104responsible. Um and and we need to do that. So I have heard people talk about um administrators as well. Um I I wanna I don't want to see anyone lose their job. Um but I know that people have spoken about that's where they think cut should go. Um, I'm not saying that's where I think cuts should go, but once again, we are representing the town and I know that I've spoken to many people and heard many people say that they think that there needs to be cuts with administrators. So, um, I will throw that out there. Um, in terms of the athletic director, um, this was brought up months ago in a meeting. Um, I asked what would happen and the discussion was that it would be a stipen. Um, I found out there's one

105school in Connecticut that operates under a stipen position. It's it's Shelton. Um, I did reach out to the I don't know if you can call him the athletic director there. Uh, great guy. Uh, we spoke on the phone for quite some time. Um, he basically told me that he's not doing his job well as a teacher. Um, he misses about 25 to 30 days a year because of his obligations to be the athletic director. um those obligations are going to increase. There's going to be more meetings next year. There's one SEC meeting a month, maybe two. There's captain's conferences. Uh there's PD days. Um so this guy's missing a ton of class time. That's not a service, a good service to the students. Um I also reached out to uh the SEC commissioner, Al Carbone.

106Um he was against it. He thought it was disaster. uh would be a disaster. Um he knows the trouble that um Shelton is experiencing. He's been speaking with that individual a lot. Shelton's actually trying to bring back that position. The only reason they cut that job was because during COVID they didn't have sports and they thought why are we paying someone to run a department that doesn't have students. Um so they're trying to bring that back because it's failing there. Um things are not going well. Um, and in terms of what we have here with our athletic director, we have someone who's always at the games. Okay. I I have you go down, sit in the middle school parking lot, turn around, and you're going to find Steve. He's going to be on that cart

107somewhere. Um, that's one of the big things was the presence at the games. Um, making sure that things are going smoothly. Um, making sure that students are behaving because they don't always. Um, the students respect Mr. Bloomfall. They really do. Um, that's that's not something that happens all the time with a bunch of high school kids. Um, trying to look cool and tough in front of their friends. They listen to Mr. Bloomfall. Um, he also evaluates every coach and he also has the task of evaluating teachers. From what I understand, he's taking on administrative roles and taking on some of those tasks. Um, he also promotes the teams. We have 29 sports teams. We have national championships. We have new fields. We have, you know, proud parents um who feel comfortable emailing Steve about their

108concerns. Um and I think the most important thing, and you you can't really put a number on this, it's the culture that he's created in North Haven around sports. And I really think that trickles into the classrooms. It makes kids feel proud to go to North Haven. Um I don't want to see that go. I will die on this hill, guys, for for this. It's not because it's Steve. is because it's what he's done and what he will continue to do. Um, so I just I cannot see our sports teams continuing the level of success and with the parents being proud and appreciative of the schools continuing without without an athletic director. Um, I think anyone who came in would never would never be able to to fill Steve shoes. Um, that's if you know

109Steve decided to go somewhere one day. Those are big fills, big shoes to fill. Um to to expect that from someone doing a teaching job as well is it doesn't make sense, guys. It doesn't make sense. It is a disaster at every single level. It's going to affect students who have that who have that teacher. It's going to affect parents. It's going to affect scheduling. I don't think things are going to run smoothly. There's always problems when it comes to sports. I don't know any is this person going to pick up the phone at 8:30, 9:'clock at night when there's a problem at a volleyball game? Are they going to be there on a Saturday? Are they going to stay late on a Friday? Um, so I I don't want to see that position gone.

110Um, but I know we also need to make room. So I'm not against the administrators. Um, I don't want to see anyone gone. Bridget, you were my neighbor. Bridget was my neighbor. Um, you know, she saw me play with her kids. I don't want to see her lose her job. Um, so I I'm not against administrators. I would love to see cuts some other way. I do have some things I'm kind of researched a little bit and I don't even know if these are possible. Um, so I'm going to ask if we have these first and then can we do without these? Um, how many counselors do we have at high school? >> Six, five, four, >> Six. Can we do without some of them? Um, I know that one of the counselors met with

111my daughter. It was awesome. Went over college and all these things and it was great. It was an hour. I I was very appreciative of that. I think that's something that we can do without them. That's something parents can do. Um so I I would love to see possibly cuts to some of the councils. >> Um do we have nurse secretaries? >> A nurse secretary? >> 1.5. >> Okay. Do we have to have a nurse secretary? >> Are these rhetorical questions? You want to >> No, no, I want to do by law. Do we have to have a nurse secretary? >> By law, I don't believe so. >> Can we do without a nurse secretary? we can do with out any >> okay >> but it's difficult to quantify any of this question >> we

112want to treat everyone but I'm saying like we we don't have a legal need or >> there's no legal need >> um so I would be throw that out we have a high school nurse secretary we also have a middle school nurse secretary >> part time >> um student service secretary we have one at the high school right two at the high school I'm sorry two do we need Can we do without two? Can we have one? I >> mean, that's not for me to make that sole decision. I think it would be very challenging after living in that office for over 10 years. >> So, what is like their primary primary role? Like what is their like day-to-day like what are they doing? >> So, the day-to-day piece of it is scheduling for all

113the students. It's also um all the college transcripts, keeping all the records. They're also the records custodian. I oversee that piece of it as well. They help to deescalate students in the moment when they come in upset. Uh that is a big huge help. They look for staffing to help with crisis management and they help to orchestrate all of that as well. >> Okay. Um I think we I think we can do with one. I'm throwing them all out there guys. Sorry if anyone hates me. These are ideas, the bad, the ugly. >> That's fine. Um, so, uh, also we have a supervisor of technology support services and a director of technology and safety. Are those like two completely different jobs? I don't know what those are. >> So, the director of technology and safety

114is Jen Kazinski. She is um just one of our one of our directors in the district. So, she's no different than Mr. Diana. >> Okay. Something like that. >> And then so we have what's so which one was that? the >> the director of of IT60. >> All right. And then we have a supervisor as well, >> I believe. And correct me if I'm wrong, that is the position that is being uh >> that was lost to the reduction. That's correct. >> The early retirement. Okay. >> Um are we spending anything on staff development this year? >> Well, we've been really fortunate because the coordinators have been leading the majority of our professional learning. >> Right. So, we're not cashing out. We're not sending money out for someone to come in. >> Very minimal. Um,

115that is going to change though if we lose the coordinator positions because those people are really at the ground level with teachers working on individual things by department and courses. In our in the teachers contract, there is >> a portion. Right. >> That's correct. >> If they present, right? We have to earmark a certain amount in the budget for professional learning per the teachers contract. >> Okay. Um I just anything that can be kept in house. Teachers prefer it that way. Um I was going to go into middle school sports, but since that's off the table, I love that we're keeping all the middle school sports. Um languages, I had a different approach. I was going to kind of suggest some things with Chinese, but you explained the phasing out. I get it. I love

116what you guys did with that. I think it's very creative. Perfect. Um Have we considered um selling advertisements for athletic fields generating income that way causes business conflict of interest? We do have certain sponsorships, but we do have to be mindful of which what any organization we go into that type of agreement with because we can't show we're effectively we're neutral. We're not really supposed to be generating substantial amount of revenues. So, we do have some that are out there, but we have to be very mindful about any type of business relationship. So like if uh you know the the town plumber wanted to advertise on the baseball field but then who you know you have you have to be mindful of not showing favoritism towards certain vendors. >> You're basically saying use that plumber

117and there are several plumbers in town. So you just have to be careful. >> They pay for the advertisement. That's the reason why they get the the I don't I don't understand that one but um All right. And then um is it possible um to spend less money on technology and anything that's geared towards technology and teaching and learning. Um my thought is kids are spending way too much time on technology. There's been studies that have been out. I'll send you guys everything. When schools introduce more technology, performance goes down. Um so I would love to see less technology. Um, is there a way that we can start looking at phasing out certain things that >> we are current? >> We are. Awesome. Okay, that's it for me, guys. Um, my big thing is the

118athletic director position. Um, I think that you can't go back on it. You know, it's going to be the end of fall sports and and things aren't going well and you got to we got to ride it out for winter sports and spring sports. Um, I think it's the disaster. Um there's a reason why no other schools have gone down that road. Uh and there's a reason why the only district that has has been working to try to get that position back. Um so that's my thought and I will end on that. >> All right. That's that's a lot of information. Uh thank you for everyone for taking the time to ask those questions and really kind of do your research before we even got here. I think maybe what we should do right now

119is just kind of go around the table and to see again this is not a formal vote. Let's kind of see as a blanket who approves. How many are in approval of what is written down here as presented? >> Tom, we can start with you. Shake your hand. No. Say no. >> No. >> G. Um, I'm not comfortable saying yes yet. >> Are you >> I'm having some difficulties with it. >> Joe, >> okay. Um, >> Randy, >> I I just don't know what I would change. >> Okay. I'm not sure what we would change either. I don't know. Amanda, >> I'm in. >> Sure. >> Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of where Amanda and Randy are where I don't like a lot of this, but I'm not sure what I would suggest for changes

120other than, you know, that OT position that saves us money and then we could put it back towards something else. >> Say, you know, to add something back in, you got to take something out. I just don't know why that is. Right. That's where I'm passing my property to. >> Yeah. >> The other issue I see is um Well, I'll stay with the negative site. What happens in 3 weeks when we come back here? >> What do you mean? >> If it fails again, >> oh, if it fails again, then >> we're back to to Detroit where I mean I >> I'm I'm trying not to approach it that way. I'm trying to approach it as this is what we need to do and we need to get here >> and then if we're directed

121to do something else then we're going to need to figure that out later. >> I don't want to make decisions now based on thinking we may have to come back later because >> that's unfair to this process. >> I'm just saying it that way. But I I can I can deal with it. That I said the one I'm concerned more with special ed than anything else on here. You know I could live with it if I have to. Joe, you got thoughts of what you would change? >> I mean, my my biggest concern right now is is the elimination of the athletic director position. I I just I I think trying to think how I can word what's floating around in my head and that's difficulties of why I'm stumbling. So, just bear with me

122for a minute. Um, look at all the years I've been on the board, every decision I've made, or at least every decision I've tried to be focused on what's in the best interests of the student. And I know that's what you guys in the central office are always guided by, right? To me, some people look at athletics as an extracurricular activity. Not everybody participates in it and I understand that. But I do think it serves sometimes this is the only sports some kids are going to be able to play is the sports associated with school. It's an outlet. It gives kids something else to do besides screen or getting into trouble. Um it does foster community and a sense of pride. And my biggest concern with eliminating the AD position is how you keep all

123that together. And I I'm not convinced that you can and then, you know, it's like a slow domino effect and then you've got all of your sports in disarray, you know, and that that's kind of where I'm I'm hung up right now. So, >> well, it's it's basically 122 to keep them, right? Because you subtract out the thing and >> you know I'll say one thing about the sports I mean look at the kid from wrestling right we just approved the wrestling program two years ago he's got a scholarship to college that he may not have ever gotten >> so I mean the sports definitely give kids opportunity there's no question >> the thing again I'm I'm going to say is that all right you want to keep them that's fine >> find me the

124money >> and that's the that's the thing >> unlike anything else on here I there's things we want to keep and maybe, but it's all about the exchange of cash. >> I and I understand that and and I don't look, I don't have a perfect solution to that. I would be willing to talk about an assistant principal somewhere and see if that balances it. >> Assistant principal at the middle school is approximately 150,000. >> Basically 150. Look, I know it's not a good I know there's no good >> alternatives here, right? I I mean, >> getting rid of an assistant principal at either of the schools, especially when a year ago you downsized one when when Tom Bushnell left the high school. >> You know, it has an impact and that impacts students as well.

125maybe not as um it's maybe not as front-facing as something like sports or the athletic program, but so I'm not saying it's a perfect solution, but it's just >> there are no willing to >> to discuss more. >> There are no perfect solutions. >> How many texts do we have? What is the what is the IT department composed of? I know Jen's in there. How many people does she have? >> 11. So what are the what do those 11 people do? And I don't know anything about that world. So combine. >> So I think we can combine to do our best here. >> Yes. >> But there are tech positions that are assigned to schools to support in school learning in school it support. So in the student union and there are positions outside um

126like data systems folks um the one we're eliminating the the manager or the supervisor of it and Keep going. >> So really, it's an army to keep our entire tech just infrastructure up and running right now, whether it's the student devices um we've reduced a lot of those tech supply lines. So we those people keep what we have running. So whether it's the switches um that we've had on those capital lines that we pull that out, they for lack of better term Frankenstein, the old machines to keep them up and running. security, making sure our cameras are up and running um consistently. They basically show up each each single day and they've got a queue of their help desk tickets that they just consistently run through all day long when their systems aren't working appropriately

127in the classroom, hardware, software, um you name it. So, um that's really kind of their day-to-day there's a constant problem solving within our technology infrastructure. Let me ask >> Oh, I was saying I think just a place we might be able to consider is some of the um the software and the actual laptop leases, making some little alterations to that. It's not going to it's not going to get us a ton of money, but we could squeeze a little bit out on that. Again, we run into the we definitely need the text in order to um keep >> we have just read the list of condition. Well, >> we answer Ry's question list >> sort of kind of um the way so we have within the union one two three four four union they're called

128computer techs >> and they're doing basically I mean they're fixing computers that break there's constantly um constantly the Chromebooks are breaking soon breaking whatever so that's constantly happening that's something they're always working on um we have uh a systems engineer position and then we other what called network admits and that they each have a school right that they are assigned to to manage the networks within that school and how they interact with every how they interact with the main ho which I believe is a middle school >> so I think that's and so what you're having is you have to have each school has its own person you do it without that sure but that it's you're going to burn people out too >> did did you take a look at those positions as you

129were doing this >> yes you did >> okay and you came up with a conclusion that >> we've already eliminated a position from that. >> Okay. But what about the rest though? >> So you've looked at the rest and said that there's nothing else there. >> So as Melinda said, there are some within the the technology leases that we could um we looked at. >> For instance, if we if we don't replace any of the Chromebooks the way we lease them, and I don't know all the specifics to that exactly, we could reduce probably about $90,000 on that. But that will leave holes because a lot of the devices that are currently in play right now are you know causing some problems. >> We felt it was no different sort of than the occupational therapist

130might end up cutting more to pay more. We don't we're not sure on that. >> So this is the actual laptop not the person >> correct. What is the cost of say one tech? >> So a tech the computer >> you said there were four tech >> right? for tech about 45,000 46,000 sorry 47 because that was last year 47 >> can I ask a question >> wait a minute >> I got to get back to something real quick guys so are we saying that we want to keep a nurse secretary at the high school a nurse secretary at the middle school we want to keep two stu two student service secretaries and Anthony has one as well so that's four people for student services and we want to keep those and get rid of

131>> the athletic director. Is that what we want to get? We want I mean we want to keep these people. We have six counselors as well. >> We want to get rid of one for and keep six. We we have six. We have We have two secretaries. We have two uh secret uh secretaries. and Anthony really are we really this is we're really >> do you know what those people do all day >> I I know that there's there's more of them than one I know that for sure more than we have one athletic director >> we have we have six >> counselors >> so can I go back to >> we so we want to get rid of these >> we want to get rid of one athletic director over >> all these I

132don't get that >> I don't understand That's why we're having a conversation. >> Okay. >> I want to just make sure I throw that out there because these are positions where there's a lot of them >> and we have one athletic director. >> It doesn't make sense. >> Um I wanted to go back to the tech and potentially like the Chromebooks. I know that in um I've been in schools where students have onetoone devices or like in my school currently we have like computer carts for each classroom. Would there be any cost savings to not having in having students have onetoone devices versus like having a cart instead? >> That would be kind of the plan if we um did not do the lease next year of the new Chromebooks. It would be carts in

133the primary classrooms. I believe and I don't want to speak this is really Jen's area but >> early >> what >> early primary right so that's how we would be able to squeak by on that and she puts it as an estimated savings of about $90,000 >> to to have carts in the primary grades versus having one to one >> carts that just stay in the class >> I am in support of that because I you know obviously there's there was a push for technology at some point there's now a push back against technology at too young of an age. Um, and if that's a cost savings there, I mean, that's something that I'd like to throw back into the equation. Did anyone get the numbers for hiring that OT person, how much we save?

134Is that something we can figure out or that's not something we can figure out? Like, I just want to know if we hire that person, what the cost savings is. I know nobody wants to hear about hiring new people, but if it's going to save somebody else, then I certainly want to know those numbers. >> It's between 50 and $75,000 >> of savings. Yes. >> So, you hire the person at $75,000, but you get an additional 50 to $75,000 to put towards something else. >> That is correct. >> Assume 50 because they got to have um >> if they accept benefits and so forth. But yes, that's correct. >> Well, that's a one time fix though. What about next the next budget cycle and next if you don't have money for that to sustain that

135>> that's a continued savings if you're not contract contracting out for those services >> you save 50 grand a year every year unless we spend it somewhere else >> so by hiring the OT we save let's call it 50,000 to be on the safe side by switching back to carts in the primary lower primary ary grades, we save another potentially $90,000. >> But the more important part of that that 90,000 I believe is the not um you know how at certain junctures we trade in the old um Chromebooks and we get new ones, the old laptops that will not occur. >> That has to just stay as Do we have a BYOD bring your own device? At one point we looked at a bring your own device policy so that people could bring their own

136computers but >> made a decision not to do that. It poses significant risk to the to the security on the network. >> I think Jen is very >> Yeah, we could we could um reduce similar to how we're reducing summer hours. There's $12,000 allocated in Jen's budget for summer IT staff and support. Again, we have summer school going on, so we do need assistance with that as well. >> Do Chromebooks go home? >> Yes. Why do problems go? >> So, at the upper upper level, um students are working on Google Docs. Their teachers are editing. So, there's, you know, back and forth. They do a lot of their um writing, their assignments, um different um formative assessments on there. Um we would not have them going home in K and one, am I correct? Um

137and there would be laptop carts there. We won't have I ready. So, we won't need to have anybody doing any of those modules. So, that would kind of offset that piece as well. I was just thinking if we keep them from going home, one, less free time. Um, and two, it's less opportunity for them to break because we know that when they're home, they're being dropped. The only thing I would I would say about that and again this not my my area of expertise by any means but I would worry um about students not having the opportunity to do a lot of um we have textbooks that are digital now students are handing out resources digitally and I do think we want to make sure that they're prepared for after high school as well knowing

138that that's how they would be communicating with their professors too. So, I think we just have to be careful not to swing too far the other way. >> I was thinking more elementary. Sorry, I was thinking more like elementary age. Maybe not middle school for sure, >> but I was thinking more elementary. >> But on that same line, I was thinking that it we could potentially look at more than just K and one. Like I don't know if even three, three, two, and three needs to and I can only speak to my own experience with again I'm in a school that is a three to five school and everybody's using carts. um and they still find ways to you know if there is a situation of a student who doesn't have a device at home

139or doesn't have access then we do have you know permission for certain students to take things home in that situation um but many of the students even in my school um do have access to using those sorts of technologies at home um and personally I have a fifth grader right now and I don't think he's opened his Chromebook once at home this year so um I I would be for you know Maybe like I'm just saying if there's more cost savings to be found by having carts and maybe only having fifth graders take them home because that's what they're going to be doing in middle school to start to get them ready. >> That 90th grade was for what grades of part? I believe two grades. >> It's really just not replacing new Chromebooks is

140how it's phrased on here. So I think it would just be not getting new ones on the lease this coming year. >> Okay. So Melinda, what happens? So, if you don't get it on the list, when's the next time you get to switch it out? >> I think she would have the opportunity again the following year. >> Okay. So, it's just a one-year deficit. >> Okay. All right. That's fine. >> Because we're always on kind of a rotation. Again, this >> Yeah. >> Not my area with that, but we're always rotating them. >> Okay. >> Is that cost going to be higher because then you have two cycles of Chromebooks that you have to >> Yeah. So potentially just kicking the can down the road. >> I mean I think that you know there there's

141a list of of things that I can't get into the details because I don't really know you know they're not what I do that tech piece but you know we have a new contract with Frontier and we can maybe reduce by 20 25,000 there. So I think if if we wanted to make an assumption that we could reduce in technology by about a 100,000 or so. Jen could do her work within that in terms of what's needed departmentally >> just as an option. >> I would much rather kick the can down the road a year and save NAP and save the athletic director if that's possible. and then worry about two cycles of Chromebooks the next year. And I don't I don't say that lightly because I don't like I think it's a bad way

142to budget and to plan, but we're kind of in a bad time right now. I I would much rather do that and see a person's job who's having an impact on our students. >> So that's just my two cents there. If we were to do that, then we'd be chasing 32,000ish, give or take. >> Could we get the 32,000 out of the occupational therapist position? >> Mhm. should be able to get 75 out of the 75 out of >> Well, I say 50 because you got to you got to account for everything. But yeah, like I think I think we can make that math math. >> Oh, that's keeping that in. You're keeping that in. If you take this minus this is 122 for 90 we need 32. >> Does that give us enough for

143the future problem solvers field trip too? >> Mhm. >> Uh at 50 >> 50 you need 45ish. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. >> So, following along with the discussion, a lot of, for lack of a better way of saying it, duct tape and bubble gum where we're pulling from here. But if we take the 90K, which effectively kicks down kicks the can down the road to the laptops. >> Yeah. So the full amount here >> which also we talked about the other IT things >> some additional software pieces. >> So it's 148,000 >> we can come up with 148,000 you can add back in the OT but you're taking out the savings right. So it's 1485 >> just round numbers 75 for the OT >> 75 comes back out because you got savings from the

144OT. >> So you got to take out the contracted services if we take that out of contracted service. That's the number I'm using. Um 25,000 for the stipen for the ad because we had a stipen now we're taking that back out. >> 147,000 for the salary >> for the ad. It's 32,000 round numbers again >> for the medical for the AD and that comes out we'd have to find $5,000 which we can do. So just to clarify um the AD position stays the OT position stays basically and then the problem solver strip stays or it's >> no okay that okay that we can >> so there's still like there's little >> this is this is this is on the back of a founder's piece of paper right there going to be employer cost for taxes

145and stuff that's not included so I'm going to have to fine it's not a lot of money it's small change >> okay but those positions >> but those positions will be back in the budget. >> Okay. Good. >> And maybe you're right, Mr. Moore. That's the foundation. >> How how much or do we spend any money on and not not not to belittle the point, but how much money do we spend if any on field trips other than future solar for the entire budget? >> Okay. That's going. Yes. >> Okay. >> And just to reiterate Mr. Follow me's point. This solution and Joe, you're always good at saying, "Hey, remember when we said that last year is effectively a kicking the can down the road, we're talking about technology replacement." So, I want you to

146be very open in that dialogue on that. I think it's important thing that we're discussing. I just want to make sure that all the impacting factors the board is aware of for future discussions in other budgets. I think it gives us a good opportunity though to have a conversation about the use of technology at home at the elementary level before next year moving forward. Bring back that paper and pencil a little bit. Keep the screens at school. Just fun. So essentially we would be keeping the athletic director. We keep our occupational therapist position where we don't get new computers. >> Is that pretty much what it is? >> Pretty much. I've had my laptop for five years. It works great for me. I'll donate a computer from when 1960. >> I'm going back. >> All

147right, let's uh let's revisit that then. if those were the um positions that were taken on the draft where we do the part removal um and associated technologies. Uh we'll be able to save both the AD and what's the other one? I'm sorry. >> Okay. Right. Okay. Right. The occupational therapist position. How do you feel about that? >> I like it. I'd like to save everything, but I like it. >> Sure. >> Feel better. >> I'd be good with that. >> I'm good. Not perfect, but I'm good. >> A lot more. >> Love it. >> A lot more power. >> Still down 28 people, but I'm in. >> I agree. It's >> disturbing, but um still functional. Michelle. >> Y. >> All right. with that here somewhere. >> I have a motion to approve the

1482026 2027 budget capital projects are proposed in a 4.53 increase. >> I'll make a motion. I mean second >> discussion. I know we just exhausted it, but I have to ask. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Abstension. So move. May I have a motion to adjourn the May 26, 2026 special meeting of the board of education? >> I'll make a motion. >> Discussion. >> All in favor? >> I. >> So move. >> Thank you everyone. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Hey guys, nice job. Really very difficult. Really good job. >> How are you doing?