2022-01-25 Board of Education Regular Meeting

001Thank you very much. Hi Edmond. to call to order um the regular board of education meeting Tuesday, January 25th at 8:30 p.m. 6:30. Sorry. The United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. My name [Music] Hi everybody. Are there any amendments to the agenda? Um, so I would like you to approve the board of education January 11th, 2022. Second any changes um for board members present um arrived at 7:05 and Steve I think it's like 6:45 and then Steve can't be present and absent at the same time take the board member absent out okay um [Music] on that and on need a motion to approve the board minutes. Um, I made the motion, but it still need to be added to the vote count. Um, other action item motion. There's no

002second to count as a motion to add to that. just entertain withdraw second to withdraw. I I will make a motion to approve January 11. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Opposed or abstain? You came No. No. Like I thought it was a joke. [Music] Oh, got it. Um, audience of citizens, does anybody wish to address the [Music] board? Um, budget 223. you. That's me. Okay. So, I have a present to get this to you in advance, but we will work in final details up this afternoon. Oh, this is Robert, does this um did you replace everything? So, we're even placing the appendix in the back and everything. Yeah, the intent was to just give you a new appendix, but some of the pages in the middle need to be changed as well,

003except for this version, we just gave you fresh new copy for everything. [Music] Yes. Okay. So, welcome to what's tonight is our second While we're waiting, I'll welcome Edmond as our new board clerk. So, thank you for taking this test on Edmond and we look forward to working with you. Well, thank you. Okay, so good evening. Take two. Tonight we are going over the second version of the budget. So on Thursday night we had an opportunity to bring forward to you um as a board all of our cost centers, our principles and our directors to go and talk about the overall budget that makes up their cost center and talk about the overall increase of any major drivers in their budget. Tonight, we're going to go over more of the the top level, the overview

004of the budget, talk about what we consider the four major enhancements to the budget, and then walk you through what the risks are in the budget, and then talk about what the additional data that we're providing tonight based on the feedback that we heard last week, and then talk about the budget process um moving forward. Last week, I mentioned a zerobased budget. And basically what a zerobased budget is, it's starting from the ground up. So it's defending everything that you put into the budget. So we ask the principles, ask the directors is start with zero and every request you have, have a rationale. Have a reason why you're adding that to the budget. Don't just say you always budgeted $8,000 for supplies and you budget 8,000 for next year. That's not how it works. The

005way it works is you actually go in, you say, "Okay, this is what we need to purchase next year." rebuilding your budget from zero up to your request. It creates a um sound budget and it creates a budget that allows the directors, the principles to act and work off of a plan for next year because there's an intended um set of purchases that you're built the budget around. We've also attempted to build the budget around student learning. What I mean by that is we looked at any reductions that we could take outside and around the classroom, not in the classroom itself. That's the last place that we would find a reduction. It's always some we need to cut down at the instructional level, but that's the last place that we look in building this budget.

006We also recognize that there is an achievement gap in students in special education and we have one of our main investments in this budget is an enhancement to our special education program. And in a minute or two Tracy up she's going to talk more about that enhancement that we're looking to do. And then our budget philosophy is if we're trying to add anything to the budget, we need to find cost savings or efficiencies to help pay for that. Can't just keep adding to budget year after year. We need to find every efficiency we can in order to maximize reductions in one place in order to pay for the investments elsewhere. So as a summary, we're asking for $33,118,182. That equates to just over $970,000 increase in terms of consent. And that's the the the magic

007number. It's a 3.02%. to give you an idea of how we referenced other towns. Um, in our sort of immediate surrounding region, they're ranging everywhere from a 2.4 up to just about just above a 5.0. So, we're right target right in the middle um in comparison to the other towns right here um outside of Oxford in the Valley area. Outside of our immediate area, um there's budgets that range in the two all the way up to seven or eight%. So, we um believe that we're presenting a very fiscally sound, responsible budget for the board of education to consider over the next month and a half. There are four main budget enhancements that we brought forward. One is related to special education. The second is leadership dealing with a department chair model. The third is the

008middle school schedule which we view as a zero impact of the budget but is um structurally sound and enhancement to the middle school to increase student learning uh opportunities at the middle school level. And the third is how we purchase and manage our supplies. We're going to talk about all four of those. Um now at this point I'm going to ask Tracy to come up and she's going to talk for a few minutes about the special education request. It's not [Music] like my candy. Hi everyone. I'm gonna go ahead. Okay. So last week uh when I was here, I talked to you and shared some information about the rising numbers of our students with specific learning disabilities um and dyslexia and shared some of the uh service hours that we currently have by building by

009grade. And then I made a request for one additional structured literacy uh teacher to help with um that very designated, very individualized instruction. So what I wanted to do is to provide you with a little bit of more detail about what that really means and what it looks like. So uh I shared a uh summary page with uh Mr. and it should answer what does structured literacy look like. Uh it gives a little bit of explanation about the state department of education and the dyslexia task force as well as some compiled data from 2020 2021. So I wanted to be able to give you an idea of progress that kids make. Uh but it's important to recognize when we look at the data that it should be over a year's growth of time and students

010enter and exit at different time periods during the year depending on what skill set they're at and what progress they've made. So, we did ask our teachers that um that do structured literacy with our students to take a look at last year from September through June and to earmark those students that were part of the program and to provide some specific detail for you. So, what you'll have is a summary table by elementary and secondary and I can explain that's on page 92 at your budget. Thanks. I didn't know what page it was on. Sorry. So, I'll give everybody a minute to get there. I think it would be great too if this could be shared electronically because I did include links um that kind of give uh you know a perspective of Wharton Gillingham

011as well as what is structured literacy and what should it look like. Uh so what you see at the bottom is a table that describes elementary school as well as the secondary schools. And by secondary I mean um Oxford Middle School and Oxford High School. Okay. Elementary targets Quaker and Grado. Now at the elementary level they do two assessments for pre and pre and post data. At the elementary level they use the core and then they use a fontis and panel which is a reading level benchmark program that takes a look at readability level um reading accuracy rate and it gives a graded quiz. So the other thing that I asked them to do is analyze from all of their IEP goals and objectives how many students mastered meaning 100% of the goals and objectives.

012So they gave me that data too. At the secondary level they used the Galis Ellis and they use the QRI the qualitative reading inventory and they measure similar skills. So really they're measuring for sound they're measuring for reading and they're measuring for spelling. both the court and the gallon notes. So, um the grid that I shared with you gives you an idea of the scores so far that our teachers have submitted about their students last year and how many hit uh success on improving the core scores as well as the GE scores and then how many jumped levels on the Fontus panel or the QRI. And then the IEP objective mastery is also on the far right. Um I also wanted to give you an explanation of uh how do they def how do they

013design structured literacy? Uh you know the groups are really dependent on the individual needs of the students. There's a scope and sequence that's followed based on skills uh and it's developmental in nature. So when reading assessments occur, they have a feel for uh where kids can be grouped and uh the nature and severity of their need. So they take very painstaking measure to make sure that they're grouping kids accordingly so that they can see nice increases with their success rates. So there's an explanation of that as well. And then I also just wanted to point out that in June 2019, the state department of education began a dyslexia task force and the dyslexia task force is going to be eventually uh turning in updated guidelines for identifying dyslexia including definition of dyslexia as well as

014giving a very targeted approach to guidelines and expectations for local boards of ed as well as university training programs. So what I can tell you is that the state department of ed is now investing a lot of time and energy into training for Orton Gillingham Wilson uh Spire uh Linda Mood Bell. These are all programs that focus on structured literacy for decoding and encoding improvement. And when um we had our opening con pace back to school director's meeting, the whole keynote focused around dyslexia and the push that the dyslexia task force is going to have to make sure that schools are providing the proper instruction with the properly trained individuals. So that's definitely something that's going to be up and coming. Now, the request for the one-on-one reading specialist is going to be earmarked for

015Oxford Middle School. And the idea there is if I can have a reading specialist begin to take on some of the structured literacy groups at the middle school, then I can take one of our current Oxford Middle School special education teachers and I can really have them target the expansion of our ABA program that we have currently at Quaker. We do have three students at Great Oak Elementary School. Um, two students that moved in last summer that are on the autism spectrum that have a high level of intensity and need. And then we have one current second grader or excuse me, one current fourth grader that's at our Quaker Farm School program that needs to make a transition to a a school with typical peers. So in doing that and expanding, we would have a

016K through four program at Quaker and we would have a 5 through eight program at Oxford Middle School and we would really be able to continue to address our students with high intensive needs in their homeschool environment. Questions? Tracy, do you have an idea of who you would want for the reading specialist? It's not just going to be a class classroom educated level important dealing person. We're going to try to get higher up the chain than that. Right. So job description, you know, would certainly include somebody that has a certification level in a structured literacy program such as Orton Gillingham, Wilson, Lenubood Bell, or Spire. uh but also uh possibly a remedial reading background um and certainly special education certification. But in order to attract that kind of talent, you're going to have to pay

017more than you would a regular. Well, um we have a current special education teacher who is uh very high on level of certification, very well trained. um we've invested in that training and helping her move through the channel of of steps. Uh and she is currently on our teachers contract. Okay. Uh and then we also have a reading specialist that does not have her special education certification, but her primary role is working with students with IEPs on uh Orton Gillingham through a structured literacy lesson platform. and both of them are currently on the teachers comp what level like there's a five day training there's a three months there's a mentorship there's an associate like what caliber of person we would want somebody that certainly can be a leader in that area so across the district

018and I can certainly provide that information for you too I need to update it for this year because we have others that have gone forward with additional steps in the training. But we have people across the district, some that have the 30-hour initial training. Some that have the 30 hour plus the coursework, which is another 30 hours beyond. We have some that are working towards their associate level, which means that they've done a practicum and they've worked with uh a fellow or a fellow in training that has overseen lessons, provided feedback, and kind of given the stamp of approval for their certification. And then we have some that are working towards their certified level. Now within a year and a half, those two individuals that are working towards their certified level will be able to

019train in district. And the intention would be that all of our staff entering that are reading interventionists or special education teachers will start that training and continue the training to really move forward and advance most of our staff. Um I will say that I have that the state department of ed offered um some uh some grant funding uh that I have earmarked for uh Orton Gillingham practicum work. So we have teachers um and reading interventionists that do SRBI intervention um that are signed on for advancing to the next step during the summer or the uh early fall. I'm just trying to learn more about the interest in autism and also dyslexia. So after our last meeting, I tried to do a little bit of research on and I see that it is increasing and I

020would think and maybe you could strict me out on this. I think the uh pandemic, the masking, some of the things that we have done and stuff has led to some of this because you can't see a person's face and some of this is learning how to get along with peer meeting over the ADA program. So some of these things know how quickly can we reestablish some of those things with the student but some of it is induced by us I think as you could say otherwise because I would think we would have a spectrum of opponent dyslex because I read it's like 100 layers of it now it's not you know Tom Cruz sees everything upside down you can't Yeah. Okay. So, as we keep getting finer and finer and finer, you know, when

021does some of that shift over when does that when you shift that over to the normal class to help the student because some of this might be just three years of not being social? That's a really good question. Um, and I think so that's the that's the thing with identifying uh students that need that type of intervention. It's not a um it's not a sustainable level of intervention through the years. So there is kind of a level of intensity that does eventually with the right intervention make close it closes the gap. So with that said, there is kind of that gradual release to the general education setting once people have moved through that scope and sequence. So I agree we're looking at certainly a level of intensity that's um very targeted very specific very time

022consuming but the outcomes in a year or two years or three years usually the scope of se sequence on um level and intensity is a one to threeyear process by the time they've reached that thirdyear process vic what you see is that there also becomes a learn to compensate as well. So students receive that intervention to learn the skills to better be able to read, but they also start to learn as they're moving on and becoming more independent, they start to learn those compensatory strategies. So, they're learning assisted technology tools to better help them access curriculum because somebody with dyslexia has that identification, that classification for their life and it's not going to to go away. With good intervention, they can they can function and do very very well. But they also have to know

023tools that help them be able to be more independent. So as they grow with maturity and they learn those compensatory strategies, then there is kind of that gradual release back to gened. Um, and a lot of that is them understanding themselves as a learner and becoming more self-aware. And you mentioned ruler. It does tie in beautifully to ruler, you know, uh, for them to be self-aware, to make good decisions, to be able to seek and self- advocate. So it really does tie in tie in really nicely. But just quick, how many students do we have now and what you project for like three years is tense because my big concern is this, you know, damage that we've done in these last three years. So somewhere in your your your feelings you got to take and

024say, well, this is going to increase at a lower level for students that need some kind of specialized fun. Yeah, that's a really good point, too. Uh, what I what I think is gonna what what I think you're going to wind up seeing is for the past three years, the district has really um really pushed and and dived in fullheartedly to good dedicated time to structured literacy. Whereas before that, there really wasn't a dedicated block towards um you know, that very targeted type of instruction, which is very scientific, brainbased. Um, so what we see is a high number of kids at the middle school and even a pocket of kids at the high school. And because that that gap is so large, it's taking more time to close. But what I think you're going to

025see, like with Quaker Farm School, these little guys are starting that intervention so young, they're probably going to move through that scope and sequence and the remediation will be relatively low time period in comparison to some of the other kids um that maybe are at the middle or high school level that that maybe didn't have that level of intervention. So, I think you may find that a couple years down the road, we won't see as many at the middle and high school level, but we'll still see those large numbers at at Quaker and at Oxford uh Gradle Elementary School. One of the conversations that we had was to capture this as early as right in the process up by That's right. I think some of the challenge that we have now is that there wasn't

026a strong program early on school level which is why we have such high school. Yes. And we need to address that now in the long term now that we've got strong school that should lower the number of students get that. So to summarize two things kind of part of the problem because of the pandemic and two is that we're looking at it earlier. So we've got a lot more focus on today than we would have and we know aware of what we're facing. Yes. Students coming in with a lesser degree that can go in and out get back into the classroom. That would be the hope. And I do think that the pandemic, I mean, you know, as you bring that up, the pandemic, as far as early intervention was that SRBI intervention, I think

027that that was really interrupted um in in many cases. Uh not to anybody's, of course, nobody's uh ill intent, but with the interruption in time, it's certainly quite effective. That's I do think that many of the referrals that have increased our identification rate have come from school-based teams, not parents. So, the schools are seeing, you know, that these students are really struggling with with what they're doing in the classroom. Thank any other questions for me. Thanks, Give the screen default as well. Let's see. Okay, we're going to continue now. So, it should be on the screen. Okay, great. Okay, so thank you Tracy update. The second enhancement that we're looking at for the budget deals with our department chair model high school level. What we're proposing is to change the leadership structure. Right now we've

028got department chairs that focus on several areas at the high school level that are 912 only. We're looking to change the model from a 912 model to 612 model and in some cases K12 model in order to provide the teachers and other schools greater um access to curriculum leadership than they have right now. So the exact details on how this is going to be structured that needs to be collaboratively developed. There are several stages that need to take place in this roll out. Stage number one is presenting to you the concept behind why we want to make this change. The next stage, and I'm going to go over the action plan in a few minutes, we'll be actually developing what this actually will look like with the people involved in high school and so forth.

029But essentially what's going to take place is we want to focus on curriculum development implementation with fidelity in grade 6 through 12. So right now at the middle school level the curriculum leadership is done by the middle school principal and this is the principal um versus at the high school the curricular leadership is done by the department chair. So we want to take that expertise that we have the high school and replicate that at the middle school level. However, what we can do is to replicate the same number of staff at the middle school and add to budget. So how do we recreate a structure give access to middle school teachers without adding to the budget. So that's why we redesign the department share model to structure it differently um to incorporate the middle school

030and in order to do that we are restructuring and taking nine people and making three and we're condensing department to make that happen. So we're going to talk about that. The second component of that is to create what's called vertical articulations. In other words, rather than have a pocket of three grades of middle school that's working isolation of the high school, we want to have conversations of middle school teachers, high school teachers. So it's an understanding of where the students are coming from and where they need to go and built in scaffolding the skills, the experiences, the content, the curriculum that students have a developmental approach in how they are approaching the curriculum in grades 6 through 12 and in the special areas K through 12. Having a department chair that can work with the

031teachers, monitor the curriculum, meet with them, look at the assessments, look at what's coming out of assessments, the data in assessments, revise the spoken sequence as they're seeing fit, provide professional learning to the teachers, look at the rubrics, look at how the students presenting grades six, seventh, eth, and so forth to make sure that when the students presenting that they are developing the skills that they need over time. That's the type of conversations that we want to have with our middle school and our high school teachers. So, we're going to find opportunities to bring those groups of teachers together and that's going to be under that that leadership of a department chair. We also want to provide great opportunities for interdisiplinary approaches. So, we want to create departments that have likeminded curriculum. So when we're

032looking at at STEM and we're looking at the commonalities between science and math and and technology education, there's commonalities there that would allow teachers to start working together in an interdisiplinary way rather than once again having silos of one department versus another. There's also an element here of saving cost and we're going to get into the differentials in a in a moment or two, but there is an opportunity to cut down a differential and there's an opportunity to cut down the number of stipens that associated with department chair. So there's a there's a budgetary impact by reducing the number of department chairs we have. So there's a curriculum and a leadership rationale and there's a budget chair rational as well. So the current models we have nine department chairs the high school they focus on

033three main areas. One is curriculum leadership that includes the supervision of um new courses. It includes developing courses. It also includes looking at the current curriculum that's in place and any revisions that need to take place along the way. It also includes organizational leadership of the department. That includes budget. It includes handling any concurrent concerns that might arise. It includes working with the high school administration on ongoing leadership um challenges ongoing leadership and patient in school. The third element is teacher evaluation. So the administrators evaluate teachers but also department chairs are the lead or the evaluators evaluations for the teachers in their in their department. They go into classrooms they observe and they do write up teachers maybe with teachers and with adminators. They also participate in the goal setting process and the end of

034mid year and the end of the year. It's that component that we're looking to pull off the department chairs, letting the department chairs focus on the curricular leadership element of it and allowing the administrators to focus on the supervision and evaluation of the teachers. So the proposed model takes the nine and it creates three departments out of those nine and we're looking to focus purely on Christian leadership with this new model ideally so that we have teachers that have an indepth knowledge of curriculum instruction. We looking for teachers that really understand and have had professional learning or or go to professional learning on how curriculum is written. So I might not necessarily be a science teacher and I'm a math teacher but if I have gone through the training and really understand how crypto is

035written and how it is unfolded and unpacked and standards and are assessed I can go from one discipline to another and I can work with teachers on how to implement that curriculum. That's the type of teacher I'm looking for that go into this role. study that really understands the nature of curriculum instruction and assessment being packaged together in these areas. So the the proposal and this is what needs to be continually refined as we go through this process creates three departments out of these nine. The first being humanities we're pretty certain that we still study language arts and language three three areas that there's a lot of similarities between those. The next is STEM, which would be science, mathematics, and um career technology and education, CTE. And the third is the one that we're kind

036of unfolding a little bit more, which is unified in special education with an element of SECL and SBI in there. And that's one because there's less teachers involved would be more of a K12 um feel. And the way this is being viewed, the curriculum leadership is what expand beyond scope high school. The traditional organizational elements of the department chair is what would still remain at high school. The element of the curriculum leadership of making sure curriculum is being developed and being implemented with fidelity and there's articulated conversations that expands out together with other grades. So the question is if we pull the evaluations off of the plate of the department chair so we move it off to the administrators which provided too much for the admins to do. Well, it's a very good question. So,

037we looked at the data and right now the middle the high school principal and assist principal those are the primary evaluators for 10 and 11 teachers each and the department chairs help assist with evaluations with other teachers in the building. When you take a look at the Quaker farms principal and the grade oaks principal each of those currently right now evaluate 24 and 23 teachers respectively. So when you take the teacher to high school and you pull out some special areas that would become 20 for administrative high school. So when you talk about equity or asking me your student of the building it's not that much far off filter for what's currently in place in other schools. You've heard me mention differential several times um this evening. What a differential is the differential is written

038into the teacher's contract with the collective bargaining agreement. And what that says is I'm the traditional teacher and I am not a department chair. I'm assigned five classes. If I have if I'm approached by administration that there is a need to cover another class in the building and under my certification, I can volunteer to say yes, I'm going to teach that class. It allows us to staff that class without hiring another teacher. By contract, we then need to give that teacher $6,000 course the year. the semester course is 3,000. In some cases, for various different reasons, the teacher might leave the middle year may need to cover part of the year. Then you prorate that differential. So this current school year, they've been um accounting for nine and a half differentials. That equates to $56,185

039teachers that are above the contract that are above what they are at the salary because they picked up a six class. And if they're department chair where they are contractually given to teach max of four classes, if they pick up that fifth class, then they're given that differential. How many classes are there in a day? There it's an eighth period rotation, but not all eight classes meet every day. And if there's a block here, there's there's far less than that. Each teacher is assigned five classes. What are they doing for the other two period? So one of the one of the periods by contact is a planning period. And then most teachers are provided at least one duty um or they're provided one duty during the day by contract as well. And typically you'll see

040a class dropped in their rotation. I'm sorry provided one what a duty. So it might be study halls, it might be um covering a certain area in the building. Um they're basically you're so the goal of this is to one eliminate these differentials and far minimize the need for differentials and if we release six department chairs back to scheduling and allows the high school to put six teachers back in rotation and not need six differential based upon how this rolls out. So it gives greater flexibility for the high school to staff those classes without having to rely on paying extra money to these department chairs or another teacher to pick up a class that we were not covering. Once again, department chairs are releasing one additional class a day. So we're cutting down the number

041that would be released and putting them back into the rotation. So part of this is from a program standpoint to strengthen and maximize curriculum leadership beyond just the high school. And part of this is for from just a fiscal perspective makes good sense to save some resources. A cuts down the differentials and B cuts down the number of stipens that we need to pay out for department sharers. Now the exact structure um we'll get into that in a moment. Um but it requires us to have some hard conversations with students along the way and put some caps on the number of sections that we can have um based upon enrollment. So for example, right now we might run a class very low class size. We might not be able to do that um in order

042to maxize and cut out some of these differentials as well. So what's next? There are three elements to this stage. One is at the board level I'm presenting to the this concept to the board a to find out from from you does this have any fee does somebody like this is this a model that we have support from the board to continue exploring to roll out I'm presenting this if you were to say to me you know what um this is not something that we think makes sense we go back to the budget we put back in partnership siphons and we we don't move forward but if we get a nod from the board you know this makes sense for us to continue this work. There are then two stages that we need to do.

043The second stage is to find out from the high school um what teachers, department chairs, midairs working collaboratively with us to fully develop this model. In other words, take the full department chair model. Now, what are all the things that every department chair does? How does it line up with the new model? Where are some gaps that we need to troubleshoot and how do we develop that? The second element is it changes the statement that a department chair has. So we're budgeted $8,000. This would require us to then sit down with the teachers association along with the board and develop a new memory of understanding with the teachers association that changes the teacher department chair stipen from $5,000 to $8,000. Now that comes a negotiating point. We might end up with less, we might end

044up a little bit more. and we need to still tweak this model. So, one of the the things that I've been talking to department chairs as a possibility of is if we go through this model, one of the things that we might do is to lower the the department chair possibly that's a $7,000 siphon and have a a lead teacher in each discipline that's still the lead content area that's working beside with department chair, not released from the teacher schedule, but still have a content person that is working with the department chair at the high school level. provides some brick of um oversight but overall we need to develop that financial structure with the association and new. So that's the three stages that we are at for this implementation of the department chair. So we're

045right now at the concept stage to see if we have buyin from the board before we proceed with those other two layers. But from budgetary spend standpoint we budgeted for for this model. If we get inclination about explain enough out of our next stage is that this is a nogo. We need to go backwards change the the budget. Okay. So I'm trying to introduce myself as a department chair. Presently it's only high school. So there's nine of us now. There's going to be three of us. Okay. Three of us are going to go down. 10 to 12 something 6 to 12 and then one K to 12. Okay. So my scope has increased as to how I all the way down the stream you know structuring the SC and down I guess and so with

046with that what is that I'm assuming that the department chair is going to come with the high school presumably so but we need to find that job description. So, I'm sitting up there at the high school and I have this stream of three schools. Okay, they're close by. How does that all fit into six the schedule that I have, the number of classes that I as a teacher in addition to the how do I fit all that? Right. So, a we we'd be eliminating a printing. Now, okay, there's three tiers. One of the tiers that interior is due right now is evaluation. take that layer off of their plate in order so that they can do this griffin work. They have four classes that they teach. So the other four class are in teaching frees

047them up to for parts of the day where they can actually either virtually meet with the teachers at at middle school or they could then actually schedule on a rotating basis to get over to middle schools to work with teachers that way. That's the finer details that needs to be worked out for the plan. But they would be going from eight to six. So they be going from six passes down four passes. They have right now currently have four passes. They would say four passes and presumably through this model we wouldn't be asking to take up that differential if it's they wouldn't have a fifth pass. Okay. Yeah. So they have four classes and if designed right with the schedule there might be an opportunity where they have a large block of time testing block

048days that they might have an entire afternoon that they're free and they could leave the high school at 11:30 or 12 and go to the middle school and spend a couple hours there. So really the differential would be built in by assigning another teacher there. you have different just shipping. How do you but I don't understand right so you get to middle school high school seem like a lot of people are very specialized what they teach now you're crossing multiple genres and I like the connection between middle school and high school right cohesion handles might look better is it really feasible to have somebody specialized say history become an expert writing curriculum and that's been their passion for 20 years and get all the other ones effectively because you're not ask it's a very good

049question. I'm not asking that person to be the curriculum writer in that content area. I'm asking in the person that really understands how program is written to then facilitate that process with the teachers that know that content project manager essentially. Yes. And I I understand probably I'm guessing right so some chair roles might be a little more intensive than others. Yeah. Right. So that probably plays into I mean it's a good thought. I just I don't know if it's going to execute or not. And if you ask like what do other districts do and I had a conversation with superintendent on Friday there's various districts that do various models such as this. Some of the districts have done in such a way that the staff administrators to do the role other districts have it where

050it's a department chair. There's more periods and some are less but there's various different components of it but having a concept of a six department chair is not a unique concept. It is something that's done out there. How much of this is a budget driven thing versus it's the right thing to do that's going to get us ahead in the long run with the continuity? I see it as a combination of both. I see one of the gaps I I've noticed in this district is silos pockets that we have and this helps eliminate that that pockets and silos that we have school school or school and also helps to connect those departments that have left common again envision myself as department chair we put a number of things in place team I think is part

051of the structure and then we've obviously all down so it's a complete program and we're also working on social studies similar to that so there's a continuity from fourth grade kindergart so you're chair a lot of these things are you really put pieces in place to make work and support that. Yeah. So, so we have a department chair which I would hope report at the board and they'll give us an update of what colleagues think everything is going one team is doing this and that and we're working on doing that. We think the forces are working fine or they're not. So, is that the kind of input? What input are we going to get from the department chairs? It's always been lack and then one department chair for years. So, This would be like a

052and we'd have to talk about that structure because ideally right now in the job description the department should report to the director of construction to then reports up to the board level. So we didn't talk about structured format of how you want information presented to the committees and to the board districts that are somewhat similar model. Do you know of anyone that is actually following this model and could just chat with it and see how they're going with it? Yeah, as I said there there are some that have the combined STEM and humanities. Um, some have not figured out how to include include or languages in there. Um, some have those STEM coordination 6 to 12. Some have done it with the midfitters and some have been departments. It's a variety of of mixes out

053there. So there's not really a school district that's doing what we can check out and see how not not in front of me. I can give you one but they do it with administrators. Okay. And that's a larger district where they much larger administrators. They have more administrators as opposed to they have more administrators. So the department chairs are themselves but uh they have administrators that oversee STEM and the different breakouts almost very similar but they have as well because they're large. Any other questions with this portion of it? The third area of focus is work that was done at the middle school level back at the beginning of December as approached by Sylvia princip middle school that she was exploring the concept of a new middle school schedule but didn't know whether or not

054it was possible with the goal of increasing the opportunity for students to select more course offerings added a library into the school um and provide greater opportunity for students to engage in wellness of physical education and health. So I authorized her to bring in a consultant who was an expert in school scheduling. Um they worked in December and she came back to me about a week and a half ago with the results of that work. Um and the results of that work was a redesign concept for a middle school schedule which would basically create an AB day. So it's a rotating every other day schedule. The concept is to take the sixth grade, take two teachers out of that sixth grade teams. One would become the librarian school who is that person who's currently certified

055as a librarian and take his second teacher and create a computer science course that feed into the middle school computer programming um classes. increase the art options that students have that want to take art for 2D, 3D sculpture. Increase music with general music and um course and get most of the students that um are rest left in the building that are not in both um and course to be able to take um physical education and health as a wellness course. Um, in past budgets, weren't we phasing out the librarian? Why are we adding it back in now for the middle school? So, two years ago, we phased out the librarian out of the middle school and the high school primarily for budgetary reasons and um we're trying to add it back in here because from

056a curriculum standpoint, we're the students are lacking instructive. We're creating a library that's not even being used right now for middle school. So when Sophie approached me on getting a library back we can do so we can do it by hand to the to the staff we need how to make this work with the existing staff. So from it's actually embarrassing that we don't have a librarian. This brings us back to a level where we should be at at a medical school level. It's just an observation and I'm just throwing this out there. You know when I look at and I'm not saying these bulleted points are any particular order but to me districts engaged ELA math sites and I'm not saying that any one of these things are not equally as important as other

057but I would think that those would be leveraged first and mentioned first you know as a district it's just my observation I'm just as thrown into I those are things really everything else it's just an observation you know I'm presenting material if those are priorities that's that's what I think wise it's a very good point this model is not impacting taking away from those content areas whatsoever However, those are are being reserved there. This is adding additional components to the building provid students a little more options for the course that they're taking outside of the court area. There are a number of steps that are still needed for this. So the next step for the middle schools is to continue working with their committee engaging actually increase in the science committee that they have there

058to begin fully developing what that schedule looks like. The number of periods per day, the number of minutes per period, um providing professional development to the sixth grade teachers on teaching social studies, um exploring what wellness looks like for all the students and really understanding what the impact on PL on my on unified arts seven major. There's a number of different steps that need to take place as the next steps for the middle school committee on developing this model um and changing the bill schedule for the middle school. Once again, the the net impact of this budget is um essentially zero to four dollar commitment for the first interest um course the library mutation which is a capstone like project that is similar to what we've done at advance. All of this would need to

059go through the script committee. We'd be making the proposals to the curriculum committee as courses and that schedule and developing the curriculum and it would eventually come back to full board for approval along the way. I did ask um if there are any specific questions that you'd like to ask her about the schedule and the changes that we proposed um in the budget itself. I I don't know who I direct the the question. It goes off of what uh Joe had to say. Um, my question is when I look at the data and test scores from last year, and I know that they're not as conclusive, but I'm curious to know, you know, as we're moving through, as we're getting evaluations, have we made progress to write the ship in terms of the math and

060the LA areas because this this looks phenomenal. We're trying to grow the arts aspect of the middle school which maybe is lacking but it's I don't remember the test scores indicating that we were deficient in those areas and I mean I'd love to do everything but it's one of those have we writed the ship in terms of started making the progress getting back to where we need to be in the core the core areas that I mean by and large that's how we're measured and that's you know when the kids move forward you know as many art programs we can provide them is great but they have to have the core competencies in the LA and the math and that's at least that's the concern I think show Joe show shares it as well and

061I wasn't sure if the test scores are starting to show that we're back on track so now we can invest in other areas we provided that we did the the ready assessment data in the fall and we're in the middle of now we don't have yet the data to analyze the impact this We did testing last week this week. So we should have data ready for fall to winter in a couple weeks for the February board. I don't know what was but I think what's important to to think about is that we are not we are not touching or impacting the core courses. So the tested areas of science, ELA and math, the core curriculum and our responsibility in those areas is being maintained. Um what we what we keep hearing and for our students

062is about voice and choice in the areas outside of their core areas. So they will go to their science class or math class or ELA class or social studies class every single day for the same amount of time that they are currently. What we're looking at is to increase the voice and choice in the other times of their day where right now if you compare us to middle schools around the state or the country we do have a dirt of offerings, right? our kids just sort of march through, you know, basic art or they're interested in band or chorus. And so what we want to do is we want to expand that and in that way to we will be reinforcing what happens in the core areas because adding a library media specialist, right? We

063want that person to teach dig digital literacy in the sixth grade to all of our students as an elective. But then we also want that person to teach um a personalized interest project which is a mini capstone to our seventh and eighth graders where they develop independence as learners where they develop collaboration, communication and critical thinking. They have to be able to enhance all of those skills and they're learning those in their core classes. At the same time, we want to bring in more STEM offerings in terms of we have the project lead the way courses, but the computer science aspect of STEM we don't have. So, we want to think of authentic ways to teach science and math that comes through computer science also. So, I do think these electives will enhance what is

064happening in the core classes right now. they march through. They don't get much choice in what they get to do, but this will allow them some choice and it'll allow them to create pathways, too. So, if it's a student that really is interested in STEM, they can in seventh and eighth grade, the way we envision it would be part of the computer science offerings and that would enhance and help them as they decide when they go to high school what pathway they want to take on. So, I just um I'm pretty passionate about it because I I see our middle schoolers and I see developmentally where they are and we are really working hard with them in the ELA, the math, the science and the social studies. And we have the SRBI offerings in both

065math and ELA that our students that are struggling go to. We have high ready that we put them on every you know every day in whip for their personalized pathway for ELA and math. We are we are really um all about the increase in achievement and growth in their ELA in their math but at the same time we want to balance that with offerings in their elective areas and we felt like we could do that in a costneutral format. Now I wasn't coming and asking for two new teachers because you know when I talked to Dr. Miller it was listen I understand you want a library we discussed with So it's not going to happen unless you give something else. And so this was our creative sort of problem solving to maintain what we have

066in our course but also increase offerings um for our students. I don't have a kid who's in the middle school so I'm not familiar with the schedule. Can you just talk a little bit more about like what a day would look like for an average student? So it sounds like they get the four core classes every single day. Yes. But then what I would consider like electives like music or gym or art or or library, is that just like one time a week or how does that fit in? Currently they have an elective um once once a day per quarter. Um so they could have up to two electives in a quarter, but they some students have an elective and some students have a wick. Some students have two electives. So a wit is it's

067called whatever it takes. It's a period in the day where students um they can have structured study hall. They can be pulled out for SRVI services. They do their eye ready there. Um they can be pulled for resource uh time during that. So a typical day, so I'll take you through a sixth grader day. A period they can currently they can have with or a special. B period they go to a four. C period they go to a tour. D period they go to either um a special or a back period. Then they go to lunch and E and F they go to two more cores and then it's the end of their day. What we're proposing is only an AB rotation for their unified arts. Their core classes are still every day at the

068same time. But in order to increase electives, we would have those courses instead of be by quarter, they would be by semester. So that it increases, it gives more slots per se for elective areas for students to be able to pick from. So one more question. Now you add SRBI or special edition. Does that mean those kids use the whatever it takes period for the resource and or do they miss out on having some of those not in not in the new schedule next year because it's AB they could possibly have a but on B they could have um an elected class yes versus now they're sort of they're sort of placed into one and they're there. Using the AB for related arts, it opens up more slots for them to be able to um

069accomplish both. And that was part of our that was part of the impetus for this. Like if you're a kid that takes band and chorus, you're pretty much your schedule's locked in. You don't really get to take anything else because of the way it it falls in the schedule. Now going from AB, you could take chorus A, you could take band B, but in semester 2, right? You can have chorus all in A, but then B in semester 2, it opens you up for if you want an art or if you want um the computer science or if you want a different Thank you. I had no idea how Yeah, it is it is complex. I mean, Anthony knows he was there. It's so complex that when you look at asking for a consultant for

070scheduling, you hire a middle school scheduling consultant or you hire an elementary school schedule consultant. You hire a high school scheduling consultant. Have different specialties actually that particular structure works at that particular level. I'm sorry with I got I looked up a couple definitions. I'm not sure which one you told me. Whatever it takes. It's made up. It's unique to us. It's unique to us. We made that up. Made up word study hall. Yeah. That can be used. It's a utility period that can be used for testing or Yes, it's unique. It's unique to us here in Oxford. I made it up when I came here. You made up. Yeah, but the the talked about it, but whatever it takes to help the kid be successful. This is a time period where there four core

071teachers, English, social studies, science, and math, don't have a class to teach. They teach in uh so the kid needs help in any of those, they can go see these people. Even if you're assigned to the social studies teacher, you can go see the science teacher at that time. They're available. So, um the problem as as was mentioned and Sylvia is trying to correct is that if you're a special education student, uh your your resource class would be during one of these sort of special periods and therefore you do get and that that's always been a problem. So, you get don't get to uh access some of these uh electives. So, they're trying to make a situation where you can have your resource and take D and have help etc. So a lot of the

072kids in resource don't go to the whip because that's not the resource class with their special education. And right now because the way that the schedule is designed, not every student is able to enroll in health and physical education. This is going to increase students to be able to actually enroll in this class which is an important class for students to also engage in. Any other questions with the schedule? The ne the fourth area of enhancement it deals with instructional supplies and office supplies. This is a complete change in the model of how we organize ordering supplies for the schools and how we maintain inventory and how we supply the schools. I'm going to let Anthony speak to and address the change model for this. I bring my glasses up so I don't wipe off

073the sheet. But uh the bottom line is is that the instructional supply line item is most besides salaries which the principles normally put together when they put their budgets together. The instructional supplies uh is going to be the largest element of really their discretional um budgeting process. You know what? The way you work this in a zerobased budget is you send uh information out to the staff and say I am starting to collect information to put my budget together. What do you need for your classes next year? Pencils, pens, protractors, whatever, right? Those are the instruction supplies the teachers will use in their classroom to provide instruction. Uh we're not saying that by shifting and they're still going to be the principles and the teachers are still putting these requests together. It's not like I'm

074sitting up in the district office determining what they need. But if we can centralize it, the idea is that we can say, okay, all of these uh requests are coming uh from WB Mason. Can we put them all together, save on shipping? Can we save get a discount for bulk? Can we you know do things they and then they come into the to the central office we will you know inventory them that's sometimes an issue we know what what's come in what's not come in when I can't pay something until I know we've got these these items built um then our program the kids that we have up here in in uh on campus can help us you know the 18 to 21 children inventory stocking delivering these products working with the staff I mean

075obviously they're not going to be carrying heavy things or anything like that but getting some some interpersonal skills life skills there's some connection that we can make there but the bottom line is it's the potential is there for statements so that's what we're thinking and I gave the example last week I had a request for four staples right 20 bucks no big deal but I knew we had like 100 staplers in the supply closet at at center my old school so why bother to buy four more when I know they're there this is sort of the same concept if we can do an inventory of what we have in the district and then these you know and as we get our orders and and we can start to get supply stock we can cut down

076on it's not frivolous it's just we don't you don't know what you have so a request comes in say well actually we don't you don't need to order this because we have x amount available and that that's the b will it save us money we we think so but we won't know until we try it so it has some implications for working with bargaining units you know how are we going to shift some of our clerks from school part part of the day to help us. We haven't gotten to that point yet. Um but there there's some options that as we try to flesh it out, how we actually operationalize it, make it work that we might have to come back and say, you know, this we might have to negotiate. Any questions about uh

077one question is have we thought about when we go around and we do the inventory is centrally locate a chunk of our supplies that maybe the middle school is low on storage like they are and and we have a centralized spot uh to store it or if we bought an excessive amount of paper because we got a really good deal. We had the budget to do it and we pre-bought it. Now we have to house all this paper somewhere, you know. Uh that's something that's crossed my mind. I haven't talked to the administrators yet. So I don't want to like steal their things even though it's our things as a collective group. I always feel people always say, "Oh, but that's my classroom." I'm like, "Well, that's the people of classroom, right?" Or or whatever.

078But the bottom line is yes, I have thought about it. But I think as a collective we want to get together and include some of the administrators and how we might do that because if we did centralize it again and border comes in which things that folks don't need and they're building say yes we already have that done and I'll give you an example. I did something similar to this in paper in Ridgefield and we centralized all the paper into the technology five months at the time and it turned out that one school had pre-ordered paper and they had so much paper that I was able to go about six months and just move the paper from their building to the other schools and not have to purchase any paper. that so much of the

079surplus is just sitting there and there are some resources like paper that in the elements over time that they it become useless right so part of this is to make sure that we're maximizing current inventory that's in place and utilize it what's there it's not going to sit in a closet for the next 10 years and then eventually be further away so we need to do full inventory what we have maximize what we currently have out in the schools that it could be that we have at grade is something the middle school needs or something the high school needs and then figure out from there what the orders are over time. But there's a good potential down the road of saving substantial resources because there's less redundancy out across the schools, less redundancy in order.

080I'm not ordering the same thing that the middle school that the next school is ordering same order. And then once again that the bulk orders when you can order five times the product opposed to five, five and five, you're going to be able to get better pricing for that as well. And and I didn't mention but we're also doing the same the same concept we're using we're doing for our office supplies. So difference between instructional and office supplies is simply these are supplies for the office and we've done we there is a history of us taking this approach in the district because we did this with our custodial supplies. Oh technology too. Yeah. When I first came to the district I was able to um you know as the principal determine what we needed for

081custodial supplies. had no idea, you know, how much wax did we need and this and that. Uh, and so, you know, I would put down, oh, we had $18,000 last year. We need $18,500 this year. Now, of course, we told them we can't do that with incremental budgeting anymore, but the idea is, you know, give it to somebody who knows, you know, and and we're still doing that because we're letting the teachers decide what they need. They're telling us what they need. It's not it's not the administrators. We're just trying to come up with an operational system that may save us some some money. And if we can pass that that money on to other elements of our budget, we we'd rather do that. Question. So we're not doing an inventory of the current of

082the schools. Now we we are we haven't started yet, but that's the first step is what what do we have? Yeah, absolutely. [Music] High school people share. Yeah. The the idea would be to do that inventory now because all of our orders are, you know, go into effect July July 1. So, we'll know what we have in the district prior to to the next, but also move stuff around. Well, exactly. I mean, I signed checks. We're buying bins across this district constantly for supplies and we must have a million bins in the system. So if we can get a handle on what we have, we don't want to keep fighting them, share it. I mean, literally that it's annoying to actually have to take the Well, and again, the idea would be to give give

083the teachers what they need. So if they need the bins, we'll buy them if we don't have them, you know, in the district, you know, but if we had them in the district somewhere and they're just sitting there, yeah, let's give [Music] them every budget when we develop a budget has risk. And the question of risk is what's our risk tolerance? And there's three main areas that we projected into this budget risk. The first is enrollment. You'll find in the packet both in um the great oak section we identify cutting a teacher in fifth grade as well as the enrollment later on in attendance. We pay an outside organization NASDAQ to an annual enrollment study for us. They project that. They look at the historical data. They look at um projected people moving to town,

084new homes and such. And they give us a projected enrollment for the next 10 plus years. We look at that data. We look at that data related to the number of students in the exchange. We look at that that data to see how many teachers we have in those courses right now. We look at what the class sizes are currently, what the class sizes will be with the projected enrollment. And we project how many teachers that we need to stay in the class size in that range. So I know that several my colleagues here are here because they're concerned that we're projecting a reduction of of fifth grade teacher for next year. We're doing that because the enrollment is indicating that the class size for fifth grade is going down by at least 15 students

085based on the enrollment study that NESD did for us. Historically, they're pretty accurate. However, this year in kindergarten, they projected a decrease in enrollment and we saw a spike in kindergarten. So much so that in August we had a higher than teacher because class size is going to go up. That's a risk. So, we're projecting fifth grade to go down. were projecting us to be in a range of 22 23 students for a fifth grade class. If class size spikes, we have a lot of fifth grade student and we have increased enrollment in fifth grade, we would then need to come back to the board and say class size has increased. That was a risk that we took in the budget that we um can no longer say in that class size. We might need

086to add a teacher or kindergarten or whatever class it is. That's a risk that we build into the budget based upon the projections that we have. The other portion of enrollment risk is special education. So if I have a student that moves in tomorrow that has special education needs and requires pair professional oneonone, I might need to hire a new staff member to work with that student. Or if that student comes in with an IEP that is outplaced out of the district, I now need to absorb those costs and now pay tuition for that student to go out of district out of district. either of those cases could be 50, 60, $100,000 that were not budgeted. So enrollment carries a risk. We do not typically budget for contingencies for two, three, four students to be

087outplaced for an additional parent that needs to be hired. So from an enrollment standpoint, we staff based on what enrollment projections are as of the October one data provided to us by our outside firm NASDAQ. That's a risk. And once again for special education, we do not budget for the whatifs. We budget for our current students. And that's a risk there as well. From a substitute perspective, we took a huge risk for this. We looked at the data for this year. We looked at the data for last year. We did not have substitute teachers that are willing to work for us right now. But that's not unique to this year. Every district across the United States is facing the same thing. So we said if we can't find the subs to work for us, we're

088not going to budget the same amount. We're gonna we're going to put less money in the budget. The risk is if we have a lot of teachers that are out and subs decide to come back and say we're ready to work now, we don't have the budget to then pay for them. We would then need to move funds around to then support that um and part of the year. That's a risk. The third element of risk is increased costs. So, we reached out to high schools that require special education tuition. We've talked to our transportation providers that special education um vans and cars. We've talked to our insurance brokers. We've talked to our IT contractors that deal with our infant vision, our finance system, and our frontline for attendance and for IPS. We've talked and

089we've gotten projected increases from all these different companies and all these different organizations, but they cannot guarantee that those are the prices. For example, insurance for our liability and our cyber insurance and our property insurance. They give us a best case estimate based on their view of the marketplace. Now, they then go to bid in the springtime for our insurance. And last year, they projected us here. The insurance bids came out and we ended up in some cases 30 or $40,000 under budget of what we needed to pay for that insurance because the bid came back higher than they had projected it to be. That's the risk as well. So when you build this budget, there are inherent risks to what we need to do. And the point of budgeting is to determine from a

090philos philosophical standpoint what's our risk tolerance. And we put in a lot of risk into this budget. You could say to us, we don't like that risk. We want you to add back in. You want to increase the budget. But that's a conversation that we have to have with you. We probably engage with the finance committee. Which leads us to the portion that I'm going to turn back over to Anthony. to claim this. But what we tried to do is to listen to what your questions were and the comments that we heard last week and begin putting together a series of pages to this presentation that tried to capture what those questions were, the comments were and align it back to what the responses are from our perspective and the data that we're providing you

091in the budget book. So that's address quickly what these pages are. Just just off the Dr. Miller's presentation, what is our outstanding legal obligation? So on page 99 of this packet that I gave you, the big one has our uh our legal obligation as far as also comparison from last year to this year. Let me just page I think it's 100 page numbers. Yeah, we got we that's why we gave you a whole new book. So I'm not going to use the numbers in your presentation. Uh but page 100 you'll see from 2120 where our total legal services were uh as well as our defined settlements and then you have 2122. So that information is just there for you and that is uh is where we stand right now and that will the pay out

092of this year's budget will be even I can't promise what's coming down the pike. I don't know that but I don't I'm not aware of any set. Next question was breakdown of pure professional hours or assignments. So we did that for the whole district for you and that's going to be three. Thank you. Very good. So again on this page it gives you by school who the uh where the para works and and the identified students that are with them. And I know it's small. I couldn't get any bigger to fit on one page. I can send you individually the electronic document. You can zoom in as much as you'd like. I can tell you that it was smaller originally and ask. Yeah, I was thinking for any extra pages that I had. So I

093tried to shrink it down, but again it's just d and we can talk to uh to to our our special education folks and the parents and are are we appropriate level of of staff and and they said yes and we certainly can answer questions to that because you may have a question you know why is there you know one identified uh you know student that is working and there's probably well I know there will be a reason that we can explain that to you because sometimes you look at defenders and you say well I don't make sense And so we can talk about that after we get a chance to this we are going to want at least for the finance subcommittee a deeper dive on this just to because it's it's part of our

094due diligence and if you know the pressure comes in that we have to start cutting. nothing we want to cut anywhere. when the pressure comes in, we want at least to have a solid base to go all of our staff are fully utilized before you know because if if we have to cut and you know we have two staff members that are at half capacity and not saying they are but if they work that turns into one staff member I just across that's what I was just saying that staff in general and that's just because when we know how many students someone gets assigned to, it's hard to understand like is that a full schedule? You know, are you seeing them for one period, you've seen them for, you know, half the day and the

095other student you're seeing for the other half. Sure. It's so we're going to need a deeper dive. Typically, when you see pars listed here assigned to an elementary classroom, in many cases, they're not being assigned as a one-on-one par where they're assigned to that student all day long. The attempt is to put several students that need a parent into one classroom and have that parrot that's assigned to the classroom then support those students that entire day in that one class. But we can talk more in depth about that finance. So the uh any other questions on on that? So deeper dive for the different groups. Uh the the next one was about different contracts we have. So I didn't include that in your number 102. All the numbers were correct. So we added one more

096page. Yeah. So, so the uh yeah, that was just a minute, but you know, most most of our contracts, we have some major contracts that are coming up. I'm actually going to be in a training all day on Friday on how to put an RFP together for uh nutrition services that's required by the state when we go out to bid for nutrition. Uh and so we have I put the major contracts up top and then we have a yearly. Uh you know, one that struck out to me that I think we were able to bid on is going to be our trash because it's a significant amount in that haven't been done. So, I wanted to uh cover that. The other ones are you get things like um there'll be like inspections for our elevators

097or inspections for the boilers, things like that. Water inspection, that's all included in what we do. So, those are like they're more year-to-year rather than formal contracts, but you may put those up on top of the formal contracts that we have on. recent data demonstrated success of our reading instruction program. Yes. Uh Tracy did a nice job of illustrating that and that uh on page 92 has the breakdown for you. I uh gave you instead of putting it in formal document here a breakdown of our dues and fees for this year and from last year. The reason I gave you last year is we haven't done all of our dues and fees for this year. I didn't know. Well, how come there's only $18,000? We're asking for 60. You get a sense from last year

098when we had four year. And these can be uh as small as a fee to um participate in a uh cheering competition might not be that small. Uh it could be fees that we spend to the state for D. Uh it could be our fees to have our elevator certificate posted. So there's a variety. And sometimes you'll see in those reports a staff member's name on there instead of an actual organization. Some of those cases are pay by credit card instead of reimbursement. So the refer goes to the person's name. The person's name is that shows up on that and we only do that when an organization won't take our POS. That's when we'll have we'll do a reimbursement for that that happens. Not not um one of the questions from last week that they

099had asked when Jim was doing the it was well why don't you want to fund all 410 Chromebooks when uh instead of you're only funding 375 based on his inventory of what we have that's actually those 375 was a number we actually for the district so there wasn't any point in stock extra ones that suggest that as far as Medicare is concerned I I put a nice I had a packet put together by the special ed department on you know what it how it uh works the letters we send to the families how we collect we have roughly I think $38,000 for central activities fund related to Medicare which I listed on there and then what can we use it for and there are no restrictions on it so I think what would make sense

100or best practice is to provide uh special education department uh with what what they need out of that whether it be supplies or items what since it's really coming from that there's no particular right and there's questions raised by case in the end of last year they wanted to spend some of that money resources and my response at the time was we're not in the budget within the traditional operating budget those Medicare funds don't go away so let's not touch those let's touch the operating fun back then as a rainy day special education we need And then there was a question about the differentials which you did as a sixth year. I'd rather correct that's correct. This is goes back to the structured literacy program and are we budgeting sufficiently for the world? That was

101a question somebody said and I won't remember say who you know what planet is the guy on that put in 7%. That was me. Uh but uh we have no idea what the oil could be. So uh what I did is I gave you a comparison in here is if if it was 60% which is totally possible. uh if the Russian invades the Ukraine and a variety of things happen around the world, we have no idea where the price of oil would go. Uh if if the price of oil went up so say it was like 60%, we would see an impact in the budget of 2%. Uh so you know we can talk in the sub committee about where what are we comfortable with you know do you want to have a larger increase

102doesn't have to be 60 but you might not be comfortable with the 7% it's really at this point couldn't tell you type more than I do been doing it for a while just to give you a comparison [Music] And the idea of this over the next month and a half is as we go through this process is to continue to expand on the budget book. If there's a change in number based upon our conversation, we'll give you revised page. If there's additional data that you want, we'll add it to the appendix. We'll just keep building this book um with you as we go. So, what's the next steps in the process? Um, following tonight, we have a finance committee tomorrow morning at tomorrow afternoon at noon to begin talking about what we've heard tonight, any

103questions, comments that emerge, lay out the additional finance committee meetings that we're going to have between now and the month of February. Um, plan out um what those meetings are, what data um the committee needs, what data the full board needs. We'll return back on the full board on February 8th. We'll have another opportunity to talk um in public school for board have additional finance committee meeting between that date and the last meeting in February with the role of um having the board of education approve the budget on February 22nd at which point it becomes the board of education approved budget. We then provide it to the board of um finance and it begins to deliberate at the town level and then that's when um you as a board take ownership of the process and

104become your budget and superintendent of the budget. So that's the next um stages um in the process. I can open up to any questions you have comments over Mike to facilitate that if you want um or you can just send questions to him. we can talk have that conversation tomorrow but that um is the nature of our presentation today. Thank you. [Music] And that was basically my report. I think you tag team. Yeah. Uh this document here which is the action public schools capital improvement plan. Uh it's a draft. I want just to share this with you to get your feedback over the next couple of days. Thank you folks. Thank you. The town would like us to submit this to to them by the 31st. So we spent some time putting this together. I'd

105like to to have you take a look at it tonight and tomorrow I'll take a look at it, get some ideas or questions or concerns and then maybe we can get a facilities maybe one day just to say change this go with it. But the highlight just so you know when I first came on board at this position George took me first place he chose me was the Oxford High School and uh and it is really in need of serious work. Uh we are doing some work on it this spring but it's not the lining needs to be completely redone. Uh the doors are are corroded with chlorine pitted and really need to be done for epoxy. We we we looking at about $250,000 to get that. So the HIT aquatic center will be looking

106good in the future. The other thing that that we budgeted for throughout these years is going to be the uh upgrade of the heating and cooling system great oak elementary school farm school and it is a little bit different from what the proposals had been put in place by the town was really focused on great oak elementary school which was their charge. Uh but we we took a ride out George Fzonian George Temple High to White Plains High School which has about 2,000 kids in it and the units that they uh had there were very impressed with. Uh we don't have a a formal uh write up from from the company yet, but they're estimating about $40,000 per unit for class. Um which would be about $2 million investment over five years to get classrooms.

107We don't want to just leave it there with boilers that are 20 years old. So we would like to also replace the boilers at farms as well as radio school and Oxford High School because that is also coming up on as well. So we put the that in as well the high school they also have about 15 units on approved air air handling HVAC system. Uh we anticipate that costing quite a bit about a million. Uh so we'd like to provide that over three years. Uh it doesn't we have to get a crane to do this. So it doesn't pay to do one per year. We could do five per year. Uh it's worth having. We put that already did one of at the other place of summer. So these are the two heat boiler

108is the same thing. Well, yeah. You boil hot water in a house. You would be correct. And and this plan you have in front of you now for the most part is the bulk of what we presented to the town last year. Recall the town did not fund any request for this year. So this is last year's plan. We buy some some additions to it. The heart of it is what was shared last year. The smallest item is a is a a playground for Quaker Farms. And the reason we put that in is that um it's it's the one closer to the town the town garage and that one uh the slide cracked. So we tried to replace it. We couldn't because it was so old the kids were getting hurt on the slide. So

109we had to tape off the thing and then we had to take the slide off. So we can't actually replace the parts. Well that's was yeah we put a little bit extra mulch for them to jump into. So my thing is thinking is you know little kids so I'm hoping so questions. Yeah just quick questions on the pool is that a quote because there were numbers around like a million dollars right we uh I asked Joe Stockwell and Paul Mirabel to get the the numbers and that's the best guess right now. Have you firm that up? A guest or someone professional came in and said, "Oh, yeah, that that you're looking at." Right. Was it somebody professional that came in or just Joe Stockwell saying? Yeah. I I I I don't believe anyone come in

110[Music] as he was, you guys told me this month, go ahead and get it done. He was the schedule was so far out that you're looking at least nine months away to get the work done. But he estimated that's going to be a drain pool off more than four tiles. Either one of two things replace the tile or literally coat it similar to an epoxy wall. down into what the placement would be for the deck. It's probably $30,000 for the doors that are open. So he gave us notice again we didn't ask for Yeah. We said look we had to replace this what would be your best I didn't [Music] know the right number. The other question I have is and I know you guys are all like the whole meeting thing. I don't really

111care what solution is, but I know the air quality at the school sucks. I know the humidity sucks. Why are we not doing it all? This doesn't seems like it was a five year. Oh, right. Right. Why are we banging it out? We're not going to be ripping ceilings and things like that. Certainly, I put it all up front. I don't I don't know. Um I'm trying I'm trying to make it more powerful. No, I know. I think I think we got we got some money now. I mean, I'm throwing systems if if funds do come available. That's something that probably that capital project. Yeah. And the sad reality is that conversation is around great school farms has the same issues. The heat in that building has practically faster time. And it's all kind of

112tied together like I give an example that you have over the summertime. major humidity problems and it kind of goes away if we can get the air conditioning in school and all these classrooms because they act as as a condensing thing will take that air moisture out of the air. So then that alleviates the worry. How much do we rent fans and [Music] dehumidifiers we've got wire? multiple things just to get as you said the building not to sweat so it doesn't secure and not have growth it you know it unfortunately towns will notoriously I don't mean Oxford Oxford but towns notoriously not put aside money for maint so you know here we are at a whole this is the best plan I think going forward to try to get out of hole because guess

113what's coming Now, I think Anthony mentioned it was the high school and the high school, you know, and I look at this, I'm always trying forward, you know, you know, one of the problems with that school, I would say building it, but having air conditioning in the gym, I mean, not having air conditioning in the gym seems kind of stupid because not only being sports there, but there's time to have assemblies there and have all these kids at one spot in the summer in the in the four months. You can't really bring them in, you know. So I I think that's one of the things looking forward that you know this off the roof. Let's let's get air too. So I just think if we could that money's coming I'm totally in favor used to

114be the second worst. Yeah. It's now the worst worst because we shut this place down. Well I I I say quite and the sad and the sad reality is that the writing is the wall for high school. Yeah. that we are continuing to see items fail in that building and I'm scared very scared about middle school because we are you're beginning to see after just a year items break out of warranty a year old and we continuously have challenges that we're addressing and we're only a year out from taking over that building. So that means that we have four facilities that we could see rise maintenance and it it's it's scary. No, I understand one school of floating out there today so you can get some feedback to Joe but maybe we should shift where

115where the years are. This mean you want to be able to get their okay send it over to the town. Well, I think this requires special meeting. I mean, I hate to say they're gonna get back. Absolutely. [Music] to adopt the capital. Yeah. Could be $4 million or something, right? But you know they're going to act. My opinion is I would have gone heavier on fixing 223 that's my own that's there it's gone more people like money I mean this would be the year to try to go a little heavy my that's all I mean not questioning the items I'm so broad What would you like to add for 22 23? I think it should be the highest of any quite honestly. Is it to just accelerate accelerate not add to this but accelerate maybe?

116But yeah, I want to go in bigger ass, get more of the other stuff, accelerate some of the leading stuff for the schools in you know, you guys the engineering all that, but I would just say go with bigger numbers. That's just my opinion. They can always scale this back. We know the pattern and this is the only year we might actually see some real money coming into the town. I like to I like to amend Uh this point including the chang [Music] Okay. So the motion is to adopt capital as amended. So there's no further discussion. Can I ask something? Is if we're going to take money for this year trying to escalate forward in that year then either windows or roof or something else that on our back of our mind we know

117it's there. We don't want to be creating concentrating on heat. So we move let's say a fouryear plane into a two year they move it in year three and four either a roof or window or something that's on the plane that's kind of I think we could bring that in next year's capital thanks none. All those in favor opposing last night. [Music] There's a pilot plan that will be coming back to our community. There will be two new one social media course and other [Music] Oh, right. Yeah. Make sure the questions teachers out to the students books. There's a book I want to read. I recommend this book. Make sure So meeting our next question, Right. All right. So, we're trying to fall into a pattern meeting the first Thursday of every month. So, the

118next meeting will be scheduled for February 3rd at 5:30 virtually. that works for everyone to [Music] check. Okay. Um what we have down is the second graduation requirements policy attached to our documentation. Everyone had a chance to read it. There's any questions or discussion back and once again as a Reminder what happened is that when we adopted all the policies in June last summer, this particular policy was given to us from Chip and the model policies, but it wasn't updated with our graduation requirements. So, it's basically adopted blank. So, now we filled in with what the requirements are supposed to be. So, we' actually have a policy that has there. So, the high school graduation requirement discussion. Not all in favor subcommittee meets tomorrow and finance. So yeah, just to reiterate, you know, question um

11918. You have [Music] anybody motion to return at 8:23. I'm sure all are in favor. So, [Music] how' you do? Not too bad.