2024-01-31 Board of Education Special Meeting

001for natural last night. Let's call the meeting to order at 6:3. Um, let's rise for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for it stands together for all Vinnie Kennedy McGrath Mike Cusa, Debbie Sherman, and I'd like the board of finance numbers, please. Yeah, we understand this isn't okay. I got Nikki Dyson over. Now, these are two new members to our board. And on your board, the new members are and then Paula Jensen and Well, welcome to our meeting. We appreciate you coming. And we also made some invitations to um the union leaders here enjoying that. And I'd like to thank the administrators and the administrative team for coming and being part of this discussion with us tonight. So I'm going to turn it over to

002Dr. Miller to start us off on our budget workshop. Hey good you can see over there you can see down there. So, welcome welcome to the official start of the 2024 2025 budget process. This is the official public phase of the the process and um it's hard to hear it now. In some cases, the budget season never ends, but this is the official launch of your next year's budget process. So, here we go. Um I was going to introduce this evening to the board of finance and to the general public our business manager, Howard Wo. Unfortunately, he's unable to be with us tonight um for unexpected reasons. So um when we present in February in March to the board of finance, you'll have a chance to meet with him on then. But Mr. Wther joined

003the district in August. Um he's done a very effective job of managing the operating budget for this current school year and did a a wonderful job putting together the budget proposal that you see um before you this evening. I'd also like to thank the members of um board of finance for joining us this evening. I think this is our third year in a row that we've invited you to the opening launch of the budget and it's helpful to have you as part of the district conversation. So, thank you for being here tonight. I also want to thank um our teachers and staff and parents and members of our leadership from our association for being here um to be stewards of the budget process and to learn more guys. Thank you. Um and finally, I want

004to thank our staff and our administrative team for their hard work in putting together their request for the budget and helping us to synthesize it. Um and their development budget is what you see here tonight. Um the proposed bill is combination of a collective effort districtwide put in their hearts and lines into the proposal you see this evening. I'm going to go through this presentation for you this tonight. Um when I'm done um each of the images are going to come up here and present um their major budget drivers in their cost centers. Um I ask that you let me go through the presentation first. Um after each administrator makes their presentation then we'll open up to questions about their individual cost center which I'll be the best opportunity to talk about each individual um

005department and school and then we'll open up any conversations at that point. So the mission of our district is for our students and staff to grow every day to excel today and succeed tomorrow. We view our budget as a tool that will provide teachers and staff the resources needed to educate our students for success. We have developed a budget as fiscally responsible while adding value added positions to help our district address key challenges to help us move forward in some critical areas. You're going to see and hear emphasize the word investments um through the tonight's presentation. We were investing talent resources to help our district grow to create a learning environment that fosters student growth for success. We were making investment in student learning. Our recommended superintendent budgets, I know this is exactly where everybody

006goes. What's the number? So, we're going to start there. Um the number is a 35 thou 35,893,131 budget which represents the increase of $1,919,53. In percent numbers, that represents a 5.65% budget from this current operating year to next year. As a reminder, over 80% of a district budget, and we are no different here in Oxford, is benefits and salaries. And that makes sense. We are people business. We're driven by our staff, our teachers, our pair of professionals, our secretaries, our monitors, our tutors, our administrators. Without the people that walk through the door every day to educate our kids, we wouldn't have a school district. So, our district, we are about people. We're people business. That's what drives our budget, the benefits from the salary of the hardworking souls that educate our children here in October

007every single day. We also use a zerobased budgeting process to develop our budget. That's the philosophy that we go through in developing our budget. What that means is that every budget request in the budget starts at zero. We don't roll forward the budget from year to year. We ask our staff what is it we want to ask the budget. We build from zero up. So we know that the request in the budget is built purely on what the needs are to move the district forward to meet our educational needs for next year. One way to look at the dollar increase is by category. As you can see here, the largest increase is in our benefits and salaries. We also have taken some reductions in liability insurance and utility. But you can see here that on

008the far left you um benefits accounts for over $750,000 of the $1.9 million increase. Salaries is another 700,000. So 700. So when you combine those two, you end up at a $1.4 million increase of the $ 1.9. That makes sense. When 80% of our budget are people, the majority of the increase in our ask for next year relates to benefits and to salaries. Another way to look at that is by looking at it by percent. So we're asking for a 5.65% budget. Within that 5.65%, how do we get to that number? 2.2% of that increase is benefits low. Another 2.08 2.08% is salary. So over 4.8% of the 5.65% 65% budget is purely related to staff. It's the benefits and that goes along with um having people in our district educating kids. That's what the

009increase is for next year. In developing our budget proposal, we had five key goals. First, we want to invest in growth. We're requesting new positions that will improve the education for our students. Second, we operate our budget and develop budgets that are fiscally sound and that's very important. We feel it is our obligation to be fiscally responsible for the money in which the town provides us and that's key in how we build the budget and that's key in how we operate the budget fiscally responsible. Third, we have students that are not as successful as others. That's simply the case and we have budget requests that will help close those achievement gaps and that's very important to closing that achievement gap. Fourth, we believe our staff should have access to high quality professional learning tied to

010their individual needs. And fifth, we're always looking for ways to be as efficient with our resources as possible. It is not always about adding but being strategic about how we fund our initiatives and operate the district. The use of grant funds is an example of being efficient within our within our budget. Now that you're you might see in the news there are a lot of districts out there that are struggling with their budget this year because they added salaries to the ESSER funds over the last couple years. So as the ESER funds expire this year and next year, we had to reabsorb those salaries into their operating budget, but they have to cut staff. We strategically did not put staff in the ESRE funds knowing that that was going to happen. We didn't want to

011set ourselves up as the grant was expiring for us to have a large increase in our budget because the grant was going away. That was a key business we move that we made in operating with the grants a couple years ago and that's going to pay off for us now. Again, in summary, our budget request for the 2425 school year is 35,8192,131, which represents a increase of 5.65%. We feel strongly that this budget captures the needs for our district as requested by our staff and the community. There are budget requests that are tied directly to the feedback we have heard from teachers, staff, and parents. And I'm going to emphasize how that feedback influenced our budget development. But it's important to stop and pause and to celebrate the successes we have had in a district.

012We've had a lot of successes. Uh for the last two years in a row, Great Oak Elementary School has been selected as a school of distinction by the Connecticut State Department of Education. That's impressive and that's something that we need to celebrate because our students have done wonderful work and our teachers at Great Oak and Great Farms have made a huge impact on that success for our students and there's a direct line behind between the investments the town made in staffing and the resources at those two schools and the impact that has had on student learning. That's an investment that paid off. Second, we have a team of teachers that participated in the science of the reading cohort last year at the state level that paved the way for major implementation this year in um

013our K5 reading program which we implemented at the major schools did a huge lift. Our teachers were well set to implement that this year because the investment they made in the professional learning last year and we have many teachers that were able to help foster the development of that this year and we had a lot of success with that and early on for the first half of the school year. And third, we're continuing to find grants to supplement the local tax base so that all of our initiatives are not solely dependent on the local tax base here in Oxford. And that's important. We've had success with the HVAC grant for goes. We've had a social worker grant at the middle school and high school. We've had a dual credit grant at the high school and

014the high dosage student grant at the middle school. All those grants you've had success with in the past 12 months alone. So that's a significant amount of resources that we brought in from just applying for those resources at the state and the federal level that we didn't have to do and that has had value add to the investments we have made here in the district. Our student success is dependent on a range of services that we provide in our district. It is the crit it is a critical approach that we take in the budget process to put our resources together and look at that as an interlocking set of puzzle pieces that when they systemically put together it creates the foundation of success for our students. We have budget requests that are part of that

015effort to make our systems approach as effective as can be. We strategically look at positions that have value add that help interlock that that piece together so that it has the most leverage to have the biggest impact on student learning. I'm now going to quickly address the new position that we are requesting to invest in the growth of our district. After I'm done, administrators will come up here and go into more detail and answer your specific questions about each of those. But I'm going to go through these rather quickly now. I'm going to start at the middle school. At the middle school, we simply do not have enough sections to accommodate students in unified arts. When we say unified arts, we're talking about music, visible education, wellness, art, STEM, library in those general classes. We

016just don't have enough sections. We have looked at the student data. We have heard from our teachers that we need to expand unified arts. And we have heard from parents last year about the importance of having full-time librarian at the school. So we we're asking for next year to have a new unified arts teacher and to increase the part-time librarian at the middle school to a full-time librarian. We feel strongly that our teachers need access to high quality job embedded professional learning and literacy. I spoke about the science and reading cohort before. We've invested considerable resources to immerse our teachers and our students in the highest quality literacy instruction as possible and we intend to do so through the addition of a K5 literacy coach that would be split between the two elementary schools. Not

017only does this provide professional learning to our teachers, but it also increases SRBI services to students literacy at the two elementary schools. Um doing so help us close that achievement gap that we spoke about earlier which is key. The current interventionists which are split between work with students and work with teachers would would allow them to be dedicating their time solely to working with students again and the new literacy coach would then work directly with teachers. So it allows us to maximize the individual work with teachers and allows us to maximize our efforts with interventions with students. We have seen an increase of students requiring interventions in special education services at elementary school level. We want to lower the class size in fifth grade to maximize tutoring ability to differentiate and their ability to address

018the needs of all the learners in their class. We are requesting a coordinator of student conduct and this is a new type of position to cover the middle school and high school. This person will address student discipline and attendance at the two schools by adding an individual to focus on this need which we have heard from parent and staff as a major concern for us to address. Our principles and assistant principles can spend more time with teachers. They can spend more time in classrooms and they can spend more time with instructional needs in their building. They can devote their time to being the instructional leaders that they need to be within their role to improve student learning. And this need to address student behavior, this need to help support teachers came directly out of our

019staff survey that we just did um in December. We want to increase the part-time library at the high school to full-time librarian. We need staff to staff that the level recommended during the asking which we're beginning process. And we heard last year loud and clear from parents the parent feedback groups that we had the importance of a full-time librarian appetite. And I strongly believe having supervised evaluated library programs for 20 years the importance of of a full-time librarian at the high school level. That librarian will support teachers through collaboration and encourage them support which will result in improved student learning. You'll hear from Mr. Hiburn in a few minutes on how the librarian is going to support student learning and how this librarian will also be tasked with supporting the development of the inter internship

020program which we're going to launch which is directly tied back to improve governing back to the district. You have heard mely mention staff and parent feedback several times already. This budget is highly responsive to the feedback that we have heard. Some of that feedback um that prompted the budget changes include the following. One, needing to restore the kindergarten par professional level back to three, which we did um this month and our budget for next year includes three for next year. It includes creating a full-time librarian at the girls high school. was feedback that came out loud and clear from parents and it supports what the administration is trying to do increase student access to unified specials and it supports what the teachers are asking for at the middle school to provide a greater access to

021students. It includes revising supply ordering process so the schools maintain their budgets and place their own orders. This is not a budget impact. You will see in the budget a transfer of the line items from the district level back to the school level. So it looked like you decreased in one area increased in the schools. Overall there's not necessarily increase districtwide. It is where it's placed in the budget. We're addressing student conduct and providing more teacher support through the addition of the coordinator of student conduct. And once again that feedback came directly from the staff survey. It came from feedback we're hearing from parents that we need to support the administrators and teachers from behaviors that we're seeing within the schools. We are recommending the evolution of the department chair model um at the high

022school to create a dedicated department chair for math, science, social studies, and language arts. Um teachers were very vocal um last year and very vocal this year again for the need for the four part four core content areas to have a subject matter expert meeting those individual requirements. And we're continuing to um study one more final three to provide some um team level um leadership at the unified level um for the other unified arts um department which is solidified together but um looking at another tweet for some content specialies within that and at this point I'm going to make a comparison um to the car industry and I I apologize if I if I don't have this example perfectly right but I'm going to make an attempt here. Okay. Um so every organization at times

023attempts to innovate. That innovation um is thought through hard work, brainstorming. The intent is to try and make the district better, make the organization better. We attempted to do that with the supply order and we attempted to do that with the department of term high school. So the comparison I'm going to make is to General Motors. Um and several years ago GM decided to spin out a new company called Saturn. Um that new company was designed to be innovative in how they um made the cars, the type of um materials that went into the design of the cars, the type of design of the car itself um and how they were marketing the cars and how they were selling the cars. It was supposed to be a whole new type of way of doing business

024in the car industry through a number of different factors which involved um competing resources um between Saturn and the larger company and GM. um product line challenges and other um key challenges that emerged through the process. Um GM finally decided to move away from that as a standalone company etc away. Well, it comes a time in every organization where if you decide to make a change, you need to know when to continue that evolution or to hit a pause button and either restore back to where you were or evolve to the next level. And that's where we are with the department chair model. It is where we are with the with supply ordering. doesn't mean that we did it wrong. It means that we made an effort and it we didn't get the outcome that

025we wanted to and we're recognizing that and we're going to make a change. Now, um part of what I stood in front of the faculty the last two years is this concept called failing forward which means we are going to make um innovative efforts in what we do at the classroom level and the district level. And if we fail, we fall down and we pick ourselves up. We say how do we do things better? And we make that evolution and we do better next time. These are two examples. We made an effort. We tried something new. It didn't work the way that we wanted to and we're we're making a change moving forward in this point. So hopefully I made a good comparison there and let me know afterwards if I did or not. We

026have several. Yeah. We have several major budget drivers that do impact the the budget that you see in front of you. The increase that we have. These do include the new um physicians that we spoke about and you'll hear more about the increase also is attributed to increase in health insurance and every organization um has increased insurance cost. We see it in the news all the time and that has a major um budget impact and how we do business um and what we're able to do. Um there is a new um teacher collective bargaining um agreement that we have that will shift our health insurance for next year and that's going to help lower the overall impact that we would have had which is a good thing but there still is an increase that we

027have with the overall health insurance. Um with that new teacher collective bargaining um contract it comes salary increases which we have from a contractual level are obligated to pay our staff. We also have within the new teacher contract a new leadership siphon that goes to a teacher to be an administrator in charge when administrator is out of the building. So that's baked into the budget increase that we use as an example. Some of the increases that we have. We also have increases in contractual services. Companies raise their rates every year. Utility companies raise their rates. So we've included those um in the budget that we have. And we are continuing to see repair costs. Um repairs go up for facilities. a fair cost though for technology and we have older facilities. So, we have a

028budget that is going up partially because we still need to maintain the facilities that we have. Again, I'm going to emphasize that the majority of our budget, which we are no different than any other school district, over 80% of our budget are people. We are a people business. We would not be here without those dedicated souls that work with our kids every day. That's who we pay for. That's what the funding base for. Um, as we take a look at um, a budget, every budget has inherent risks. When we talk about risks, some of these risks we assume could have substantial impacts on the budget and the management of that budget for next year. And we know those risks are there, but we build a budget knowing that those risks are potential. Some examples are

029we have a new student or we have a student with special education services that now needs new services than they had yesterday. Well, some of those services are quite costly knowing that now we need to absorb this because we're legally bound to do that. Medical insurance is another example. Those costs could go up. Right now, we've got anticipated costs from the health provider, but that's anticipated. We're not going to have an insurance rate locked in until sometime late spring at the earliest, but those rates could go higher than we're just anticipating. service contracts, vendors, we talk to them now what they anticipate their budgeting if there's going to be what their rates are going to be, but some of them not don't actually lock in what those rates are going to be until sometime September

030in some cases. We've got utility rates and fuel and stuff that's only locked into November, December. We don't know what's going to be the second half of the school year. So, as those rates sink, that has a potential impact on the budget. A very positive thing. The board of education last month approved an increase in the rate of pay for substitute teachers and even the next day we got a phone call from the person said I now want to start working in the district. We've seen an increase in substitute teachers that are wanting to work the district. That was the goal. It's possible that we have such an influx that we've now under budgeted the need for the the um the account line that we have for substitutes for next year. That's that would be

031a good problem to have. But that is a risk that's associated with the budget. And finally, you heard me talk about aging um facilities. The building we're in right now is aging. Bigger farms is aging. High school is aging. We're having repair costs crop up that are um quite costly. And it's possible that our budget's not going to account for all the repair costs that that occur during the year. And while we've got risks, I also like to talk about opportunities. and opportunities um emerge during a school year that are unplanned. When you plan a budget, you're planning for the best case scenario, what you expect the cost going to be. But sometimes you get stuff that happens to the positive during that that fiscal year. That might look like a service change up for

032the student in special education. Maybe we don't need to have as many services for that child. So that lowers your special education cost. It could be that a teacher retires, your teacher leaves the district, your parent professor retires, your parent professor leaves the district. You hire a new person, typically that person's at a lower salary scale. When that person leaves higher and the person comes in lower, there's a salary increase um differential. That's a net savings to the budget. That's unplanned, but that's a net benefit to our budget. That operating year, it's possible that we change vendors. Last September, October, we negotiated with the insurance company. We changed medical insurance. That change midy year saved the district last year close to $500,000. That was a fun plan savings um that we didn't have when we

033built the budget originally. So these opportunities lead to what we end up with as a budget surplus. But a budget surplus should not been considered a negative. A budget surplus means that we've had good financial management of the budget that operating year. We made fiscally responsible decisions that led to those opportunities to emerge that gave us a surplus at that moment. What that surplus allows us to do is to reinvest in services in products in budget initiatives that either we had to cancel out in the budget process from the previous year or things that occurred during the year that were that we didn't know about when we planned the budget originally. So we often hear surplus with a negative plantation. I view surplus as emerging through good fiscal management of the budget. We made good

034decisions during the operating year that led to surplus emerging and allows us to use those resources um in new um innovative ways to support the district. Um and before we move it off to the administrators, just a quick note on the next steps in the process. We are going to attempt to answer your questions tonight. It's possible that with Mr. We're alo not here tonight. We can't answer all the questions. We're going to collect the questions we can't answer. We're gonna collect the feedback and comments that we hear. The board of education finance committee will meet. Um go over those questions, go over that feedback. We'll do some fine tuning of the budget if there's there's a need to do that. We'll then come back to the board of education on February 13th where we'll

035then have a second conversation with the board of education with any of the tweaks that come up and any other further questions you might have. know that you'll have teammates to study the documents in front of you. Um at that point, we'll listen to feedback again. If there are major changes, if there are any changes at back, the finance committee meet will meet again, possibly multiple times. And then February 27th, we come back to the full board with the final budget proposal at which point any final changes are made and hopefully the board of education then approves the budget. It becomes the board of education adopted budget at which point then we send it off to the board of finance. Um and then they will invite us in in March, typically March, and we'll have

036the conversations with them and they'll spend two months deliberating our budget and at some point they'll probably bring us back um in April and have further conversations with them and then it goes to the town level. So that's the next steps in the process and this is just the very beginning. So at this point I'm going to start by bringing um Amy and Rachel the dynamic mix and then I'll mix budget um together. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you everyone for giving us an opportunity to share with you um where our budget came from and explain why we're advocating for these things. As you know, Rachel and I have been collaborating a lot this year as we have similar goals across Quaker and GO. We want to get our kids ready to head off to

037the middle and high school. Uh, and so in crafting our budget, we were thinking about we have really dedicated and caring staff. Some of them are here tonight. Some of them are also parents. Um, and they care deeply about our students as well as their growth and achievement. So, we built a budget that we believe will support them so they can reach their maximum potential. Therefore, letting our students reach their maximum potential and making really we're keeping Oxford a place where we can retain the best teachers and where people say that's where I want my kids to go to school. So, we're going to highlight three kind of big topics. One is uh adding a classroom position and keeping class size equitable. Um adding adding a literacy coach shared between the buildings to really promote

038embedded professional learning and making sure that we support our teachers instructional needs. Good evening. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Richard principal at the farm school and I can see everyone tonight. So, as Amy said, one of our biggest initiatives is the classroom staffing. So, specifically at Quaker Farms, I am not asking for any additional classroom teachers. However, there is some movement within Quaker Farm School that I'd like to share with you. So, again, no classroom teachers are being added to the budget. It's just some movement in the middle behind that movement. Currently, we have seven sections of kindergarten. So, this current school year, we had an influx of kindergarteners that we did not plan for. And as a board of education, you supported the additional hiring of a kindergarten teacher due

039to the increase in numbers that unfortunately were just not for seen. Um, last year we had six sections. The year prior again was a influx where we had seven. So, we currently have seven sections of kindergarten. So, we are looking to maintain that lower class size and move that seven kindergarten teachers on to first grade. So following that cohort of children because currently our first grade team is about six teachers. So now next year we're looking at seven. So just moving eight teacher to first grade to really support that low class size which has been a huge initiative throughout many years in Oxford. One of our main goals is to continue with that lower class size because we know the benefits of a low class size in elementary school. Currently our first grade class is

040consist of six first grade classrooms. They're moving on to second grade for next year. My second grade has seven sections of second grade. So that seventh section of second grade is no longer needed. So six sections of first grade will move to six sections of second grade, which means that the second grade position, the seventh teacher in second grade will then move on to goes in third grade. So not new position, just some movement within our schools. The teacher coming up from Quaker will keep our class sizes low in third grade. Um for the past few years since we dropped down to five fifth grade teachers, the class sizes have slowly grown again in fifth grade as these cohorts of kids are getting larger. So this year currently our fifth grade classes with only five

041teachers are 25 kids in a classroom. Um any other grade level K through eight, it's 20 or under for the most part. There are a few classes with 21. Um, and five kids may not seem like a big difference, but at the elementary school, it's not best practice to level kids. So, we don't have a low math class and a high math class. We have home rooms of kids, and we try to meet every child's needs. So, as a fifth grade teacher, you could potentially have students from a first grade level all the way up to a fifth, sixth, or even seventh grade level in your classroom. And so, you're doing a lot of differentiated instruction. You're meeting them where they are at. And oftentimes that's in small group or working with independent students, individual

042students. So five or six students is a big difference when you put it in the context of a six-hour day trying to find time to meet the needs of six more diverse learners compared to all of your colleagues in the other grade levels. And our fifth grade team takes it very seriously that our students are prepared to be responsible and independent and handle the coursework at the middle school. And that is becoming harder and harder to do as the class sizes are getting larger. So we are looking to add a fifth grade teacher so that we can maintain that consistent low class size throughout and not have this jump in fifth grade when really it's such an important year to make sure kids are getting caught up. We're closing that gap and sending them off

043to middle school to be successful. kind of picking back off of what Amy had just said as well, again the fact that research has shown that lower class size is beneficial for students not only academically but social and emotionally and we are seeing students coming in um new to district or that aren't new to district that are having significant social emotional needs and that low class size is so very detrimental to their learning and we want to make sure we're doing what's right for students as Dr. Miller had mentioned an investment. So not only would this position next year, if approved, be an investment in our children's future next school year, it's an investment in our children's future moving forward. So there's always going to be the bubble classes. So as I mentioned, I'm not

044asking for new stuff. I'm asking for a movement. Well, that movement eventually is going to trickle down to Ghost and that's an investment over time. So that bubble, those bubble classes will be smaller classes in fifth grade if that position is to be approved. So this is an investment not only for next school year but for all future years to come. Again there is a bubble we have I have two bubbles right now that are going to go look forward to goes and we need to make sure that we're preparing these students across all grade levels for low class size. And if you look at the information that's presented to you in our budget you will notice that K8 there's that one big class and that's where we're at both. So that fifth grade position

045again it should be consistent grades K to eight where all grades to all students are given the opportunity for a lower class size and that there's just not one anomaly in that class size but very evident. So again really stress the fact that we would love your support in approving that great position not only for next year but it's a huge investment for all the bubble classes that are coming. Our second um major focus in the budget is for a shared literacy coach which would provide embedded professional learning for our staff. Um I was trying to think how to kind of best explain this. Um I come from a reading background. I was a literacy coach for a while and I can honestly tell you that I didn't learn what I now know about reading

046when I went to teacher prep school in college. It just wasn't taught. You may have one or two classes on reading. It's definitely not enough. Uh they say that reading is rocket science. Teaching reading is rocket science and it's true. Um there's old brain research that's now coming back. There's new brain research, but there really are tried and true ways, tried and tested ways to teach reading. And unfortunately, the majority of our staff have not been trained in those ways. So we did make a big investment in our new reading program, the HMH series. And it's a good program, but it's just that it's a program. We have very dedicated and talented teachers as I've said and I'll continue to say but again many of them didn't come out of college with the knowledge they

047need. So a program is only as good as its user. So I was again trying to think about how to explain the need for this. So I was in um one of the monthly HVAC meetings for this building and the engineer rolls out the big drawings of all the systems and I think it's it's CAD or whatever those programs are. So everything that the engineer needs to build that system is in that program. But I couldn't use that program because I don't know what needs to go into it to make drawings that are actually going to be able to be acted upon and work once they're put in because I don't have that background knowledge. So any reading program is only as good as its user just like that CAD software is only as good

048as the person who's designing whatever system it is they're designing. So, our teachers now have all the tools, and I would be honest, they're doing an excellent job learning how to use them. But what we're really hoping for is to share a person who has that really strong background in the science of reading, who can be pushing into classrooms, who can be planning with teachers, who can be working with our interventionists. We do have um reading interventionists in the building now, but we need them working with kids. We need them there to close that achievement gap, but then that means they have much less time to work with the teachers. So, we need somebody there for the teachers to really make sure that we are leveraging the resources we now have as best as we

049can. And that's what's going to help us close the achievement gap, really see growth. Um, not that our scores are bad now, but they could they could be better. They can always be better. And our true goal would be to have every student leaving elementary school reading where they need to be and prepared to take on, you know, what their real passions are. So we are asking for some support in that area with the literacy coach. So with the adoption and the purchase of our current H&M program, it did come with professional development. And one example that Amy and I had wanted to share was that with that purchase, we had a literacy coach from HMH and she was their HMH expert. So what we're looking for in that literacy coach is an expert in

050reading. So luckily recently we had the H&M coach who was an expert in H&M come and do professional development. She spent one day at Quaker and she spent one day at go and she actually had time to meet with all of the classroom teachers. So each grade level had about a two-hour time frame with the coach and the coach went into the classroom and all of say grade one teachers went into the classroom and watched her model an HMH lesson along with my reading specialist and along with myself. And I have to say that 20 to 30 minutes was the most valuable time I think I spent in a very long time to watch this H&MH coach who's an expert in her field, an expert in reading, an expert in H&MH model a lesson for

051teachers while she was doing the lesson when she had previously met with the classroom teacher. So she had known where they are, what she need to know about the class, where they are in the lesson, specifically what does the grade level want to see. A lot of collaboration went on ahead of time prior to that. And as we were watching the lesson, the classroom teachers were taking notes with the reflection sheet, things that they were wondering about, things that they noticed, aha moments or questions that that they may have had. And then we came back for about a 45m minute debrief and we talked and that the conversations were so authentic and rich and teachers were excited and yes, there were some things like, oh, I didn't know that or I didn't know you could

052do that. And again, it's a new program so that there was so much learning that went on in those two hours. So again, just wanted to give you an idea of what a coach does and how appreciative teachers were. We're just learning new things by learning things and as educators, we always want to improve our practice and we want to look for the experts and we want to become experts in our field and I think there's always room for growth. So that's just an example of what a coach would do for our classroom teachers and then those teachers like, "Oh, I can do that in the classroom. Oh, I didn't know I have to read the entire story, which takes up a lot of time. I didn't realize maybe I could just read five pages

053and get the objective done in the five pages and then maybe I have some free time. finish the story. Just a lot of rich conversations came from that. So, I think it's important to understand the context of what a coach would do. And that's just one piece to a a greater puzzle of the things that he or she would do get approved. But it was very beneficial. We got such positive feedback from the staff and lots of great learning came out. Okay, our last one will be relatively quick. Um finally with the new implementation of science of reading um that comes along with needing some new resources. The reading program gives us a lot but when we look at trying to catch some students up there are some other things that teachers really need. So,

054we are just looking to be able to fully fund our teachers instructional supply requests. And that does include things like decodable texts to help more emerging readers. Um, and just along with your everyday classroom supplies that allow them to have one less thing to worry about. So, it's not where do I have to go and struggle to find this material to reach this child's need. It's they're already in the building, we have them, and it just takes one more piece off of their plate so that they can focus on planning and teaching. And saying that, we do understand that at times some of those instructional supply line items, they are going to have to be cut and we certainly make with what we have. But I just think it's very important to to note that

055we want to set teachers up for success because if we set teachers up for success, our students are going to be successful. And those supplies and those account numbers that you see, the requests that come through, those are are very they're very meaningful numbers. They mean something to our our staff. our staff don't just put numbers together just to put numbers together and things that maybe as an outsider you might say well why do you need a hundred little circle those circles have a meaning and a and a purpose behind them when you have kindergarters who are coming in for the very first time you might need to put those little circles on the carpet and number them so yes that's a to why do you need why does Mrs. the case in 150 little

056circles. Those circles are still there today. And when we call children to a carpet, we want them to sit where they need to sit and not on top of one another. So, there is meaning and intent behind all of these supplies and instructional equipment that we ask for. And teachers want to do the very best and we want to make sure that as a district, we're giving the teachers what they ask in order for their students to be successful. Well, that's that's the majority of our presentation. we just decided we would leave you with um little bit of a quote kind of sum up what we're doing. We each have one to share. Um you often hear about you know well we're going to invest in this or we're going to try this strategy and

057you may have heard Dr. Miller or other people talk about John Hattie who does all this um these metaanalysis but basically what has come out is on above anything else I'll just read you the quote the research on teachers collective efficacy is consistent with an effect size of 1.34 effective teacher teams have the power to accelerate student learning more than just about any other practice. And that's what we're trying to do with this budget is really give our teachers what they need and the professional learning they need so that they can feel like they have everything they need to help kids succeed and be effective teams and as you know a lot of time thought and effort goes into into this budget process. So I think Dr. Miller, I think all of your support as

058always. I thank all of the stakeholders, all of the teachers that have really put a lot of time in into putting together what we feel is an appropriate budget with obviously the best interests of students always at heart. Just to leave you with this, um please remember that the budget is not just a collection of numbers, but it's an expression of our values and our aspirations. And the budgets that we have put together, we feel presenters. Thank you. We're happy to answer any questions that you may have or if you think of them after the fact in question. Thanks. Great question. Um, for your literacy coach, what kind of certification or and experience are you thinking would be a reference? I believe that um, Mr. Williams is going to touch on that more. Okay. But

059we definitely have criteria in mind to make sure that it's somebody that can meet the teacher's needs. Okay. Anybody else have any questions on the board? Thank you very much. So, um, the teacher supply requests, I mean, I know better than most that, you know, my wife is a teacher. How much are you actually looking for over what you get? Because I know teachers get a stipen to buy supplies for their child. How much is not being funded? Do you have do you have some number that teachers typically spend out of their own pocket that they are looking for? I don't have a specific number, but I can say that anything that teachers have asked this year has always had been fully supported. Dr. Miller has been wonderful. I haven't had one thing said, "Oh,

060no, sorry, Mrs. Forget that because I do believe that they need they need to get what they need." So, Dr. Mill has always been number saying 100%. There has never hasn't been anything that's been denied and we don't give them a set amount like here's what you get because of the zerobased budgeting. So we typically put together a supply order that we know will stock the supply closet for the year and then we'll say to teachers what other instructional needs do you have within reason and that's how we build that instructional supply budget. But I can tell you as I'm sure you know teachers still will go out of their pockets. So, you know, they know that not to put too much fluff on there and they do some of that fluff on their own.

061So, anything that they do need that we can provide them is we try to be reasonable about that and include it in the the budget. Any other board members have any questions? Yeah, if the system was working so great, why are we changing? Well, the the purchase again is going to go back to school district and not to a centralized thing that we did a couple years ago. I'll address that. Um, we attempted to make a centralized purchasing system to power in numbers um and have one purchasing agent do all the work. And in change in designing that model, we envision having a warehouse type of a system where we have multiple rooms where the inventory would be. We envisioned having the C students helping with the inventory um and having the van help transport

062the items around. That changed when we moved here. We lost inventory space. We lost access to CP on a daily basis to do that work. So part of the how we were going to use the model changed when we moved here in central office. So um we still envision using best practices on using some good business management on ordering paper and supplies like that. And Mr. Waro has ideas on how to make a decentralized system still work in the most efficient way possible. But a lot of it was based on our our move and the fact that we just weren't able to get the structures in place that we needed to make it built properly. I'm just going back in. So the control systems that weren't in place before we made that change. So obviously

063you must have a plan in place to have controls in because two years ago it was a terrible nightmare and we were spending tons of money on six and seven staplers and all kinds of stuff. I mean that was what I was told. I mean I don't know not school you know. I just uh hope that and I don't have a problem with this, but I just hope there's a uh a system in place that you can control this now because you couldn't you couldn't do it a couple years ago because everybody was ordering on Amazon and all this stuff and we had triplicate duplicates and all this other I mean that's what I was told. I never saw it but that's what I was told. There is greater accountability um and I think Mr.

064have where has processes in place to make it more structured to help avoid the types of issues that we had in okay so I think as a board member I'd like they to see you know what that is because you know the words are nice you know what are you going to we have addition a lot of additional people that are going there always supervisors where they want to call and stuff like that conduct but you know something like this it's been part of the plan it's written you just gave it some is that there should be an outline of who's going to be in charge so that next year when we come in and you're over budget on supplies because you know Amazon made $3 million off of us you know I'm just going

065back to what you said a few years ago so I'd like to see what the plans are to control the things you should get what you want when you need it and I understand the the little pieces that you need I just want to see the the answer to the questions that you presented that's Anybody else on the board? I have a question. You're bringing in coaches for teachers to help them perform better at reading, math, and yet teachers go to work on a master's, work on a sixth year. Does any of that that they're taking for masters or six year relate back to what your this coach is doing or what's the rest doing? What type of courses do they take for for a masters? Is it all education related? Is it Yeah, it's

066education related, but they can specialize in special education. They could specialize in reading. They could specialize in curriculum design. Um instructional technology. There's so many different options. And you know, really it's up to the kind of the individual teacher. But does that, you know, is do they get that training plus the training you're getting? Is this doubling this up or is I I don't I don't I just don't see I don't know. You got to tell me what what how that works. You know, I hope I think it's definitely separate just because a teacher that might be going back for her sixth year or his sixth year, they might be specializing in in 092, which is a for you like a principal type. So that's very different than reading. So again, masters might they might

067get their masters at Amy said maybe in speech and language pathology which is very different than reading art or math. So it really depends on the preference of the individual but I can see how they want to you know extend their their learning but it could just be a different area. So it's not necessarily being math specific education related but not it's a personal choice of what direction they want to go with that degree. One of the challenging things for teachers when it comes to getting professional development historically is you get professional development two or three times a year, but that's when kids aren't in your classroom. Those are our professional learning days. Um, and that one and done kind of learning doesn't necessarily translate. You know, you get a couple hours of theory and

068here's some things you can try, but how does that translate into the 20, you know, kids sitting in front of you? And that's where the job embedded coaching comes in. Um, and I believe Mr. Williams is going to speak a little bit more on it, but I know it's kind of unique to education, although some other fields have it as well, but teachers unfortunately don't have a lot of time in their day to do extra studies or reading or even to visit another classroom and see what a colleague is doing. It's just not the way their schedules work. So, and providing the job embedded coaching is one way to make sure that that growth continues, any new learning is continued so that our kids are constantly getting what's best instead of waiting for next year's

069three PD days. and then hoping it translates to the class. Yeah. Because on this the level six of the grid, the teacher sle grid uh if I understand it correctly is it takes 30 credit hours to go in. So it's not a master's degree per se, right? But it's up to the school to decide if that 30 hours of credit is applicable to what that person's teaching. You mean within the teachers contract? Within the contract stuff. So I mean we have a built-in control that they can try to control that and and incentive because the percentage increase going into the sixth level is gigantic by most you know standards. So uh I would assume that it's been hard to get the data is that you know almost anybody they hear this 10 years has probably

070got the masters. I would think I would think most of the teachers I don't know that but I would think most teachers have the masters you know so that you would be naturally going for 30 credits you know especially with the online schooling and stuff that you would do that because it's worth a lot but are we falling down and not having our teachers get information and learning the stuff that they should be doing like the science of reading is old stuff you know that we're bringing back, you know. So, if I went to college 10 years ago, I would have learned science of breathing, you know. So, I it's as a novice on the outside looking in, it's like how do we get this all together, you know? So, uh the sixth level is

071under your control. I think is one of the things as a principal says that you get that sixth level, you got to be something that benefits you and at school. I I think that the the point that Amy and Rachel made before is that when teachers go back for their masters or six year or even their doctorate, they select on a personal level what type of specialty that they want to go for. So we don't direct them where they're going to go. We don't have that right to do so. They have the personal choice of what they want to study. And I also mind a lot of teachers that work here come in having taught on other districts already and have either have their masters over the six years before they walk in the door

072here. Yeah. But shouldn't it be a criteria? I don't want to get on, but shouldn't it be a criteria of, you know, we'd have dramatic deficits and we're saying that our teachers are surprised at some of the things that these tutors are telling them is that as a as supervisor of that, I would say if you're going to get your 30 credits, let's get it in something that is a benefit to us because we're going to pay you for it. Can we get in and I'm just saying I'm looking for the administration part of it. I'm done. I just wanted on the budget so we can move forward and let's bring up Miss Unfortunately Missy at the middle school is going to speak. Right. Hi everyone. Sorry I know that Dr. Miller shared that this

073is a lot of us today. So I shall do my best to fill her shoes. So our largest request requests at MS are for a full-time library media specialist. We currently have five library media specialists. We're looking to expand that to full-time. And then also we want to um add another new a teacher to our staff. They'll be a full-time unified arts teacher to support our students when they're not in their four academic classes. This year, uh, with the support of the board, we implemented our new schedule, which has been awesome. Our students, um, all have the opportunity to have support classes in the form of win, which is whatever I need, and have access to um, all of the unified arts, which is not something that's um, happened in the past. With that, we

074need more unified arts as well. So, we want to create opportunities for them. Um most of our students are now in gym which is something or PE which is something that hasn't um happened before as well as health and so we want to really create a robust program for students uh during their unified arts. So, one of the great things that's happened at MS is our van numbers have really increased um since the start since my arrival in 2122. Uh they've a little less than tripled um in numbers which is really awesome. And so we want to be able to utilize our van teacher and chorus teacher to reach those kids throughout different times in the day. And so that would be something we would look at um doing with the new unified arts position.

075This unified arts position would also allow us to cater to the diverse learning needs of our students. Um, as we all know, different students excel in different things. Some do great in our STEM class. Some really love expressing theirel through art. So, we want to make sure that we're doing our best to meet their specific needs and tailor to their learning experience. Um, are let's see watch up my time too. Um, and then also primarily our increased engagement and motivation. So when students are engaged in what they're doing, we see greater academic successes in and out of the classroom um and better academic performance um as well. When those students are engaged and they have the opportunity opportunity, excuse me, to explore the topics they're passionate about, uh they demonstrate higher levels of academic achievement

076and overall success, which is ultimately what we want to see when they leave our doors and head off to the high school. This position will also promote critical thinking skills which again is part of our attributes of a graduate that we want to support throughout our students time prek through 12. Um I could keep going. Um as well as creativity and innovation and community engagement which is something we're really working on at the middle school. During our win periods uh we have different focuses every week or excuse me every day. So Mondays they focus on executive functioning skills. If you have a middle school student or you know a middle school student, you know, that's an area where they they can certainly grow as they're in this developmental time in their life. We want to

077make sure that we're supporting that. Tuesdays and Thursdays are academically focused and win. Wednesdays, we focus on kindness lessons. And then Fridays we focus on community lessons and projects that the teams develop for their students to participate in um various times throughout the week. Whether it's um making like gift care packages for a homeless shelter or I just got notification from our eighth graders are getting ready to visit Quaker Farms and they're going to put books together for the students to read and share with them when they go. Projects like that. So really to enhance that community um across our schools and the town overall. And then the impact of adding these oops skipped a page. Sorry I am um of in here we go. All right. So our current part-time library media specialist um

078really focuses on a variety of things with our students. you've been to the middle school. We have a beautiful new library um downstairs and we want to provide more access to that for our students. So, right now um we have six sections of about 20 to 25 students each section. The goal of making this full-time would be to have 12 sections. So, we double the number of students who will have access to that class. That class will and does focus on uh curriculum integration. So they're able to collaborate with teachers across the building, right? We do research projects um in social studies. They can help to teach students what research practices are or citing evidence, which is a big thing in ELA. They can um enhance that. So that crosscurricular instruction uh is something that

079they can focus on. Also, technology integration. Uh in middle school, we're learning how to use the technology that's available to us. We all know so much is at our fingertips and easily accessible. Middle school is a big time where they learn right from wrong um and how to engage with technology appropriately. Utilizing dig digital citizenship curriculum during this time is really pivotal pivotal to help students grow and make sure that they engage appropriately so they don't end up facing consequences of their choices. Right? It's a big time for them to learn how to engage appropriately. We can also again speak to some diverse programming, more community engagement and also leadership and advocacy. The pro the projects they can do in library media will allow them to create projects throughout the building. So for instance that

080eighth grade book I mentioned, maybe they work on it in library media with um the teacher and they bring it to win and then they're gone gone to um Miss Safe down at at Quaker Farm. are really embedding that community portion into the position. So we are really looking to make sure that we are investing I know Dr. Miller brought that up earlier but we want to invest in our school our students and our overall community by providing these two positions to our students. That's it. Any questions? So unified arts covers a lot of different subjects. If you were granted this extra teacher, do you have an idea of would you want it to be an art teacher, a gym teacher or new music teacher? What would you want it to be? So, we'd probably

081focus it in the music sector, whether that's music technology, um something along those lines. I actually just had a student in my office the other day and we were talking and he's said he makes music outside school, right? And so, we need to look at the high interest of our students in order to promote that engagement, the level of engagement that we're looking for. But we would probably we're thinking uh in that capacity because this year we added music. We have three sections of music as well. So that would expand that program. And so looking at that what worked, what didn't work worked work and then how can we grow that. So I think that's where we're we're looking at initially. But we're open you know to being flexible for sure. But I think that's

082an area where, you know, we have students in band and chorus, a lot of them, which is great, but we also have a cohort of students who don't have access to that art specifically. And so, if we can engage them in some way because there's so many different facets um of music and technology and all that's embedded. Thank you. I'm the uh coordinator of student conduct. Um I wasn't sure what your what's your vision for the impact it would have on the middle school. Sure. So I don't know if Dr. Miller you want or do you want me to speak to that? I actually want to perspective. Yeah. Listen, I think Dr. Miller spoke earlier today about how that would alleviate uh the time that we spend working with students um in order to focus

083more on the classroom. The large majority of my time is spent dealing with students who, you know, don't make the best choices throughout the day. And so I use my practices to help them make better choices. So I don't know what that looks like from a time standpoint, right? Because it's 6:00 to 12. So if they're with us, you know, Monday, Wednesday, high school Tuesday, Thursday, Friday's swing day, you know, whatever that looks like, how can we utilize them to intervene before things happen? um as well. Is that it? It it is because I was imagining how can they be in two places at once because you're not next door, right? You have issues in both buildings and how Yeah, I think that that would need some collaboration between the high school and the middle

084school and of course central office. Um I think we typically work pretty well together. So, um and also with the person is how they would see um that role because it's pretty cool that it's a new position. So, there's some there can be some ownership into what that would look like. and also get from the teachers perspective of how they think that could benefit them. Thank you. Yeah. My question is that part of the detail of that was STEM. Okay. And you know few years ago STEM stem STEM you know and we had an Apple STEM thing is today you never hardly ever hear of STEM or anything that we're doing in STEM. So I think the music I'm so happy and proud when I think I hear I see that. Yeah. I don't see

085that much of but I see the art the display of the art and stuff like that. It's like phenomenal. Okay. Because it's all classes, all levels of everything. Everybody when we go that everybody's proud sports has been outstanding as far as building because we had meetings about team spirit and everything about the school and that has generated itself but the kids are going to go out the world and and nobody's going to be beat. Well, you never know. Yeah, I know. But it's like one millionth of a percent. The thing is that somebody's going to have to go out and go to work. Sure. Extend is the place that they learn and I never I don't see that anything going. You know, we got 3D printers, we got milling machine, we got all kinds of

086stuff up there that next level up. And yeah, right. But where where's the steps? Where's where's the the uh Yeah. So, we have a STEM program um at the middle school. We do project project leading the way classes. So, um sixth grade is engineering in the environment, seventh grade is modeling, and eighth grade is app graater. And so those feed into the high school. I actually just had a student come back for one of our concerts and he was really excited to show me about how he got accepted into one of the higher level project lead classes. So we do, you know, feed that program for lack of a better word. U Mrs. Allette's working with Miss Bucket who's our teacher up there about with 3D printing as well to integrate that into her classes.

087So we do have a STEM component. And then if we go back to the music, you know, if we consider doing a music technology, right, that speaks to your STEM. So it doesn't have to be an isolated STEM class. We can take those components and put them also great. You might I hear steam more than I hear STEM now, right? Because now they're integrating the arts into into STEM. So is there a graphic design component that we want to look at which hits creativity from the art perspective and engineering as well. So there's lots of different ways to to address that. Keep that high in the list. Noted. Thank you. Any other board members have a question? I don't know if this goes lower to Dr. Villa, but getting back to the student conduct for

088teachers. I know how hard teacher report I mean managing a classroom is difficult. Yes, sir. And all the issues that kids bring in today that weren't there in years prior. The student conduct coordinator themselves though, is this a therapist? Is it a psychologist? Like what exactly does that mean? that's coordinator student. So, we're envisioning either a administrator, somebody that has their 092, um like an assistant principal, somebody that is hired to work with the sole purpose of work with students that are having difficulty from a behavior standpoint and standpoint. Um some districts would view it as a teacher um with an 092, so they're in the teacher contract um and get additional site to do that work. We haven't fully decided where which association would be in um yet, but it could land in either

089because either model is what's happening by school districts. But typically, it's something that has their admin degree that's able to um conduct this, conduct bullying investigations, harassment investigations, and those types of things and be able to have conversations with parents and um work with the rest of team. So essentially, the the duties and responsibilities are to be defined. You're just asking for the opportunity to have somebody that oversees this. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Before I was here, I was a dean of students. Um, and so you're kind of you're dealing with everything that comes your way to support students, right? And so I think as administrators, we can all say in some ways we're social workers, sometimes we're counselor and so that being students are disciplined would be the same. I have on the conduct you

090know position reading the survey I I probably have a completely different impression of what I think but the conduct is that seems like the teachers say they don't have any control of the class you know and well it's in the survey you look and I'm just repeating if that is true it's there okay that's where the conduct that starts you know if uh you know a math when I went to school the teacher was dressed you know and yeah if it was a math teacher you look like a math teacher I know it's a different world today but that's all part of you know the conduct I know every but we treat this as a monastery school you know in kindergarten I remember going to the light or what thing was called and Mary and

091thing in the kindergarten they're all going to pick their own chair and stuff like that that's when they start to learn the discipline so we break down the discipline problem. We started in kindergarten now because we have this thing that everybody's creative and they're going to sit on a jelly bean chair and become a genius. It's got to start there. This this extra step of shifting the problem to another person is not addressing it where it starts. You know, you're afraid to touch the third rail. Well, I hear what you're saying, but I think also we have to consider the change that's happened with the students in front of us and how we need to best respond to that, right? because the students of today are not the students of yesterday and the students of

092tomorrow are not the students of today. And I think naturally as teachers, we are very flexible in what we do. And so when we say teachers can't manage their classroom, I don't necessarily agree. I didn't interpret it that way, right? I think that there's a difference group of students in front of us that we have to address differently than we have historically. And I think the dean of I keep saying um students because that's just what I'm used to will help us address address that. And so, you know, my restorative brain kicks in, right? And so, a lot of the restorative work is 80% before something happens, 20% happens after. So, how can that person in insert themselves to that 80% so that we mitigate what happens later? I'm just going to ask that we

093try and concentrate on the budget right now because we have a lot to get through and we can talk about all the other things we need to talk about later on, but we have we're only at the we haven't even done the height yet. I agree. But we got a good opportunity. We got a good audience here of teachers, town, and other people here. So, it's a good time to to some of this stuff and then get it out there. But we're here. I want to work on the budget. So, thank you. Okay. As I said, Mr. Waro is not here tonight. And the next call center is the districtwide cost center. What? The districtwide call center. I'm going order actually in the budget book. Okay, Anthony coming up. Sorry. No one just texted me.

094He said I only have 8:45. Uh just two main uh additions to our staffing that I'll talk about for the high school. The first uh recommendation is a change to our department chair model that Dr. Miller talked about earlier. Currently I have three department chairs over academics. I have a department chair for STEM which is math, science and uh applied technology. I have a humanities chair who is in charge of English, social studies and world languages. And I have an integrated arts wellness and special education chair as well. So that's the academics and I have one chair in charge of our school counseling department. So a total of four and these are stipended positions. These are people who are already employees at the school and take on these duties. The request for this year is

095to go from those four to six. Uh an English chair specific for English, a math chair specifically for that subject, science, social studies. We would have uh Linda who's our special ed supervisor be in charge of our special ed department up there which she has an office in the building now currently a lot of work with them. Uh and then we have a chair for everyone else which would be the world languages, applied tech, fine arts and PE which the middle school where tough I worked for years we used to call unified arts programs or the specialist classes. That is a step in the direction that the staff told me that would help them academically, culturally if you will uh increase some morale being able to talk to somebody who's specifically knows their subject. I

096was a department chair 24 years ago um long time ago but the same idea from back then you know you know your subject matter you know your department and you can work with them not a perfect system but it's one that we thought would be a step in the right direction uh that maybe going back to our old model where everyone had a department chair wouldn't necessarily work but we're trying to meet the needs of the staff who expressed a need for this and also be fiscally responsible Uh, one thing that this connects to is our long-term goal for the school, which is next year we're looking at some systemic approaches to assessments, grading practices and instruction, making sure the grade books are properly set up. Sometimes we have issues with that. Making sure they're

097properly uh used so the information is updated and the department chairs can do some of those things. You have any questions on the department chair of course? Go ahead. Could you just repeat the the six department chair for me please? Sure. The four cores are going to be English, math, science, and social stud. Thank you. In addition to that, we're going to have um the counseling school counseling and what I was calling the unified arts which is rest. It also includes uh special ed, but that won't be a teacher that would be ended up special. Thank you. Um and that is on page 14 of the big budget as well. Thank you very much. Go through the department chairs. We've had department chairs five, three, and six. Okay. And the thing is that I' I'd

098like to see I looked up there all kinds of different job descriptions of what this person does, okay? and who they report to. And and the thing is that I've never ever I think once we had a department chair, okay, all the times I requested that the department chair come in and say what they were doing. And when we had the meeting to go down from 5 to three, part of the thing was these department chairs were going to go all the way through the school and keep education coordinated from kindergarten right up to high school because we had the look back method, whatever you want to call it, you know, and get it coordinated. So now we're going to six. Okay. And it's the high school. And then I read the teachers agreement. The

099board has been taken out as part of the approval process of that. I think it's page 23. There's a strike out of the board. It's only the superintendent that's going to have a say over the uh over the directors. Okay. So one, I don't like my power being taken away. Maybe I read it wrong. I read those three paragraphs over and over again. So maybe I read it wrong, but the thing is that the board, that's a key ingredient for the board to know what's going on in the school. Okay. And it's never worked. I met with one and when I got all done, they went dropped the mic. Yeah. Thank you for coming in. Yeah. So my impression of what they do and how they do it is not high. So, this new program

100going six and going from $4,000 to $6,300 siphons concerns me. Okay. Sure. I didn't I wasn't on the negotiation for you know what their salaries are or who hires them, but I so I can't necessarily speak to any of those things other than to say that um it's as we try to move the school forward. It's something that the staff came to me and said this would be something that we would appreciate. Talked to Dr. Miller uh and and he agreed that we put obviously I don't understand the budget process you'll talk about. what's the board approved budget and things may change. This is just us trying to reflect what the the will of the needs of what SAP are and how they they reflect you know how they told the people. I'd like to

101propose that the director still under the director curriculum. They the department chairs report to the director for construction that's writing their job. They should report to the director. Okay. Because I looked on the on our finance saying we don't have a director report. You have a coordinator of curriculum. That's what I meant. The director of report to curriculum. The direct the department chairs report to be the director of curriculum. Correct. I think for in our in our model the we are looking at them not as evaluators of staff with more curriculum based like I was mentioning. You know we want them to be checking out is the curriculum being implemented but fidelity. If the teacher has a problem, can they help them with that or connect to the But he's also directing you. He's the

102overseer of building the curriculum thing that we've been missing. So, Oh, absolutely. And I think that connection is intention. I mean, and then they they talk to me, too. But, you know, you know, it's different. Yeah. Well, I I sometimes know parents will ask me about the curriculum. I have to say, well, let's talk to the department chair or this because I don't have the answers. And I'm just I was concerned because page 23 or 24 has to strike out as being part of the process. So I promise you I wasn't there anymore. No, I have a great audience here. So where that's part of the bargaining quick question. Will the department chairs be responsible for teacher evaluation and will they do teacher observation? And no, the reason why we changed that a couple years

103ago is because department chairs are within the teacher um education association and there's a conflict of interest for members to be evaluating other members of their association. Right. So I added all the certified teachers. Yes. Any other board members? Yeah. Great question. And um if it isn't lashed out yet or it falls to somebody else, just let me know. Um so department chairs um do we have like a sort of a job description of it and also um I know in the past there was a significant uh reduction in um class teaching um that see that felt disproportionate to the responsibilities. So the to answer your question is a two-part answer. No. uh we have one but we're going to have to revise that job description because of the way the job description currently is

104related to these three larger areas. Uh two uh regarding the the reduction in the course load uh one of the um things that we would discuss with the OEA would be not reducing the teaching load because they're not adopted that they could teach uh the regular course load if they're stifling they would be worked with Eric or myself and that that conversation's already started ready to be done with the association. I don't hear what you said correct. That conversation has already begun with the association. Okay. But I think that has that would have to be worked out. Um so they would have one extra prep or no extra prep. It would have same teaching uh load as as a non-EP department chair teacher which is five full classes over the two day block. Okay. Thank

105you. Any other board members question? I got caught up in a lot of distraction discussion. So just to summarize, we're going from three. We have four currently. Three, six. We have the three ident trying to go wide. Yeah. And try to collect things together. Now we're going Now we're going to go a little bit back the other way because we find there's probably more that's more effective approach, but not all the way. Not all the way back. We're still our subjects. Right. Right. Or aside from the contract. Right. That's out. That's negotiate. That's not our discussion tonight. Right. Right. Um I don't even know if we're ever involved in decision-m there honestly. Um and then correct and then once we have the new job descriptions they'll be solely reporting to director curriculum guideline to you

106to help teachers but it's focused on getting our because our whole point focus on curriculum right that's our one of our biggest priorities and has been right. So that's going to fuel that a little bit more sure with a partnership of air. Yes. Think of that department chair having two primary goals. One, working with curriculum development revisions with director of instruction. That's the curriculum um implementation. And then two is the direct support in that subject area to the teachers in that department. So teachers having subject area questions about science or math having expert in that they right there. subject matter expert directing helping circulate. All right, that makes sense to me. Yeah, thank you. Any other any other board members? The only other uh teaching position we're recommending is the full med uh library media

107specialist uh because again we do want to move our school to a more rigorous academic culture. Information literacy is incredibly important. That's something that certainly all teachers know but that's specialty of the library sessions. uh the other portion of the work and it's I think that school needs to have a functional library and academically I would say that is a huge help to us to quality portion would also include our capstone uh what we want to do with that provide an alternative to students who uh are perhaps not interested in doing the academic research presentation of the capstone system, but allow them to do an internship and do a presentation related to that. So that they know they're not they may not be interested in a four-year degree. They may be interested in trade or

108getting into business or whatnot. Giving them an opportunity to connect with a town business, learn if they like it or not, and they want that to continue. They may find that they love it and they want to do that and they say, "This isn't for me." Having that experience with adults in the community is important. We don't have anybody who currently can organize that and also vet the places we're sending kids to. We want to make sure there's, you know, appropriate places for kids to go say. So, it's a dual part. Keep the library open, let kids use it, work with teachers on information strate literacy strategies and allow for an alternative way to the capstone department through an internship. I think the cap that idea expanding capstone beyond you know traditional case studies and

109all that stuff I think I think that's huge not everybody said not even coming to college but everyone's brain operates a little differently and there's a passion we can unleash from that internship I think that's huge Anthony if we get the coordinator of student conduct for grades 6 through 12 do you have a vision on how you would like to utilize that position for the high school I think it's similar to what Ellen said is that that position can be used for let's say the you think about the whole spectrum of things that a student might do well the the areas that might not need myself I usually handle uh issues that are going to result in out of school suspension possible expulsion student arrest and the assistant principal handles almost all the others well

110we can take some of the misdemeanors and allow the deed students to to do that. Um, attendance. I think we're we have a huge problem getting kids into the building on on a a regular basis in a timely manner. I don't have much that I can hold over kids heads anymore. We used to be able to send the kids to court under a quiz or family with service needs. Uh, DCF will not take truency or as a educational neglect anymore. We have very little to offer stick. are working on carrots and things and that would include you know meetings with families, meetings with the family, the child and their social workers some of the things that that you have students or the coordinator. Thank you. Um back to the internships which I fully commit to.

111I think that's a great idea and having a librarian but in 2019 they did have this option. They could the capstone was traditional internship or they could take a college course. Yeah. So who was organizing it back then? So I know my daughter did an internship and she took it upon herself to find it and just ran it with her herself. So I'm just curious why now we need someone to organize it. Well, I don't know how it was run because I was the middle school at that time. But I will say one and Rob talked and I talked about, you know, do we need somebody to do this? And my biggest concern to be honest with you is the vetting of the industries we're sending these kids to. And I'm certainly can work with

112the person on this, but I I I don't want to get into a place where we send a kid off to an industry. Not not because it's unsafe, of what they're doing, they get abused or something. I don't think that's my biggest concern. That's why I really would like to have somebody who could oversee where we're sending the students to. It's not like kids can't find a place to go. I don't think that's really the issue. Is that both members? Just one more question back on the um the shared resource. So set a different way based on what you do every day and staff and others and teachers. What's the opportunity having that person? Where do you where do you translate that into opportunity for the the rest for the student body? Yeah. Well, first

113of all, I'd say it's it's an extra it's an extra leadership position in the building. Uh and we uh we do believe that by having relationships with our kids, we have the potential of reducing um problems. And when we do have a problem, if we have a relationship with a kid, it's easier to to rectify it and to get the student re-engaged and and back into the classroom. So, it's another opportunity to build adult relationships. It's also for families, the same the same thing. you know, parents are more receptive about talking to me on the phone, built a relationship with them ahead of time. So, just having another person in the building who's connected to a community. Makes sense. Actually, I do have one more for the I forget I think of it as uh

114dean of students, but whatever whatever we want to call it. Uh, do you think that having a single person split between two buildings makes sense or do you think that it'd be valuable having it one per building? Well, I'd love to have one. Do you think it'll be successful if we don't? Well, what what these here's a positive and here's Start with the I don't know when the kids are going to miss me. So, it's not always going to be on the day the person's in the film. So, you know, at those days, obviously, we're still doing that work. That's fine. Um, when that person is in the building, obviously, we can do some positive things. the the negative um that the positive I'll tell you what the the real positive is is some coordination

115between behaviors and consequences middle through high school because you're going to get the kids starting to learn hey this person's not only going to be disciplining you now but in the future not just discipline you know they're going to be they're building a relationship as well over those you know seven years instead of three or And I was sort of thinking the same way Mike was. I mean, having one split between two schools to me doesn't seem the smartest approach. It might work, but if there are issues at both schools, I mean, splitting their time between the two schools makes it difficult. I mean, I could envision there being one per school and when that person isn't nec needing to do their uh counseling for whatever you're defining it as, you know, they're a resource

116for that school to do other things. They're a substitute in the classrooms. They're a they're a specialist. They're something that their skill set could be put to use for when they're not absolutely working with student. The part part of this is that obviously we're we're we're coaching this person and assistant principal the principal showing them how is it how we do it how you know what your strengths you know figuring out a way to make things work but yes I mean we have in the bathroom that person can do those loops too cafeteria answer to your question if we had unlimited resources yes we would want to buildings, but we also need the kids to respond. We're asking the board of education, board of science, the council to fund. Yeah. And and just because I'm

117mentioning it doesn't necessarily mean uh that's what I'd like to see, but in a perfect world, I think that's the best approach. We heard you were recommending that. We're gonna print this tomorrow. He'll catch on here. He's got the budget first. Let's see where I stand in two months. Um, does this position fill a a need that the the social workers and the SRO's cannot cover? Because isn't that kind of what the social workers and the SRO's do? Well, yes. Uh, they they what they don't do intentionally is to discipline the students, right? We we we want the kids to have a good a good positive relationship with their social workers so they can talk to them about the issues that are really causing them perhaps serious issues. Um same with the SRO. Unfortunately, he

118does have to issue this the juvenile summons, but in general he's there to be a presence to me a leaison to, you know, local town police and whatnot to to show kids that not not everybody in uniforms could probably get them. In general, I think our who the TAM is our SSO does a good job with that connecting with kids and um so we don't want to put them in a position of always having to be the heavies if you will. So that is sometimes my job or Stephanie's job to do the the bad quote unquote bad guy who's going to issue consequence. My colleagues call it consequence. I still call them punishments but um that's the point would be they're doing some something a little bit different like we you heard restorative practice. I

119don't do that in the high school. That's social workers will do that. It's an important part. Our part is listen, this is what you did. Here's the rule. Here's the consequence. Here's we're going to make sure you get back and can talk to that other kid again and it can be in the class. And that's what social. So there are actually people out there who specialize in this like you hire a student coordinator of conduct. I don't think anyone will want to do that for their whole career. Typically, typically this role is somebody that is just leaving a teaching classroom and is looking for an assistant principal or principal role and typically is that first step into administration. That's it. So, it does give ourselves to a little pipeline, you know, a potential administrator K

120has people. Oh, we would hire them from inside or I mean, we post in there and semi- internal could apply or semi foundation. Thank you. Thank you. Education be able to see me guest. There you go. Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Megan Popski. I'm the director of special education and Linda Cassella supervisor. Um yeah, special education budget. So I'm just going to focus on our major initiatives. There are no um position requests in the department of special education, but want to kind of speak to what our focuses are and how we're going to continue to support uh support students. Um so focusing on that theme of investing in growth. um we really want to continue to strengthen and provide high quality PD for all of our staff. So this year we invested in supporting them in

121developmental therapy that's really helping our specialized programs. Um we're seeing the impact now and I want to continue it and bridge it even larger to our you know not just our specialized programs to larger programs. Um you'll also see and I'll go through those kind of major drivers. Um there is a huge increase you'll see in professional services. One of the reasons is for that is we took our testing line that has been in the budget in different areas and moved it to this one. And the reason for that is that we can get refunded um through our Medicaid billing services. So it's just kind of a line item change, but we can get reimbursement um if we have it under specific items in our budget. So that's one major um change in that 66%.

122Um and then also the professional services. These are services that are directly provided to students. So those are the behavior technicians that we hire. Those are our side psychological psychiatric um assisted technology transition evaluations that are directly supporting our students and teachers to better their programs. Um we're continuing to look at specialized instruction programs and resources. So a major funding um item would be that so that we have high quality resources um for our teachers. Um and then we have you know I think some of them spoke to it. Um it's not unique to Oxford but there's been a lot of change in student behavior. So really focusing on providing that support for students um you know through social work services, school psychologists and the BCBA that we hired and contracted through ACES to continue

123that work um and provide those behavior technicians to to the classrooms and to the students. That was the quickest one but um any meet any questions. So, as always, again, the the airball is someone moves in who's got heavy needs, that means they'll out place. We don't have line of sight to any of that. You know, we only have what's in the pipeline. Correct. So, that's always a risk to the budget. Yes. As always. As always, can you talk a little bit about the BCBA and how it's working out now? Because originally we had one in district, now we're contracting. Do you have enough support? Would you like to have someone back in district again? Is it working the way you want it to? The nice part of a contract, I will say, you know,

124yes, we could always use more support. Um, especially because with the change in person, they're kind of redoing a lot of the plans that were done. We're reinforcing it. We're reting the staff the plans. So, right now, it is taking a bit of his time. Actually, was a conversation we had today about kind of finding different ways to support. Um, it's taking a lot of time for him to kind of rebuild those plans and teach the staff and then, you know, reinforce it. Um, so it's working out really well. The nice thing about having the contracted service, um, for instance, at the beginning of this year, he unfortunately was out for a short period of time. They were able to provide a backup person to attend PPTs to come in and consult with us. So,

125the nice part of the contract is they have their outside clinical services that are there to help us. Um, if that person happens to be out or if there's a question regarding his work, they'll come in, they'll double check it, they'll send someone to help and train and support. So, you're getting the same person every day, correct? And if you realize halfway through the school year that it's not enough, could you get a second person through the contract? I could. Yes. I don't have it budgeted. Um, but yes, I could we could contract it. I was speaking with him today because what we noticed with these plans that are happening right now, we need a lot of staff training um just on redoing the plans. So, we were considering adding just a behavior technician to

126work directly with him for a short period of time to train those teachers and be in the classroom with the proactive strategies to get those kind of plans going so that he can get caught up with all of the other ones that he's doing and then, you know, provide that additional support in the classrooms and doing contract contact service allows us to ramp up or ramp down on the needs are when the needs are during school. Well, now's the time to ramp up if you need it. So, do you feel like you need it or are you okay? I mean I I can add it to the budget. Um yeah, I I have no that would be a support I think to the district um to staff um and to the students as well. So

127I can talk with the team about adding that or even a partial because what we did talk about is maybe potentially having someone two to three days, not the full week, but providing that additional support in those areas because along with those plans, we also have to do fidelity checks to make sure that those plans are being utilized appropriately. um we have to make sure that they don't need adjustments. So there's a lot of work that goes into making sure those plans are appropriate for students. Shel questions. Um first question is what agency are we using currently for the BCBA for our BCBA support. We contract through ACES. Um our behavior technicians we are contracting through Connecticut Behavioral Health. And the other question is um and I know everything is variable but I noticed under

128psychologist you put underbudgeted. Um can you tell me about that? Sure. So last year um it was unfortunate we only had three psychologists throughout the district. So we had personally we were unable to hire um at that point in time. So we had shifted I believe we shifted I think it was overbudgeted or under Yeah. So if you look at the social work line, it was overbudgeted. So that's kind of the difference. We had hired a social worker in the meantime to support the need. Um and we were very fortunate to find a school psychologist to work fully staffed this year across building. I thought that's what it was, but I wasn't asked. Yeah, that Yeah, I've been trying to catch up on special education and all the things because one of the big things

129that is really a burdens on the teachers. I think is it called IP, individual. Yep. So, every student in special education has what we call an IDP, an individualized education plan. And and I'm reading it can take an hour, two hours to keep revamping and doing this stuff. How do you how do you handle that? Because of all the areas in the school, you got the toughest. I'm just gonna Are we really going to just do the budget? Well, if I'm going to sit and approve some money, I want to know what's how it's happening. I don't think that's an unfair thing that they can say, "Hey, how is it going to happen?" Okay. I read the budget. I'm happy to answer or I'm happy to have a conversation with him afterwards to explain. Sure.

130So, it I I would say one to two hours. I'm not sure what you mean in terms of that. It's kind of a year-long process. Um, the initial process is that we do evaluations, we determine if a child's eligible, and based on that information, through extensive testing, we create and develop an IEP. That can be changed throughout the year. If things aren't working, we meet back and we make adjustments. If things are working, we continue. So, each IEP is developed to be a one year in time. We set goals for one year in time for a student. Um, it does take a lot of upfront work. Um, but that's what our special education teachers are doing. and the data that they're collecting in the classrooms um and the work that they're doing informs those changes

131to the IEP that happens. So, we already have specialists doing that. All of our special education teachers do it and then our related service staff add their um supports to the IEP. It's a it's a working it's a document that everybody is working on. So, it's not just a responsibility of one person. Thank you. Anybody else have a question on the board? Thank you ladies very much. Oh, it was about the psychologist but you answered it. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. So, Eric Williams, director of curriculum instruction and assessment. um talk about the curriculum part of the budget. Um each year I'm going to focus on kind of those three main pieces. I'm going to come up here every year to talk about curriculum writing, professional development, and then the variety of supplies. And that's

132kind of what it's going to be every year within the curriculum budget. That first piece with curriculum writing, I did take some notes also able to answer some of the department head literacy coach stuff as well that came up before. Um so with the curriculum writing piece um this year we have uh adopted and updated our district curriculum template um and have a focus on um updating curriculum throughout the district. So when I came into this position there was a large focus on math and ELA throughout the district. Um so that's currently what we're working on on providing the training for teachers who are doing the writing. Um we talked about the department head role. one of the one of the aspects if if we have that position um they will take part in that

133process as well. So I said anyone writing curriculum they currently do roughly two-hour training with me before they actually go and do that on their own. The department head would be part of that process um as having someone in the building as an expert on that curriculum uh as well. So they would be able to you know we don't have usually the whole department write a curriculum. So you may have four or five teachers teaching the class. Maybe one of them actually writes the curriculum while the training when that is done is going to happen with the teachers. That department head will also be that person in the building as an expert that you have a new teacher um they can work with. Uh when we have half day, full day PDS department meetings where

134we're going back into the curriculum um reviewing it. How are assessments going? Uh are we actually hitting what we said we were going to hit with those instructional goals? you have someone there that's actually teaching the classes, giving the assessments, um is an expert in that field. So, for example, this Friday I'm doing some curriculum training with uh some high school teachers, uh English up at the high school. Right now, it's a humanities department head um working with that department chair. She happens to teach all social studies classes. She's been great. She's going to be going through the training and get involved, but when it comes to the actual specific content and she's not teaching those classes. So if we had those department heads that were specific to those areas, they would be able to

135have more of those specific conversations in regards to how does this curriculum work with this specific topic. Um just to just to kind of put that out there with the department piece. So uh next year with within this budget um a focus with curriculum writing just in with talking to staff um there is a big chunk of that budget going to foreign language for next year. um that came to me with a request as wanting to um update their curriculum um and the pathway they have throughout the high school. Uh we currently have a dual credit grant um right now we're looking at uh opportunities to involve at the high school and possibly the middle school. So there's some money set aside for that um within curriculum writing. Uh each year there's a process for

136um bringing up new courses. Uh so this year the board just approved moving forward with three new um courses up to the high school. So, there's money set aside um for those new courses to be written. Um and then I did set aside just because there is so much curriculum being written this year um some money for possible um uh review and revisions that may have to happen outside of the school day um due to the large scope of the the amount of curriculum that is being written this year. Um so that's the kind of curriculum side um of the budget for next year. um professional development obviously another large piece and there is an increase in that area. Um kind of a couple of the main reasons why is the building based PD line

137budgets uh the majority of those are being moved into the uh my budget more of a district-wide uh so every district by the end of the school year we don't have the date yet has to give a new teacher evaluation plan to the state um and a lot of that you know Dr. Miller talked about before in his opening piece about individualized professional learning to make sure it's tailored to the teachers. Um, so we have a large part of that budget set aside for each building. Uh, when teachers create those goals in the beginning of the year, then we identify professional development that if we can't provide that in-house that we have that money set aside to put them uh to bring them out of the district. We don't know what that is at this

138time, but we do know there is a cost associated with that. Um also, uh the special ed department PD used to be in that budget and that rolled over to the curriculum budget. So that's also another reason for increase. Um within the PD budget, um we also have some uh programs we run here in the district that require training for if we get new teachers that we always set money aside for. So for example, at the K to2 school, we do foundations um as part of the literacy program um that requires training. So this past year we had a couple new teachers um uh that we hired at the K2 level that we had to send to that training um and we set aside money for because we typically have new teachers brought into the

139district. We always make sure we set aside money for that. Um we always have money set aside for uh more examples annual professional development uh Westcon election day PD that's usually a K12 arcs day. they do a very large PD for uh districts around the state um on election day every year. So, we have money set set aside for that. Um and then also thinking of the new positions when it comes to uh the literacy coach, department heads. Um we've also set aside money for training in those areas as needed. Obviously, we have to wait to see what the specific training is going to look like uh based on who we hire. Um and then we have money set aside as well for um administration. When it comes to this new uh teacher evaluation program,

140we did set some money aside for some PD in that area as well when everything gets approved. Um so those are kind of the major pieces um of that professional development budget. And then the last piece is supplies. Um obviously there's a large increase when it comes to instructional supplies. Um part of this is finishing the purchasing of supplies specifically for 912 ELA. The new program built um brought in last year um and it mainly for the 12th grade um and increasing um the amount of supplies we need for that grade level. So, um, this past year there was a lot of students who had electives in the 12th grade and we're expanding the our English 12 availability um because there were some electives that went away and we're making sure we have enough supplies

141for those students when it comes to the workbooks and the novels that they're going to be reading. Um, also some new course approved um at the high school. Some of those courses did come with costs. Uh, our AP seminars for example, there is a couple novels that they read in there. So, we're going to make sure those are purchased for the students um as well as possible the health course, some supplies as well. Um when it comes to textbooks and uh that that line item went down, we may possibly need some textbooks for the health class. So, we made sure we put some money aside just for that piece. Um when it comes to professional supplies, um that line item went down, but that's really there for any of our PD needs. Um, so the

142half APDS fe the full APDs we have that money is there to help with any supplies we may need to run those. Um, and I believe besides dues and fees just that's a subscription for uh myself in order to get professional materials. But those are the big pieces of the curriculum budget. Um if there's any questions follow Jim Center here to talk about the tech um tech side of things uh for next year really falls into two areas for us for in the tech world really and it's really equipment. Um the first one that's a big one is the instructional supply instructional equipment. Um we have a zero budget there. Um all our desktop computers are running Windows 10 currently. Windows 10 is end of life on October 14th, 2025. So that means no updates

143after that. So we're trying to jump on that and we can upgrade all our desktops except for Quaker Farms. So that's really just desktops for Quaker Farms. Um second part is the repair equipment. We did not budget for the um insurance for Chromebooks. So we do not need to purchase Chromebooks. We are purchasing them out of the ESRE funds for out of this year for next year. We are also starting the life cycle for Chromebooks. So every third grader next year, seventh grader next year will get a uh eighth grader next year will get a brand new Chromebook. uh and it will stay with them till they gra till they either get to eighth grade or graduate. Um I have shifted also the purchase of Chromebooks to Lenovo. I've had very good luck with them

144in a prior district. Uh they're a little more sturdy, look a little better on the corners. Um and I think it'll improve some of the repairs that we have to do. Um the luckily for us I found a company too that will also give us the insurance that gives us parts back. So in partnership with the middle school and we hope to expand it to the high school possibly this year or next year. We're doing the middle school this year where the students are actually going to start repairing some of the devices for us. Um getting kind of that hands-on work. Uh, mostly just screens and keyboards probably. If we get a couple really good ones, we'll show them how to experience some. The nice thing about this company that we're using currently is that

145the ones we can't repair, we send back. Water damage ones, we send back and they repair them and give them back. The process hasn't been great as so far this year with the getting them back part. Um, it's been a little slow. Uh, but we pro, we, you know, we poke and prod them. Um, other than that, we, you know, you see a few decreases in there for, uh, IT software licenses and contracts. We're doing a better job of kind of narrowing down what we're using and eliminating them andor bundling into other ones that we have already mode. Any questions for them? How many desktops? It's approximately 65. 65. Yeah. And why upgrade the desktops versus just buying a license for Windows 11? Uh the the desktops won't handle them. They can't. Correct. How old

146are the desktops? Um they predate me. So I don't have an actual purchase purchase date. I don't know. Um Alex, my my network guy does most of the research on that stuff. I don't know when they are. They did have they didn't have solid state drives in them. We actually put solid state drives in them. Um so I mean I can find out for you. And and typically what are the desktops used for? Uh controlling a smartboard and then obviously browsing. Okay. Yep. Thank you. [Music] Good evening everyone. Uh my name is Michael Dagino as the chief operating officers facilities falls under my purview. So the goal for facilities to keep uh the facilities functioning so that children have a superior environment in which to learn and to try and do this as fiscally responsive

147as possible. Um so that's the goal that I try and and achieve. some of the major uh initiatives and some of the the major drivers for our facilities budget this year. Uh we have a number of glycol and water pumps at the high school that are probably going to be needing to be rebuilt and loaded probably going to be needing to be reorked as well. We estimate four or five of them this year. Um in building management systems, we have some upgrades that are desperately needed at uh Quaker Farms. Our building management system is 14 versions behind. Um so that needs to be upgraded uh so that we can access things better and we can control them better. Um the uh building management system at the middle school is right now controlled by a train

148system which is a proprietary train uh system and we would like to try and move away from that and towards tridium which is what we use in this building and the high school I believe. Um it's called Tridium Niagara. it will communicate with the train system without having to replace the entire infrastructure. Um, we have vehicle repairs and maintenance as well. Uh, we have the buses and we have the van. Um, so there are some repairs and general maintenance and safety certifications and inspections for uh for that. That's a new item. We have the HVAC system upgrades and repairs continuing at uh the school. We have been chasing those down and making great progress with that, but there are still some more strides to make. And then we have uh Quaker Farms that needs to

149have an awful lot of work done to the HBA system, and that's the grant that we're going to be pursuing. We have some repairs that are needed here uh at the track behind the school here and as well at the high school. Um so there's some expenses there as well. At the middle school, we have a baseball field that has a major drainage issue and we need to continue to find what the cause of that is or make the correction. And then we also have some generator maintenance systems. Uh we have Kinsley Power under contract right now to provide us with some of our generator maintenance. Uh we typically do it at a level one uh which is every year. Um there's uh level two and level three that need to be done on other

150bianual basis. So we're going to try and get that accomplished as well because you never know you have a problem with a generator until you need it. So um those are the major issues there. Um some of the issues that we have experiencing are through age related issues and deferred maintenance issues. Some of the other issues that we uh can highlight for the facilities is the expense of we have non-certified staff. That's the district maintenance technician and that's bringing his salary up to a market level and accommodating for anticipated overtime. Question Mike question slash more of a statement. I know during our last facility subcommittee meeting we talked about a director of security uh Bob Carr had had proposed it and uh it's something that that I we know that it's not in the budget

151but we are you know trying to get the the board to consider adding that type of position. Um it's more or less just we're just making a statement just to kind of put it on the record for facilities for security aspect to have someone who the SRO's can talk to and be a resource building admins as well as for central office. Um do you have any any I know that you know during that meeting we talked about it. I think there some work was done to get some data. Um do you have any anything to add on the director of security? I do position I do I I understand that there are some school districts that have that position already. I believe there there's one in the valley Seymour Seymour that has that. Um it

152it'll it allows the person to be a dedicated person for the security of the buildings and it and some of the benefits that we can point to for that are some uh maybe the person would be the Alice training lead. um uh they would back up any of the ASOS and SRO's if there was a vacancy. Uh right now we have that backup being provided by OPD by the Oxford PD at a cost to us. So we would be able to mitigate that. They'd be able to monitor and maintain the surveillance system that we we have at all the schools as well as maybe the radio communication systems. Um, they'd be able to provide us with a protocol and coordination with town emergency services and first responders. Um, they'd be able to collaborate with any

153identified weaknesses uh in any of our envelope systems, the doors and the windows. Um, maybe they can identify grants. Maybe they'll be available to look at what grants are out there specifically towards security purposes. Um, and the only other thing that that I looked at was that, you know, the salary for that kind of a person was probably going to be around 75,000. That's usually what the market reads if that's the only information that I just have one thing to add. Um, they could be also be a resource for new things that are coming out in terms of training. Uh, new new systems we could use to protect the kids better. Like they would know the industry, they would know who to go with the to go to, where to look, that type of stuff.

154Agreed. Um, Dr. Miller talked a lot about investing in our kids. We got to protect that investment. We definitely are in support of this type of position. Obviously, it's not part of the original budget build. The reason we did not add it to tonight's budget was not discussed at the board finance committee came up at the sub committee after finance committees to meet. So, if it's the interest of the board for us to add the position to the budget, we could do so. said the net duration on February 13th. We can add this to the budget so you can see the impact on the overall number. The only other thing I'd like to to reiterate and echo is that you know facilities uh is an investment in the future. It's just like your home or

155you know if you take care of it, it takes care of you and if you neglect it and forget it then it becomes much more expensive. And so I think that we should all just be mindful that it's it's an investment as well. Who acts as a director of security today? I So what's your background with the director of security? I don't. whereas you know something that Bob uh in the budget uh correct I don't have a I don't have a background in security uh but I am the leazison for the ASOS and and they have now your facilities we also have a longer list and it must be in the capital maybe capital because uh yes sir yeah because we know like the gym and the the for the pool and And is the

156pool it's all that part is the pool's all was complete and correct me if I'm wrong but some of the surplus we used to catch up with some of the old items that will be around for a while on maintenance right the repairs we did a lot of work okay security upgrades so you have a lot longer list on repairs that's the capital repairs do you still have a um no I'm I'm getting to the end of it Okay. I I I hope to not have anything that's extraordinary after this next fiscal year. Any other board members have any questions? Okay, now I really am back and I'm going to pitch it for Mr. Wortho athletics and vice spice. So, I'm going to be rather quick. For athletics, um we shifted approximately um $40,900 from

157the facilities budget over to athletics to maintain various structures and and um systems within the athletic field itself. It made more sense to have that in an athletic budget. So, it's an increase in the overall budget to transfer from one budget account to another budget account. Um second, our athletic trainer. When we took a look at the salaries of athletic trainer, we recognized at the market level if she was to leave to go another district, she would um be able to do very easily work. We're paying less from a salary perspective. So, we're recommending increase that position by $10,000 to a $60,000 salary to make it a market level um type of position in other school districts. Um and then third, from a professional service standpoint, we're increasing by $10,670 to the 14.8 8% increase

158um due to increase in cost for arrests um meeting police and ambulance um etc um at our games. So that's the increase for athletics. Any questions on athletics as of right now the middle school sports the kids have to find their own way to away game. Is that factored into this budget for next year or no? Yes, actually we've had a lot of success this year. Um it was not the first couple weeks of school but since then um we were able to use the van and the bus for the support of Minnesota athletics. It's not for 100% of them. Um versus last year parents had to transport everything. Um now we were able to um have a system in place and we're able to provide some support where in the past they did not

159have that and that that's factored into the budget. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Central office. Central office. Okay. There was a shift in accounting again um from one from the special education department into central office. We moved one of the secretaries from a cost center perspective that where was located in the budget. So you'll see an increase in central office um because we just trans one budget to another budget. Um there is also an offset in office supplies and coffee paper that used to be in the districtwide budget. Once again like we move the supplies from districtwide to the schools. We also move from districtwide into the central office budget also to represent where those resources were specifically going. That's central office budget. Any questions on central office? Okay. Um from a districtwide

160districtwide basically supports all of the utilities and toughs new teachers, pension, medical insurance. Um this is a pretty big budget. um districtwide um there was an increase. I spoke about the substitute teachers earlier on um we accounted for daily substitutes or the hopes that um that if you have four or five teachers out you're able to get four or five um daily subs that go in where the need is. In addition to that, we have a permanent building sub in each school. Um the goal of having permanent building sub in each school is because it's that first person that takes that first initial person um teacher that's out in that building. And if you have a substitute teacher that's an expert that really knows the school, knows the teachers, knows the curriculum, knows the kids,

161you get a higher quality substitute experience in that classroom. Um and what we want is learning to continue. Um, so if you've got a consistent person in those schools, it's more beneficial to kids. Also, if you've got a a certified teacher that is working as a substitute teacher, if a teacher goes out, that person is a is a good opportunity for them to move into a long-term sub role. Or if a permanent position is open up, you've got a through line um you're able to recruit a little bit easier. And we we know in today's society um in education Connecticut, there's a teacher shortage. So having that pipeline built into the system is helpful and having that permanent building sub across all four schools is beneficial for teachers um in all four schools. So we've

162accounted for that increase in the budget for permanent building subs and the increase in the sub rate itself. Um we've also um taken a look at our substitute power professional um pool and um historically um we've had less um subs available. So we've actually taken a decrease in that line based on the historical access to par professionals that are coming in um as substantive care professionals. So we've accounted for that and and made a budget um decrease to represent that. From pension standpoint, all of our teachers get their pension from the state TRB system. Um that comes from the state level, but par professionals, secretaries, all of our non-certified staff get it through the state MURF system. Um and that pension increase is governed at the state level. Um town employees also get the same

163thing. We've accounted for that that pension for non-certified staff. Um that's increase of 41,000 or 5.1% increase and we don't have any control of that. Um that's dependent on outside forces telling us what that percent rate is going to be. We don't have any control over what that pension is. From a medical insurance perspective, um we use Brown and Bond Consulting. as the insurance company that um helps us determine the rates and works as our partner in finding and health insurance and is there any troubleshooting with the current plan that we have. They they work as our broker. They're estimating an initial increase of um 7% cost plus the initial increase of adding to the HSA. The teachers contract has shifted our insurance over to an HSA system. So, our insurance plan covers the increase

164for the medical rates and the additional funding of the HSAs for employees. Um, I will say that we got some shocking numbers this week from Brown and Brown that actually could indicate that that number could even be higher than we initially planned for. However, um, there's some thinking of shifting to different insurance company which could also end up some lowering. So, we're still in the initial um, stages as to where we're going with insurance. That's there's some variability within that electricity. Um there's um variability. We we think we're able to bring that down based upon um an aggressive look at our use of electricity. Um so you take into that consideration. Um transportation there's an increase of $8,000 and that's based upon um increased cost of gas. That is the districtwide um child center. Any

165questions? Maybe not be able to answer that. That's okay. Um so every time I drive by the high school, I notice that the lights on the football field are on. Would would that save us any money if we just turn those things off at night or can't we can we do that or can we not do that? There would be savings there. Um, we have to also recognize that the town that the fields at the at the schools are town facilities, okay? And adults and kids go to the facility for both programs, parks, and wreck and so forth and just people that just go to the track and they do things. Okay? So, part of it is having it available so that the general public can come and use that space because it's a public

166space, but it's something we could look at. Is there an opportunity that there might be? Yeah. But we need to be considered of who else is using this. How did you go off? Yeah. Since I've been elected, I've had several people that live in the area go, can you get those things? I'm like, that's that's not me. Like, you got to talk to But they have a low lighting walking track light, but the big lights go out. My daughter's been out there running. We could take a look at the schedule and see if there's any tweaks that could be had. Anybody else? Yeah, I went through the insurance portion of it. So I was just trying to this is just to try to understand is the HSA. We had that in the past. Yes. Okay.

167And uh now that's a $400,000 tack on to the insurance and I tried to read through. I didn't see where that that saved anything with that. So and we're paying 100%. It's not like we're paying 78% and they're paying us. Now, in the past, they started out this way and it got that kept going up and we started to charge the teachers and then it gets to a point where they say no, they walk away from the deal and you never get to save the money. Has that been considered? Because HSAs, when you read about them, how to be to be clear, the HSA is funded both by the staff members and the district. It's it's not 100% by the district. And um the consultant gave us the the the mathematics that going to an

168HSA was actually saving district money there. Yes, there is an increase in the insurance line because there's increase in costs, but that increase is buffered because we're going to HSA. Yeah. And and they have a contribution. I didn't see. Yes. In the in the teacher contrib asked and I couldn't. Yes, it's it's uh it's there. Yeah. Um I try to save my questions till the end after they administer. So um when I look at staff analysis at central office, we're adding a position. It looks like we're from 223 and the um administrators. I'm looking at 39 when the um [Music] On page 39, what you're where where it says central office staffing analysis. Yes. It says administrators. We're going from two to three. Yeah, the administrators there's three administrators at central office um actually the

169um in that central office call center. Okay. and and they are you and Eric and it Megan I thought line item I'm sorry not line item I thought she was listed in a state cost center not she's not included in this I'll get you clarification we're not changing the number inventor office I don't we're not we're not there's no change inven office so there's it's as it currently is I'll get you an explation why there's three listed there so requested um it could How how how are interpreted the numbers the equipment page together? So other than um the literacy coaches and the requested um um discipline person to be shared there's no other um in this budget where there's no other positions being added other than the teachers no other administrative technical being this budget.

170I'll I'll answer that question. I don't know where that admin would be more than likely administrative position. I'm sorry. One of one of the items that's been there's been some discussion. Um and we have there's been no decisions, no further outcomes have come. We talked briefly during um finance meeting. We haven't decided whether or not there will be a change. We're still in the process of before we come back to you with a decision of what it's going to be there. So, is it already included in the in the budget or no? No. Okay. Okay. And then the only other um question or concern I would say is that um well, there's two and then I'm done. One is um the percent of increases. I know that you said it was based on market analysis.

171Can we have that analysis so we know what the justification is of such large salary increases? We can put together research for you in in many cases. As an example, um Howard would um use the Casill Serve and send an email out to all the business managers in the state and collect information from other districts on what um salaries are for specific specific positions and then we use that as some of the data that we have. Shel, what specifically are you? Um well I would have to shift over to another document but we have some um increases that are very large percentages um you know from 7% up to I think one of it was 12 and while I want to hang on to our people by paying them uh what they're worth so that

172we retain them. I just wanted to see um what the analysis is that's been done so that we know you know we're competitive but not overly increasing salary based on the percentages. So Shel moving can you send those the positions to Steve so we can pull that together? I I think they are in the just to answer one of them. I know that one of them was a position that wasn't fully funded for the entire year that for the new budget it the percent looks like it's bigger but it's like I it looks like it's 12 or something but it's really because it's a full year's payment versus yeah I changed the numbers on that and I didn't I'll send that as a separate question um and Then um those are the two that's it

173the the um the basis for the um competitive market and market marketability analysis and then the percentage. Yeah. So to also speak to Steve specific position any other questions? I'm just going to ask if you have a specific question um to send them to Dr. Miller and to Steve as the chair of the the finance committee and they can certainly we'll get you answers. Do you want to see Steve as well? Um no you can just send it to Stephen and Rob. I don't I don't need to Steve Steve's responsibility as chair of and then um we'll meet I'm sure we'll meet a thousand more times as committee. We'll come back and then we'll handle from there. Does anybody on the board have any questions before we move on to the next topic? Perfect. Okay.

174Thank you. Thank you very much everybody. The next part is capital project. The rest of the admins can go except for Mike. [Laughter] Thank you. Okay. Capital plan. I'll invite that after the podium. [Music] Okay, if we want to talk about our capital improvement plan and this is for obviously next budget year. It's not including work for the year. Um we went through what items we thought were critical, high and medium uh importance. So starting at the top, the critical priority for us right now is the pool pack. This is the dehumidifying uh environment control for the high school pool. And without this, if this were to fail, and this is where I'm making it a critical, if this were to fail tomorrow, there would probably be a 10 to 12 month lead time before

175we would get another one. In order to replace it, we would be requiring a crane to lift the other one off the roof and to place the other one on top of the roof. Uh three years ago, I understand this was also put on the capital improvement plan and the estimate was around $500,000 for this piece of equipment. It's now 850,000 and that might be on the slow side right now depending on. So that was in our capital plan. I'm sorry. No, that was in the town capital plan and at the town meeting it got taken out. That is correct. I can't see why this isn't ARPA funds. There's $2 million sitting in ARPA and I just can't for the life of me see why this is not ARPA fun. We visited the pool today

176and uh there are already signs the full pack is failing. There is there is rust on on metal in the in the space. Um there's damage across an entire facility because the humidity level is rising. And if that pool pack was to fail today, the pool would be shut down. And as Mike just said, we're looking at a shutdown and probably over a year before it's up and running again and its use. So we cancel boys and girls um swim and dive for at least a year. Um so high school athletics would would no longer have that that as a sport. parks and wreck which uses it on the board and the area and open swim that also be shut down for that period of time. So it's not only a town a school resource

177also town resource that would be shut down for a minimum of a year and even if we get in the capital budget today or next year there's no guarantee it's going to last that long. Don't you have the chlorine problem too? Well, so it that's also part of the issue. Um, in the past they used liquid chlorine and liquid chlorine was very corrosive and we've now changed it to a different form but uh I noticed today when I walked into the high school that you could smell chlorine down the hallway and that's an indication that the pool pack is not fully functioning. We have stainless steel to just to reiterate what Dr. Miller just said. Most everything in in the pool area is stainless steel and we do have areas where it's starting to show

178rust and again that is an indication that pool back is not doing 100% of what it needs to be doing. So this is a critical issue and I don't view it as a choice. The same what happened with our shine that they ignored for a few years knocked it down. What happened? We got $130,000 repair bill and now we're doing the whole thing for you know four or five million. It's sort of similar to what I said about facilities. You take care of it, it takes care of you. Um, is the failing bar doing failing? No, it's age. It's age related. It's it's 17 years old. Um, and uh, it's it's, you know, there are certain things that we can do to plan for the future so that it's better. But that particular piece of

179machinery has done Yman's work for 17 years. It's been on the capital plan for a number of years. It just hasn't, you know, moved forward. Um, I have a number for uh roof replacement and repairs at at the high school. Again, it's a 17-year-old EPDM rug roof. Um, there are some areas where there has been some leaks and some concerns. Um, so this is obviously not a replacement. This is just for repairs for the next year. Um, you know, if we should need it. um the the security ballards um and replacements. Um there are ballards with lights on them along the walkways at the high school. So they're there to protect the people walking on the sidewalks from any vehicles as well as lighting the areas. Um again, some of them are failing, some of

180them are falling over uh because their metal bases have rotted. And so this is just to replace some of them and it's a security issue to be quite honest with you. Um at QFS we have the HVAC system which we're going out for a grant uh for but we put this here so that you could see that if we don't get the grant it would cost us an estimated $5 million to replace the HBA system over at Quaker Fox. Okay. And if we do not have the granted, it's still a high priority for us because if the HVAC was to fail X or farms um which already in classrooms, we have students in classrooms with jackets on. And um in the start of the school year, we don't have air conditioning in in school. We

181had to shut down kids unworthy because classes over 90 degrees at the spaces. So, we'd like to obviously replace the whole HVA system with that grant, but in in the if we don't get that grant, this would be the expense that would be and we'd also would be recommending upgrading or modernizing what we have, but the the town would still have to pick up 40%. The grant, we would have to pay 40% 60% was the grant. That's correct, sir. um parking lot repavement at Quaker Farms. The parking lot for the front of the building has uh you know lived its life. It's done its duty. It's time for it to be uh redone. Um there's many cracks and potholes. Um Miss Kase has uh talked to me about it on numerous occasions that this is

182a security issue for Trip and Falls. Um, we have had some patching done typically in November on election years and it's um, sorry, I'm just trying to be funny. Sorry. Um, so it it it it is something that needs to be done. We received two different um, bids last year and one was for $350,000 and the other one was for a half a million dollars. Um, so we're putting in the $350,000 number because we think that we can accomplish the job for that. Uh, playground upgrades at Quaker Farms. Uh, we've upgraded one just recently this year and was a success. There is a playground directly behind the school which I believe is for the first graders. It consists of a a swing set um that uh I feel the wood chipped area is too narrow

183for I I believe someone could jump off of it and end up in the uh asphalt paved area. Um so that's a concern for me. And then on the other side of the asphalt area is two sandboxes and that's the entirety of the first grade playground. So, I would like to modernize that and upgrade that if we could. Um, and so that's the reason why that is a a high priority. Carpet replacement in the music room and the classrooms. Uh, the the carpet in the classroom, the music classroom, excuse me, is of an odd size and it has a VCT Kyle circle in the middle of it. Um, it has been there for well over 10 years and so the carpet has lived its life. It uh is showing its age. It should be replaced.

184Um, it's just as a cycle of replacement. So that's why we're talking about that. And then there's 25 classrooms that Rachel has asked for. Mrs. Case has asked for um area rugs. Um, again, they have lived their life and we can get them from a vendor such as the WBM Mason type of vendor for about $400. So, that goes we obviously have the HBA system work being done in the school, but now we would like to have it done in the the cafeteria and the gymnasium. That's beyond me. Why we put the HBA system in for the school and then include the gym and for another you know why how who who makes these decision I'm sorry I couldn't answer that. Sorry. On a on a positive note attempt is actually in the building today.

185I saw them earlier but but not for this part. No that was not part that was not included in the grant. Yeah. Um and then we have the roof replacement for the same area. So when we do the HBA system, part of the air handlers right now are in between the uh decking of the ceiling and the EPDM roof. Uh when the tornado came through and damaged the roof at that in that section of the school, we only repaired the section of roof that was damaged. So if you were to go up on the roof right now, you would see an old section of EPDM, which is a rubber membrane with ballast. Ballast is a really cool way of saying rocks. So there's an EPM membrane and ballast to hold it down in place. And

186then you'll see a section that doesn't have any rocks on it. And that's the section that they replaced. We're saying you we're it's time to replace the old section and you wouldn't just stop, you would do the whole thing. So that is the $325,000 that was estimated for that. Does it still leak bad? Well, so yes, yes it does. Uh the bottom line is yes it does. It leaks where the parapet is which is the termination of the roof and the facade of the building. And so the water is getting down in between the facade of the building and the siding of the building. And through the freezing and warming and freezing and thawing, it's expanding and contracting and knocking the brick facade off. And that's why it looks the way it took us took

187a tour couple years ago and it's like that. It's crazy. That's the reason why it looks that way. should have white. I couldn't answer that question. The tornado damage, you could have you could have done the whole thing. I would I guess obviously the insurance company didn't think it needed to be done. Um, so some additional upgrades that are not included in the capital improvement plan. I don't know if you want me to to raise them here, but since they're listed, I'll go through it. There's some sidewalk repair at Baker Farms. Uh, again, it's a it's a trip hazard. It's there's some heaving, there's some cracking um that we can take care of. There's been some spalling because uh ice melt was put on young unccured uh concrete and so there's some spalling there. Um

188the bleacher configuration at the high school has been a continual request from the athletic director and the athletic department. Um there are some egresses that he would like to change for safety reasons. Um there's a kiln in Quaker Farms that the uh uh art teacher is not able to use because the motor isn't working properly. And so we would like to replace that whole thing. Um and then uh this is you know a very near and dear project to some of my colleagues but um it's called a snow raider. And essentially what it is, we have tractors with attachments on them to clear snow on the sidewalks and then we have uh bush salt spreaders and then good oldfashioned, you know, shovels in your back. Um the snow raider is a rideon. You sort of

189stand up on it. The front of it has a plow. The back of it has a salt spreader and you can do everything very efficiently without anyone getting hurt hopefully and maybe a little less labor over time and such. And I understand this would be used for all three of the build all the schools here. We could do that very easily. And that by having that device, it actually cut out labor cost. It it could probably it will lower that significant. Well, you'll need snow, right? All you need is snow. You never know. Any board members have any questions about capital projects? Just one. Sure. With all the repairs on the new school, we had a negotiated thing with OMG and still ongoing. Did they fix all that stuff? Not yet, but it's still ongoing.

190Yes, I've been on I've been in touch with the vice president of OMG. And I I should say here in front of everybody else, especially from the people from the town, Mr. slide job slide has been phenomenal and instrumental in us getting some uh assistance and so a lot of the things have gotten accomplished. There are still more to get ac so we need a motion to approve the capital plan. Somebody want to make a motion. Uh make the motion to approve the capital uh improvement plan. Second. All in favor? opposed abstain. Welcome Gary. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Mike, I wanted to make sure we had an audience of citizens on our meeting tonight. So, if there's anyone in the public that wanted to ask or comment on any questions or concerns or anything

191with the budget, you're here. We want to hear from you. So, I just like to uh you know, Bob Wheeler. I'm a teacher at middle school as well. Been here my 13th year. kids are quick to farm first grade. Um, you know, I'd like to see us put money into education. I know, uh, you know, we ask a lot every year and whatnot, but it's going towards good needs. We're not wasting money. I'm tired of being in a district, putting my kids somewhere where we're cutting something every year and we're constantly getting cut from our board of uh, our education proposals. We're going at it with decent proposals from my not allow fluff. So, there's not a lot to get cut with. that I would like to just uh I'd like to be in a

192district where we're overpaying for our kids, not cutting the tree. I hope you'll go with their recommendations. Anybody else in the audience have anything they want to add? Okay. Anybody want to make a motion to adjurnn? Motion to second. All in favor? We're at 907.