001I'd like to convene this regular Board of Education meeting for Monday SE sorry February 24th 2025 at 7 p.m. could we all stand for oh wait do that first sure I'm sorry um before the pledge sorry we'd like to um have a moment of silence in remembrance of Miss Carol Queen sure uh Carol Anne creen 84 passed away peacefully on Friday February 14th in 2025 born on November 28th 1940 in Bronxville New York Carol was the daughter of theate William and Alice Gerard and was raised in ngat a graduate of Sacred Heart High School Carol pursued her passion for caring and graduated from St Mary School of Nursing this marked the beginning of her dedicated 59-year career as a registered nurse Carol served her community in a v in various Capac ities starting at St
002Mary's Hospital she then transitioned to occupational health and worked for many years as the plant nurse at Sherwood medical and Waterberry and later at Superior Electric in Bristol she concluded her career as a school nurse first in the Plymouth school district and then later in Watertown at pulk school Carol's life was a testament to her boundless capacity for love and compassion she profoundly impacted countless lives with her acts of kindness and unwavering support whether it was providing transportation to medical appointments delivering groceries or offering Comfort to the sick or homebound Carol was always ready to lend a helping hand she had an innate ability to see the good in everyone and approached life with optimism and Grace family was the Cornerstone of her world she cherished family gatherings holidays and cookouts her grandchildren Ryan and
003Rachel held a special place in her heart and she took immense pride in their accomplishments she had found memories of the destination list drives she took with her sister Jean and treasured her friendships particularly with Betty and Lynn and a bird Enthusiast Carol found joy in feeding and observing the birds that frequented her home she will be deeply missed by her son Bob and his wife Melinda of Watertown as well as countless other family services were held this past weekend in Carolina thank you now if we could all rise for the pledge flag of the United States of America and to the repic for it stands one nation God indivisible liy and justice for all M Davidson Mr M Miss B here Mr Gales here Messa here miss H here Mr Maly here miss Lon
004here Mr speak here thank you all board members should have received the minutes from the Board of Education meeting dated February 10th was there any discussion Corrections or questions seeing none do I have a motion to accept those minutes yes Madam chair I move to approve the minutes from the Board of Education meeting held on February 10th 2025 do we have a second I second all those in favor I I opposed abstentions [Music] abstain motion carries our report tonight from um student council Representatives um there was no reports from John Trumble so for Judson students and staff have enjoyed the special dress up days and morning sale to fundraise to benefit the families and kids at St Jude Hospital there is one there's about one week left of fundraising on Sunday March 2nd pul and
005jutson fifth grade chorus band and Orchestra members will be performing live on the 46th annual Tim drisol St Jude Children's Research Hospital ton this can be viewed in person at torington Middle School on the local cable 5 Channel as well as live streamed on the St Jude website the performances time start at 10:15 a.m. spring conferences will be held on Wednesday March 5th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and on Thursday March 6th from 1:45 to 3:30 p.m. if your child's teacher feels or needs to be a conference the teacher will reach out directly to the families if a family does not receive direct communication but would like to have a conference families can contact the child's teacher and schedule conference time teachers also had their mid-year conference with the principal to talk about teaching
006learning data and growth the third and final round ofies begins Friday March 14th and on Monday March 3rd Judson will celebrate read Across America where community members will come read to each of the classes as special guests for po Elementry School um pul will also celebrate read Across America this year with a wild about reading theme the main event will take place on March 3rd first students first students will go on a scavenger hunt and search for good books in their classroom libraries after that students will get to enjoy their books and participate in a reading Marathon um they will also have a special re wildout reading Spirit Week in addition um the PTO will be decorating the library with wildout reading theme for the book fair that week for Swift middle school students on
007the Swift School climate committee recently met for the second phase of their work which is using School climate data to develop meaningful ideas on how to create a more positive and supportive environment the focus of this discussion with special guest Dr V villain NOA was on ways to help everyone feel safe supported by peers welcomed at school and less stressed the committee is excited to see their efforts come to life at the middle school the after school cooking club has recently started offering students the chance to sign up for a 5we session filled with Hands-On culinary activities directed by the family consumer science teacher and the nutrition education coordinator students will be able to explore key topics such as nutrition Agriculture and culinary techniques for Watertown High School um Club updates the Watertown High School
008interact Club successfully raised $419 and collected a truckload of food for the Watertown Food Bank their efforts were supported by the generosity of Leon's customers and they extend their gratitude to the market for hosting the community Initiative for um the school counseling department high school counselors will host a junior coffee with counselors for all 11th grade parents and Guardians on Friday March 14th at 8:00 a.m. in the lecture hall they will discuss the post-secondary process on March 3rd whhs school counselors will visit Swift to meet with the current eighth graders to support them as they make their course requests for 9th grade um the week of March 10th school counselors will meet with all students in grades 9 to 11 to review their course selections for the 2025 2026 school year for athletic updates we
009will like to con congratulate the Watertown High School swim team for remaining undefeated throughout the regular season with a record of 70 and one um they will compete for a league title at the upcoming NV championships at a cheer competition held on Saturday February 8th at Danbury High School Waterton High School made a significant stride with the routine resulting in a 10-point score increase an impressive achievement in a sport where even tenth of a point can make a difference their strong performance earned them third place at the co-ed division um additionally whhs sophomore Niger Ellis showcased his talent by placing second in the top top gun tumbling individual division out of 12 competitors um also spring Sports registration is now open and for upcoming events ice hockey senior night is Wednesday February 6th at 7:30
010at Taff school on March 1st boys basketball state tournament starts girls basketball state tournament starts and cheerleading state championship occurs um also nvl diving Championship is Wednesday March 5th at Watertown and nvl swim Championship is Friday March 7th at JFK pool thank you to item G superintendent's recommendations and report all right good evening everyone um so we have a busy week ahead of us um tonight actually our poke uh family was doing their Winter Wonderland celebration and we had families comeing to learn about literacy mathematics social emotional learning um and I believe they had some stations as they moveed through tonight and so that was very exciting uh we have Bingo night coming up at the Watertown High School I believe Thursday and so we're hoping um there's going to be lots of prizes we're
011hoping lots of families will come on out to support supp that um we have a special meeting on Wednesday we have cast visitors coming to the Watertown High School where um they will be hosting kind of a uh interview session as they are finalist for the cast award and so I think uh Mr malag Goody and Miss hosking who will be joining us from the board uh to talk about the good work that's happening um and fingers crossed that we win and then this coming Wednesday night we also have The Invention Convention judging at Judson uh and then quickly into a capital committee to talk more about r and HVAC and all that kind of stuff um and tomorrow night we have the Leo induction at Swift so a busy week um lots of great
012work coming to kind of a culminating end um to celebrate so wonderful to see it all happening thank you H public participation in accordance with policy 9050 public participants must State their name and address for the record and limit statements to 3 minutes the board encourages speakers not to Express defamatory comments about Watertown Board of Education Personnel or any other person associated with the Watertown public school system is there anybody in um the audience tonight that would like to speak seeing none back to Dr V superintendent's proposed budget presentation for the fiscal year 2025 2026 right good evening everyone and um I am very excited to present tonight's FY 26 superintendent's proposed budget for your review um good night thank you and I love this picture always try to start out with our graduates from
013the year previous um because these are our students who've been with us for 13 plus years and they are uh graduated on to bigger and better things and it's always exciting to see them on that wonderful last day of school um thank you to all of our Board of Education members to all of our town council members for moving through this process with us each year um it's important that we're all not only a part of the process but also our um comments and advisement are all taken into consideration as a budget is prepared by a school district also you see all of our administrators sitting in the audience this evening so thank you to everybody from the administrative team for being here on not a freezing cold night but it's dark out there so
014I appreciate that you're here this evening um and you do see that there are some new names up there as part of our administrative team so welcome to those of you who are in interim positions um and thank you for the good work that you've been doing all throughout this year as always it's wonderful to start with our vision of a graduate because that is all that we are um achieving to do here in the school district it is our North Star um and I'm also proud to say that we are currently in the midst of updating our vision of a graduate as we now enter the world of AI and more into the 21st century and so we're looking at um how our characteristics and skills and our knowledge expectations are slightly tweaking as
015we um kind of face this new frontier ahead of us um but as always every child every classroom every day is our motto here um and it's very important that we have alignment Innovation and authenticity and all that we do and as always all of our fiscal resources as well as anything that we attempt to do here in the district has to align to our Board of Education goals we have four overarching goals and of course those goals line into operational Focus areas where then your superintendent priorities are listed um these are goals that take more than a year to achieve if anything that multi-year goals um and I'm proud to say that with every budget that we've presented we've been able to make a step towards each one of these four goals our return
016on investment a business term but one that is very important for a school district every year we must make progress and we must move forward um these are our students these are the students that we work so hard for and these are the students that we wake up early for and want to make sure that they are having the best experience in our school district even with our very significant reduction before moving into the referendum last year we worked very hard this year to take one step at a time we continue to do so to keep progressing forward because um becoming stagnant or standing still is just not possibility for us um and we're going to do everything we possibly can to move forward um I just wanted to highlight some of the good work
017so in technology we continue to enhance cyber security infrastructure um You probably all heard we had a little blip this year um and with that our technology team has really been trying to fortify our infrastructure so that we can um have even more of a robust kind of fencing to stop those kind of Bad actors from trying to get into our school system in facilities and security although this is part of our Capital Improvement We have replaced a roof at the Watertown High School it looks beautiful if you actually stand on the outside and look up at the metal paneling it looks very professional it almost looks like a corporate building um we've also replaced almost all of the roof at uh John Trumble that project there once the weather starts to warm up a
018little bit more they'll be able to put the finishing touches on that and I know that we have finished installing that security window film on all of our windows um it's basically that shatterproof kind of film if something goes into the windshield um in curriculum we also implemented this year the sixth to eth grade level reading program which is a continuation of our K5 amplifier program that was a big lift and I'm just so excited that our teachers are kind of running with it um it's a lot to learn but they are giving it a go we also have students now enrolled for the first time this year in the College and Career accelerator program through our partnership with Ed advance and so we have a little cohort of students who are getting that manufacturing
019um work experience and in Food Service not only do you see new signage and equipment in some of our cafeterias but we have also been able to provide about $40,000 worth of food assistance to just a band of families who just didn't quite make that threshold for that Federal food assistance um and we're very proud to be able to support our families in that way and this is certainly not an exhaustive list this is just some highlights from this year um and then special education there has been huge strides so not only did we expand the program at the Watertown um alternative Academy located over at the Seaman building we also expanded the Watertown transition Academy to not only a larger space but to have more students come back from out placements we've also expanded
020programs at Judson and in the preschool with our New Horizons and um we're going to that 4-day preschool and then we have visible shifts in decreasing Reliance on outside external providers and that's good work that's a good work to kind of notice of our special education department and we do have students returning to district from out so it's a wonderful feeling to have um this is perhaps again as you know from last year's budget cycle this is where all of our fiscal resources not all of them but a good majority of them were really being uh focused in and prioritized so you can see that that was the uh continua of special education programs that we had in our school district and that was 3 to four years in the building and now in in
021the black box to the right of it you see it expanding even more and so that continue will be updated at the end of this year to expand um and it will continue to not only grow but also become more robust because we can't grow too fast and then grow too big where we can't handle it each one of those programs has to also be well staffed with high quality people and it has to be a good program um so that is definitely where we see success this year of our fiscal resources being directly shown to our public and our students and families and I have to say we have some legislative advocacy paying off for us for the Watertown Public Schools um not only has the good work of our Board of Education and
022all the letters or all the conversations that you've had with Senators um paid off but next year we are anticipating an increase in education cost sharing by just about a quar million dollars about $245,000 in ECS funding will be coming direct to the town of Watertown um to be put towards the board of education budget the one of the new updates and clauses for ECS funding now is that we have to demonstrate as a district that those funds are being used for chronic absenteeism for student performance and achievement and also for um I believe special programming it can't just be sent to the town and used for anything it has to be tied to something of that sort but that is ECS funding that we have been fighting for that chart on on the left
023is that Plateau that we've had for 30 years of that same amount of ECS funding that has not moved and finally in this proposed Governor's budget in the 26 and 27 biennium we should be seeing that increase in addition this year was a little tricky for excess cost grant funding um because we were supposed to be on a 76% tier of reimbursement and we only received about 6 to 69% of that and so that was quite a hard trip this year but we're living through it next year we do anticipate with all of the advocacy that's been going on um and just recently I I made a statement to the CT mirror just about how important this funding is we should be seeing our excess cost Grant fully funded or at least going back to
024a closer number of those tiers for next year and that will help next year's budget and so when you see the percentage that I'm going to be presenting tonight part of that is also addressing the fact that we should be seeing a little increase in some of the grant funding coming from the state next year so our WPS FY 26 budget here we are um I am proposing as a superintendent um 9,727 265 for next year which is an increase of 7.99% now I know that looks like a very large increase we are still under $60 million but we are coming off a year this year where we were cut down to a 2.94% increase after asking for just under 4% I also wanted to demonstrate that across our region and our durg we are
025not too Off the Mark you can see that our like partners are all ranging between 4.87% to asks of up to 2 10.65% so we are somewhere in that range um the average proposed budget increase out of these listed here is about a 6.86% increase everybody including our Dirk Partners including our other Dirk Partners from a right down through K is experiencing a phenomenon in special education cost and so sustainability is definitely a uh conversation for every single School District in the state of Connecticut and so it's not um it's not I supposed a surprise to see that many of us are coming in a little bit higher and a little bit more elevated this year I thought this was important though because I didn't want anybody to think that we were completely out of
026bounds on the request Okay so so this is a small chart but it's an important one every year I provide you a py graph that shows where our largest expenditures are and typically because we are in the business of uh humans and educating people our largest budget budget expenditures are in salaries and benefits just like it was last year we are once again largest in salary and benefits at 76.8% of our total overall budget how however I had it parsed out a little bit this year to demonstrate because sustainability is a really big um theme right now we have to address the legislative shifts that need to happen in order for school districts to become sustainable in our budgeting because we want to make sure that we can educate all of our students so when
027you look at it I've asked Miss kashuba to parse out our special education salaries as well as our special education Transportation so we can see where those kind of differences are so when you just look at salaries and benefits for everybody we are again at 76.8% the largest part of our PI if however you take just special education costs and remove everything else overall our school district spends 26.34% just on special education related costs that is a good chunk of um that pie then when you take that away that would mean then really that general education salaries and benefits only comes to about a 60. 38% overall of the total budget and so in your packet um that's printed you don't have quite the animation that I'm I'm showing here tonight um but I'm trying
028to just parse it out so that the IE can see it in chunks as I've asked Miss kashua to carve out then once you go from there salaries and benefits for general education come in at about 6.38% % our total special education expenditures come in at about 26.34% Transportation without special education included is about 3.77% or if you want to do Transportation together as a bulk it's about 5.32% and then everything else heating lighting facilities maintenance that's just about 4% and then everything else for curriculum technology and all of that it's just about 5% so you can see that a good portion of our pie yes it's salaries and benefits but it's a good portion to our special education funding we are very proud of that um and I don't say this to uh create
029a part between a general education and special education uh group that is not it we are very proud to be able to put this towards our programs but at the same time very realistically and pragmatically we have to work with those legislative Partners to see funding change so that we can become sustainable as a school district and I think almost every district is having this conversation across the state um and so that's why it's really important that our continue to work at that legislative level um continues on so um I love to show this because it's always a little bit of shock and a but how do we actually get to a percentage increase each year there's actually three phases and I'm I'm making it sound very simple that there's only three phases but the
030very beginning ultimately um if we took everything flat and the only thing that we increased was contractual increases that means just our six bargaining units and we just put in their kind of salary increase for the year we would have an increase of 3.78% for the whole year that means nothing else is touched no increase on Transportation no increase on special education nothing it would just be 3.78% however in the world that we live in that is not how that functions so then we also take into consideration all of our vendor contracts so whether we have out tuition transportation copers and phones which you're going to hear a little bit about tonight um whether we have technology vendors utility increases eversource UI gas whatever it may be um all of the building and Department requests
031that you've been hearing since December that our building administrators would like to have in their building so that they can give this robust experience to our students we have to look at our insurance Market our our anticipated federal and state funding all of that when we put that all in there it's like a 15.6% increase and then Marie and I look at each other and we say there's no way we can say that we're going to ask for a 15% increase and we say how do we bring this number down and so just mathematically for every per we come down we're coming down about $590,000 and so from 15.6 quite a bit of money from 15.6% we start to drop down and we Whittle down and so in phase two using the advisement of our
032business manager and um just knowledge and information gathering we have to acknowledge that there has to be reductions in places and not everybody gets what they ask for um we prioritize we can delay we can eliminate we can uh temporarily hold we can freeze things we can swap we can uh change up plans but we do have to acknowledge some of the fixed volatile cost fixed and volatile although contradictory we have to have insurance but if it's volatile increases our high we have to have utilities it's a fixed need but if increases are high there's some volatility there so by acknowledging this year we did have um a catastrophic health insurance year with 20 high cost claimants that were um pushing our insurance experience and so this year you will see that we are going
033to change health insurance carriers from our current self-insured Signa to uh most likely the state partnership plan which is the fully insured so that we can see a little bit of it's not savings but we're trying to mitigate the increase if we had stayed with who we are with it would have been a 19% increase and by the move we're seeing about a 10 to 11% increase which is mitigating that cost for utilities as I've shared in the past ever source is coming in with a 24% increase in electricity and over 40% for gas um which is astounding to me um and as well in special education Transportation there's some volatility as as well even though you're seeing some um neutrality in the budget lines depending on what our consortia can do for us each
034year and depending on how much Medical Transport we have um those are specialty transport with wheelchair or oxygenated uh transportation that can also be volatile for that so knowing all that and then kind of whittling down all the requests uh we were able to bring it down to about 88.9% and then we wanted to take it a little bit further but this is where we take it just as far to make sure that we have our academic priorities in place so that we're not decimating the experience and that's where we were able to take it to keeping just the absolutely necessary items in the budget and to restore some of the positions that have been cut over the years and we brought it down to a 7.99% for that final increase in your larger budget
035packets which will soon be online after this meeting tonight you can see the four-year history of what the kind of attrition of personnel positions that have either been eliminated altogether or just not filled and we are over 26 positions if not more and so at some point you run out of puzzle pieces to be able to staff some of your things and you have to start to restore those positions so again even though delaying is a tactic or tightening the belt for a little while is a tactic they can only be temporary tactics before you have to address it and start to restore so in this year's budget presentation you will see a lot of requests for those Personnel pieces to come back um so what are we essentially investing in this year with our
0367.99% increase we are investing in simply class sizes I hear it everywhere it's exper it's very important and the classroom experience is better when you have a proper class size when it gets unwieldy and there's too many students in one class it's hard um and it's detrimental math is also a focus area we want to see student achievement and performance increased in our mathematics reading as well but we have a real focus in on math and so personnel there is going to be important highquality faculty to offer students support via intervention to offer student choice and more course selection at Watertown High School um as our Flagship school we want to make sure that we can offer that program of studies and as you heard also um some of our schools like P we have
037almost over 30 languages and dialects being spoken by some of our students and our families in that uh neighborhood and so we need MLL support and Technology Ever Changing technology we need to make sure that we have new and updated equipment not all the time but cycling through and phasing in so those are the four priority pieces that we're putting that 7.99% towards super tiny but class sizes do matter and you can see that this chart hasn't really changed very much from this year we're trying to keep class sizes in kindergarten around that 17 17 students a class and we're trying to keep those Elementary grades under 22 or just about 22 students when you get a little bit older you go go into the 23 24 range um but we're trying to keep those
038class size as manageable and I've heard that from The Faculty as well loud and clear our 10-year projection on School enrollment uh really kind of abs and flows but we're remaining fairly steady with just slight increases in the next 10 years so we're not looking at any in you know precipitous drops or anything of that nature our optimal learning environments often times when they talk about class sizes out in the public is well you know when I went to school we had 35 kids in a class and we were just fine when you think about how learning is set up in this this day and age it's very difficult to have 35 students in a classroom because we have learning spaces that look different we don't have desks and rows any longer um the factory
039model certainly isn't going to do it and so it's really important that class sizes are taken into consideration um and again here's that second priority around C seeing that student performance and achievement increase but also to do that via the personnel and the high quality people we want working with our students so in curriculum and instruction we are looking for and this is a teacher contracted position a K12 curriculum tosa specializing in instruction and math specifically which then would help and oversee all of the interventionist that we would like to have in every single one of our schools in special education we are looking to and this is kind of the half world have those MLL teachers general education and special education work out in pul and Swift where we're seeing that uptick in students
040with different languages and in special education we're looking to expand by one special education administrator so that we can situate them right into a building and then we have expansion of programs and so two special education teachers would be expanding there at the high school again that program of studies is really important they asked for um a few more positions but right now we've penciled in the CTE teacher we have over 250 requests for CTE courses and we or maybe I got this backwards maybe we actually deny 250 students who request CTE courses because we don't have enough sections to put them into um so we do need that expansion of that CTE teacher we do need that expansion of that math teacher if we are going to be having math every single day um
041and we do need that expansion of that science teacher which was Whitted away years ago that we would love to see restored and again with technology um we're looking to in a phase you can see you're one four we need those 50 teacher computers that are now starting to uh phase out because they're just so old we need a constant cycle of Chrome books with impact resistant covers just because our students are cycling through them we have five levels of Chrome Chromebooks of different ages and we need to get rid of those oldest the oldest versions um the new line smart panels very important our smartboards are I would say at this point Antiquated and we don't even have the parts anymore to actually get them to run again so those new line smart panels
042are really important um because they the teachers use them every day for everything um LED lighting for the whs auditorium and the laser projector that would be wonderful and then there's a part of my would like to give an audio visual experience as well but we're just not quite there yet but we would love to see that happen um and then of course all of our existing Network costs just to make sure that we have that cyber security security and that 10 gig Network moving up to uh the speeds that we want it to be we experienced a bit of a hardship this year in technology uh we have some fits and starts and so we really need to take a look at that and make sure that we're we're giving it the um the
043love that it needs again I talked a little bit about this even though um I'm telling you what the Investments are going to be this year there are just some pragmatic realities uh we had some significant and unavoidable budget drivers that are driving next year's increases health benefits being the one um so we do see quite an uptick there and so we have absorbed what that increase would be um in special education there's always the uh possibility of unanticipated students coming in and again the um ex's cost Grant was tricky this year but we anticipated that that will be better next year um facilities those numbers are pretty jarring the 24% increase in the 40% U increase on gas when you have as many school buildings that we have and as much square footage as
044Mr valard covers with his team it's a lot of electricity and it's a lot of gas um and so just economy of scale it's it's lots of increase um as well as for contracts we're very proud to be able to have um competitive contract for our employees and a high quality work environment for our people um but we do have Connecticut's minimum wage increasing each six months or each year something like that um and so we have been trying to get our contracts up to a point where we're at least ahead of it so that we're not falling below we want to make sure that we're following all Department of Labor uh policies and requirements so those were driving our increases a little bit this year our commitments and goals always and this is my
045personal commitment always it remains unchanged the focus is on the students so anything we spend our fiscal resources on anything we spend our time on needs to be to keep our instructional core sacred um we have to also um and this is my commitment to you to realistically acknowledge the state of the district always even if it's an ugly picture I will tell you where we are um we also need to prioritize even though i' love to do everything all at once um doing things one or two or three at a time is is what we can do and making sure that we can reliably steer The District in a balanced and consistent manner so we don't have big pitches and and dips um and then always formulating a plan for the future so again
046even though that's always an annual budget presentation I always try to situate it within a 3 to 5e Outlook because if we're just working within the year I mean it's like just dropping off the face of the year at the end kind of always have to see a couple years out in advance and then always purposefully creating um an annual building block so that each year we're never stagnant we're making one piece and one Progressive step forward um so again there's that number we uh I'm recommending 59 mil 727-2696 have any questions that you would like to go deeper into any of the line items Miss kashuba and I can give you more detail on any of those um and I'll try to prepare that all before the following meeting so that you have time
047to go through all as Dr V said I know we have our binders to go through but does anybody have question questions or comments this evening just over the presentation we just saw the chair would there be a way to kind of cut out or showcase how much unfunded mandates are costing us in the budget just as a talking point as well I think it'd be important to have absolutely yep have another question through the chair are we able to also get I know in Prior years we' gotten some kind of nice graphics and updates on not that test scores are the end all but it's always nice especially going to the public to kind of have some metrics to support some of the positions and interventionalists and I know we just had may your
048assessments any we can get some yep I think we have some nice growth um growth CH yep I'm getting a head knot over there okay perfect so metrics to support and impact or highlight where where you know prior budget Investments have the shown results both yep anyone else moving on to agenda item J items of discussion have to activ perfect so um these two are for your information um we are out to bid uh well not quite yet by the end of this week we will be putting an RFP out for all of the copers in our school district and all of the phones um so again we have uh five buildings and then we have our special programs over at Seaman um it's a big contract a coffee company and a phone company would
049love to have us as their uh customer and so we are looking for the best possible vendor to pick us up um I do think our experience has been okay I Look to Mindy because she works with us at central office um I think it it can always be better um so I think this is a wonderful opportunity to kind of Zone in on on some of the proposals we see and see who can give us what we need so that's exciting um so that's really just for one and two and you have a copy of both of those rfps in your packet and then the third one I will actually turn it over to miss gck um for next year's calendar abolutely so you should have um both a draft of the calendar and
050um on the back it should have the asso of important for um families and staff to be aware of and then you should also have a copy of the district um calendar narrative which includes some snapshots of the survey data this year um we sent the survey data as we do every year to all of our bargaining units across kind of stakeholder groups we had 239 staff respond um which was a fantastic resp sponsor rate we also sent it out this year to our pool of substitutes so anyone who has signed up and is substitute um teaching in our district again across all bargaining units um we had a much smaller response tool we got seven responses but it was nice to be able to hear at least a little bit of a voice um
051and provide them the opportunity to give us some feedback on our calendar as well um that was the first time that we had done that I think we also had a substitute we sent in some notes so correct yes we did we did review those as well um so there were some kind of consistent themes that came out both in the graphs that are included but then also just kind of in their anecdotal feedback um that they could provide the themes of which were just really hoping for alignment with our calendar and other local districts calendars especially for our staff who either has children or grandchildren that they are caring for and the need to kind of keep those calendars consistent um so one of the things that we did and I I think Miss
052Davidson for this because isue um spearheaded getting calendars from every single District um both in our dur um in the kind of surrounding area and then any District that staff said that they reside in if they have um children that they care for um so any calendar that was published we reviewed it to kind of try to align with the majority of them um because we know that that presents a difficulty when we have misalignment there um we also wanted to continue to honor the professional learning day so that we can continue the hard work um that we're doing doing there both with curriculum um development but then also kind of the ongoing professional development that we provide um and then the other kind of consistent theme was a difficulty with scheduling conferences so if
053you live and work in town um because the times overlapped but we did discuss kind of an internal way to stagger those times so that we can provide some relief there um just one thing to point out um as you're looking through the charts um there was a little bit of a contradictory answer with one of the questions so 58% of our staff wanted the first day of um return to work to be a Monday um but then in a later question we did kind of a would you rather scenario with relation to our winter break um and 42% were willing to return earlier in August and have a longer winter break so it was a little bit of a you know kind of Catch 22 situation there um however ultimately when we reviewed other
054District's calendars um to keep us in line with kind of when their winter breaks were going to be and also to ensure that that um when we're bringing staff back some of our staff work two or even five days um more in the summer so our school counselors some of our special education staff members return a little bit earlier and to make sure that they weren't coming into our buildings you know too close to kind of the middle of August when our custodial and maintenance staff is still working hard to get our buildings wrapped up um and also when it's it's at the height of the heat um we decided to keep with the Monday return to school so um next year's calendar does very much kind of mirror the calendar that that we lived
055with this year um which had very positive um staff feedback about it um and I'm happy to answer any questions if there is anything specifically wondering um through the chair have you always done a poll like this or is this the first time you've done something always have done one for at least the last four or five years okay thank you now this is well done thank you anyone else else questions or comments okay seeing none we'll move on to K miss kashuba our monthly financial report good evening everyone so uh yet again I feel like I just gave one and here we are giving another one um you'll find in your binder the uh year-to-date snapshot of the current budget um situation for as of uh January 31st 2025 um last month I believe
056I reported we were in a deficit of about $925,000 we are now in a deficit of about $1.2 million um as of January 31st uh the major driving cost is special ed um expenses of course this coming month we will be receiving um excess cost grants I'll be reporting on that next month what the offset is on that but you do need to remember that we we still need to address the catastrophic um insurance claims that we're having so next month will be a big reporting month for me because I'll be giving you um plenty of information on both um I will let you know that uh with our freeze this year um and what I'm calling a deep freeze right now or a hard freeze um we have been able to mitigate a good
057portion of the amount of the insurance cost but um there's no doubt in my mind and I will say it publicly we will need to go for an appropriation um and Dr V and I are in conversations all the time about that I spent a good deal of this month with my um purchasing agent and my accounts payable uh Team reviewing the POS again um I'd like to say that we found money but we've gotten so good at starting to really you know do this annually that you know we're not finding as much which is a good thing which means we're not over encumbering or under encumbering uh but in terms of facilities we did need to increase some of the um encumbrances due to our uh utilities are coming in higher than even what
058I anticipated at the beginning of the year um but just so that you're aware I mean this is this is not something that I only look at once a month when I'm about to do this report we are looking at our encumbrances our POS our invoices looking at the contracts that are coming in it it's a it's a daily Daily Item not to mention that every requisition that comes in from our um all of our members um is looked at by me literally every single requisition is looked at me to see if if it's something we can honor or or reject for obvious reasons so um we're working hard we will do our best to bring this in and we do still have grants that are being applied as we move forward and I'll continue
059to report the snapshot every month and I hope to have some good news at some point for you all if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them yeah to the chair of the special ed cost are they a result of of new students coming in or just increases in increases General increases um we also had some unanticipated students yeah yes so anyone else you okay I am okay thank you for asking thank you Miss Kupa you're welcome moving on to item L um Miss Vera any Communications that were received no Communications thank you committee reports curriculum and instruction committee that's me no report this evening policy and labor Mr me goody no report at this time the budget and finance boy Mr galdas I no report mam chair facilities uh no report and
060um Miss palumba is not here tonight so there's no report from governance and Community engagement and item n report from the board chair there's no report um this evening as well so we move on to O action items um adoption of items to be approved by consent number one consideration of approval of the proposed 2025 2026 school calendar or school year calendar is presented tonight for board approval it is REM recommended that the board approve of the proposed 2025 2026 School calendar for Watertown Public Schools do I have a motion uh yes Madam chair I move to approve the 20 2025 2026 School your calendar for Watertown Public Schools thank you Mr kavalis we have a second second all those in favor I opposed abstentions motion carries our second um item for consideration is to
061approve um an out ofate field trip to Springfield Massachusetts Miss Crystal Bears is a teacher at Swift Middle School requests an outof State field trip to Springfield Massachusetts from April 2nd through April 5th 2025 for approximately 10 Watertown High School students students will participate in the first robot otics competition along with teams from New England it is recommended that the board approve of this field trip in to Springfield Massachusetts from April 2nd through April 5th 2025 for approximately 10 Watertown High School students to participate in the first robotics competition with teams from New England do I have a motion Madam chair I move to approve this out of state Feld trip to sprayfield Massachusetts from April 2nd to April 15th 2025 for approximately 10 mtown high school students to participate in the first robotics competition
062with teams from New England thank you Mr Gardella do I have a second hey second thank you all those in favor I I opposed abstentions motion carries number three consideration of the approval of an out ofate field trip to Houston Texas Miss Crystal Bears a teacher at Swift Middle School requests an outof State field trip to Houston Texas from April 15th through April 20th 2025 for a proximately 12 Watertown High School students this is the world championship event first robotics competition students will participate in robotics along with teams from around the world world it is recommended that the board approve of this out ofate field trip to Houston Texas from April 15th through April 20th 2025 for approximately 12 Watertown High School students to participate in robotics with teams from around the world do I
063have a motion yes Madam chair I move to approve that this aate field trip to Houston Texas from April 15 to April 20th 2025 for approximately 12 uh Watertown High School students to participate in the first repics competition with teams from around the world thank you do we have a second a second thank you all those in favor I opposed abstentions motion carries and finally consideration of the approval of gifts members of the Midstate Association of Realtors in planville Connecticut generously donated more than 200 brand new books to Watertown Public Schools as part of their inaugural books for kids initiative the donated books are estimated to be worth approximately $2,000 it is recommended that the board approve of this generous donation and a letter of appreciation be sent to the donor do I have a
064motion yes Madam chair I move to approve this generous donation and a letter of appreciation be sent to the donor thank you second second all those in favor I opposed abstentions motion carries moving on to item P future agenda items and board members comment any comments any board nope okay then I move on to Q for adjournment the time is 7:53 I was going to say 54 do I have a motion to adjourn yes Madam chair I move to adjourn this Board of Education meeting at 7:53 p.m. thank you do we have a second I second all those in favor I opposed abstentions motion carries thank you