New Haven Board of Education Regular Board Meeting

001I cannot hear anything. Can you hear me? >> We can hear you. Can you hear me now? >> Yes, I can. Okay, great. Thank you for checking on that. and we're unmuted for one line. Okay. Good evening. Welcome to the board of education regular meeting for March 23rd, 2026. Thank you for being present. I call this meeting to order. Let's have the pledge of allegiance. Mr. Wilcox, will you please lead us? Pledge allegiance to the flag of America to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all board members thank you board members thank you for your presence others all thank you for your presence next on the agenda is public partic participation. Welcome to the board of education regular meeting. Regular meetings are a time for the

002board to conduct its business. As a board of education, we are here to set goals, listen to reports of the superintendent, approve budgets, contracts, and personnel appointments, and make policy for the district. The board may hear public participation for up to 60 minutes. Public participation shall be limited to a maximum of three minutes per speaker. One speaker cannot yield their time to another speaker. There will be no responses this evening to any questions or concerns raised. They will be referred to the administration for review. As adults, we serve as positive role models for our students. Please be respectful of people. We ask speakers not to make defamatory comments or use abusive or vulgar language. Dr. White, are we ready for public comments? We are, but at this time there are no raised hands and no

003one signed up to speak. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh we'll close public comment and go to the agenda. First action item is the approval of the board meeting minutes of March 9th, 2026. >> Mr. Chair, I move to approve the board minutes for March 26. Thank you, Dr. Joiner. Second. Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. Any discussion? Seeing none, Dr. Joiner. >> Yes. >> Mr. Wilcox. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bonitez. >> Yes. >> Miss Downer. >> Yes. >> Mr. Waldes. >> Yes. >> Miss Cologne for approval of board minutes. >> Yes. >> Mr. Ellie? >> Yes. Mayor Elker. >> Yes. >> I'm a yes as well. That motion carries. Thank you. Next is the personnel report. Dr. Negrron. >> Good evening, Dr. >> and members of the board. Um there are some retirements that I wish to

004highlight before asking you to approve the personnel report. We do want to recognize Constance Pieranti, instructional math coach, who will retired on June 30th. She has served for 27 years to uh with NHPS um impacting our students, families, and the entire community. I also want to acknowledge the work of Tissol teacher Michael Esposito, who will also retire on June 30th after dedicating 28 years to our district. And last but not least, um, want to acknowledge school psychologist Elana Coverman, also retiring on June 30th, 2026 after serving a total of 26 years. And with that, I ask that you please approve or personnel report. >> Mr. Chair, >> yes. >> I move to approve the superintendent's personnel report. >> Thank you. Is there a second? Mr. Wilcox. Second. That's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Thank

005you for those who have retired. We thank you for your commitment to the district all these years. We will vote. Dr. Joiner, >> yes. Mr. Wilcox, >> yes. >> Dr. Bonitez, >> yes. >> Miss Downer, >> yes. >> Mr. Mr. Ward, >> yes. >> Miss Cologne, >> yes. >> Mr. Ay, >> yes. >> Mayor Eller, >> yes. >> I'm a yes as well. That motion carries. Next, the finance and operations committee. Mr. Wilcox. >> Yes. Before I get started, just checking to see if anybody would like anything moved separately. Hearing and seeing none, I'm going to make the main motion and that is I move that we approve this one abstract, this one memorandum of understanding, this one purchase order, these four contracts, and these three change orders as outlined on our agenda. >> Second.

006>> Thank you. That's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Mr. Wilcox? >> Yes. >> Dr. Joiner, >> yes. >> Dr. Bonitez. >> Yes. >> Miss Downer. >> Yes. >> Mr. Waldez. >> Yes. >> Miss Cologne. >> Yes. >> Mr. Alley. >> Yes. >> Mayor Eller. >> Yes. >> And I'm a yes as well. That motion carries. Next, our students report. Um, hey everyone. Um, so after the council meeting last week, I have gathered some important details. I'll put the bad one out of the way. Um, there has been concerns over some inappropriate symbols at um, Hill at Hill House High School. Um specifically, um the inappropriate symbols were put in on the girl's bathroom, mainly the one on the bottom floor and the top. Uh and the concern was things that shouldn't be

007happening like this and who caused um this incident. Um, what I know so far is that the principal at the time sent um a letter to the parents saying that these things shouldn't be happening, but the students want um to see who actually done this. Maybe it's from like a sports game, maybe it's something else. Um and second and last um we are in the pro process of preparing the midyear um student liaison report that will probably be shown um next board meeting. So, I'm looking forward to that. And >> and then I also have um some three students to introduce. Three sophomores that are um that do want to run for student representative. So, I have um Yolet. She's a sophomore at Hill House. She's They're all three in the back over there. I

008have um Melanie from sophomore school from sound school. I'm so sorry. Also a sophomore. and then Lutz from HSC from HSC. And so they're here today just to like see what a board meeting is about and kind of just see how um all of this runs. So I really appreciate them being here and I hope this is a fun experience. Yeah. >> Great. Thank you very much. Any discussion? >> Yes, Mr. Wilcox. Yeah, I'll just say um that it is awesome to have you all here this evening and I hope that you continue the process exploring your candidacy because uh you have some good colleagues here and we've always had good student reps and so I really appreciate you all taking the time to be here. Thank you very much. >> Also want to thank

009you for being present. um and Miss Cologne, thank you for introducing them and uh bring them here as part of what it is to participate. Um I look forward to uh Miss Downer and also Dr. White as they work on the student election process. Um you are in good hands. Uh for the student report, I look forward to the midyear uh student liaison report that will come in a future board meeting. Um, and as well, uh, I'm grateful to hear about the student leaders, uh, meeting and talking about, uh, school culture and climate and what happens and what can be done to make it a welcoming place for everyone. Um, and, uh, if answers come uh, to the specific questions, uh, I look forward to the students taking a leadership role and how they continue

010to make the place welcoming for everyone. Um, and if answers don't necessarily come, uh, hopefully there'll be enough, um, positive peer pressure to keep the environment what it should be for everyone in NHPS. Um, so thank you very much for those reports. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Negron. Next is our superintendence report. >> Uh, yes. Thank you, Dr. Ybero. I am going to um ask Dr. if he could facilitate our our clicker to make this a little easier. He's going to set up set us up with the presentation. >> And uh and Dr. Negron, I have a request that um as you present or as your team presents that you will go through the whole presentation uh so that the board can get a full picture. Board members, I hope I ask us to hold

011our questions uh to the end as much as we can so that we can receive and intake the full presentation. Um as I know some things are interconnected. Uh so Dr. Negron, if you and your team could move through that would be great. >> Thank you. And and before I begin, I do want to acknowledge a very small team that was instrumental um in putting together um what we're bringing forth um to you today. So I do want to take a moment to thank uh Michelle Bonano, our supervisor of magnet and grants program. I want to thank Juanita Masik, our central office business director. I want to thank John Nuan, our supervisor of research assessment and evaluation. And last but not least, I want to thank um Tiffany Jackson or executive director of pupil services

012special education. So today I am here joined by our CFO Ail Carnandez um to share with you uh my proposed operating budget for fiscal year 27. It's great to know that my technology is working. Um, and for the public, just bear with me. We have a lot of information um to go through today and we want to take our our time to continue to make sure that we're doing um our due diligence in being clear um about what we are presenting to you today. So, as we present the fiscal year 2027 operating budget proposal, we stand at a defining moment for New Haven Public Schools. This proposal is not merely a request for funding. It is a formal testament to the resilience of our students and the efficacy of our strategic investments. As I have

013outlined for you, board of education members, in the new and improved draft budget book that I share with you tonight, our collective efforts have yield significant gains in teaching, learning, and school culture, evidenced by steady rise in student achievement across our inim assessment measures. We are seeing remarkable progress in foundational skills among our kindergarteners, particularly in literacy, language, and numeracy development in grades 3 through 10. The data confirms that our instructional strategies are working. Over 50% of our students reach a 100% of their typical growth targets in reading while over 30% achieve a remarkable 150% growth as evident by last year's Smarter Balance assessment results. or students average percentage of growth target achieve the smarter balance assessment grew by 3.5 percentage points reaching 54.7% last year in comparison to the 51.2% in the year prior.

014In mathematics, we have focused uh intently on dismantling the barriers of math anxiety to strengthening or tier one instruction and targeted to interventions. These efforts resulted in a 2.9 percentage point increase in proficiency last year. Beyond specific subject mastery, our systemic improvements are reflected in the secondary levels rising success. We proudly reported that our graduation rate has increased by 7 percentage points from 72.5 in 2324 to 79.5% in 2425. a clear indicator that our support systems are steering more students towards the finish line. This is bolstered by a 6.3 increase in ninth grade on track rates, ensuring our high schoolers build the necessary foundation for success from their very first year as freshmen. We are ensuring that all our graduates leave our halls with a concrete post secondary plan. I want to remind you that

015last year our graduates pursue diverse and ambitious paths. In higher education, 46.4 Four of our students enroll in four-year colleges and 26.1% enroll in two-year colleges. As it relates to vocational and specialized training, 8.5% move to trades or vte programs while 3.2% pursue certifications at two-year institutions. And in workforce and service, 5.9 joined the workforce directly after graduating last year and 2.2% went directly to serve in the military. I also want to remind you that we have expanded our six career pathways. bioscience, business, culinary, education, health care, and manufacturing. And that these programs just last year alone led to 158 industry certified um industry certificates. By prioritizing our strategy of connectess and belongingness, we're also successfully reducing chronic abs absenteeism. And you may recall that we celebrated the fact that we were able to reduce

016that percentage by 5.4 percentage points. or school climate. Uh survey reflects um the shift showing an increase in favorable responses from students and families who feel a renewed sense of partnership with our schools. And pretty soon uh we are going to have our um third party vendor give us the results for culture and climate uh results. I will hear that this coming Friday and then I will bring that that data um to this to you so that you can also see how we are doing this year. But I wanted to lift that to remind the public that we built the plan together. We are committing to our mission to empower every student to thrive in a safe, inclusive and supportive environment. and that we're very clear about our vision, that we want to make sure

017that we are inspiring and empowering and equipping every single one of our students and that we are being guided by our core values. It doesn't matter what happens out there in our state um political climate or state climate or federal climate. We are staying the course with the path to excellence that we build together with the targets that we are setting out to achieve uh being driven by our core values that we share so that we can get there in 2029. I also want to remind you that we built a timeline, a very clear timeline on how we were going to build this budget and bring it to you and to the community. I I want to remind folks that this process started in late actually late October in November when we engage our entire

018community in a thought exchange survey to to to let us know what was important, what we should be protecting. I gave you the results of that survey. We also laid out and did a process overview with all of our school administrators and our leaders back in early November. Our leaders then worked through our own through their own school budgets. Um in December, we engaged in those budget conversations. uh the CFO and I and members of cabinet and the executive team join me to go through all of these community budget conversations to engage the community, hear their questions, provide answers in the moment. So reminding you that that process took place in late January and early February and that we have engaged in ongoing conversations in FNO to talk about our budget. And here we are

019today to make the formal presentation over fiscal year 27 budget requests and that from here we are not done. We will then engage in a a board of alders budget hearing that's already scheduled for the end of April and then we are going to continue to hear what's going to happen at the state level hoping that that's going to help us so that hopefully in June you as a board with all of those pieces better known can approve this budget. I also want to remind you and the public that we are keeping the statements that we have made before you. We said that this budget development process will be guided by one central question and one goal and that was to respond to the voices that said they wanted more transparency. That is why since

020November we have been speaking about the budget. We have been open about the budget how we were going to tackle the development process. We are being guided by transparency that is being informed not by one voice, two voices, but by all the voices or diverse stakeholder perspectives because we ultimately want to achieve equity across all of our schools. So, I wanted to remind people about that goal, that we're staying committed with that goal. And as I mentioned, I'm very happy to share with you today, we have developed a new and improved budget book. The budget book that I gave you today for members, uh that budget book includes new and improved information. It includes a further explanation of what we're going to present to you today in the slide deck. It will explain and go

021into uh depth around our operating budget requests and the drivers. The operating budget by function, the major grants budget by function along with the school budget section in the central service budget section and a glossery to help you navigate the technical terms. I want to add for the public and for the paper that I see here in the room, the draft of that budget book will be made available to the entire public electronically after tonight. After I get a chance to present to my board, the people that I answer to and feel their questions, we will take that on tonight. And our plan is to make this budget book draft. I want to highlight it is a draft. That is what a budget book does. It is a moment in time that will be linked

022to the page that through this budget process we have made available to the public to be transparent and put everything up there in one place for the budget to see. We're not hiding anything. We're being an open book. As I told you last year, I am keeping my word because as a superintendent, from the moment you hire me and the public that was part of the hiring process, I told you that I pride myself 30 years in the business by my integrity. And I'm not going shying away from my integrity. So today I hope that you will indulge me in this long presentation. Next I want to share with you what it is that we are prioritizing in this budget. You heard me at the beginning share the data that you've heard me share before

023about the wins that we've had as a district where we are celebrating because of the amazing work that our teachers are doing that our administrators are doing that our students are doing that our parents are doing that all of us are doing as a collective. You heard me share the celebrations. To continue that upward trajectory, we must protect the investments that made all of those successes possible. We must sustain the current level of full-time employees to ensure that every student has access to highquality core instruction and the interventions and the enrichment services that they require. We must protect the dedicated personnel whose staffs or attendance teams and supporter families in overcoming barriers to education. This budget safeguards our integrated instructional models that we have created and that we continue to define and deepen and expand

024to support our special education students and our multilingual learners. protecting the arts, protecting athletics, and protecting the professional learning opportunities that keep our educators at the forefront of the field. For too long, for way too long, this district has been asked to do more with less. We continue to do it because that's who we are as the New Haven public schools. That is the pedigree of our teachers, our educators, our parents, and our students. But I want to remind you again and say it again. This district has been asked to do more with less. Today, we ask for the resources necessary to do what is right. And on behalf of the students of the New Haven public schools who deserve an education that is both high quality and stable, I urge you to support the

025fiscal year 27 budget. And with that, I am now going to turn it over to my CFO to unpack for us the budget key drivers behind the requests that we are making before you tonight. Thank you Dr. Negron and and good evening to the members of the board and and the audience uh not only here but also watching us online. Um so yes, as Dr. Negron mentioned, it's it's quite a long presentation. We'll make it as as easily digestible as possible and and I I'll go as quick as I can, but not too quick that then you won't be able to capture the information. So, uh, bear with me for the next, uh, 125 slides. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. I only got like 20 one more slides or so. Um,

026but let's start with the budget key drivers, right? And and this is just a very general u high level uh just like just to start with this foundation. uh the conversation after this slide will uh I will go a little deeper into some of these and then we'll also deviate from from the key drivers and also speak about some other areas that are of interest to the public as we've gone through all these months you know speaking to the community and and to the different stakeholders. Um you know we we now understand you know some of the areas that are of key interest. So we also will touch base on some of those as well. Um, so as opposed to me going through the slide and reading what you can see already, I will just

027speak to some of those. Um, and then we'll just keep moving and then at the end we'll we'll have some opportunities for some questions. So um, so I will just focus on I mean on the first on the first one I will actually take this back. I I actually have to read this one. So on the first one, you know, the personnel cost and the contractual salary increases for teachers and staff. That's obviously a major key driver. I've mentioned this in the past um that the uh the personnel cost is is the biggest expense of of the school district and and it is the same in any organization in not only just uh you know government organization but just in any place nonprofit the private sector always is is it is the biggest cost but

028it also comes with the with the great title of this is also where our biggest asset lies right like our personal is our biggest asset so so it only makes sense that the most important component of our organization is the the one that carries, you know, the the biggest cost, right? Because we have to compensate them accordingly. Um there's also uh a need to maintain competitive wages to attract and and retain uh talent. Um you know, we've talked about that especially the negotiations. That was a huge highlight, right? We want to be able to retain the staff. So it's not only compensate for what I deserve to be compensated, but also do it because it's the only way to retain staff, right? And and and it only makes sense, right? So, so that is a

029key uh um you know budget driver. Uh on the student needs, I'll I'll go a little deeper on this one. Uh when we say growth in special education services, uh it is in order for us to address the continued upward trajectory of special education enrollment and we'll see a slide about the enrollment uh for special education at a later time. um which necessitates a strategic expansion of specialized staff to maintain compliance with mandated services service hours and mental health support. So that is extremely important. It's not just that it sounds good that we want to provide resources for the growth special education. It's also a mandate and it's also our mandate, you know, as a human, as a person that cares for our children. It's it's common sense like we want be we want to

030be able to provide our students with the best service that we could possibly provide beyond just the fact that is a state mandate for us to do so. And then the evolution of multilingual support uh to address its complexity. Um I I want to really expand a little bit on what I what we mean by the evolution of multilingual uh support. Uh that is the that is a transition from managing growth to addressing the increased complexity and depth of need with st with within a stabilized post population requiring more nuance high tier interventions for long long-term English learners. I know this because I was one of them. I did my whole high school in a bilingual program uh not not knowing any English whatsoever at the age of 14 through the age of 16 and

031and that's how I had to you know learn English and be part of society and and here here I am today. So I'm grateful for for the multilingual lingual um um service that I received in high school uh which is when I learned English or at least what you hear coming out of my mouth. I I hope it is still English but uh it is close enough that you understand what I'm saying right uh it's good enough I would say um so then and then we have the operational cost right and we've talked about these you know quite a bit these are the ones that are more visible for people uh these are the transportation and fuel increases uh the facility maintenance increases and and that conversation has been uh a conversation that this district

032has had for years and years and years uh you know maintaining our buildings and how the cost of maintaining our buildings have increased year-over-year here. So these are the budget key drivers among other ones. Uh and we'll go uh we'll go in depth into into some of those um as we go along. Uh on the next slide, I do have the control of this. >> You you are >> Oh, this is fun. Uh on the next slide, so we had the district enrollment as of October 1st and this is a 10-year snapshot and and this is what we all know to be true like how enrollment has decreased over time. Um obviously now at the uh at this year 2025 uh fiscal year 2025 we have a 17,000 can't even see this number from here

033uh >> 8007 >> 37 there you go um and I have it really small on my computer let me make it bigger there you go um so we've seen the decrease of enrollment and and this is some of the comments that I've heard you know lately is but car if the enrollment keeps going down how do you explain how the cost keeps going up. How do you explain why transportation keeps going up and and and teachers salaries keep going up and all these things keep going up and and but enrollment keeps going down, right? Um so I hope that at the end of this presentation we're able to to paint a picture um to provide a little bit more clarity on that. And if I don't, please ask me that question at the end. I

034want to make sure that we leave tonight with with clarity on how that works, right? um how the the correlation between enrollment and the cost of doing business right in in a school district. Um so this one is is is important for us to to touch base. But in a in a nutshell, you could have I'll give you just one quick example. You could have in a in a classroom you could have 20 students or you could have 16 students or you could have 23 students. any any any of those three numbers 15 20 or 23 still requires one teacher. Now there's a big difference between 15 students and 23 students. That's eight students difference. Eight student different could be easily revenue of about $100,000 that we won't get from the state just because of

035the eight student. $100,000 easily pays for the salary of that one teacher that's in that classroom. But now we just lost those eight students. But we still have to pay the teacher. So, so that that's a very easy example. All right. And this is not the case in this is just the case that just came came to mind now. But there's a lot of cases where you could also say, well, you have a school facility that has 300 students and you have to pay electricity, you have to pay gas, you have to pay all these utilities. But that school now has only 200 students. The building didn't shrink. The building is still the same size. You still have to heat the whole entire building. You still have electricity in the entire building, but you have

036100 students less. So all these things there's there's a there's a correlation between enrollment and cost and there is also a no correlation in between enrollment and and and cost. And this is one example of how that correlation doesn't doesn't quite align. You could have less students but the cost keeps either stay the same or keeps going up based on inflation which is another conversation. Right? the inflation uh is also another um component that's important for us to to keep in mind when we're talking about cost even when enrollment goes down. But we'll touch base on on this as we go along. There's a lot of slides and and I don't want to get ahead of myself. Uh on the next slide uh we have uh this beautiful colorful slide that shows three different um

037um cohorts. And if I'm able to make this bigger on my end. There you go. So we have first the eligible for free or reduced price meals. Uh that will be the first section uh on the left side. Then on the middle we have the English uh language learners and then at the end we have students with disabilities. So this is the enrollment uh for these three cohorts. Now I do want to point out the multilingual learners um cohort which is the one in the middle. This is the first year for the first time that we have a decline in this particular population and and that's to be expected given the political climate that that we live uh right now. Uh while the population of multilingual learners has stabilized for the first time this year,

038the complexity of student needs continues to escalate. We're seeing a sustained significant rise in students requiring a special education services and that will be the on the right section. Although the bars they kind of almost looks the same in by naked eye, I want you to take a look at the last two between the green and the yellow. there's a 101 student difference there if I'm not mistaken. I can't see the number as well, but I I do know that it's supposed to be 101 students. Um alongside a high baseline of multilingual learners to meet this compounding requirements, we must provide a proportional increase in specialized intervention staff and mandated mental health support. I won't get too deep into the special education enrollment and the needs because I do have like about four or five

039slides dedicated to special education. So we'll we can have a a a deeper conversation about that uh component. Uh but I did wanted to note that these are specialized cohorts of of students that require uh um more targeted uh efforts and and a more sustained uh it's more a little bit more complex uh the the type of education and support that they require uh which increase the cost of of our um of our services. on the next slide. There you go. Now we have that special education component that I just told you. The next four or five slides. So this is a student with disabilities enrollment. Uh this one a little bit more clear shows that uh 101 students difference. So I will give you like a little overview of what this chart says. Um

040so between 21 and 22 there's an increase of 24 students. Between 22 and 23 there's an increase of 34 students. Between 23 and 24, there's an increase of 57 students. And then lastly, between 24 and 25, there's an increase of 101 students. So, I will kind of put those numbers next to each other. 24, 34, 57, 101. Do you do you see the trend there? For the last four years, the addition of special education service students has increased. In fact, this last year, the increase was almost doubled. So I was thinking, okay, maybe the increases every every year we add the same number of student plus 10 or 15 more. But then this last year was the same number of students plus another 44 students, you know. So it kind of almost doubled. Um and

041and I would I would be it would be responsible of me to not see this trend and not prepare our district uh for potential increases in special education given what we're seeing lately. and and and we have um I heard um in another uh meeting um our executive director of people services and special education talked about uh how uh we get these students not only before October 1st but even beyond October 1st uh which is you know an issue in itself right we get these numbers of students that come with IEPs from other school districts or other towns or other areas and and it it's a cost that we are not accounted for in the budget that we still have to provide services for um one child could cost anywhere between $80,000 to $250,000. This

042is in the special education uh services anywhere between $80,000 to $250,000 depending of the services needed, depending on what the IEP mandates for us to provide. Um we have right now 43 specialized classrooms, one new each year since 2015. So since 2015, we've added one new every single year. Uh we currently have 290 students enrolled in New Haven public schools operated specialized classrooms. So we have the data, we have the numbers, we're seeing the trend and we also understand what the cost is um to service this population. So we have to uh be cognizant of this and prepare a budget that not only meet the demands of this fiscal reality but more importantly that provides a quality service to our children. On this slide you have a little bit more detail uh regarding the special

043education um service um budget. Now, this is the operating budget. This is only general fund budget. And I say this because on the on the next few slides, you're going to see some examples of how special education is so complex that the general fund alone is not even near enough. And and as you see on the screen, we're talking about almost $72 million just from the general fund for special education services. $72 million is about 33% of our entire general fund budget. And that's not even enough. And because of that, on the next few slides, you're going to see a little bit more information about what it is that we have to do as a district to make sure that our student receive the services they need beyond what we can support with our general

044fund. So again, special education students make up about 18% of our enrollment. Yet that 18% of of of our enrollment requires 33% of our general fund budget. special education outplacement tuition has risen 6.3 million over the last five years. $6.3 million over the last five years. That's just the outplacement tuition. And and we've talked about tuition several times in in other presentations as one of the key drivers of our budget. We currently have 278 resident students in an outplace setting all requiring tuition. All of them requiring us to pay tuition. And every single one of them goes beyond the amount of funding that we receive from the state because as I said before special education services is not just what the state uh provides or the local government provides. It's it goes beyond again because

045of the the the level of service that that they require. And again it could go between 80 and $250,000 and and and and it's it's just the reality that we live. Um, now this, as I said before, this particular budget that you see in front of you does not include any additional funds to cover other special education expenses um, using special funds. And I'll I'll go into that special funds component in just a little bit. Um, I know that in the past when we present budgets, uh, line item budgets as this, there's always question about what is this, what is that. So, I'll just give you a little bit uh, of what some of these um, are um, just so at least hopefully could get the conversation going. So on the first one, tuition um

046this particular one for special education, you know, a a good chunk of it um goes to any ASES operated uh locations. Um a portion of it also goes to some of the uh uh the charter schools that we also have to pay our special education students to attend to. on the personnel. Uh some examples of personnel that are covered by this particular uh line item from the general fund are speech and language pathologist um and occupational therapist and and anywhere uh from any of those services um even even some of the staffing uh from from any of the charter schools that we have to send students to. Uh transportation as an example in this particular case just give you an example. I know transportation is much a bigger uh conversation, but just to give you

047an example, uh we have right now 64 vans um that cost about $93,000 each. These are all based on IEP requirements. We contracted for 57 really 57 bands. So right now we're using seven more vehicles, vans, I'm talking about school buses, vans. Seven more at $93,000 each. That's just somewhere between $650,000 and $700,000 more over the budgeted amount based on the 57 vans that we um originally allocated for. Uh and so this is just an example of how the transportation cost could easily fluctuate up or down only based on IB requirements. Um so at the beginning of the school year, especially now that we're doing a budget for next year, we're doing it based on the students that we have, based on the 10 the trends that we see. Uh but at any given time

048this the numbers of students can fluctuate uh substantially. Uh and and for each student it comes with with with a cost that that goes way beyond what we receive from the state for each for each of the students. Um in some cases you know you have to depending on the location of the student you have to get a van for one or two students or even three students. And even when you add up everything we get for each of those students, it doesn't even pay for the full cost of that van, which is $93,000. H you know, in order for you to be able to get enough revenue to pay just for the van. And this is not even talking about the teachers that will provide the services and any other cost, you will have

049to fill up that van with at least, you know, five students and just to pay for that van. And then now you don't have any more money to pay for the teachers, for the support staff, for the par profofessionals, uh social workers, and any of the other expenses. So those dynamics have to be clear that every time we receive funding for one student, you have to account for the cost of that student as a whole, not just that student receive services from this one teacher, this second teacher or these three or four different staff on the school level. Yeah. What about transportation? What about some of the other components of things that we have to pay for to support the student? And this is just one example uh that I felt it was easy for

050us to to to understand and to digest and and and see the dynamics when we receive funding for special education students. Um when we look at the contracts uh line item um that's where we have some of the contracts that I saw under there were the sign language contracts uh behavioral therapist contracts. Uh so these are contracts that we are mandated to to employ and to have in order to provide our student the services they require and they need. Um because we do not have all the resources we need to meet the demands and needs of our special education students, we rely on grants or special funds to make these services available. An example is on our next slide when we talk about IDEIDA. So let's go to our next slide. IDA grant expenditures. So,

051uh I selected two different uh um special education grants um that I felt it were were easy to to explain the dynamics between the general fund and the and the special funds and and and to show u how much sometimes we have to rely on grants in order for us to provide the basic services of our students. Um let me first define what IDA means. This is individuals with disabilities education act. So this is a grant. Uh it provides federal funding to the state for special education and early intervention services for children with disabilities ages 3 through to 21. So that's what this is. When you look at that chart and you look at the data that's there, you can see that out of the $7 million 3.2 to in fact I will say 3.8

052eight when you include the employee benefits go towards full-time staff then you have the tutors then you have people services and then you have some of the other categories uh that we have to employ this funding for. Now, you saw the budget for special education at a previous slide uh for the $71 million almost 72 and 33% of our general fund and and anyone can say well that's a lot of money for special education and and and I will say not nearly enough um because we have to rely on these grants in order for us to really provide these services and even then we need more because our students deserve more. So IDA is one example of how we break down the cost of this grant. Now I have heard um you know some some

053some folks talk about we don't we don't know what you do with education special education funding. We don't know if you're using it to buy pencils for special education students or you're using it for this or for that. and and you know, they make this very blanket general statement. Um, and and it's it's really hard, right, to answer that question because you're like, well, I I I don't know that that I know, you know, how much one pencil cost in a school district that buys hundreds of thousands of pencils every year. But I will tell you this, every single time we use any special education funding, it's coded as a special education expense. and we could tell you exactly what we purchased with that special education funding. The problem is that on the other side

054um what people see is just supplies coming into the classroom distributed to all the all the students um regular students, special education student, multilinguage students and have no idea if that one box of pencils or that one box of whatever supply is was paid with one funding or the other. Um, and that's what the the people see with their eyes because they are not on this side and they don't see the amount of reporting that we have to do every single time we use special education funding. We have to categorize every single item that we purchase with this funding and we have to account for it. There's oversight entities that come to our district to audit our expenses. uh special education expenses are not just the only one, but this is one that's actually very

055uh well audited. This is one that that not only the state but the federal government on a continuous basis are looking exactly how we're spending this money. So, I I want to make sure that, you know, for those folks that don't understand how we allocate and how we report expenses for special education and other cohorts and other funding, uh rest assured that we do have this coded in a way that we could easily identify how we use the money and for what particular purpose. Um this grant allocation you see there is exactly how we budget our expenses. Our system does not allow for you to use more than what's already allotted for that line unless you request a budget modification, which in the case of these grants is not that easy. It's not that easy,

056whether it's a state or the federal government to request a budget modification. It takes it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of intentionality and you have to be able to to provide a good business case in order for you to make these changes. So, our system is is is built in a way that doesn't allow you to go beyond um what's there. And it's not just us because when we send these expenses to the city for the city to cut the check, they also have another layer of gatekeepers that will push it back to us and say, "Hey, hey, America, you guys just went over this number. I can't cut a check. I can't do this because you just went over it." Right? So, it's not just our decision alone. We have

057multiple layers of departments and personnel across not only BOE but also the city that's keeping an eye and making sure that we are within budget and and and that's a good thing right sometimes it takes a little longer to get there right but it is it is a good thing that we have systems in place that make sure that we are in compliance not only budgetarily but also in the services that we're providing. So this is one example um in the IDA grants uh you know because if you look at this if you look at this chart here you will say well America what do you mean by people's services what do you mean by you know instructional non-instructional uh those are very broad categories I I don't know what you mean by that I've

058heard this before I've presented categories of such before and they always ask the same questions so this time I came prepared this time I came ready to give you some details. Um so I'll give you some details now. Instructional uh this 3.2 pays for two social workers, um two speech and language pathologist, two psychologist, one hearing impaired, uh three visually impaired, uh 27 special education teachers, and 34 PA educators. There it is. You wanted to know how many FTEEs we could pay with 3.2 to in this particular with this particular grant there's the information pupil services what are those contracts for that 1.7 oh that 1.7 includes you know nursing include ASUS behavioral um autism health care pediatric services lifeline care relay hub bilingual assessment and and many other contracts you know that are necessary

059uh for special education um services um uh population uh benefits is all the personal paid on IDA uh and benefits you know includes obviously you know taxes and workers compensation and health insurance and so on uh tutors and non-instructional non-instructional would be the administrative assistants the direct coordinator supervisors compliance coordinators management analyst all these other support staff that are critical for us not only to report back to IDA to the federal government how we're using the money but they're also critical in making sure that we are in compliance with the way we use the funding and then supplies it's self-explanatory and unless somebody want I need to tell you that we buy pencils, pens, paper, supplies. And the indirect cost, it's the administrative cost to to you know to um to the district. So this

060is just one example broken down into a more deeper level. Um any other grant that we receive whether it's a state or federal is a very similar uh breakdown. We know exactly how much we pay for each category and we know exactly uh who are we paying for and what's included in that particular category. the next and last component of IDA because IDA is split into two different uh sections. The other one will be the preschool uh side of it and that one is is a much smaller. So you add the $7 million I showed you on two slides ago plus this 100 almost 29,000 that is the full IDEIDA grant and this one um similar to what we see in other grants. Um 61.6% pays for staffing and 38.4 pays for the for pays

061for the benefits. I will take an opportunity now that I've shown you two three different examples of how um many of our grants and even general fund um works. I will take this opportunity to to tell you how how dangerous it is for us to keep relying on grants to pay for the services for our students. not only with my previous experience from other places that I've worked and and that I've been involved um not only at the academic area, the school, but also in the nonprofit sector and the government sector, I've I've learned that it's beautiful and it's amazing when we get grants, right? We celebrate grants. We celebrate when we get them. Uh it makes us happy because it gives us an additional funding for us to uh to provide the services at

062the level that that that our students are our our students deserve. But it can also create a very bad habit where we start functioning under the assumption that we're going to get this grant every single year and now we start we start putting staff in there. Now staff salaries now are subject to the availability of that grant. What happens when that grant goes away? What do we do with the staffing? Right? It's very dangerous. It's a very dangerous business when we start doing that. No, it is not in it is not with bad intentions that we end actually end up doing this of putting staffing in grants. It's only because we don't have enough in the general fund for us to sustain our staffing. So, we have to move them to grants and use those

063special funds and grants to pay for our staff. Often times when we apply for these grants, we do tell the funer that we're going to use it to pay for this staffing, right? Because we need these staff to provide the services that are mandated or that are part of the mission and vision of our superintendent. But at the same time, it would be even better if I could tell on the application that I'm going to use this funding to not only improve the service, but to add more services to our student, more quality service to our student and not have to tell the funer that we're going to use the funding to pay teachers or to pay support staff. I want teachers and support staff to rest assure that the general fund has them covered.

064that's not going away and I want to use the grants to improve to expand the quality service that we provide to our children. That is the perfect worst scenario. Now I'll tell you this and I gave you this premise because I want to skip to this is a great time for me to go to this slide which I'm going to skip now to slide 25 if you're following on the because I think it's important for me now to to show this on slide 25 We have uh the major grants revenue and FT accounts. I just mentioned to you the importance of us thinking strategically long-term for sustainability purposes. How do we bring our FDES back to our general fund and start using grants in a in a in a more efficient way to improve the

065quality service to our students. This is a snapshot of how many of our FTEEs are right now in our entire district rely on grants. 899 FTEEs rely on grants. That's if I'm not mistaken that's about 34% of our FTEEs rely on grants. That's 34% of our FDEs rely on grants. There's no guarantees that any of these grants will come back or will increase. I'll tell you this alliance and priority as as of right now is going to be flatfunded for the upcoming years unless this legislative this legislative session takes a look at that and then changes. But this year was the last year of the phasing increases. But our teachers will get increases this year, next year and the following one. And they deserve to get increases every single year. Period. Period. There's no question

066about that. But Alliance and Priority who carries FTEEs between those two would not increase anymore unless this state legislature decides to make some changes to the alliance and priority and continue the increases that we've had for the last five years. That's just one example of how critical it is for us to understand the dynamics between general fund special funds and how our FTES are allocated between the two of them. Again, in a perfect world, all the FDS should be the general fund. So, we could use the grants to expand quality service to improve our quality service. We have to tie it down to our staffing because like I said before, that's our greatest asset. Without them, there's absolutely no quality education whatsoever. So we have to preserve our staffing and we have to use grants

067for so for for for such a uh you know in that manner. I'm going to go back because it wasn't my intention or plan to skip to this live but I thought it was u important for us to do so. So I'll go back to slide 14 if you're following on the on the um on the paper copy. Uh so this is the last grant uh that I'm going to show you regarding um uh special funds. I'm sorry, special education. And and this one I want to really thank our state legislative uh body, our state delegation because they work really hard to make sure that this seat grant uh it's in place. Uh and here you can see how it also again following the same trend, it also pays for the lot of the staffing

068that provides special education uh not only at the charter school but also in in some of the other schools that we have. Um, so the SE grant, uh, that's I'm gonna exactly say what it is, uh, just for for the, uh, benefit of our public. That's a special education expansion and development grant is a state grant aimed at increasing school district capacity to serve students with special needs locally. It provides flexible funding for staff recruitment, direct services, and development screenings. It is extremely important for us to track every single scent for special education students. I I I cannot say this enough. I cannot say enough that every single scent that we spend on special education students is tracked accordingly. Not only as a whole department of special education but also even by grant and by

069location too. So if any time you get you you ask me how much have you spent in special education in that one particular school the system will give it to me. We have it we track it in that manner to that level. So there is I want to make sure there's no misinformation when it comes to special education. We track these expenses is this is not nothing new. I don't take credit for it. This has been in place way before I was here. It's always been the case. And this is another grant again that explains the dynamics between general fund, special education, the staffing FTEEs and this is just for special education. Uh but the same applies to some of the other um you know components of the school district beyond special education. on the

070next slide. Um I'm cognizant of the time so I want to keep moving forward if I can see I will move to this one uh staffing trends um chart on this one. Uh let me let me move this down a little bit more. Apologies. There you go. Um on this one I want to um I want to point out just a few u um areas here. First of all, the one that I think we've we were asked at at a earlier meeting uh on the last one, the other staff providing non-instructional and you'll see that 1,00 91 and 23 24 um that one I will have the information here. Um I forgot where Tiffan is. the uh oh that one includes now oh that one include the uh the bus drivers and included the monitors

071included some other staffing that were not included there in the past and that's why the number um increased substantially in that year the uh the way that that the category uh what the category included changed in that particular year and then from that point on then we kept that same uh standard and that's I I almost forgot see I that's exactly what happened we included some additional positions that were not included in the past and that what created that that big um change the the line of PAR educators I also want to mention because that one also has a huge increase between last year and this year the par educators are inclusive of multiple support positions including the traditional classroom par educator a special education par educator teachers for our head start classroom student retention

072specialist etc. Um so that line uh it's just beyond just the par educator that we think about. So I want to make sure that we understand that so we can see why we have such an increase between the 482 and the 575 between one year and the other as we keep reclassifying and and moving the line items then we are adjusting the numbers accordingly. Um so this is a staffing trend and and this is important information for us to understand not only where we are today but also speaks to where we need to be in the future. At another slide I will speak a little bit more about the staffing guidelines and and I think that there's a correlation between what we're seeing here the staffing guidelines and what it is that we need to

073do to achieve that goal. I'll get to that slide at a later time but then just connect it back to this one um you know as as you see the opportunity to do so. Uh on the next one on the next slide uh we have the collective bargaining groups projected increases. Again these are just approximates but uh so we have for example the school administrators for this coming year there's an additional $620,000 uh that will be uh that's contractually agreed upon uh to spend on the on that particular bargaining unit in addition to um what we already budgeted for this year. Uh then we have uh the the cafeteria bargaining unit that's at 119,000. Uh the custodial uh we're still currently in negotiations, but we're estimating that it could be somewhere between, you know, about

074$124,000 more in salaries uh for the custodial. Uh for the teachers, it's about $6.1 million for this coming year. And then for our par educators, $395,000. So when you add them all up, you have about $7.3 million just in increase of salaries. And that does not include um the uh the BOE the trades uh which is the second one there. We are waiting for negotiations. And so we are estimating somewhere between 7 and 8 million you know in additional salaries uh for next year. And that's just again keeping status quo keeping the same staffing the same number just contractual increases. On the next one we have uh the transportation cost the history cost. Um, on this one I I I I want to take a point of privilege if that's if there's such a thing

075for a panelist. Yeah. Okay. Good. I I always love to say that. I want to take a point of privilege. Um, and and I want to say this from the bottom of my heart, but in a very nice way. When we talk about transportation cost, there's no such thing as a debacle, right? when when when people use these kind of mischaracterizations, you know, it it it goes along the lines of what we're seeing at the national level, right? And and I was surprised to see that kind of misinformation and mischaracterization at a local level. I was like, okay, you know what? I'm I'm shielded here from the nonsense that happening in Washington DC. And then I I wake up this morning finding out that we have that kind of nonsense happening in New Haven. I'm

076like, that can't be true. We cannot be providing this level of misinformation. and and mischaracterization of what what I said or what we're presenting. So, well, it is what it is, right? You know, that that's that's uh some of the things that we have to to deal with. But I want to make sure that people understand there is no such thing as a debacle, as a budget debacle, especially when we talk about transportation. It was very clearly explained and I will explain it again um just for those that need that clarification. Um the transportation line item I said in the past that for this year it was underbudgeted. Let me just first say this underbudgeted line items happen everywhere at all times. It's just it's it just happens right your budget based on the information

077that you have today on the data that you have today. It's a point in time decision. under budgeted line items happen everywhere all the time. Now given the fact that we have spent in the past as you see in the chart and and and and this shows that we're not shying away from the facts and the data that we spent 33 35 $39 million in transportation and we budgeted between 30 and 32 depending on what categories you include in transportation. In this particular case, I'm using this particular breakdown that that says that we budgeted $32 million. People say, "Oh, you did under budgeted." No, but not me. But the district under budgeted, right? I'm like, "Sure, we did." But then ask me why. And I'll tell you what I said before. When we are in

078the process of budget development and this is what's going to happen in the next two months unfortunately we have to get to a point where we have to present a balanced budget and we have to present a mitigation plan and we have to be on that mitigation plan we have to cut line items in order to present a balanced budget so it could be approved and we could be in compliance and we hope and we work really hard to implement that mitigation plan put it in case without cutting our services to a point that it's not beneficial to our children. This year we are seeing from the beginning we're seeing the trends of the cost of transportation. So technically you have two decisions, two options. Either you continue providing the services or you say, "Well,

079we're just cutting down these routes. We're not providing services anymore." But then you have to deal with the consequences of doing so without preparing a good plan to transition any of those changes. You know, then you you see an increase on absentism. you see increase on you know on some of the other negative impacts that it will have not to provide this service at the level that we're providing it right now unless you provide a plan to transition between one form of transportation to another form. You put a plan together. You strategize and you make sure that every student receive the services they need and then you prioritize how you going to provide that service. So this year we said we're not touching that. We're going to continue providing the services. We are not impacting

080our children in such a way that then they don't make it to school or that they don't receive the services they need to receive. So unfortunately the cost keeps increasing the needs as I mentioned to you in in in a previous example of the special education students that require a different level of transportation continues to increase. So, we're going to provide the service and us as leadership, it's our responsibility now to figure out how we're going to pay for it. It's not the responsibility of our of our students. They shouldn't have to pay for our decisions. We have to now make decisions of how are we going to deal with this deficit. If we're overspending this line item because we budgeted at this level, we have to figure it out. It is my job as

081a CFO to take the lead on that effort and figure out how we going to pay for this. How we going to cover this expense? In what other areas can I create more efficiencies to create enough savings to cover this expense? That's my job. My job and the job of my team to come up with a plan to do so. So there's no debacle. It's mostly a decision for us to prioritize the education of our students over staying within a budget line item at the cost of the quality of service to our children. I pick I make this decision a million times more every single year if I have to because I am not going to jeopardize the service of our children. There's no debacle. It's very easily understood. I explained it in less than

082two minutes. No debacle. So in comparison, I want to make sure that um you know for those of you that are very mathematical driven and that are looking at the numbers uh and and and you know I I welcome all those questions. If you looked at slide number 10, I will go back just just because I want to and I want to make sure that you get that answer. If you look at the third line, it says special education transportation 5,59970. Special education transportation from the general fund five almost 5.6. Now I'm showing you a slide that says on the second line special education transportation the budget says 5,273 8.95. And then you say, wait a second, same year, same fiscal year. You're giving me two different numbers. It's is up by 316,375. Yes, it

083is. But I want to explain to you why. So, I'm going to give you the answer before you ask the question because I know one of you already thought about it. So, I'm giving you the answer right now. Um the uh the this one this line that's a little less of does not include uh the portion of special education transportation for two technical schools the bus passes and the interd district transportation for special education students. Right? So this is for the special education students. Those three that I just mentioned to you that add up to 316 375 is not included in this chart. It is included on the other one. That's the only difference. It's just broken down differently. It just happens to have the same name, special education transportation, but one includes those three

084components. The other one doesn't. Are we clear? We good? All right. Good. Perfect. Um, other than that, um, then uh this chart what what it does is that it helps me uh figure out potential savings on outplacement transportation due to the creation of the Wexler program. Uh, so that's that's what we are, you know, counting on on some savings there. Um and then u another opportunity that we have by looking at this transportation cost history is that uh it kind of pushed us to start assessing our transportation capacity usage on specific school and routes that have shown opportunities to maximize and create more efficiency which in turn turns into more savings. Um, so what we're doing with this is not only being transparent, but also it's a tool for us to get to work, right?

085When we see a trend that says 33, 35, 39, and then this year we could probably hit about 39 or 40 again somewhere close to same as last year uh with our projections. We're saying, okay, hold on. We're seeing the trend here. We got to get to work. how it is that we can mitigate this increase of expenses in transportation and let's have some serious conversations about what are the opportunities are. So we have already identified two different opportunities. Uh there are some other ones that in the upcoming months we're going to be having conversations not only internally but also with the board. Um you will also be getting a presentation I believe on April 6 Mr. Wilcox is April 6 for transportation. Uh I think April 6 you will be getting yes that's a

086Monday. the procedure, you will receive a a more in-depth conversation about transportation. Uh, and that's purposely done in order for us to get this conversation going. Not only for the board to understand better what the transportation uh structure looks like, but it will help us just have these conversations, right? Because there's a lot of different opportunities. Uh, and I am one that's up for it. I would love to explore opportunities to save uh in transportation. I do want to also another piece that's also being misinformed um is the um the belief that we have a contract let's say with with our our our main uh service provider like first student America that contract is for $30 million or you know the number whatever the number it is for depending on which components you look on

087the contract but you're already spending 32 but I I also have to make sure that you understand this is not just for a student this is transportation as a whole is first student but it is also many other transportation providers not only taxi caps but also a lot of other uh smaller LLC companies that provide you know uh private transportation doortodoor there's a lot of different transportation uh companies beyond just first student so so these numbers uh reflect um you know transportation cost as a whole is not just for students so please do not take any transportation budget that you see uh and mimic it or try to put it next to just the first student contract that is at apples to apples. Um, if you want to know exactly how much we spend in

088first student, that's a different conversation, but my job right now is to provide you with a full entire budget of transportation. All right, next one. I don't know how I'm doing on time, but I want to make sure we get this done uh as you know, as quick as possible. Uh, the next one will be the schoolbased um allocation model. Um, this is the uh uh the one that speaks, you know, about the equity driven resource allocation, the targeted support for closing gaps. Um, you know, I've talked to you about uh the idea of um allocating a little bit more funding for special education students and multil- language learner students. Uh, the calculation came out to be uh that we allocated an additional $24 for multil- language learner students and another additional 34 for uh

089for students with disabilities. Uh my hope is to keep increasing that allocation year after year. Uh we understand that this is just the beginning. This is just us um not just testing the waters but also trying to use a limited funding, general funding uh to give a little bit more to areas of our services that require a little bit more complex um you know support. Um, so this is just the beginning and and and one of the reasons that I want to make sure that we all know what that number is is because I want you next year to say Amilkar, last year you gave 24 additional. Can you make it 30? Can you make it 35, right? Push me to make it more because that is my goal and I expect our board to

090support me in that goal to keep providing more funding to to to the to a population that requires more funding because of the complexities of the services that that they require. So, we allocated $200,000 just for this particular um uh effort just to start with. I wanted to allocate more than that and and we'll see how the budget goes in the in the upcoming months and and if that's something that we can uh you know change, we we will do so, but there are many areas that we have already identified as also priorities. So, we'll we'll have to you know have those conversations. Um on the next slide, we have the famous staffing guidelines. I I I presented this in our budget workshop and I spoke a little bit about it, we've updated um some

091of the information here. Um but as a reminder for those of you that uh that don't remember exactly what this chart meant, back in 20 fiscal year 22 23, you adopted the staffing guidelines uh to define the level of staffing necessary in our schools by category. We're not there yet. I I I don't see anyone here surprised, which is good. you're not surprised because you know we're not there yet. Um but it is not something that we're going to stop bringing up because it is still our goal uh to comply with your mandate. Um so in order to get there we will still need another $26.8 million. So this is in addition to the request that we are presenting today. So none of the numbers that you will see in in towards the end of

092the presentation which is where I'm going to talk about the the full budget include this amount. Dr. Negron >> I just want to add that we also linked if you click on the staffing guidelines it takes you to the document that was adopted in 2223 just as a reference. So, it is our goal and we will continue to bring it up uh because it is um it is what our children deserve and and that's our goal to achieve that goal. That didn't sound right. That is our goal to achieve that goal. So, uh on the next one, the next slide, uh historical budget request. And we've seen this one before. It's sadly it's one of my favorite ones, but it is because one that when it was presented to me, it really really told me

093the story because this is from way before my time and it really kind of helped me understand, you know, how we're doing and and I will say that even though it it still shows a huge gap every year, um we continue to see the commitment of our local elected officials uh by every year adding whether it's $8 million or $5 million and hopefully five more this year and and if I keep saying it out loud, maybe turns into 10 and and we'll see. You know, the more I say it, I hope that it just keeps multiplying. I don't know if that's how it works, but the more I say it, hopefully it keeps multiplying. But it is it is the commitment of our local officials, you know, to to continue supporting our school system. So

094So we are seeing some progress. Um the the the problem here and the reason why this chart is important is because it's not enough and it's not enough and and we've heard this conversation many times uh because the state is not doing their part to also keep up with the not only inflation but also the increase of cost and and and to support our our our teachers to support our school staff that deserve uh not only the increases that they are getting but more than that uh I don't think that there is a level of agreement that we could make with any bargaining unit for their salary increases that will do justice to the work that they do. I've always said that teachers should be getting paid like lawyers and doctors and and and that

095is the reality, right? And and unfortunately our funding doesn't allow for us to to get that far. Um but the state knows that's my thinking and I'm sure that a lot of you share that same thought. So um you know it is it is uh you know something that I'm hoping that that our state delegation keep pushing for. I we've been in in many conversations with them and they are very committed to to the conversation uh and we're seeing some progress. We're seeing some conversations. So so in the upcoming months we will learn a little bit more about um you know how far we're going to move uh on that on that on that line on that area. But this this historical chart you know tells you uh you know what a request was what

096the approved budget was and what the gap is. And it's important for me um to share this uh because once I disclose um you know the budget request I I want you to see it from the perspective of we're not doing anything different than any other year. This is a problem that continues to happen year after year. Any request that we make is substantiated by actual cost. And in our case in our particular case it's status quo. We're asking for us to keep us at status quo. I I will dig I will explain that a little bit more because status quo doesn't do justice to my request to our request. So I'll explain that when we get to that slide. But this historical that is important for us to understand where we've been and where

097we continue to be if we don't do something extraordinary if we don't actually get what our children deserve to receive for their education. Our next slide just is it's is it's kind of like a byproduct of the previous one. Uh I just gave you uh the general fund expenditures for each of the last three and and this year the projected and you could see the trend. It's kind of like almost like a straight line. I was surprised to see that straight line like that. It's just by by pure coincidence. Um it just came out to be 195 203 213 and then um we're projecting about 222 for this year. So our general fund expenditures keeps growing up at a pace that we cannot keep up with. And and and again I I I I I

098thank our local electoral officials for trying to, you know, keep up with it, but but it's just impossible at at this rate, right? When you are increasing your general expenditures by $8 million, then you increase it by 10 and now it's going to be by about nine or 10 more. It's it's really hard. And this is where we are asking our other stakeholders, especially our state legislator and and our governor, to really take a look at this and say, "Hey, these are the real true expenses. Our o our books are open. You can see line by line. You can see exactly how we're spending the money. This is not luxury. This is our expenses that we require to have in order to provide quality services. Our next slide just gives you uh a little bit

099of a budget uh revenue by funding source. Um here you can see how our ECS non-alliance uh which is the 142 and a half million dollars uh is basically uh 42% of our general fund and then you could see the the local uh funds of 70 almost $71 million equates to almost 21% of our budget. Uh and then you have our state grants. Uh and the state grants is the one that includes the non-alliance funding. I just want to make make sure that non-alliance is included here. just under the state um funding that says $75 million. And then you see the other ones that are a little bit smaller, but here's a breakdown. And again, this is another picture that shows you how much we have to rely in funding outside of the general fund

100in order for us to provide the services that we provide. And and again, in a perfect word, we want most of our expenses to be covered by general fund. So we could use grants for expansion in improvement um you know create more programming for our children providing more opportunities uh and so this is a picture that also shows you how much we have to rely on grants state federal grants to to to run our district. Our next slide um this one is the alliance revenue. So, you know, we took a look at the alliance revenue across different districts and and you know, I was a little surprised to see that New Haven is the one that received the least amount of alliance revenue per pupil. Um, you see there, you know, the amount of money

101is the the 1,55 per student, uh, compared to some other districts that go up to 5,000. So the average I think it's 3,00 oh it's actually there $3,156 per student uh of the alliance funding. Um so this is one area that we would like to explore. Uh we would like to bring up to the attention uh to understand you know the uh uh sometimes you know it's the inequities and and I'm not accusing of anyone doing anything on purpose. It's just sometimes inequities happen in the in the midst of creating formulas and trying to to uh uh uh to create equity. we create inequities in in an indirect way and and this chart shows you uh that New Haven is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to the alliance funding compared

102to other districts. So, uh we want to make sure that this is something that's you know brought up to the surface so we can have these conversations and figure out okay how can we you know improve this a little better. But um moving on to the next slide uh we have the historical alliance and priority grant allocations. And I I I showed you I talked a little bit about ear earlier about the the the alliance and the priority funding uh now getting to that point where now there's no projected increases coming up in the in the upcoming years. And we also talked about the fact that FTEEs rely on alliance and priority grant allocation. So, so this is something that's important for me to make sure that we bring up because these are conversations that

103we need to have as a as a as a as a leadership of the district, but also with the board that if alliance and priority funding stays flat for the upcoming years, how do we keep up with the increase of cost of salaries for these 236 FTEEs that rely on alliance and priority funding to pay for their salaries? How do we keep up with that? And that's a conversation that I don't want to catch you by surprise a year from now. It is a conversation I want to have now early on. So we could start strategizing and having those conversations not only internally but also with our stakeholders at the state to figure out how do we keep up with this. U so this one uh you know this year was the last year of

104the phase in of increases and here you can see kind of like how the increases kind of worked out um you know for the last six seven years. This is the slide that I showed you earlier. I only touch base on the alliance and priority, but you can see the rest of the other um major grants that cover um our staffing. Like I said, it's just short of 900 FTEEs that are covered by special funds or grants. And and just by the nature of grants or special funds, they are never guaranteed. Uh some of those we have to apply on a year-to-year basis. Some of those are competitive. Some of those may or may not pan out. Um, you know, I know that one of the board members in a previous meeting asked about the

105the federal funding and and the impact that it that it could have uh, you know, given the the current climate at the federal level and and this is the kind of conversation that we need to have, right? The federal grants, whether it's title one, IDA, those these grants that may or may not be affected, right, by this particular climate. But we I also want to talk about it from the perspective of when we talk about IDA, we're talking about 74 FDES. If we're talking about title one, we're talking about 112 FTEEs. These are critical staffing that we need in our schools. So, it's not just the the loss of funding. We're losing our best assets, which are our staff. We're losing what makes New Haven to be in that path of excellence. So, for us,

106it's extremely important for us to provide this perspective. So, so take a take a I don't know if you're like me that likes to take pictures with my eyes. Like, I'm very visual. Uh I I there's a name for that. Don't ask me what it is. Like I told you, I just learned English the other day. So you take a picture with your eye. Take a picture of this one with your eyes because this is the most important one almost of the whole stack. Uh because this is this talks about our reliance on grants for staffing. And and and this is a conversation that speaks about sustainability for us in the upcoming years. And and like I said before, I I when when the district and the board hired me was not just to do

107finances, accounting 101 in the office was for me to think about strategically about not this year but also years to come. This is the conversation we need to have moving forward. On the next slide, we have what um you've seen in the past. So I I will introduce this slide um uh in this manner. So New Haven Public Schools hereby submits it proposed budget of 252.6 6 million for the upcoming fiscal year. This request reflects the district's unwavering commitment to providing equitable highquality education to all our students while navigating rising operational cost evolving and evolving student needs. This request reflects our true operating cost without any additional applied revenue. That's important. An adjusted budget of $232.1 million has been previously presented during the board meeting workshop on March 2nd of 2026, but that number is

108based on revenue assumptions that may or may not become reality. The total budget increase to $252 million is approximately 18.4%. So I want to be very clear and and we have this conversation in in in in multiple meetings, not only in FNO, but also in the budget workshop. Our request is $252.6 $6 million status quo budget. The community and and and this is this is one of the benefits of the community forums that we did all six of them. One of the most important things that we got out of the community forums was that people were asking for transparency for us to be proactive for us to think just beyond these big numbers. So the leadership we sat down and we said okay 252.6 six is exactly what we need to keep status quo. That

109will cover the increases that I showed you for the bargaining units. Uh that that includes uh every other cost that that's recent. Um it also catches up catches up from all the other deficits that we've had in the past because I think it's important for people to understand that I I don't need just the increase the new expenses. I also need to cover the deficits that we keep having every year after year. So when I present a budget to you, it covers the deficits that we've had and also the new expenses that are upcoming. So 252 would will do just that. But because people wanted to hear transparency, I said, "Okay, I know that often times we have opportunities with some special funds to leverage some special funds um to cover some of the staff

110staffing cost and some of the other expenses. So, we looked at the special fun forms and and based on the parameters of the grants and the applications and what we were mandated to use those fundings for, uh, we're able to then um leverage some of that funding to cover some of the general cost. So, we're saying we're asking for 252. We know we could use just short of $20 million to leverage those expenses. That would take us down to $232 million. $232 million will be still an increase of again I don't have the slide here in front of me. Where is it? It will be an increase of 18 $9 million I believe is the number is um you know compared to um oh wait I'm sorry. Yeah.9 I see the number now. um $8.9

111million compared to the budget of this year. Out of the 18.9, you will say, well, a milk car, you know, the mayor proposed another $5 million, so if the others approve $5 million, then it's not $1.9 anymore. That's true. It will make a 14.9. But this is what we're doing when we only think about the $232 million. We're kicking the countdown again in in in in a matter of speaking. We're kicking the countdown again because what we're doing is that we're still cultivating that habit of using special funds and grants for costs that should be covered by general funds. And we're tying down more staffing, more core services to grants that may or may not arrive. For grants that are here today, may not be here tomorrow. For grants that the amount approved changes all

112the time up or down. We've had grants that have gone down. We have grants that gone up. Every year is a different story. And we cannot tie down our staffing cost, our salaries, our core services to grants that are not permanent. So $252 million will solve that part of the issue. It will keep us status quo, but then now it relieves $20 million for us to then do what grants are supposed to do, improve, add additional programming. Well, what I've been talking about throughout this whole presentation about improving quality service, adding, expanding, that's what we're looking for with this $252 million to relie release that $20 million that's tied down now with staffing. so we could expand and increase the services to our students. So as stakeholders, we have a responsibility now to attend to

113that need and to attend to these requests. And and I I I hope that um that that moving forward you accept this request and that we find ways to um to fulfill these requests on behalf of our children. I'll I'll stop there. I no pressure, but I'll stop there and then I'll I'll let the chair now uh open up with questions. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Hernandez. Thank you, Dr. Negron, for the thorough presentation. I want to open it up to the board for discussion, question, comments. Miss Downer, >> thank you for the presentation. Um, chief is um I have a question. Given that um the fixed operational costs like the snow and the snow removal, any landscaping or building maintenance are not scaling down proportionally with our almost 20% student enrollment decline. What

114is the strategy to realign our facilities or footprint and leverage our regional shared services um or our local shared ser if if there is an opportunity to collaborate with public works or park and wreck to bring the maintenance expenses in line with the lower state ECS aid? Let me call on our chief of school operations to to uh to answer that question for you, Miss Donner. >> Yes. Uh we do work with our city partners and look at ways of reducing cost. We are still in the midst of that process now of looking at what things can be services inhouse as well as services that we work with our partners on as as mentioned before with the snow removal during each storm. Our parks department has availed themselves to help support our cleanup of getting

115lots open after parking bans, getting bus lanes cleared up so that we are as best as possible we can reduce the number of days we're closed at any time. And we're still looking at efficiencies that we have that's that's still in the works right now and some more will be presented at the next finance and operations. >> Okay. Um, I got part two of that question because I know that some districts often look at other districts to see if they can look at some shared services um between districts. Um, are we looking at that also? >> If I may. Um, right now, Mr. counter. We we do have some shared services um particularly around uh let's see here where it comes to um where's my line here there are some shared services particularly like in

116IT at this point that we are are leveraging to your point it's it's at a small scale but I think that's an area that we have to continue to look to see are there um more opportunities right not just inside of um custodial work um like it now but perhaps to your point could there be a more there I know for example right now in the manner in which um health services are supported right like the city supports by um placing or nurses in our schools where we then as a BOE take care of the schoolbased um health centers. So there's some of that and but definitely the opportunity to look at more possibilities. >> Okay. Is there any way we can also reassess our vendor contracts um for services? And I know that you

117know um Chief Retirees did a great job on transportation, but is there some areas there where we can reduce the operational spending there and also um leverage volume discounts? Uh part of that will be in the transportation update about what we're looking for looking to do and then obviously with the end of the contract and it going out to bid again uh making a better contra RFP is the core to making uh services that are within our budget that we can be predictable budgets as well as something we can stay in to meet the service needs. >> Okay. And my last question is um for forecasting, I don't know um maybe Chief Hernandez can answer this. So you have a $6.7 million um forecast for other contractual services and I take it that that's where

118our um privatization is with the custodials and everything is in that line. Um I know we ask for definitions of each line. Do you foresee that number actually decreasing in the fiscal year 28 or do you see that that's going to be a standard cost for your five-year plan? >> My apolog 6.7 million. >> So it's in your other contractual services and I believe that was slide 27. >> Okay. Um well slide 27 is the last. So slide 26 maybe >> maybe twice slide 26. I'm sorry. >> Sure. Um even then I I don't see the 6.7 that you're referring >> it's 16.7. >> 16. Okay. So on that one >> yes >> so okay. So can you repeat the question again? I was >> so do you foresee that forecasted for the fif fiscal

119year 2028? >> Okay. >> Do you see that being fixed going straight across? because that's where our privatization is in that line. >> Yeah. I I think as as Dr. White has mentioned in previous meetings and even even today, uh there are many opportunities for us to look at each of these contracts uh and not only contractually uh review the way that we put the RFP uh out there for contractors or for vendors to apply or to to you know to to apply for. uh but also the combination of opportunities like shared services, opportunities of like Dr. White just mentioned how the parks and wreck has you know uh tag team with our team to to clear some of the uh the school areas which then takes down some of the cost for our vendor.

120Um those are opportunities that that we are going to going to continue to seek uh and create more efficiencies. Dr. Negron. >> Yeah. And and one of the things that I want to highlight which has been a process that we implemented um this year is that to your point as we continue to look are there um efficiencies. One of the things that we did this year is the way in which we look at every single contract that comes before us even before we bring it forward to FNO. Specifically what we do is we ask ourselves three key questions. Can we build this expertise in house? So as it relates to the facilities management, that's exactly what we're doing. Can we build that expertise in house? and and at the next FNO we either next FNO

121or or BOE, forgive me for not having the the date in front of me, we plan to bring the analysis that we've done to say what do we pay now? What would that look like if we were to bring it in house? Right? So that's one of the questions that we ask not just for that contract but again for every contract that is coming before us. The other question that we ask is, is there a more sustainable strategy? For example, when we're hiring a contractor to come in and do a service, particularly around something related to to like instruction, we ask, well, are we better off if we actually hire a person? Because that way we build sustainability. we have the person moving forward. So that is the second question that we ask and the

122third question is that we ask ourselves can we find the efficiency and we've done a lot of those samples this year meaning can we bundle services if we know multiple schools are looking for that service can we bundle it and then talk with the vendor and say hey if we bring these many what amount reduction are you willing to give us and we've been able to do that. So I am I I called up my own like student impact filter because I'm forcing the team to say we're no longer just okay do we have the paperwork let's put it before FNO no we want to ask those questions because we're trying to get a better efficiencies so I just wanted to take an opportunity right now to say that's the way we're looking at everything

123not just oper uh facilities related related contracts or operations related contracts or instructional whether it's after school programming you name it those are the key questions that I'm asking um our team to ask and even moving forward how can we put those layers in place through these electronic mechanisms that we're trying to to bring about to the district so that these questions do not slow down the speed in which we're making the decisions and they they just don't end up sitting in somebody's email that they can actually be tracked um through a system to know where where is where is that in terms of the flow of the life of the decisions that are being made related to contracts. long- winded, but again, I just wanted to highlight not only for you, but everybody that

124we have been listening and that we are continuing to look at ways to bring about operational efficiencies. But again, thank you for your question. >> And thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Miss Downer, Mr. Wilcox, Dr. Joiner. >> Uh yes, just want to thank you all for this uh presentation. It's the I can tell it's the result of a lot of work. I'm very also happy to see the budget book is back and it's I think it's back a month earlier in the budget cycle than I've seen it previously in previous years. And so I think that's that's even more carrying on with the with the commitment that the superintendent and her staff made and the board made to uh increasing budget transparency this cycle. And so I do

125appreciate that and um it's been very interesting to be going through it and I highly recommend comparing it also to previous budget books which are available on the district website maybe using an AI tool just to have it start to tease things out. And definitely the things that stand out are the the in giant increases in special education costs and the transportation costs which some of which is mandated because it's tied to the special education costs and so very much uh am appreciative of that and seeing that information and just you know just the special education costs that you presented tonight 18% of our enrollment but more than 30% of our general funds are spent on this uh what is provided by our funders just is not keeping up. And um and this is also

126after trying to working to bring down some of those expenses through trying to bring some things inhouse through the new program at Wexler as well as also having uh staff placements I think at charter schools to also try to control the special education costs that we're mandated to pay for New Haven students that go to charter schools. So, even with trying to be innovative in that as best we can with available funds, it's still um just exploding those costs. I do appreciate seeing uh you know, all the information in the presentation. I'm looking forward to really spending some time over the next week or so thinking about it. Um the staffing trends chart I thought was very interesting. uh might just add a ex some notes of explanation to the categories because there's that one

127category of non-instructional staff that there's a whole lot of pieces to that that you explained here verbally but I think might be useful in on the page itself um that's the one that's showing the decrease in top level administrators decrease in teachers uh but some increases in other staff and it was included I think you said things like bus drivers and so one. So, just making clear what categories of staff in there. Otherwise, people might just assume as we constantly hear that, oh, they're just sitting at Meadow Street. You know, we're not adding hundreds and hundreds of positions at Meadow Street. It's the way the staff are being counted more accurately now into the different categories is what I heard. So I just suggest that going through the budget book as I did I did

128notice a few calculation errors on uh I noticed it on cross and EIMS just in terms of enrollment projection for next year was ending up as zero. So, just to make sure nobody thinks we're not going to close cross uh that would be very challenging, but it's just it looked like the column didn't total. Um and I noticed it on EMS. It might have been on another, but um all the other data looked fine to me, but it was those are the two. I saw the zeros and I'm like, "Oh, what's going on there?" But um I see it's just probably a calculation error, I'm assuming. Um, just to finish up here, um, do think that, um, that I I'm hoping that this gets sent to, um, once it's put up on the website, also

129sent to our alders and to the New Haven delegation and to anybody else in the world that wants to see this along with the um, YouTube video of this meeting that has the very extensive explanations of things. I also think that when it's posted on the website, if it could be posted with maybe a thought exchange link so that anybody that wants to can provide ask questions, provide more information, ideas, etc. Just something that's also gathering in more input and trying to answer those questions that people might have after viewing the materials. Um, finally, I just want to say, and I'll be a broken record on some of these things, um, this is not a growth budget. In a sense, this is the cost of standing still budget. And that's even take into account there

130has been progress in categories. We're going to get complaints that the numbers aren't going up high enough and fast enough. I always remind people a percentage of increase in something means real students re-engaging with school. Real progress in some students education. Obviously, there's more to go. But those that progress is real in spite of the costs not having the funding. In a lot of ways, this document um is really lining the failures in Connecticut in funding education which is constitutionally protected in Connecticut, not taking care of it. And you see this in things like the unequal or the unevenness in per pupil funding, which is everything when you're talking about ed funding education. the per pupil funding which is allowed to be so much lower in the high needs places like New Haven in spite

131of the city working to try to fill that gap. We're not seeing what we need from the state. We're not seeing what we need from the federal government. We're also seeing this as the failure in the ECS formula when it was innovative when it was set up, but it was not indexed to inflation. And that would have right now instead of 11,525 as the base formula amount would have been more than 18,000 if it was just indexed to inflation. And we all know for the cost of doing our home business and keeping our cars running and paying rent or paying a mortgage, nothing stays flat for since 2013. And it's we're even seeing a failure which I'm hoping can be reversed in people backing off of finally addressing that by adding 2,000 more to the

132base formula amount wanting to back off to only add 1,000 next year which is just going to be devastating to New Haven public schools. So just in some in a lot of ways we have the cities we're hearing seeing news all the time about our colleagues in Hartford and Bridgeport and all the challenges that they're dealing with. I think Hartford has even more special education funding happening, more needs there. We're not seeing the funding going where the need is, but we're quite happy to have places like Greenwich having more than 30% more per student that they're able to afford than places like New Haven, even when we have high concentrations of the special needs. So, thank you very much for having this information. I really hope our delegation sees this. I really hope that they're

133able to convince their other colleagues and our governor who seems to have forgotten about education uh in his budget. I'm hoping that there can be progress made because the sad I mean the thing that we're not talking about is what happens if this is not funding. But I am happy to see that with the detailed budget book it gets pretty easy for people to see what happens. just start reducing the numbers at every single one of those schools or start reducing the number of bus routes and adding long wait times for students or um risks to us for lawsuits if we're not meeting our mandated special education funding needs and providing those services for those students just start to subtract from the current and you start to just end up where we might be. And

134I'm hoping that we all work together, which New Haven does better than some cities, but I'm hoping we can do even better, that we can have everybody on the same page as we talk to the to the governor and the other legislators to make progress and fix some of these problems that are basically saying a New Haven kid doesn't deserve or Hartford kid doesn't deserve what a Greenwich or Westport kid does when the numbers show they actually need a bit more. Thank you very much for this information. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Wilcox, Dr. Joiner. >> I'm going to start with what I believe to be the greatest line in hip hop. It's like a jungle sometime. It makes you wonder how you keep from going under. Uh first of all, I thought you

135did a great job in the presentation. Uh Dr. Negro, I don't think you were being long-winded. I don't think you had enough time to really go into depth to explain a stage of change related to education reform and budget development. And I'll explain that and I'm glad that you're still speaking out that way. If you look at the um historical budget request, it starts with fiscal year 2016. If if you know anything about American history, you know that you could had you could have had this same template that would have started in 1619 for certain groups and it would be a mirror to the budget differences on this page because those groups are represented in this city. If you think about the Irish, if you think about African-Americans, you think about the indigenous populations, Latinos,

136and so on and so forth. So, from a historical standpoint, those groups have been deprived from the jump, and it's still going on. Uh, I believe in stage theory as a way to analyze how things progress or regress. And tonight I saw the purpose of of tonight's board meeting to broadcast and forecast and you did a great job of that. You you didn't do as much forecasting because it would have taken too much time. But but what I think you did and I think that Mrs. down or ask questions related to that is that you broadcast to some extent what has happened in the past and how what happened in the past is responsible for the problems we have now and you also talked about the internal workings of the various aspects of the budget

137and how within the budget we're robbing Peter to pay Paul in a lot of cases and we have to do that because we can't anticipate how much snow is going to fall, uh, what's going to break down in buildings that have not been fully attended for since they were built. We built buildings, but we didn't build a budget to maintain them. And so that's the broadcast and forecast phase. The phase that Dr. Negron talked about and do and and Ms. Donna alluded to was the efficiency analysis. We have money. Now, let's see if we're using that money to maximum use. Is the costbenefit analysis favorable if we invest over here rather than over here? And that's on us to look inside the system to see whether or not all of the units are operating at

138full efficiency. And the people in those units are performing because you get paid to perform. And don't get mad at at me if I say that you're not performing or that you're wasting resources or that you might be better positioned in a building to deal with certain system challenges as opposed to central office. or you might be best positioned in a building where somebody can supervise you and know that you're doing what you're supposed to do about a particular problem. I'm not calling out any particular problems, but I think once we do an efficiency analysis, we'll see that. Also to look at units, how effective units are. If we have a particular unit that's working with atrisisk kids, is that unit fully is it at full capacity? Are the people there doing their jobs? Are

139all those kids there? All those kids that are there should be there or should they be back where they were in the first place? Would additional services brought in there? And I'm speaking in educators know exactly what I'm talking about. Uh I'm not talking about any particular person, but I'm talking about general issues in education. So, so the phase that we're going to have to get in once we get the money allocated is to look at our own practices to see whether or not those practices are bearing fruit to see whether or not uh we have given enough equity to certain fields of our field like libraries and so on and so forth and then of course re reallocation as necessary. But I think the other thing that we failed to do that we're gonna

140do now with this board and this administration is forecast and you did some of that tonight. We know that we have fixed costs in our contracts for the next three years. We shouldn't wait until next year or to time to rebargain to talk about this and that because one, we ought to be talking to our union leadership on a regular basis from now until the next contract negotiation so that we don't have to bring drama into the boardroom. So that we realize that we're on the same team. And we realize that in order to pay teachers and other educators what they deserve that we have to come together as one union to bargain with the powers that be. That's critically important because this board will give you everything it can give you. And we we

141we were we were of that mind from from the beginning of the negotiations. And that's for all of the unions. We're going to give you ex as much as we can give you, but we need to come together as a community to bargain for what we deserve because it's our money in the first place. It's the money we send to state and federal coffers to maintain this country and the and and these states. And the people that we elect are the ones who are supposed to make the best decisions about allocation of that. Not only that, but New Haven provides more medical services, more cultural support or more anything. Our cities can provide that to the state. And so that ought to be taken in consideration when you when you use our infrastructure to come

142into hospitals and go to colleges and all these other things that we offer. When we use that, then we ought to get a little something something for being a place where people can come and use those services. And that's that's really the dysfunction of of state and local state and federal government that that they don't take that into account and and it's a larger issue that gets into history and and economic and economics and distribution of wealth and all those other things. But I think if we can handle all three of those stages, broadcasting and forecasting, rigorous examination of our practices within the system, maintaining frequent contact with our union leaders leaders and being very open and honest about what we have and what we want to give you. and then re reallocation of resources

143as necessary based on the needs of the kids and the frontline workers in in buildings. I think if we can do that that we will build a better mousetrap. Um I guess in this era we need a a better rat trap. But I I think we can do that. And if we can be governed by what's rational and what's ethical, if we can let that be our driving forces, and you're in a very strong position because not only are you a fiscal expert, but you also understand the politics because of your service on the city council in Hartford. you know the deal and you know the reality of how the city is underfunded and as a consequence it it takes more of the city to allocate resources already scarce toward the school system and that's

144the problem that our mayor faces um even though he is a warrior for negotiating with Yale and and the state for more resources to supplant or the the the to to to handle the inequities that we face as an urban community. So, thank you so much. I'm going to I'm going to just ask for three things that won't be hard to do. I think that whenever you have a document this big, you need an executive summary so that people who don't have time to go through all of it, at least they have a general sense of and I don't know if it's in there. It is. >> Yeah. The budget book has one. >> The budget book has an executive summary. That's good. >> Great. >> Actually goes beyond executive summary. Then we have another

145section that's a follow up to executive summary. So, >> right. So, that's that's good. So, that's a great point. I still believe you need a budget narrative and that's not hard to do with AI. If that's in there, that's great. I didn't I didn't have chance to go through the whole >> I think you're going to be very happy with the first 17 pages. >> You say it's in there. I trust your judgment because you've been honest. >> And then of course I don't know if there's a glossery here. >> There there is one. >> There is one. I was thinking about you every single time we're adding another another term. So it's there. >> Thank you. Thank you. So I think that that no one can can can be critical and and you can

146be critical if you're trying to help. But I I think that's a great improvement. I think it's a um it's an unprecedented publication as it relates to that. And I think we just need as much public input as possible to make even this even even better. But again, don't don't criticize unless you're trying to help. There are some people who just come and make public comment and they just want to leave. But bring some solutions with your and and leave your drama, but bring some solutions when when you come. And they don't always have to be out loud. You know, you can let people know pull people's coat before they the meeting say in the future we'd like to see this and that and whatever. I think we'll have a much better uh year going

147forward if we do that and I thank you very much for that. I thank you very much uh Dr. Underground for leading that process and the unsung hero in this over the last several years is Matthew Wilcox who is the best uh financial fis fiscal committee person I've I've ever known and I've known a few. So thank you so much for that. We got to get to those Yukon girls. So, >> thank you, Dr. Joiner. >> Games on tonight. >> Mayor Eller. Uh, and then Dr. Bonitz, >> just a quick a couple quick comments. I appreciate the presentation. Um, I often give Dr. Non a hard time about long presentations, and I think this is one of the longer ones, but it was very engaging. Um, I appreciate the self-deprecating humor. I'm sure Maya appreciated

148the feedback on the New Haven Independent titles. Um but seriously, it was well done and really really engaging. Um just a couple quick comments. Uh so in downsizing uh that, um Miss Downer raised, I think an important uh significant thing that we've done with the students numbers going down is closed three schools in the last six years merged two others and Dr. Gro referenced bringing special ed services more so in house. Uh if we had those school buildings open now, it would be much more costly for us to operate snow clearance, utilities, landscaping. >> Um not to mention additional staff for a probably much lower teacher student ratio. So it' be very difficult. Um just the one thing I want to point out is, and I know you weren't exactly saying this, but I think

149it's important for us not to have the premise that we should not have grant dollars funding staff and we should not have the goal that we bring all staff members into the general fund. not realistic. It's not even close to realistic, but it's it's also something that is standard across almost all districts with the exception of some very wealthy districts. I I don't know how you have $92 million and you don't spend that on staff. I think just the theme here is we need more money from the state. Um and and I know that's what you're trying to say. I just didn't want the, you know, people that are listening to think that somehow we were inappropriately using grant funds or um or that we should have the goal that we bring it all into

150the general fund. >> Thank you very much, Mayor Alfair. Dr. Bonitez. >> Yes. Um want to thank um the chief and also our facilities person now our um director for explaining some of the creative ways in which you are trying to improve how we our expenditure is more creative. But I I also want to say that I am impressed by the ability that all of you, including our superintendent, have to tie every conversation about dollars to quality of education for children because that's what we're doing here. And and I am impressed because in the past we say that as a byproduct but this presentation was not about a byproduct. uh it was about what our work is and how the money follows the children and follows the children in order to impact their learning in

151order to impact their experience in our schools in our city. So I am very impressed with that how you were able to tie that and I want you to continue to do that. The other thing that again I agree with some of you have said that um the historical account so that we see how things have changed and how we are trying to understand why things have changed and hope that as we are understanding this better and and listening to articulation that makes sense that the public can do that in order to advocate like they are doing in Hartford or uh at the state level. I want to warn us. I like the mayor says we we cannot live without grants, but I like I like the dream. I like the fact that we are

152dreaming that we could find that money that grants give us and and not need it, but we also know that grants, as the chief mentioned, Chief Hernandez, could go away. So, we all need to continue to stay focused, listen to what's happening in Washington, listen to what's happening in Hartford, keep our eyes and ears open because New Haven kids and New Haven taxpayers, one of which is me, and I take quite a steep tax for my home and I don't mind it because I believe children in New Haven deserve that. And people in New Haven deserve for me as a taxpayer to pay for my um very um loved home that I have here. But I I I do want people to continue to be part of a team. I I heard superintendent in a

153p podcast say that she feels that this board of ed is not a team of eight but a one mind team and I I agree. I think this board of education has landed in a place where we can support each other. we can support our superintendent and we can support our staff in doing a great job in figuring out how we can spend the money to improve education for children. So, thank you very much and looking forward to continue to read more and understand more. >> Thank you very much, Dr. Bonitez. Uh just want to mention three thoughts that I'll run through. One is um I appreciate the ongoing responsiveness of this team to the conversations that you've held to the input um that has been given. Uh I noticed the board narrative. I noticed

154the glossery um and and having the budget book now even though that work will need to be um potentially adjusted once we know the final number. Uh and the point that stands out to me is that um responding to inquiry and um following through on task is not something that's just technical. It's also social and emotional >> and at least for me to pull myself together to follow through on something that I know is going to take more of me to do uh is a lot. So, I I just appreciate and don't want to understate um the work that has gone into all these conversations. Um and then for us to give it over to somebody else and have them make a decision uh is is is a lot. So, thank you very much for

155your responsiveness. Um the second thing I'll mention, you know, slide 23 where it talks about the alliance revenue per pupil for 2026. Um, it has me both disheartened and also just very curious about what is going on here. Um, that New Haven is receiving more than half less than the average per pupil amount and and we're receiving it. We It's not about we earned it. Um, New Haven is not less valuable. Um, New Haven is not more than 50% less valuable than any other district. Uh, yet our students have this number. So I'm curious uh what needs to change in this formula to really bring the uh equity where it needs to be. Uh my last comment um so in addition to Mr. Borov's mention about um our state delegates and our state leaders having

156the information and this book and the presentation. I also think this needs to be sent or I also think our vendors need to take notice >> and I have a desire and expectation that they will be innovative in their own efficiencies >> that they will look at how they can implement things to reduce their own expenses and pass on some of those savings to the vendors particularly if New Haven has been with them for a very long time and has supported them in a very strong way. Uh, I know that as an FNO member, I'm looking at everything that comes forward and it's not just okay to say, well, since I'm the late, since I'm the lowest bidder on whatever I'm presenting, I should get it. Um, what I do know in a different field,

157not necessarily in the education field, but in a different field, there's a name brand cost and then there's the same product that just happens to not be name brand. And there can be a company that makes a product. They'll make a supermarket version. Then they'll make the name brand version. And they can be essentially the same. They can perform essentially the same. Uh but one will cost more because of the name brand recognition. There are other things that are involved. But my point is the increase in cost should definitely match an increase in quality and performance. >> Um and some things don't cost as much as they're growing. Uh so I I would really hope that our vendors will still be on top of their craft. Uh that they will uh work on their own

158efficiencies, that they will be innovative on their own, and that someone will step forward and say, "Hey, what can we do to um bring the cost down for education uh and and other nonprofits?" Um now, I'm not talking about self-driving buses. Don't want to don't want to put any children on that right now. But yeah, but there there things that can happen. There are things that we can do. Um, so for me, just thank you very much for all the work that has gone into this, all the work that will go forward and I look forward to the state coming through and making this impact and creating the legacy that will be spoken about for generations to come. Dr. Negron, does that conclude your report? >> That concludes my report tonight. >> Thank you very

159much. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Hernandez. Okay. Next is the president's report. Um, and I want to miss mine. I want to talk about a finance fair that I went to that our students were a part of, but I'll save that for another meeting. Um, teaching and learning report, facilities naming committee report. Dr. Joiner, >> I'm going to save that for the next meeting. I'll just say we had a great TL meeting about language development and I'm hoping that Dr. Negron will put that on the agenda. It was phenomenal. we are at the top of the heap when it comes to what people are doing nationally with language and and uh any any in-depth stuff I'll say for the next meeting. >> Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, uh the Head Start report, citywide school building

160committee report, finance and operations committee report. >> Uh yes, thank you. I'll be brief. Um the minutes for Head Start are posted, but I'll highlight two or three things. One is as you know the Head Start grant was submitted uh after it was approved by the board. So that's been done. Uh there was we've discussed in the past there was a monitoring review and they had received the results and for the significant health and safety incidents. Uh the um deficiencies have been corrected. Um and there are current no outstanding issues or open findings. So that's good news that those have come to an end. Uh then finally I'll also say we remain very strong on enrollment with almost every slot full 434 out of 438. So just uh four slots available in the district. So

161that's uh good news. The team there continues to keep that going. and my understanding is they're already working on the class for next year. Um, so the other thing I'll mention is finance and operate. There was no city ride report because we haven't met since our last board meeting. Uh, the minutes for the uh, FNO meeting are posted. You might want to take a look at those in addition to some things we've talked about. There's also a restroom report and um information on our updated discussion calendar which we have some uh that outlines when we're going to be discussing things in FNO and uh at our next meeting we'll be looking at continuing that calendar out through the summer months as well. So if there's any things you all would like to be hearing about

162uh please let the committee know and Dr. undergone and we'll work on fitting that into the discussion calendar so we can get updates on the important things we need to get updates on. Happy to answer any questions but that's the end of the reports. >> Thank you. Any discussion? >> Thank you. Governance report. Dr. Bonitez. >> U there's no report for today. We haven't met yet this month. >> Thank you Dr. Bonitez. for the food service task group committee. We did meet um I look forward to having the minutes uh available to you. Um, and I also look forward to uh one bringing a presentation by the food service team and also our food service partners in the city and in the state because they do a remarkable job and I appreciate the the work

163that they do um on serving the students also providing special lunches, food allergy and helping with um food during the break periods and also during the year um when more food uh would be needed in family households. Any discussion? Thank you. Seeing none, accept a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Thank you. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Dr. Joiner. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bonitez, >> yes. >> Mr. Wilcox, >> yes. >> Miss Downer. >> Yes. >> Mr. Waldez, >> yes. >> Mr. Miss Miss Mr. Ellie, >> yes. >> Mayor Eller, >> yes. >> I'm a yes as well.