001and our basketball team had a great season little disappointing at the end but hey they made it to States and got into two games so it was wonderful I want to remind everybody to buy their tickets to Annie it's the last weekend of this month already bought mine I want to thank Justin for doing a good job and helping with the budget presentation uh last week uh last Thursday it was disappointing that more of the public didn't show up uh because we did a good job of explaining what was going on I thought we did um H why we have the increase Amy did a great job with the town and why the increase in the town budget uh starting next Thursday the board of Finance is going to be doing their weekly budget workshops
002at 7 o'clock at Town Hall so I urge Board of Ed members to go uh they will give us heads up when they are going to do the board of education's budget but it's good to be there to support the town if you can make it so that's basically all I had to say so any tickets Board of Finance meetings on Thursday nights will be wor budget workshops especially when they do the board of education budget which uh we got to be there to support that and um Heather will fill you in on our sub subcommittee Communications which will will be starting to focus on the um supporting getting the vote out for the budget that's our major drive right now is to get the vote out to support the budget um I will now
003open the floor to Citizens comments please come to the microphone and state your name and address uh yes no well you you I was gonna I had a Citizens comment so I you want to finish what you no that's um so Heather Santos 77 haom Road um I just want wanted to also mention um to piggy back off of what Kathleen had said for folks that did not get to attend um the town hearing um it is on our Facebook page um you can watch it via YouTube I assume is how they do it as well as we have the PowerPoint presentation for our PowerPoint p p portion as well as our full budget line by line um budget for folks that want to check that out on their own yeah thank you heather for
004for mentioning that I didn't Miss I did hear some feedback that the YouTube presentation they said it was a little low at the beginning but that I think 5 minutes deep they adjusted the volume okay so it was more of the introductions and stuff and that and yes our budget and the town our budgets on the school website the town budget is on the town's website so yes Tom uh one other comment about the uh YouTube link if at all possible next time there's a presentation once the speaker either is done or working with you know the presentation to zoom into the actual screen watching it on Zoom uh on YouTube you could not see the words or any of the screen yeah that would be um that's that that was another comment that I
005had thank you Tom for bringing but the but they can see the presentation if they go to the web our website yeah correct right okay any other citizens comments either um do I have any from Zoom any from the audience here hearing none I'm going to we have uh Senator Jeff Gordon from the 35th District um I'm going to invite him to come up now yeah we need to add to the agenda it's swapped right oh I'm sorry I'm sorry you're out of order um I did not see that excuse me it's the student spot what happened to your cohort tonight I don't know you're not his you're not his keeper she checked on his geolocation and tomor for the challenge I'm gonna start with the student Spotlight for the second quarter okay so each
006quarter Turtle up Memorial High School student Spotlight program recognizes a student who has demonstrated outstanding achievement character leadership attitude and our contributions to the school and Community our first quarter our second quarter student Spotlight hory is senior Aden bourette Luke zos writes Aiden is one of the kindest people I know he is helpful and has so much Integrity I've seen Aiden help others and myself multiple times and he never once complaint to put it simply he is the sunshine on a stormy day additionally Bon P writes he really try he tries really hard in school and is a really good cook he he lights up the room with his jokes and sarcasm jna Brinson ja Santos and Serena Smith all describe Aiden as kind caring and helpful and funny sth members have also supported Aiden's
007nomination Mrs Anderson says Aiden is a hardworking and dedicated student who always strives to do his best he has a strong passion for Learning and isn't afraid to take risks to grow and experience new things as a natural leader at tmhs he encourages others while embracing every opportunity to learn and improve his dedication to developing his musical talents is especially inspiring and he con constantly challenges himself to reach new levels of skill and creativity whether in the class or on stage he sorry he makes the most of every opportunity showing a true love for Learning and personal growth Mrs Willet adds Aiden is dedicated to what he does and he and takes responsibility seriously in addition Aiden is able to balance his deter this determination with a great sense of humor while Aiden knows how
008to make people laugh he also knows how to take a joke and is open to feedback personally I appreciate that Aiden is willing to put himself out there and being courageous he worked tremendously hard to help pilot our Capstone showcases absolutely crushed his first his performance and now is he is dedicated to his PE do the same and let's not even talk about how gutsy he is on stage and finally Miss Mrs seget writes Aiden has become this absolute Dynam a student he is over involved in passionate about his commitments to his community and his people he has always held his academics to a high standard and he is embracing his senior year he is funny dedicated and reliable I interact with Aiden every day and better for him when ask what motivates him Aiden
009says I motivate motivated by the positive influences in my life my family my friends and anyone else who supports me in my dreams aen contributes to his community in various ways he shared that he is the treasur of the tmhs national honesty Society a member of the tmhs student leadership team a member of the tmhs governance Council a member of the tmhs schools Spirit Association and a member of the teams future Business Leaders of America at the concert choir the modern music Ensemble the modern music Masters triam and I captain of The Varsity golf team on top of those clubs I also was a host on the TGT and playing as Bert Healey Roosevelt in the school boy sorry wait I lost my spot really sorry great job it's Annie volunteered to help with the
010team HS Unified sports program and volunteered as the school mascot at basketball games my family and I have done thousands of volunteer hours being a foster family for our dog adoption fostering organization called go dogs go I volunteered as one of the team captains for the team HS National Honor Society trium team for the 2025 really for life and help pilot the team HS capsum portrait of a graduate as one of the six chosen inag girls also volunteered with helping setup a fundraising cornhole tournament organized a team HS expedite for eighth graders moving up to high school organize and speak at the 2024 2025 teams freshman orientation I've been an usher for special guest at the 2023 2024 teams scholarship and award ceremony and worked with my team HS collaborative group to honor the 1987
011turtle out varsity basketball team winning the state CH championships I have also worked two part-time jobs one over the school year at be hansburg as a bus boy and the other over the summer over the summer at Connecticut National Golf course as a groundskeeper finally Aiden's message to his school and Community is don't be afraid to take risk and embrace what makes you unique make sure to keep your grades high but never forget to have fun give yourself reasons to remember these four quick years of your life fondly Aiden plans after high school to pursue the next steps in his educational journey in college but he hasn't fully decided what he wants to major in just yet and then for the Board of Education Le report March 3rd with the team just c meeting at
0127 p.m. March 5th was the team just pop sponsor at 6 p.m. um March 7th Was a Serial challenge um March 11th is the Red Cross blood drive at Team HS and Springs sports parent player meeting on the 14th is midnight madness at 6 pm on the 18th is a field trip to Yukon for interested 10th and 11th graders 19th School governance council meeting 21st is the TSL TSL meeting and local government day 28th is the end of quarter 3 and the 28th to the 29th is the an is Annie the musical performance other news and highlights is the team HS boys basketball team has made States this year and won the first game on March 1st against Oxford team HS won 66 to 58 and is now in the second round the next game
013will be on March 4th against c train the marketing class is putting in a lot of hard work collecting cereal for Friday March 7th and Midnight Madness is being held on March 14th and we'll have activities in the gym including basketball volleyball and other sports it will also include a foral room just dance room nail painting room and Etc students will be going out to many different locations to Shadow local government positions this will take place on March 21st and concluded with a lunch in with all the local government officials and TSL student leaders in the scavage auditorium and for student boys the student voice forms that were sent to the student council will be discussed with Mr melon and reported at her next Board of Education meeting thank you thank you for that Megan
014um I forgot the serial Feng you broke the record very good work um serial challenge you broke the record again terrific I always love watching that I wasn't able to be here in person this year but I watched about five or six different videos of it on Facebook okay now we have the honor did she write the the Villager she did Megan Megan you wrote the the Villager the little article yes yeah thank you yeah it's very it's very rare anybody ever says thank you but that was very nicely done yes thank you very much thank you so much Senator Gordon I'm happy to be here this this evening you all have a copy of the letter that you wrote us good yes February 11th which we will put into record as correspondence but well
015I'm happy to be here uh this actually is the highlight of my evening because I got to spend hours tonight preparing for a public hearing testimony tomorrow all day at the capital in some meetings so uh but as I tell people I represent part of Thompson but really I'm here for all of Thompson so I'm happy to have Thompson as part of my 13 towns that I represent uh I could be here all night letting you know what's going on at the Capitol uh it's just a whirlwind of activity this is a action path session uh for various reasons there was a backlog of stuff last year that did not happen that's dump into this year in addition to the thousands of bills we normally do what we call a long session which will end
016at the end of the day on June 4th when we gavel out once we reach midnight and then legally we're we're done until we go into the special session I know everybody asks me what's the state going to do with its budget to be honest with you we're probably not going to know until the last day uh I'm on Appropriations Committee my third year and we have to wrestle with what is anticipated to be a $55 billion two-year budget uh it might be more than that we don't yet know we're trying to get a handle on a whole bunch of fixed costs and a whole bunch of federal funded money that we get which isn't in the budget actually that's all considered off budget that whether or not we have to assume some of that
017we don't know uh so we're trying to get a handle on it the governor presented his budget to us I got to have a front row seat his budget is Dead on Arrival the minute he gave it to us because a lot of people are unhappy with things like his proposed public education Cuts again I'm not certain why he keeps proposing that uh Thompson actually doesn't get affected uh but a lot of other towns do uh and it's millions and Mill hundreds of millions of dollars so we're trying to find money for that to stop all those cuts at the same time there's a big bipartisan push to see what can we do to further fund education cost sharing which despite what the state law says and which I believe the doesn't come anywhere close
018to its legal obligation the lawyers keep saying we do because evidently every year in the budget implementer we keep on exempting ourselves more or less from whatever that law is back in the day uh that we're supposed to fund things uh which is an interesting provision that has to more or less be done every two years so we're trying to find a better way and a fairer formula which is a big political hassle right now what do we do with the education cost sharing and of course the big one is what do we do with special Education costs which are going through the roof uh for a change we actually have a committee now just on special education uh and that's going to feed into us on the Appropriations Committee as we're trying to figure
019out what are we going to do with the money uh hanging over our heads is the spending cap and you've probably heard a lot of discussions that we have massive uh surpluses which we do and we've been paying down billions in debt uh we are think I think the number two or number three most indebted state for just State debt uh and the governor's right we've been paying that down it was up to 97 or 98 billion I think he's knocked down N9 billion that's a big number that interest payments that we save we move into other things for example two years ago we had to find money to counter the governor's cut to education and all that interest payments we moved into public education uh so H down debt is helpful uh we don't
020really know what's going to happen with the spending cap and the volatility cap in these fiscal guard rails you hear about it is a massive political fight what's going to go on with that uh and no one really knows until we crunch the numbers and see where things are with that uh with that said we did actually take two votes to further fund special education uh it took two votes to do it it was a little bit bizarre but we wanted to have more money for special education this fiscal year so there was a proposal for 40 million in a past the governor was in India and we don't know why he vetoed it but he did and instead of overriding the veto there was a last minute deal to say we'll do the 40
021million whether it's going off budget into account there some leeway as far as how that money is going to where it's coming from but it's really coming from the budget uh which is where should come from so we had a huge political fight last week I don't know if anybody watched it uh we were in Senate session for a while uh on it I actually ended up voting for and I said I was going to the additional money not everybody did uh but that's up to them I voted for it it's 40 million the estimates I'm getting for Thompson range anywhere from 36 to 46,000 the numbers are fluid uh it's only 40 million for the entire state so we actually my colleagues and I pushed for 92.2 million the reason was is that would
022have taken us right up to the spending cap this year with a little bit of a cushion uh which we do have which would have given around two and a half times more money uh to everybody who was due that that's the best we could do within the spending cap for this year it's better than certainly zero uh one of the reasons I voted for it is it sets a marker that we want more money for special education uh we tried to see if we can get more money for the education cost sharing to help out this fiscal year but that didn't have any buyers so we couldn't actually add that in and we were told it was not Germaine because it was a uh there was already emergency certifications and so they're they're handled
023certain ways by the Senate and the house interestingly uh so we're going to try to get as much money as we can get uh in the budget there is a bipartisan push to try to get more I just don't know how much more uh because there's a lot of asss in the budget uh the last total that I've gotten from my staff last week was all the different asss that people have uh which doesn't have anything to do with education is going to put an additional five or six billion dollars beyond what the governor proposed uh we don't have that much at all uh so we're setting priorities I've been very clear on Appropriations Committee I serve on several education subcommittees uh that one priority should be public education there are other things I believe
024state government does that it can do if it has the money and it wants to but there's certain things it must do so we're going to see where that pans out there's been a lot of discussions behind the scenes about what we might be able to do with with that but we also don't know what the governor wants to do he really wants to adhere to the fiscal guard rails he's saying he wants to do that in a real strict way we'll see how that pans out um there's a lot of Dynamics because technically he could be overridden um and he's mindful of that no Governor wants to be overridden necessarily so we're trying to see how that might play to get him to agree to move different pots of gold around to better fund
025public education with a lot of other things that have to be funded so that's one of the reasons we may not have a budget until the very end which unfortunately means you guys have to determine your budget before we actually get to determine ours uh which is kind of interesting and one other thing we're pushing on is is we're really taking a strong look at all these unfunded mandates on the schools we think this year we might be able to do something we're getting more buyin uh from state government uh especially the State Department of Education the governor's office that there are a lot of unfunded mandates we should do something about it uh this has been a task force that keeps on going and going and never seems to generate anything but there is
026a big push right now because if there can be Savings in the State Department of Education the thinking is great move that into funding public education because there can be some savings there uh with regards to what they do with all these reports you guys have to issue and all this other stuff we don't really know how much savings but we're going to take a look at that and see where we are with it my feeling is anything we can do to cut down on unfunded mandates is great I think there's way too many of them I don't have to tell you uh but we'll see where that goes uh this year but there is a renewed effort this year to try to get something out from the legislature if we can uh but we'll
027see where that goes that's going through the education committee I don't serve on that uh but some of that's going to feed into the Appropriations Committee uh but there's a lot of other things going on that isn't education that's taking up our time because it's a long session we have thousands of bills I submitted 105 this year um but there's just thousands we're plowing through so it is a whirlwind of activity committees public hearings the thinking is we really want to get a lot done because of massive problems last year that things didn't get done so that's why there's a flurry of activity things are happening very very fast and I warn people at the end of this month committe is going to start wrapping up their work then the Senate and the house go
028into voting more and more and things are going to happen especially in the middle of the night we're already being warned that expect to stay overnight which I can do in my office uh there uh because we're just going to be Lo in trying to get a lot done so I'll try to get as much information as I can I'm not certain how many people pay attention to me at two in the morning when we're there but certainly things that you want me to be aware of things you're trying to track I have a crackerjack staff fortunately and they can track all this stuff for me even in the middle of the night uh so by all means I have an open door feel free to reach out to me any time uh and I'll
029try to get information out to you as much as I can on stuff but sometimes s unfortunately some of the these things hit us like an hour before a vote and then the vote gets called and there's just no way to Pivot to let people know in time uh that's just the way it works but we're trying as best as we can to keep you up to date I'm glad you got the letter I'm trying to redouble my efforts getting information out as best as I can to you and to all of my towns just because of how quickly things happen it just let you know some of what's what we're doing even if it doesn't always make the news but always happy to be here to be at help any time have a question
030how did they determine that Thompson's going to get 36 to 46,000 they rolled the dice kind feels that way sometimes so what it's based upon is whatever the way it's been explained to me is whatever was money given to any municipality and some didn't get much at all uh for the special educ excess costs it upped the percentage so whatever the percentage is which is nowhere near 100% most of time it's like in the 60s for most places uh as far as what the state reimburses whatever that was calculated the additional 40 million got spread out amongst all the municipalities that were getting money this fiscal year and the percentage just went up accordingly but not evenly no because I mean for example I have earn in that is getting around a quarter of million
031is their cost are they get a lot more um they're a bigger town and the cities get even more so it it the formula was the same it's just the part of money funded for the state went up by 40 million I was just wondering because we're like correct me if I'm wrong Dr Jones like 16th in the state for having the most 16 out of 167 yeah so it's kind of just wondering how they're determining like what are they looking at if we have all a higher population of special education kids why are we not getting a higher percent of money and we're much poorer than burning for instance well this is why the formula needs to be fixed and there's an effort to do that the formula is a political formula that's just
032the way it is I mean I consider myself smart when I try to read that the formulas I can't figure out how the heck they came up with it makes no sense it's a political formula that's just the way it is when you craft a budget it's a there's a lot of politics involved and special interest so whatever the formula is this 40 million added to whatever the state has been spending this fisal year the hope is we can get more money in general and rework the formula for ECF and special education so that way it's more fair I've been arguing for the towns I represent a lot of small towns I think I have the smallest Union um so we're trying to see we can make it better for the towns there a lot
033of legislators who represent cities let me tell you so but we're trying to work that out the trick is to get more money and then we can spread it out a bit differently Tom you have a question yep Dr Gordon can you hear me okay sure I can okay thank you very much for coming in tonight and I appreciate you saying that you are supporting the special ed and obviously anything and everything you can do is greatly appreciated has have they ever looked at using a sliding scale formula basically you know to hear that some of the let's just say like Vernon or Stanford or these uh towns and actually they're more cities than towns um right now obviously the formula does not work for a town of our size and especially where we only
034have I think two or 2.2% where our tax base is funded by industrial support so it's a huge burden on the homeowner um and we want to do the right thing but unfortunately it's really handcuffing us as taxpayers oh I agree the formula makes no sense absolutely it doesn't it needs to be reworked which is a whole political process that is already underway um separate from what money we can find so there's it's two parts to that we'll see which process prevails but there is a legitimate bipartisan effort to see what we can do to rework the formula at the same time if we can part of that political analysis will be the cities don't want to lose anything and give up any share to the towns so we can up the amount of money
035then one can try to work politics and there's a lot of that behind the scenes I I tell people 99% of what we do is behind the scenes and 1% is when we're in front of the cameras at committees and taking votes and debating things uh there is a lot going into that right now I I I I had various reasons to vote for the special education uh last week that was the second vote and I was heavily Lobby to vote no so if you look at who voted for for what my vote kind of my vote very much did stick out actually um but it was the right thing to do because it helps as much as we can now but it helps move things we're trying to do for the next two years
036and I felt if I voted no it would lose my ability to be negotiating with folks about what to do for the next two years so there were a number of reasons I did vote at the end of the day it was the right thing to do for special education that's how I viewed it when we took the vote at night thank you Senator Norton thank you for your time tonight I we just went through our our budget presentations as Melinda said earlier in the meeting on Monday um or last week the most volatile piece two pieces of our budget is special education um and it being almost $6 million of a $22 million budget and that being able to vary I think in three weeks it went 28% in One Direction or another um
037and then you know building facilities being the second bu portion the state has has done the HV that clean air in schools grants that they've done for facilities upgrades and I get that you guys are reworking the excess cost Grant formula but it makes it really hard for smalltown Board of educations to balance or work on a budget when the volatility of those two items it it's it's impossible for us to predict a boiler goes and that's $100,000 uh three uh individuals move into town or four individuals move into town and it's $400,000 you know $300,000 worth of worth of um out placement it it is hard for us and it's even harder to to get that into the citizens Minds that that that's you know that that's having to be carried by the the
038local governments are you guys I mean besides reworking the formula is there anything else that you guys are are looking at doing for smaller towns like Thomson yeah there there's a big effort I'm not the only one who represents small towns there's a number of us that do um it's just there's a lot more who represent the really big towns and the cities that's just the way it is um especially in the house there only 36 of us in the Senate there 150 something in the house so yes there is as best as we can part of it is really pushing the state to say if we can commit more to public education what can we commit more for school construction School reconstruction being of help as needed for Capital expenses there's a lot of
039those discussions the issue is what are we going to have for money to work with because trying to push for public education isn't in a vacuum the state has huge obligations all across the board a lot of those are just Rising it's just amazing the fixed costs um some of the analyses I've seen have just been eye openening for what the true fixed costs are for the state at the same time we have a big state employee um Union contract that is up now uh we have we don't know what that might come in at for how many how much more money and that has to be factored in as well but that will add more cost to the state that has to be budgeted so it's a little unclear how much wiggle room we're
040going to have and part of it also is we got the spending cap and the only part of the spending cap that we can play with is the volatility cap which is really made up of personal income taxes and the folks who do their taxes and is legally we have some leeway there if we wanted to tweak that but some of the other caps we can't I mean we have a we have bonding Provisions that that say we're supposed to actually follow the spending cap if we can't break those bonding covenants um so there's reasons we have them in place it's unclear what we might be able to for some leeway that's the political fight I'm keeping an open mind I I like having a degree of spending caps because it served the state well
041not having to keep r raising taxes we actually enacted big tax cuts two years ago uh because we're on an even kill but there's some leeway I'm keeping open minded about about what we might be able to use with some of the surpluses we have unfortunately what's really bed water on us is not knowing what we're going to have to fund if Connecticut loses any federal money we have no clue I don't think they do either um in Washington and we don't know we can't budget for that well we have to have a reserve and so we're trying to keep the reserves we have just in case but we can't blow through the reserves because it's estimated if we use our reserves to fund a lot of different things we'll go through those billions of
042dollars in two years so we want to make certain we keep the reserves to be able to do things we need so it's not easy getting a handle on that but the hope is that we might be able to rework a number of these different programs there's a big push that to try to of help to the small towns there's a lot of us both sides of the aisle who represent small towns and we're trying to B together as best as we can I can tell you our delegation from this part of the state we're not the quiet Corner we are loud uh we do get Hur uh especially when it comes time to negotiate things uh I was meeting with the governor a few weeks ago on some items and I happen to bring
043up education to him uh and remind him that we should spend more on it uh of course he came right back and said we have the spending caps uh but still we we I think we have room in the budget to move some things around and see there's a lot of active discussion about that this is early in the session for the Appropriations Committee right in March quite frankly the committee doesn't really heavily hash things out for a few months and then things get hashed out even more end of May first week of June when we're done so we're still early in the process soly believe it or not even though we started in January and Heather Santos I just had a couple of uh comments and questions um I always thought it was bizarre
044that they redistrict redistricted us but I'm happy that they did because we get you too so that's that's fantastic I didn't have anything to do with the redistrict I know I know but I just thought it was bizarre that they would take a chunk of our town and and throw it in another when it was already pre kind of working as it was but but I but I I don't I'm happy that that happy the process why they took po so to have an extra voice is always fantastic um thank you for your yes vote I know it didn't work out but I we appreciate that as well um my concern is a little bit of what you just mentioned a little bit in terms of the federal grants and that um we did just
045have our budget presentation and we rely on about a half a million dollars of federal grants that we always get that we plan to get that we budget to get um if we don't get those or portions of those that that it would be an immediate need for this coming budget not something that we can wait for um the slow wheels of of politics to to get us funding if the state were to be able to you know what what are they doing in terms of steps to potentially streamline that if it comes to that sort of situation um because a lot of these grants fund salaries contracted salaries that we can't just cut um you know it would it would have to be immediate um so is there any kind of pre-planning that's happening
046that to say how that things can kind of move a little quicker if need be because things are moving pretty quick um on a federal level yeah we have a process to move fast if we want to okay we do I mean the Senate moves somewhat slow at times compared to the house but it's all a political process many times we're standing at ease for hours it's because everybody is off the Senate chamber negotiating discussing doing whatever then we come back in and in Vote or debate and things like that yes we can move fast we can do things as fast as we want because we create the law by frankly uh we can do emergency certification real quick that bypasses any committee the downside of that is there no public hearing and the public
047has no way of having a say most of the emergency certifications have nothing to do with an emergency however the special education one was important to do and I'm glad we were able to get the 40 million um but if we wanted to we could there's been discussions right now that we can't really plan budget-wise because we don't know what will happen if anything we just don't but we're using this as a good opportunity to say what actually are all these off-budget accounts that we get from the feds you would think the state would have one document actually really doesn't you have to get these all from agencies and even getting it from one agency you have to takes a while to get so we're using this to find out everything we get from the
048Feds all these grants Medicaid which we get a huge amount of money all these different things to figure out what are all these off-budget items that the state relies upon so if something happens we actually then know what we're dealing with as opposed to right now not that we don't know but it's not easy to figure it out if we have to do anything at a state level or do anything for towns and cities yeah we can just go it will just be declared an emergency certification and we just go in uh if it's wanted um you got to get the governor's Buy in because he can veto but he can't stop us from acting um but that would be a process or we just decide we put it on the agenda and it goes
049usually to get it done quick fortunately you got to bypass committees the Appropriations Committee I don't like doing that but when you have certain reasons to like the special education funding we didn't need to spend many time on that we all knew what it was for for example so there's a way of doing that if needed and there's planning for that certainly but right now there it isn't there's no date for that it's just going to be if something happens we can pivot quickly react yeah we could the question is what do we do we can actually react but what do we do and that's where there's a lot of discussions on that um my my last question is um in your letter you comment to the alliance our alliance district and the we opportunity
050District even beyond that and I know Melinda always has to fight to get our due money um because for whatever reason Thompson isn't in the master list and it we have to kind of do these you know jumping through who so anything that you can do to streamline us get us on the list so that we don't have to worry every time you know it comes to the annual renewal to get the the money that we rely on that would be helpful well there's a process behind the scenes for that when I hear about these things some days I play the good cop some days I play the bad cop uh so there are some agencies that don't like hearing from me because I'm usually not nice um and then they get things done other
051times it's easy enough with a commissioner to get things done uh if I hear about these things there is a process uh I'm able to go to a commissioner I'm able to go to the chief of staff I can go to the leg legislatively aison I can drill in um but I have to hear about these things if there's a delay in something or whatever usually it's a red tape or some something is sitting in a pile and everything just gets piled the top of it uh we're able to move that around as much as we can so I'm always happy to be of help usually it works out well when we hear about it yeah I just know every year since we've been on it it's it's always drama you know and it's it's
052unclear why that has to be right I think the reason is is that it's just the way it's been done and there's a huge inertia to not want to change and sometimes it just has to uh but I can talk with you separate about that because there is an effort hold agencies the uh departments feat to the fire and say we're giving you a gigantic amount of money every year we give you more staff what is it that you're doing with your processes some of these don't work uh we're having some of those discussions now which is well we're giving you no more staff because we can't figure out what you're doing and we keep hearing complaints so and then the agencies kind of wake up sometimes uh with that we certainly appreciate that you
053and Senator flexer um put in uh a bill so that we did get the $200,000 but it's a separate it's a separate line item it's not part of the alliance bucket um and we're grateful for that it's just we want some guarantee that will always be in that bucket um we're working hard to bring our scores up but we do need help and we're in a region that our surrounding communities are also Alliance districts yes and you know some of it is it's sad to say that sometimes in a budget bill or an implementor bill of the budget you got to slip these things in to get things done that's just the way it works um so you kind of prepare for that every year uh which is sad uh there certainly is a better
054way of doing it that's a bigger effort to change some of these processes but still you know I'm I'm continue and happy to fight on it I work with Senator lexer I worked with rep Hayes I now work with rep Stewart you know we certainly do uh talk a lot about the talents we share and what can we do in the Senate and in the house to get things done so we're always happy to keep on pushing but unfortunately sometimes it takes a while to change in agency standard operating procedures it's huge inertia Melinda and I went to Harford to have this discussion and we're not covered by the law and they keep saying we'll change the law and nobody's changing the law so every two years we have to ask for the money now
055we're designated an alliance District but not guaranteed the money uh so we have to ask for it it would I'm not saying this would be easy but if the law was changed to include Thompson we wouldn't have to ask every year or every other year and that would be common sense right but that's not the way it always works well they promised us when we were sitting at the table with the whatever his name was but and I'm happy to keep having discussions you know senator flex and I of course are in the same chamber you have to get it through the Senate and then you got to get it through the house uh unfortunately a lot of those Common Sense things just don't always happen um a lot of the decisions get made by
056leadership what goes in what doesn't go into these big bills to get done but it's also what the governor wants done and not done for some of this stuff so do you know what he wants I mean we do have a large Surplus in the state and there's a bipartisan boat to to fund special education he comes back from India and vetos it and I'm not sure if it was exact words but he's saving it for a rainy day does he not know that it's pouring it's it's raining hard right now I don't want to throw the governor under the bus but well um what happened was is that we voted for it and it was going to come out of the budget we have the money this fiscal year to fund in we're not
057near the cap and we have to have a cushion by law and so so we don't go over the cap but quite frankly last year we already knew we were over a budget but it evidently it didn't matter because I was told that yeah but if you're over budget and you don't reopen the budget in the second year legally you're still balanced it didn't make sense to me um so we didn't call it that we open the budget last year we adjusted the budget in a massive way we added even more deficit to the operating expenses that now has to come due this year the governor was right and saying we got to pay for it uh however we have the money this fiscal year the state actually has been doing well with Revenue I'm
058glad its expenses go up but its Revenue has gone up higher that's actually really good news um and we had that 40 million in the budget well within the spending cap no problem uh however his calculation was that we went over the spending I disagreed with the with the way I saw it so he vetoed on those rounds he didn't want the VTO overridden so they made a deal to say we won't really we'll take it out of the operating expenses basically but we're going to put it into an account off budget so it makes it look like we're still within the spending cap I just thought that was semantics because the numbers I saw didn't matter we still were in the spending cap that's why you saw a lot of people vote against it
059on those grounds that oh it was we created an off budget account I didn't see it that way so I was I voted for it and I took a lot of flak for it I still am but we had the money for it it wasn't a problem but it was that's the politics of what happened and that's why we had to vote a second time bizarre when we already had approved it so however what we can do within the spending cap for the next two years is to be determined and we're trying to get a hand on those numbers we're probably not going to get reliable numbers until April that we can realistically work with so but I encourage people continue to let folks know and the governor that you want special education you want
060P through2 public education better funded people do listen I mean I get thousands of emails a week and we do listen Okay well you know the education cost sharing ours has been frozen for eight years now going on eight years so that if you do the taking into account the inflation rate we're losing ground or you and you know that costs keep increasing increasing increasing so we've lost ground and we're expecting the taxpayers to pick up that Gap and they can't pick continue to pick up I don't know anyone in any of my towns who can pick up the uh so what's happening is is that one of the things that I've been advocating for and others are is if we can rework the formula for public education can we put in it's almost like
061an annual cost of living increase right like Social Security can we do that now some people say well that will limit how much money not the next two years but the next two years after that the state does a two-year budget right uh but quite frankly it changes its budget the second year anyway I don't have a problem putting that as a fixed cost because then that's less we play with politically if we say we're going to have this annual cost of living increase who then wants to and someone votes for it who then the next year wants to go back to his or her town and say yeah I changed my mind and now we're going to use it for something else so that cost of living increase you banked on you're not going
062to get that's political suicide isn't it so that forces our hand to say we should be prioritizing that funding there's discussions about can we do that we can change anytime we want the state runs out of money we just change it or we just Bond more which is what we've done historically so there's an effort for that to see and if we can do that that would be a step in in a good direction because then we could say whatever the FED say is the cost of living increase which they have various formulas the States you know the towns can say Okay based upon that number we might get X and where we would be that's what we should be doing but we'll see if there's a political will for that but I've been advocating
063for that reason something because we're our costs continue we have Union employees and you know that that they get cost of living they get raises every year so everything's going up we're one of the most expensive States for cost of living to live in and that's a sad thing I think we're number two for electricity Alone um yeah I believe we are yeah we used to be three behind Hawaii which is an island and everything's expensive in California say whatever you want about it but evidently now we've gone to number two but the cost of living in general in this state has not gotten better it's gotten worse and the same for municipalities across the board we see the numbers because we get all the numbers from the towns and we can see the cost
064going up and up but the state hasn't been keeping up and that's the problem well um that that's my big thing here where oh we're not it's not uh opposing funding increases for us but all our costs for the last eight years have increased increased increased but our funding level has remained flat and the legislature can can then say do you know what we haven't cut you and that's that's the jargon that gets you saying well doesn't matter how much yes they have then in essence they have they have but then they can say well you're still getting the same amount but they don't factor in that cut how much money you got last time isn't the same as the same amount of money that's done just because of it doesn't inflation and stuff correct
065but that's the jargon that gets used oh there's no back because the net present value of what they give you is not worth what it was worth when they gave me that money to begin and this is why I've been advocating for many programs but the annual cost of living in because we know we we should be keeping up put it as a fixed cost for the state so it has to be budgeted um and there's a push to see if we can do that I just don't know if the governor will go along with that or not I really don't because in essence every year I take a cut or we take a cut as a board yeah and we see the numbers I I've seen the spreadsheets that I get for all the
066towns and the cities and then if you do the inflation or I don't but my staff does what it really is now in real dollars keeps on going down even though the total dollar number stays the same right and that's the thinking that you have to change the state does a very weird accounting because it creates the accounting rules for itself it's not what you and I do for a county or a business does so that's why I can legitimately say based upon our analysis we're not cutting you but that's not the real world and that's what we're trying to change you know it unfortunately it takes things like pound suffering for lots of legislators now to want to work and try to change it you've seen well you live in Woodstock but you've seen
067the listen into some of our budget workshops and where very close to the edge and and I've been paying attention to all 13 towns in my district I don't I can't attend every meeting every month of course not we don't expect however I do pay attention I do read minutes you know I I watch recordings of of things so I do know what's going on even if I'm not there in person because then I can take this back to Harford and say I'm just not talking abstract this is the real world that we have to deal with I can tell you regardless of party a lot of legislators are doing that now because they're really hearing from it um so we'll see what how it plays out this year uh but you know the more
068people I tell you the more you let people know and the governor put pressure on him as well um then the more that legislators you know react I do track every day the emails I get and I can tell you the number of emails I'm getting from from people in towns about the schools has been going up because that's the big chunk of town budgets right so that's what they see in their property taxes and I've been getting a lot of emails now specifically about school funding yeah well we're asking for a $1.2 million increase $886,000 of that is special education 73% special education because we can't do anything about it you can't and you're mandated to have to provide the care you know there's ways the state's trying to look to see about some
069things I have a number of bills about special education but they're all going to be dumped into these big big Bills or the the budget or the implementer as Justin said $6 million of that is special education now we have to provide a lot of that any you know but some of those mandates would take some of that away it would I mean my argument for the 92.2 million was the special education for this year was it went up to the spending cap so we stayed within the spending cap 92.2 million out of a $26 billion plus budget this year fiscal year you do the math you that's a decimal point the state doesn't even see 92.2 million because everything is measured different way so not that it is a lot of money but for
070the state it isn't and so that's one of the reasons I voted for it because let's push as much as we can to get more money for the uh public education we'll see how much that pans out yes what kind of people senators repres Representatives what kind of people aren't seeing these factors where do where do those people live that aren't see what we're seeing what you're seeing who are who are these people that just don't get it I don't think it's that they don't get it I think the issue is what happens politically I mean everything at the capital is politics yeah nothing happens without politics up there that's just the reality and so there's a lot of politics you have a lot of turf battles the cities don't want to give up money
071the big suburbs don't want to give up money they just hear the towns lot more oh we have to give up our share and I've been trying to tell them no if we can better fund public education we're not taking away from you we're just trying to rework things if we have a bigger pot of gold the other thing that we fight against is if there's a bigger pot of gold everybody wants a bigger share I can tell you for a lot of the Cities they get money for public education for many different accounts that don't come out of the State Department of Education um so they they get a lot of money so the issue is what can we do to rework the formula so that way politically all those people and there's a
072lot of them in powerful positions don't feel we're taking things away from them but we can give more for everybody else the way you do that is you've got to work the formuls and and and the politics of it and bring up the total amount of funding you're not taking away from them but you have more money to move elsewhere that's that's the two parts of that that we're working through as much as you can it comes down to relationship building I mean I have some good relationships I tend not to be one of the bad acting people up there so I actually do get to get in for for lots of meetings and I've had some discussions with leadership in the majority party in the house and the Senate but what could we realistically
073do with some of this but not hurt the cities um we'll see where that goes but it's really going to come down to if the governor doesn't want it are there enough votes to vote for it and then override a VTO technically there are in his party his party can in the house and the Senate this year now they have enough that they can override um we'll see you know that changes the negotiating p with the governor so we'll see how how that plays out um but that's a lot of the stuff that's happening behind the scenes and again we're early in this process so to speak y this is just March I can tell things aren't going to heat up until we start getting later April into May and then near we start crunching
074the numbers and really pushing things out to the to the floor for votes thank you thank you well thank you happy to be here again than reach out anytime know how to find me y always happy to but any of you I do have an open door policy so any of you just feel free to reach out to me um if you don't hear from me by email I do reply but I'm getting literally thousands of emails a day right now um but if you don't have my number I'm happy to give you my cell number separately people do reach out to me yeah so you can use it people do text and do call and I don't have a problem with that um so by all means let me know thank you thank you
075I wish I could stay but I'm gonna now head on prepare for the public hearing thank you okay thank you so much okay all right we're on to administrator reports first one is Mr melon from turot Memorial High School good evening everyone try to lighten the mood a little bit you have money for us any money so I'm gonna go to the March 21st just something we have coming up which was freya's visit um so Freya I sent some pictur you have some pictures of her she's a therapy dog um actually it's Aiden bourette who was onor here tonight his dad um brings a dog in but I think the next board meeting I'll bring her in for us I think that'll help out did a really big hit with all three schools um so
076we were happy to have her and she's going to come back again on the 21st um April coming up a lot of uh testing science Testing SAT prep work um we're going to have a big uh Spring Showcase in an art show um right now our program of studies is pretty much ready to go to the uh printers um that's a collab effort by all of our teachers again super proud of the basketball team and what they what they accomplished um I didn't have it in your report because I just got these emails after the fact but I'm just going to read one quick email I have another one that I can certainly send to you if you want it but is pretty lengthy um Dear Mr melon I'm a commentry basketball parent I feel
077compelled to write you regarding what I observed to be incredible class and sportsmanship demonstrated by your entire team during tonight's State Tournament game uh number five extended his hand to several centry players on the floor offered pats on the backs and was just classy as could be to his opponent throughout a tough game the final minute of the game number four uh was encouraging a young player on the centry high school bench to look for his own shot it was a genuinely encouraging act that brought a smile to our players's face in an age of trash talking online battles and endless efforts um at in one upmanship your student athletes were refreshing in their class uh please let them uh know that their character was observed and appreciated by many in this dance tonight they
078represented their school and themselves with dignity you should be and I'm sure are proud of them so a testament to coach Greg and the way he coaches the boys but also just the character and makeup of that group uh of of players definitely be missed next year um but I thought that would be a nice thing to share for all of you if anyone has any questions thank you thank you thank you this Granada good evening everyone so we have parent teacher conferences this week um very important that parents show up and uh take a look at what their children are doing um we have our Scholastic book prer that's this week as well congratulations to those who participated in the Pops concert it was amazing it was great to see all the families there
079also so um thank you to all the families who donated to this serial challenge the middle school as always uh did remarkable um thank you Mr Apprentice folks good evening a couple highlights you get the Board of Ed report uh this week but just a couple highlights you you notice there that em unfortunately had to resign for personal reasons really going to miss her students going to miss her but miss lucier who's a current long time long-term substitute teacher in the third grade will be taking um Miss Clark Miss Clark spot so we anticipate a nice smooth transition in first grade parents were informed of that last week really quality educator there um uh something fun not on the report for March today March 10th and March 24th uh Mrs Hue is running a March
080mudes for some of the faculty and staff at the elementary school working on some clay projects after school from 5 to seven raising some money so uh really nice camaraderie there it's nice book fair opened up today conferences are the 12th and 13th today as well the second grade had project oceanology visit from Connecticut just inspiring uh some enthusiasm for uh marine marine life in the elementary school we had Mrs Chenille doing some great uh grade level visits last week really making sure teachers are implementing that math curriculum with Fidelity and everything's uh going nice that's it from the elementary Fisher Fest May 1 from 5 to [Music] 7 thank you Dr John evening I wish I was bringing better news but didn't seem to be the case um so total total student population is
081803 number of IEPs is 202 which has an increase in the total percent of 25% last month we were at 24 um 24.8 to 25 .1 number of 504s is 71 all placement is up one from 24 to 25 uh Bradley School Windham County has a total population of 15 of which seven students are our students uh we're hosting four neighboring districts at this time we're still holding true with six Vans and we're utilizing seven outplacement schools for the other 18 students that are not in Bradley School Windom County our referrals um are up to 51 but we received two today so that brings us to 53 um our risk assessments with which derive from our internal threat assessment team are now up to seven I have one pending of those seven risk assessments um
082we've had four students that needed to move to a more restrictive setting as a result um and then also just an update in terms of Statewide open positions in special education just the the standard 165 certification comprehensive k to2 c um as of the 5th we were at 189 open positions but the month prior it was at 177 so it actually went up 12 so but special ed certified staff we're fully our special ed staff we full but Bradley program on site is down two of the three open positions so again that prohibits any type of ability to refer to middle or Elementary and then I cannot pull students back that may be ready to return because we don't have teachers in those programs in those classrooms any questions for okay uh Heather Miss Burns
083good evening um last month we had over 200 tickets um that seems to be the norm lately um Trav Travis is settling in well with the Department um and I just want to thank Tyler because he's taking really good care of lights and sound in the audit he did an amazing job at the Pops concert um my colleague in Killingly is uh refreshing his Chromebook Fleet so we're getting a donation of um quite a few Chromebooks from killing Le um we'll probably put those together on a cart to use as Fair testing devices because we have SATs and ESAT coming up so we are preparing um for that um we're working on a project with the town to migrate their web hosting company to to um someone more reliable so um that Travis busy with
084that um and then we still see an uptick in fishing email attempts um so we're working on um researching some sort of um cyber security training for staff a little bit more than what we're doing now and then this week we have um somebody from the state coming in to do a free cyber security investment so um I'll share the results of that if I'm able to after that is complete um and there is a cyber security grant that um is opening in May that I'll be applying for for that as well thank you um next up there's [Music] Michelle good evening um current open positions we have a open CNA in our Middle School we have a open par professional at the high school Dr Jones is currently working through two candidates for um
085par positions in the elementary school we've offered the food service director um we are waiting for a contract from her um and this month I'll be working on internal audits for fingerprinting um we do have a special fingerprinting system um so I'm going through all of the um staff's fingerprints and making sure that they are accurate um and I will also be C uh complet uh completing audits in um our Personnel staff um more importantly our I um they have not been audited since before 2020 so it is time to go back through um and to make sure that all the paperwork is 100% um I do have a number of projects going on at the town as well um some of those projects are also piggybacking to what I'm doing at the school thank
086you very much Michelle thank you seget is not not with us tonight so uh Bill ber Mr bur happening oh we are still moving along uh with the hbac project we had the hasmat um team in today to do some evaluation of as this materials Middle School Boiler Room that's really our next Milestone to keep this thing on track hopefully we'll be able to get that straightened out and get it done uh over the April break the guys started working on the athletic fields today with the Thor so they've been picking up leaves and we have to rebuild the pitcher mount on the baseball field so they've been doing that um and in case anybody didn't notice the clocks did not make the jump this week so I have I have been back and forth
087with tech support most of the day trying to figure out what we can do about the clocks to get them going oh God no you can't okay there's no way to there's no way to manually it's at the class you can't do it yeah and that's all okay thank you [Music] um Miss Growler you have anything I don't have much to say we're on the Downs slide for all the illnesses Oh yay well that that's something that's good it's good okay M belli took off she took off okay but she knows she oh well we could have congratulated her and Greg Greg bu's good man C athetic right right there and I want to thank uh Mr s all his work and helping us out and coordinating all the testing and everything that we did
088from last Thursday on and thank all the fire departments and everybody who showed up for what could have been it turned out not to be of an incident um so I want to thank you very much to our fire marshal to our fire departments in town thank them and to mdy Brook Fire Department and to all the other surrounding fire dep dep departments who showed up they've got back and so when they come around with their little boot drives remember them okayy Kathleen can I uh just say one thing about the turtle L trust meeting we just had oh sure of course um so we just recently had our annual meeting for the turtle art trust uh all of the uh elected officials for the trust are back in place in addition to that we
089also went through a number of things including our finances our spend policy um and we're going to change the annual Board of Trustees meeting to the first uh Monday is that right Melinda the first Monday of December you said Tuesday but Tuesday Monday okay but because Tuesday you'll never have the first electon there correct all right so we're going to change that to the first Monday of December right but you'll have to do that at another meeting because you already voted on I listen correct I watched the video thank you uh most yeah most importantly one of the things I really want to um say that I'm proud to announce the turtle lot trust is uh keeping with the tradition of what Mrs Turtle lot originally uh wanted to do for the students and not
090only just the public education but the uh trip which is to our nation's capital of Washington D.C so as a board of trust uh we all voted unanimously to help contribute towards the funding of that trip and this year I believe our gift is approximately $10,000 which will help offset the cost per student uh for the 13 students that are going on that trip so just wanted to put that out there yes um I want to say thank you to to you Tom and the the board of trust uh the turtle out trust trust um because my daughter's is one of those uh students that uh really wanted to go on the trip and we paid all our you know our fee and everything but we didn't reach the um the goal amount of students
091to have it be um without having to ask for additional funds and I can't tell you how happy she was when I told her that the trip was on so thank you very much well thank you I'm glad to hear that and uh you know again it's keeping with the traditions of what the turtle art uh family wanted to see for our town so I'm glad we were able to do that well you we need to hold another meeting sometime to change that um meeting date to a Monday night all right I'll I'll put a an email out there and see if we can do a virtual uh and then we'll do a virtual vote okay all right thank you yeah I if I had been at the meeting I would have said something I
092also owe you some notes I uh took uh some good notes that night I'll send them to you okay you can do I'm watching I'm watching it so all right yeah I've got the video so all right thank you yeah thank you T okay um next up on the agenda is is the sub approval of minutes keep skipping down I'm getting new glasses approval of minutes from our regular meeting of February 10th and our first and a budget meeting from February 19th can I have a motion make a motion to approve both minutes from the 10th and the 19th I'll second that I motion and a second any discussion on the minutes hearing none I'll put the motion to the floor for a vote all in favor say I I I any opposition say no
093any extension motion passes sub commmittee update we ahead yep um the uh communication subcommittee actually met right before our meeting today um I'll give you the quick quick version because we actually had a laundry list of stuff we covered but the summary is that um the uh subcommittee communication subcommittee has been organizing for the third annual um local government leadership round table at the high school and that's on March 21st um we have a lot of people attending and The Culinary um students are are serving a lunch in so that's coming up um some of the things that we talked about was promoting all the exciting things that are happening at Turtle at Thompson Public Schools um including volunteer projects activities uh the pathway programs uh Sports um another topic was um celebrating our senior
094graduates and talking about the Capstone process since this is the first full year of the entire class going through that um and some of the the things that we can do to to Market and and get that information out to the um the public um as well as featuring any um future college acceptances and scholarships or perhaps they're going into um a trade uh and the last thing we talked about was um the referendum is coming up and um brainstorming on how we can help educate the public as to our budgets um and the needs of the school and obviously to make sure they go out to vote okay thank you okay now I'll turn it over to superintendent Smith for her update so our enrollment update um for the month of March is that
095we are up to students at Mar off Fisher so for a grand total of 361 students at the middle school we remain the same at 265 and we're down one student at turot Memorial High School um and then more student in our transition program for a grand total of 803 students as um Dr Jones mentioned and that is the enrollment report I did um in my weekly briefs uh because it was asked of the board members uh to try to find out or or learn about um Thompson students in um non-public schools and DTE S I want to shout out to her um she um beat down the bushes and got that information for you um and so um that was added to your briefs thank you any questions for superintendent [Music] Smith we have
096any old business business that we want to cover or want to follow up on new business no just that we need to really push to get the vote out this year that's going to be our Focus from now till the referendum sometime in May uh correspondents we were all handed to letter that was sent to us by Senator Gordon put that into the the record there and any other correspondents I'm going to get that besides what's been going on on Facebook uh and consider that correspondence and then I will now open the floor to Citizens comments anybody left to the audience have anybody on Zoom have um citizens comments is that on Kathleen do you want to reiterate um what kind of uh whoever takes the stance on replying to some of these Facebook comments
097I know that in the past um we've always said that there's usually one voice for the board uh if it's directed to the board and do you still want that to follow through yourself no I don't I don't reply I have a I I try not to reply to them Heather's been doing a very good job of it I I don't have a problem with the Facebook it's to the press and to Winnie it either the superintendent or myself but the Facebook replies replying to someone on Facebook I don't have a problem with a board member replying um Sean you does a good Sean b said who's not on the board does a pretty good job of replying he as long as you stick to the facts and stay polite if you go off on
098a rant I'll come down on you but you got to be polite and stay to the facts which every member has done so far yeah I think I was just going to say what I've scene has been very cordial yes it's been very professional and to your point just State the facts don't get sucked into the rabbit hole whatever you do okay right and I haven't seen any board member do that as no me either I not even just gonna say she was looking in this direction right just just stay calm stay to the facts and don't get political about it also on Facebook that's our job we have to be neutral we are not on either political side when we are a board member but on your own private Facebook you're not a board
099member private citizen but when you're responding to someone who has made some ludicrous statement I don't what do you sometimes you have to you just State the facts like the we told them no this is what happened there was a broken fan Somebody went out with carbon dioxide instead of carbon monoxide which on yes after your comment I would like to make a motion to a jar okay we will do that okay that's when somebody came on and said no it wasn't very calmly the facts are boom boom boom end a comment that's a lot we don't get caught up in the worldly gig I I respect that we're not hiding anything and we're not getting caught up in the media frenzy do that point I will motion to