001Call this meeting to order and start with the pledge of allegiance. Welcome everyone here this evening. It's sure to be exciting. And do we will start first with comments from the audience. Is there anyone in the audience who would care to make a public comment this evening? All right. Um now turn things over to the superintendent. Good night. celebration of excellence. >> Like to welcome Mr. up here, please. And uh we have some student representatives here that are going to put on a performance for us tonight. And we'd like to recognize some students that uh earned a fabulous recognition um for their musical talents. >> All right. Thank you. Um so I'm here to recognize the CMEA Eastern Region Music Festival and Elementary Honors Festival students. We had a total of 14 students from BCS
002and BHS who were selected to participate in the Connecticut Music Educators Association music festivals this school year. These include the Eastern Region High School Music Festival at the University of Connecticut in January, the Elementary Honors Festival at the University of Bridgeport this month in February, and the Eastern Region Middle School Music Festival next month in March at Coventry High School. In order to participate in the regional festivals, each student had to perform a live audition in front of a professional adjudicator from the CMEA. The auditions are highly competitive and it is an honor to be selected for one of these elite ensembles. For the elementary honors festival, music teachers from across the state nominate qualified students by submitting a written recommendation for each individual student. During each festival, students rehearse and perform in large ensembles
003featuring up to 150 musicians. After several hours of rehearsal, the festival culminates in a concert featuring each ensemble performing several pieces of challenging and exciting repertoire. And I'm going to say all the students names and I would like for you to gather over by where Mr. McCormick is standing and uh and we will uh recognize everyone and take a photo after. So for the Eastern Region High School Festival, please join us in celebrating these students for their accomplishment. Allison Hartzog for flute. Nicole Denunio for flute. Christopher Allenson for jazz tenor saxophone. Sophie Dow for tenor saxophone. Kelsey Perkins for soprano voice, Kora Murray for soprano voice, and Olivia Urianiano for soprano voice. Uh, and then for the Eastern Region Middle School Festival, we had Elliot Garcia for percussion and Savannah Sheel for alto voice. And
004finally, the elementary honors festival. We have Mave Duffy for percussion, Olivia Zky for trumpet, Ariana Ferrer for soprano voice, Jackson Sadler alto voice, and Brooke Cordier alto voice. Please join me in congratulating them. for a quick look right Congratulations guys. >> Miss. >> Yeah. >> Hi. Good evening. You guys can organize while you're chatting. Um I'm Jen Carvalo. This is and we are in the um close to the end of producing our annual musical which this year is the Spongebob musical. So we've been invited to share a little bit of our work and we appreciate the opportunity to rehearse with the live audience. Give us kind of like a little mini taste of what it's like to perform um in front of people before we head next door and continue rehearsal. Um so this is
005not all of our cast. This is a portion of our cast. Um, and we're presenting um, one of the numbers from the first act. We don't want to give too many spoilers about the show. Um, so we're not really gonna tell you what the one's about. Um, other that there's there's a conflict in Bikini Bottom and Spongebob and Friends are trying to fix that conflict. Um, and so they're talking about what tomorrow is going to bring as they do that. So tickets are currently on sale boltonhigh.com. $5 students, $10 adults. And the show is February 26th, 27th, and 28th at 700 p.m. right next door in Sunni Common. So, we hope you join us. We have a lot of lot of surprises in store for the production this year. So, should be a lot of
006fun. I'm gonna turn it on real quick just to make sure one's okay. Don't start. We're okay. >> Yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay. My only try to Our world ends. However, we are just white. I feel I succeeded this thought the for the night of I'm not ready. world. We'll add in real quick that's just our rehearsal track that they're singing to. We do have a live pit this year for the show um that both Mr. McCormack and Mr. Er are a part of. So the actual background music will be far superior to the uh what we call the click track that was playing tonight. So we hope to see you all in a couple weeks. Thank you. >> Um, all right. Congratulations to the Eastern Regional Music Festival Award winners and um, we're
007about to move on to our regular business meeting. And if people are so inclined, they our feelings will not be hurt. If you would like to go home, now is a great time. But please feel free to say all righty. Um now we get into the agenda this evening, right? Uh, we will have routine business and the approval of minutes. Could we have a motion, please, to approve the minutes of the January 8th, 2026 board of education business meeting? So, move. >> Anyone would like to second? >> One second. >> Uh, does anyone have questions, comments, or edits for these minutes? All those in favor of the motion, please say I. >> I. Opposed or abstaining. All right. On to committee reports and we'll start with curriculum. The curriculum committee met um earlier this week
008and we saw a presentation from Misso um for a requested um text and digital companion um for the economics class. There were three text options presented um and the teacher pre preferred text is from SAVIS which is also being used in other history and world US history and world history. Um and after reviewing the three options, the subcommittee approved economics principles and action which is from SAVIS and plan to bring it up for a first read in March. Um and there was also a brief discussion of the AI planning committee and where they're going and how eventually we will need to have a policy committee meeting after all that. >> Thank you very much. Um finance, who was doing finance? >> Yeah, I'll do that. Um the finance subcommittee met today. Uh additionally, since the
009last time we met, we had the town's board of finance meeting and two Kappa uh meetings. So, you threw us right into a busy time of year. Um but as of January 31st, the budget is uh approximately 47% expended, which is consistent with this point last year. Overall spending trends were stable across all budget areas. Several budget transfers were completed this month as you can see on your list and we're going to review those. Um the transfers didn't increase any overall spending but basically reallocations to address specific instructional and operational needs. Uh additionally the CAP committee met to review, discuss, and approve the school and town capital projects plan for the next four years uh ensuring alignment between educational priorities and long-term municipal planning. and we're going to review that in more detail later. >>
010Thank you very much. Um, do we want to approve the transfers now or is anyone gonna um do we have a motion please to approve the POE transfers for January? >> I mean I'll make a motion. Uh, second. Anybody? >> I'll second. >> Does anyone have any questions or comments on any of these >> worthy ofation? We don't need the professional development um money from DCS to go for instructional supplies. We have an access there. >> Oh, for music. >> Yes. Yes. there was a um a transfer there to the instructional supplies fund professional development. Uh it might be something that they're not participating in this year. >> So anyone have any questions or comments about any of these transfers eight? >> All right. Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion please say
011I. Hi. >> Anyone opposed? Abstaining. All right. On to communication. Our first ever communication meeting. You all set up. >> We didn't pick a person. So, >> yeah. >> Would you like to or we don't need to? >> You You can. >> Okay. Uh we met two weeks ago. Um it was our first uh meeting. It was more of a bouncing ideas off each other how we would like to effectively communicate moving forward more effectively communicate uh moving forward um for the board of ed the bud upcoming budget season and some plans to implement moving forward. Um we talked about um moving some things on the board website. um yeah, some plans moving forward, different strategies we can use to uh more effectively communicate with the community at large. I think we're waiting to finalize
012the the budget calendar and we're going to be meeting again next next week >> to make a more detailed plan. >> Yeah. One of the things I want to mention that we talked about was um having like a a place where people can go and check out like highlights or summaries of of different things that are going on. So, uh they can keep up to date with things without having to search through a bunch of different websites and links and um uh documents. So, we talked about that and um had a lot of really good ideas and looking forward to next steps. Thank you very much. Uh community meeting reports. Has anyone attended any meeting? Actually, I'm here. >> Sorry. >> Um so just uh start uh next week on Tuesday at 6:30 at WPS
013Library, we have um our general meeting with guest communication with students and support services um for Bolton School. Um, so all this should attend. I think there there's usually somebody there to help if you have littles with babysitting and goodies and everything to that. Um, see, listen. Um, there came to our attention that there was a community member that reached out to the DOE that reached out through to the PTA about confusion about the playground and the funding for that. Um, so I just wanted to reiterate what how that is done to hopefully clear up any confusion. So, we received a 520,000 general bond and this from the state. Um, and it's not a bond like where you when we built redid bolt and high where we have to pay it back. It's more like
014a grant um like a donation. It is I don't like the fact that it's called a bond because I do feel that it leads to a lot of misinterpretation of what it actually means. Um, so think of it as a very large donation from the state and we are currently working with the town um to submit the paperwork early next week um uh to with that is technically town property that the playground does sit on and not BCS or school district property. Um we are submitting bid requests for developer and um bids and proposals in addition to the 80 85,000 that we have fundraised. And then we are also looking to make sure that if we need any additional costs, especially with having to restructure the grounds to make sure that it is accessible for
015our need. Um and we're hoping to break ground sometime between this spring and this fall. Obviously, we can't do it right now because of the sun. Um, some other things that are coming up for the PTA on Fridays, we have our someone special dance for the pre-K through fifth grade. Um, was very well attended last year. We're hoping for a good turnout again this year. We have urban air night at on the 26th of this month for so come jump around, get kids run wild, get their crazies out with all this pooped up time. U, we also have crispy cream fundraiser in conjunction this year with the the high school's project graduation. So, it's a dual fundraiser for both the elementary school and Project Grad. And orders must be in by the 28th of this
016month. Um, all of these things can be found out on our Facebook or the Bolton PDA website, but I'm sure Project Graduation has their listing for that as well. We also have Glaze Pottery Night. Um, seats do fill up fast for that and that's the end on March 26th. So, there's limited seat for that if you would like to attend. plus a whole other bunch of stuff that we have coming with um events and like discounted tickets to like Wolfpack and the Yard Goats and I think there in January we've had um Disney on ice and everything. So, those are always fun, too. And please do not hesitate to reach out to anybody on the PTA if there are questions, especially around the playground, so that we do get information accurately disseminated to the public
017at large, especially with the very lovely termin terminology of bonds versus grants versus donations. >> Thank you very much. uh a lot of our communications people reach out to your communication. >> Is there any quick question? So, as it relates to the bond, what's the legal entity that contracted with the bond? Is it PTA or is it the town? So, I think that would probably also clarify for for >> I I hate to give out the wrong answer. I believe it has to go through the town for the for specifically for the playground for the public. So it's not so the town I believe um and I can clarify that um I'm sending you an email about that too Ashley um that the town has to receive the funding and then like it's not like
018we can go and go use it for something else. passing because that was what the the bonding grant was written for was specifically for a all acceptable program. >> It's currently out for bid on the town website I believe. Um any other any community meetings anyone has to report on a little bit? >> Uh now turn things over to the superintendent for tonight's superintendent report. >> Hey, good evening everybody. This is a slightly abbreviated report tonight because uh we have the budget presentation. Um, Bolton Hoops Night was one one event that we uh put on um last two Fridays ago. Um, we had student council and a bunch of high school students and staff um host Bolton oops night. Mr. Humson was able to rearrange some schedules and have two home games, uh, a girls
019game and a boys game, uh, which was really well attended. We invited all the students from BCS. We invited students from Horus Porter. Um we had games, um halftime competitions, uh and it was a lot of fun. I think that uh there was a lot of energy in the in the gymnasium and it was nice to see the whole whole community come out which was was fantastic. Uh our next coffee and conversation, speaking of communication, uh next coffee and conversation is going to be at town hall Thursday, February 19th at 5:00. looking forward to participating in another one of those and um keeping everybody up to date on what's going on with the schools and in the budget specifically. I know we'll get a lot of questions again about that. Uh last but not least,
020the governor's budget came out last night and then a revision this morning. Um and we're currently taking a look at how that may impact us moving forward. Uh we do think Cassaul and I looked at it this morning and talked about a couple of things that may have an impact on us, but it's too early to tell exactly what that impact's going to be. So, more to come on that. The impact would not be giving us more money. Why is that never? We're pretty certain of that. >> Yeah. PowerPoint fired up. You guys might want to move your seats or spin them around like that's hurt your neck. >> All right. So, I know we sent you a packet last week for you to look at and uh we put something together tonight to kind
021of summarize all the work that's been going on for the past few months. Um, I feel like I've been working on this budget since mid August when the last one passed. Um, it's been a really a great learning experience for me and I want to give a lot of give a shout out to the whole team in district. Uh, this really was a true team effort. Uh, a lot of people came together, the teachers, teacher leaders, the administrators, central office staff. Um, everybody really put their heads together and um, I I asked some challenging questions. We had some difficult conversations. uh we looked at everything and wanted to make sure that we were providing our kids with exactly what they need and what they deserve uh while being as fiscally responsible as we possibly can
022be. So, is the clicker in there, Miss >> Did someone shut it off on the side? Is there power off? It's on. >> There we go. >> You see that Monica? Was that me? >> Just trying to get back to >> I feel like technologist. >> Okay. All right. So, here we go. Superintendent recommended budget for uh 2627. Um just a little little agenda of order of things for the presentation. >> I don't know why it's good. >> Really throwing me off my pacing here. >> That's right. We got like this song take 35 minutes. Okay, the slides timed. >> Nope. >> Okay, >> I don't know how to do that. >> Go back to the page. >> All right, seems like there's some sort of picture. Another one. >> Well, yeah. Just from the
023app on the >> It's nice to do that. >> Think we're good. >> Just kidding. >> No, I did this. Okay. Okay. Did you do it? >> I did that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Are you sure you >> Yeah. All right. So, why are we here? Um, we're here because our schools are the pride of Baltimore and I've said that in a lot of emails and I really believe that to be true. Um, I felt that as a resident and I know I feel that when I talk to people that are in town, we talk to people that move to town. Why did you move here? They say because our schools are great. And so, uh, our schools are the pride of Bolton and it's our responsibility to make sure that we continue the
024proud tradition that we have of providing our kids with an awesome education. One of our board goals is to champion the needs of our school system and be responsible stewards of the public investment. I added a couple pictures of students here that are a little difficult to see, but I'm glad we had a student performance tonight because uh there's no better illustration of tonight and our students to remind us why we're here and to remind us why we're putting this budget together. to make sure that we continue to support uh the learning experiences that our kids have in and out of the classroom. try to put some pictures together and I know you've seen some of these already in some of the updates um of some different activities, the college fair, the uh Friday morning
025dance party on the top left and just an illustration of some of the things that our staff does above and beyond the classroom uh to make sure that we're educating the whole child and making sure they have a great experience. This budget was founded in our core beliefs. Uh we believe that quality education is indispensable community investment in the future and students and society. Quality education requires commitment, communication, collaboration among students, families, schools, and the community. All students have value in the right to an education that meets their academic, physical, social, emotional needs. Students be recognized for uh recognized and value excellence and high expectations, shared accountability are essential for the success of each student. So, I I kind of went through some of our guiding documents, our mission statement, our beliefs um at the
026beginning of this and just to remind me like this is why we're doing what we do. And so, every budget decision was made with this as a backdrop. I want to include some things that people have said recently about why Bolton Public Schools is so special. Um what our identity is, and these are things that came directly from our uh participants in the strategic planning committee. And I think if if you asked people around town, you would hear these things echoed over and over again. Our climate surveys um surveys indicate that our families feel engaged in the process. They feel like that we're communicating well with them. Um our students feel like doing well is really important to them. Um and what this tells us is that all the ores are rowing in the same
027direction. we're all on the same page and uh things are moving in in the right direction for kids in our school district. Again, the mission is to inspire all students to grow as learners, individuals, and citizens. That is closely aligned to our vision statement. And at the end of the day, we want to make sure our kids become engaged global citizens. And that includes making sure that they have the transferable skills that they need to be successful in school and beyond. Um, I talked a lot lately about the strategic plan and our current strategic plan is what also is guiding this work. So, you'll see this woven through uh the presentation and everything that we do. Um, our plan goals being at the top of the list is student success. So you'll see things uh
028in regards to making sure that we have all the instructional materials that the teachers need, that we have professional learning for our staff, that uh make sure that we're pushing our students, have high expectations for them, accompanied with the appropriate level of support that they need. Caring culture, you see that in our schools, you see it in the senior center. You see it when our kids are out in the community. Um, you see that when other coaches communicate with our schools about how respectful our student athletes are when they went to their gymnasium or their soccer field. Um, and that's always nice to see. Again, talent development, making sure that we have the highest qualified people in front of our kids every single day. That's that's the biggest thing we can do for our students.
029Um, and another reason why we're here right now is resource stewardship. making sure that um we're championing the needs of our school system and we're responsible stewards again of the public's investment. Our budget approach um we want to make decisions that are grounded what administrators, principles and teachers need. Um and so we start with zerobased budgeting. We ask them what they need. What do you need to maintain? What do you need to improve your program? Uh and we go from there. The team heard me talk a lot about ROI the past couple months and return on investment. And we really took a look at everything that we are spending money on, all our resources, and try to examine the return on investment that we're getting and making sure that we are getting the return on
030investment that we need and that we deserve. And if not, then we're already talking about plans to make adjustments moving forward to make sure that that we do. Again, I I half joked that development process started at the end of the summertime. Um but really as we were going through last budget cycle, a lot of things were popping into my head as far as um what we would look at going moving into this budget season. Um but the official talks started back in October. Um teacher leaders were submitting recommendations based on classroom instructional needs to their principles. The principles were then relaying it to central office and myself. Um they brought proposals to me. Then in December and January, we looked at all that continuously on a weekly basis. Um I think Cass will tell
031you probably multiple times per day basis. Um and really digging into what's in our budgets and what do our teachers and kids absolutely need. Um and trying to differentiate between some needs and some nice to haves and making sure that we're being responsible and putting our needs in there. There's a couple economic factors I wanted to point out because I think these these matter and um these have an impact on on our budget. Obviously, rate of inflation the past 12 months in Connecticut is 3.3%. And I think you know that's something that we're struggling with in school systems and in our own homes or at least I know we are. Um our health insurance is projected at 16% increase. While that sounds really high, that is lower than most areas superintendents have reported lately. Um
032I just talked to a superintendent this morning. She was at 20%. So um that is something that is is a significant increase for us. Transportation also is an increase by 15 at least 15%. We're in the process right now of uh going out to bid and uh hopefully we'll be working with a bus company in the next couple weeks. Uh but we know that it's going to be at least 15% higher. And another impact is another factor that impacts is Connecticut minimum wage has increased to 1694 per hour this year. Um, and while it on the surface it may not feel like that has a tremendous impact, but that really moves the needle on all the other salaries. And one of the reasons why the bus company wasn't able to give us a number in
033the fall is because they were in a collective bargaining uh they were bargaining the agreement with their workers. And so with the minimum wage going up, they their costs are going up, which obviously gets passed on to us. So that minimum wage does end up impacting us on a lot of different levels. special education impact. We talk about that all the time. Um I'm really proud to say that, you know, Beth and her team has done an unbelievable job making sure that we are um doing the right things in our special education department. Our two building principles are doing an unbelievable job making sure that we have high quality tier one instruction. Tier one instruction is instruction that all students get. Make sure that we're doing that on a really high level. Um and then
034also making sure that we are running our MTSS process as effectively as we possibly can. So we do those two things and we couple high quality tier one instruction with high quality MTSS then that lowers um the need oftent times for special special education services. So um we have an awesome identification process that we use uh criteria for eligibility make sure that we get kids what they need and and not things that they don't need. Um, and I really appreciate the work that that our support services team has done with that. Um, all that being said, um, we know that special education is extremely volatile and can change very quickly. Um, and I know you've all experienced that in the past. Our enrollment right now, so um, as you can see, 26 27 projections going
035into next year. This year we have a high school class in the 60s. uh that tapers off and then for the cons for the foreseeable future uh we settle in in the low 50s high 40s um and on the right you can see a projected 26 27 um Bolton High School projections and again that's with uh losing a large class this year as seniors and then they kind of level off into the mid to high 40s. We've said before that it's not just Bolton that is feeling the um the enrollment crunch. Horus poor, you can see their projections over the next few years and what they have for students. Obviously, they look pretty good in seventh and eighth and then it drops off pretty significantly. Um and so their enrollment is decreasing at a much
036higher rate than than ours. Columbia enrollment at BHS. Those are our projections and then you can see at the bottom um how those funds are allocated. On the right is the tuition for the 2627 school year for both uh for Columbia students. Some of the enrollment factors, I know we've talked about some of these, but as you can see in the last couple slides, Colombia enrollment has been decreasing um for and not only is their enrollment decreasing, but they also have more options. they can come here, they can go to RAM, EOSmith, Windham Techch, all the private schools and multiple magnet school options for them. Uh we currently have 10 Bolton students that are being homeschooled. We have students that are in magnet schools. We have students that are attending tech schools, VOAG. So all
037those competing forces uh make enrollment even that much more challenging. Open choice enrollment continues to decline not only for Bolton but for surrounding communities that participate in the program. there are a larger number of communities that participate in the program, making the pool of students smaller. Um, and Hartford is working really hard to try to make sure their schools are as attractive as they possibly can be for their students to keep their students in Hartford. So, those are just some enrollment factors that um play a role in in what's going on here in Bolton. Just want to highlight some accomplishments. You know, I think it's important that to share out some of the awesome things that are going on um again inside the classroom, outside the classroom. As you look through these, I try to
038draw your attention to some of them by highlighting um some key words. Um I think what you'll see too is you'll see everything in here is uh directly aligned to the strategic plan. And there's a through line and coherence that exists with with these accomplishments and everything else that's going on in the school. So when I look at these, I was putting these together and I asked u the building principles to share some celebrations with me. Um it was really overwhelming all the things that came in and for two small schools it's incredible the amount of things that we have going on. It's incredible the amount of students that are participating in our extracurricular activities. Um we probably have more students participating in ours at a school of a little over 200 kids and some
039high schools that have 500 students. Um and it's really really impressive and it speaks to the culture that exists here in Bolton. Again, really proud of the work that our students do with student engagement and service. Um, a couple of my favorite things this year were were lunch at the senior center. We did a cookie cookie celebration here at the I don't know if it was called I called it a celebration because I enjoyed having the cookies uh here for the seniors. Um and then when we have things like pajama day at the schools of school staff uh really rallied around those things and uh made the kids aware of the world around them and and how they fit into that world and more importantly how they can positively contribute to that world around them.
040Some other things going on. Again I highlighted bullet and hoops night. That was something new for us this year. Um and looking forward to adding some things in the future. So, those are some celebrations outside the classroom. I know there were some inside and I think this is worth noting that our student performance continues to improve um year after year. Um you can see that in ELA, math and science, some considerable jumps in our student performance. And so, our staff is doing an awesome job pushing our kids and making sure that they're provided with rigorous um class activities that are challenging them, that are pushing them to think, and really building those transferable skills. That's that's really proud of that slide. Great work that the teachers are doing. Um, next gener next generation account accountability
041index. We talked about that a little earlier on the year. Uh, we're sitting at 79.5 right now. And again, you can see the trend is moving in the right direction. So, um, what I keep reiterating to the building principles and the teachers is what we're doing is working. So, um, we found the secret sauce. The recipe for success is there. Um, and we're going to do our best to stay the course and continue this trend and keep moving forward. I've heard a lot about per people expenditure in the community and out amongst other superintendents. So, I wanted to share this um visual. I did include obviously all the surrounding towns, but I wanted to um provide a little snapshot for towns that are a little more similar to us um and geographically a little closer
042to us. And so you can see we sit like smack dab in the middle of those districts. Um I didn't put up the next generation accountability index for those districts but if I did you would see that we were uh near the top of all those districts which is another thing to be really really proud of. Okay. So budget this is where we started. So, uh, when we kind of did phase one and the building principles working with teacher leaders and getting their their needs, uh, and their list, they brought it forward to us and we compiled Cassol compiled it all and the the increase over FY26 uh, you can see is a little over a million dollars and we were sitting just under 7% for a total increase. And so that's when that's when
043the good conversations really started to kick in and uh we started looking line by line and seeing where we can consolidate things, seeing where we can uh make savings that made sense that didn't negatively impact any programs, didn't negatively impact any people um and still provided a high quality learning experience that our kids deserved. Um I highlighted just some of the budget adjustments that were made during that process. Um, you can look on page 55 of your budget book. That is a complete list, but I just want to shout out some of the highlights of of some of the reductions that were made. Um, we heard things uh in the community last year about the number of admin assistance we had. So, we took a really hard look at that and as painful as it
044was, we were able to reduce that by a half half a position. Um, and that obviously means that other people are going to have to assume some of those roles and responsibilities. But I can tell you the team has been extremely receptive to that. Um, and incorporating a a team approach, which is not surprising. Um, to make that happen. We are uh reducing by one special education parent educator uh as a parent educator right here at BHS library a.5 position and a building sub at Bolton High School also uh will be reduced. And again, that's uh Mr. Miselli has been great with that as far as like brainstorming ideas right now how we're going to cover that next year and um we know that people are going to have to step up and and ship
045in in different areas and um we appreciate them doing that. >> Can can I ask a question? >> Yes. >> I'm just wondering are those currently filled where people are being reduced and out of jobs or are they leaving being moved to other positions? just the human impact. >> Yeah, that's a good question. Um, some of that is undecided, undetermined yet, but the goal here, so so far we've done um done everything we could to make sure nobody lose their job. >> Okay. And I can I can expand on that a little bit when we get into the budget workshop. >> So, here are some other highlights. Uh, stipen positions. We we took a hard look at all the stipens that we had in the district. met with the uh members of the stipen committee
046to take a look at what's there. Um and what we found was there are some stipen positions that were u possibly not being utilized or clubs and activities that were no longer running and um so we made some adjustments there. Superintendent's office I took a look at. We'll go over this in the budget book uh at the workshop. Um but taking a look at some things that uh I could pair down and I can consolidate uh virtual high school reduced that by $5,000. The athletic trainer and the bus miner. So, a total reduction um again can be found on page 55 and was just under $33,000 of reductions. So, those are not easy reductions. Um those were were pretty painful and again really difficult conversations and discussions, but um I think it made the most
047sense for for our our our district and to get a number that we'll be we could be comfortable with. Quick little five-year look back on position reductions over the past five years um equaling a little over nine total FTEES impact of reductions. I asked Cassaul like what does it mean if we try to for lack of better terms shave off a quarter percent or half a percent? What's the dollar amount? And so, you know, when I look at this, it's kind of a um I think it's a powerful slide for me because when we think of just percentages, sometimes you can throw percentages there, but when you put a dollar amount to it, um you know, you can't save $42,000 by buying less paper. Um so, additional reductions um to this magnitude would result in,
048you know, staffing changes and program changes. Here's an overview of where the money is being spent. the 2% was tiny, so I had to put it outside the the pie. But you can see as as I'm sure you're well aware that most of it is in salaries and benefits. To break that down a little bit, contractual obligations uh consists of $761,941 of the increase, which is a huge chunk. Um, again, special education increase of only $7,700 is again a tribute to Beth and her hard work and her team. Uh, I think that's unheard of in um in districts that it's that that small an amount. And you can see there was a uh less spending in regular instruction and administration and business. We had some savings there because of some things we were able to
049do. So, the impact of the expenditures and reductions, you can see there the the proposed increase is 8.66, which is a 5.17% increase and of that increase 761,941 is salary in health insurance or a 4.54% increase. So before we even did anything before we got started we didn't really technically start at a zero. We started a 4.54 and went from there. Um so really the increase is 4.54 to the 517. Some local air requests right here. Here again, you can see where we fall as it relates to other area districts. We are below the average and certainly well below some of the other districts. I have to note coming from Vernon, Vernon is very low. Um they also are an alliance district and uh they have millions of dollars in state funding which certainly helps
050to get that. So that that number is a little bit deceiving. Um had to throw in that caveat there. Here's your projected revenues from grants, federal and state, our capital proposals. I know Ben spoke a little earlier about um our Kappa and this is what is in that. The district handicap band replacement. We uh pieced it out into two separate years to try to reduce the impact and potential referendum items and the roof replacement that we've spoken about before. I kept the BHS soccer field and track on there um because it still needs to be done. I took out the BCS um science lab renovation and the BCS library renovation. I talked to Mr. Gard and he felt comfortable taking those two things out and um not having those be as much of a priority
051as some other things right now. Some shared efforts to reduce expenses, some shared things we have with the town. I also included in there, we're exploring shared ESY with Andover this summer, which could produce some revenue for us. And then our next few meetings coming up. And I just want to finish with some pictures of our kids. you know, you get caught up in the office sometimes looking at numbers and numbers and numbers um and popping into the schools and seeing pictures like this, seeing the kids in the day-to-day routines in their classes, interacting with their teachers and their peers. Um that's really what it's all about. So, that is why we're here and um I'm really proud to put this budget proposal together. >> Thank you very much. We look forward to our next
052meeting in about 10 minutes to discuss this in great detail. 11 minutes. But in the meantime, we have no unfinished business, but we do have small new business and resignations or do we not have? >> Yes, we do have one resignation. Elaine Aligretti at BCS is announced her retirement after quite a few years. So, we wish her the best of luck. Really excited for her. Yeah. >> Been a staple. Yes. >> She was my son school Spanish teacher. >> Yeah. >> All right. They choose to fill their >> Yes. Future business. Looking for a motion to adjourn. So move. >> We have a second. >> Second comments on this motion. All those in favor, please say I. Anyone opposed or abstaining? All righty. One down.