001to order welcome back can thank you yes so would you all please join me um in St [Music] for the United States of America to the for it stands Nation invisible liy and justice for [Applause] all right so um uh to speak to the folks at home there's our main camera do we know um they're on top just Catches Us in Round Table okay great we want to move the microphones down um then when it's time to move um for when it's time to move for focus on the slides um I'll just head over to the side um because everybody got the print out too all right all right so let's kick off first of all uh we apologize for our delay as you know we were uh down in the gym um watching the
002BHS um uh dance team do a hip-hop routine which was inspiring they were great it featured our own um a Canton and it it was cool to see them do their thing um so thank you for joining us here this evening and for the folks watching at home thanks for making Tak time for this important part of Civic information sharing uh we're happy to have you with us our purpose here tonight is to share the board of education's adopted budget I will introduce the process and Rosa Fernandez will walk you through the nuts and bolts of the budget we are happy to take your questions uh please wait until the end of the presentation for that as some questions May resolve themselves along the way uh further our entire team uh Dr John burill um
003Mrs Casey di Dr Anna man um Mr Roland and principles Banda uh Renda and Pepsi are here to field questions that pertain to their specific domains um I think it's important oh next slide can we advance the slides please go ahead thank you okay I think it's important to start off with a reminder of our shared why um I pulled these two from the mission uh these two bullet points we know that particularly for small towns uh the public schools are a source of Pride um of shared experience and community in many ways they're part of the Town DNA um these two bullet points um speak first to what we want to facilitate for the kids in our community this is a a life promise one way we use our public schools to launch children
004from Brookfield um onto their own respective Journeys the second bullet point is more about the students experiment experience what skills and capacities we hope to develop in them um the mission helps us recall whom we serve and it's you know it's important to Center our kids in everything that we do here okay U next slide please backing up a little bit uh it's really important to acknowledge the path that previous boards pursued to get here um and the range of measures they took to manage finances responsibly they really did the town proud with careful management of funds during very turbulent time uh during the covid crisis the district received a substantial infusion of funds from RL legislation together with the boards of Selectmen and Boards of Finance the Board of Education developed an incremental three-year
005plan for these funds in so doing they avoided the budget Cliff facing so many towns and cities around our state some of the phased Investments are easy to recognize summer school offered for regular education students math tutoring the higher iring of uh security monitors a05 occupational therapist and a social worker to assist in the district goal of supporting students mental health finally the funds were also used to invest in our professional core instructional coaches were added in science social studies for K8 levels and technology for K12 to further develop the capacity of our teachers as you know teachers are at the heart of children's academic success and we want them to continue to grow professionally to connect with Inspire and educate all our kids all of our initiatives and Investments are aligned with the Board
006of Education strategic plan okay next slide please thank you here are our enrollment projections or our enrollment numbers for this year and the projections for next year um you can see that they're holding pretty steady I'll give you a second to look at those um in total we expect between this year and next year we expect about a 2% decline in aggregate numbers but spread out over all the grades um that that's not a lot if you look at the bottom you'll see some important Trends um the number of identified students with special needs is largely unchanged the next two figures show that the needs of Brookfield families are changing we are welcoming more families with multilingual or multilanguage Learners and this has budgetary implications we are also seeing more families accessing services for free
007and reduced lunch our school stand stand our schools stand ready to respond to these shifts and demographics and we trust the other boards do too okay next slide thank you this slide gives you a breakdown of class siiz averages for our K to eight Learners you can see that the y- AIS gives you a historical overview while the x- axis shows grade level the projection for next year's classes is in the bottom row the red squares indicate where class size exceeds board recommended guidelines in the areas where we might be a little over at least in the lower grades teachers seem comfortable uh so we expect to keep Staffing levels consistent one particular note and I'll give you a second to keep up with me because when you're new to this uh slide it's it's
008a little bit uh challenging so you can see for the 19 oh sorry for the 2022 23 um line when we were planning for class sizes um for CES the kindergarten and first grade numbers were a bit higher than guidelines this is 22 23 K and one teachers and administrators decided that keeping class sizes a little larger was what they wanted it was beneficial because with that they'd have a full-time pair of professional in the room um teachers like this Arrangement uh and having one or two kids over the guidelines rather than having the um Paris support reduced and having um the number of kids Within the guidelines and so the um boards were able to respect that desire from the teachers one of the district goals for next year involves redistribution of staff to
009accommodate a larger class uh for example the current grade four is pretty large so we'll be moving a teacher from another grade to meet this need this way we maintain High teaching professionalism with existing staff okay next slide um so while most of you are familiar with the budget development process we have a couple of folks watching um who might not be and this is an apt time to mention that this presentation will be posted online many of the points mentioned at least in my introduction uh can be found in much more detail in Dr Burl's budget proposal slideshow from the December 6th um Board of Ed meeting more information on how we are accomplishing this year's goals including tie-in to the Strategic plan are in his presentation this slide is a reminder of how
010lengthy the B budget development process is it's notable that there are new members of all three boards so there's been a bit of a Changing of the Guard uh newly elected people have been digging in to get up to speed and we appreciate everyone's efforts in that regard you can see the highlighted Point here we're very deep now the yellow line we're very deep now in the budget process and we look forward to getting your feedback before we take the next steps okay next please all right to give you an idea of the Board of Education education's engagement with the budget this slide shows dates when we held public meetings to discuss the budget members of the public attended the budget Roundtable in December um also a special meeting to discuss the budget in January
011and a meeting of the finance subcommittee also in January and we are grateful to those folks those members of the public for coming out to learn more and to share their thoughts all told we have had 11 public meetings about the budget Mrs diot is the architect of the budget Q&A document that you each have in your binders here Folks at home should know that the budget that that document is hyperlink at the bottom of this slide and it's incredibly useful for people who have a lot of extra time and a whole bunch of curiosity this is the most um I think revealing document about the budget process um how we've we as um sub Finance subcommittee members uh executive team and Board of Ed members have have sought to uh scrutinize and inquire about
012various budget items and I would encourage you to take a look um it's useful for understanding not only the actual spending versus the projected of this year's budget but also how we arrived at projections for next year's budget some of this process is fixed and predictable much is not the dynamic parts of the budget are pieces that Rosa will talk about at length Okay um next slide here's an articulation of what we hope to achieve with this budget and I'll give you a second to read through these items you can see that these goals are trim and focused on Essential Touch points okay let's go that to to the next slide thank you okay and what's important uh for you to know is that this budget is the result of a transparent and rigorous process
013uh we are accountable to the community we're all accountable to the community and we have adopted this budget with that considerable responsibility as our guide so um to our fellow board members here at the table we understand that this is a big ask uh this budget represents how we can best achieve our operational goals we know that your job is difficult and that our request may not fit with your goals for the town that's your conversation to have in your respective groups we are here to give you answers uh that you need to have informed deliberations um if the board of education is faced with having to contend with a lower budget we will strategize uh the best use of the funds that we have available as you know that is our conversation to have
014and it's not for this meeting so with that I turn it over to um Rosa and thank you okay um on all right so tonight I promise to discuss next year's budget plans but it is important to speak to historical trends that will all help us understand how we got here so I'll be doing that also tonight and for now I wanted to start with this snapshot of where we're at in this current budget because it is so much a part of that story and also hopefully maybe after this I can maybe take a board of Finance meeting off my calendar but um but we are currently about 49 ,000 over budget and some specific areas of the budget that are contributing to that are special education outplacement and transportation which is difficult to forecast
015teacher turnover savings this is the second year in a row that we've realized none uh substitutes absentee rates are up everywhere athletic Transportation uh there's a nationwide bus driver shortage forcing districts to hire private Charter companies water uh small but noted Miss and budgeting for CES electricity more on that later and vag tuition so this is likely a true anomaly there were just some students that were not expected to return that did and we do have some offsetting Savings in leaves and vacancies though of course we do still actively attempt to fill most of those vacancies so we will continue to report out on that um an increase in special education excess cost Grant decreased enrollment at the magnet school AIS and other adjustments throughout the budget due to a recently implemented budget freeze so
016the highlighted blue items here should come as no surprise because we've been discussing special education tuition and transportation via a town and school agreement uh for years what is new is the second consecutive year of not realizing teacher turnover savings um that's a risk the town and schools took together so I'll talk more to both of those points later what remains highlighted in yellow are in a different bucket they're important to understand in the context of next year's budget as there's some areas with particularly High increases that we don't anticipate changing anytime soon so sorry it's cut off there but in the upcoming slides I'm going to review each of these in detail but I wanted to give you an overview of some familiar areas of the budget our new requests as well as what
017are called anomalies in your binder and some are uh but other are more potential trends that we'll be watching now and in the coming years and you should note that most of the funding for new Investments as well as for special education is either mandated or has been planned for and discussed with the ARP eser Roland the areas highlighted in yellower items seeing a particularly large increase and whose increase I felt significantly impacted the budget request so these are the same items that we'll be seeing as problematic for this year this is a continuation of the previous slide and it points out new or significant items being affected purely by contractual or obligation inflationary we are able to reduce the budget somewhat with a reorganization of the HR department there was an opportunity with a
018retirement a reduction of one counselor at CES a consolidation of some technology platforms with uh use of something called parent square and a continuation of decreased enrollment at the magnet school and at the the bottom you'll just see a summary of all of these bucketed items so the reason I started talking about our current year in relation to next year is because one of the drivers behind the in the inescapable increase to next year's budget is a reflection of the cost that we're already seeing this year and we unfortunately believe that that might be the start of some concerning Trends I'm going to speak to more on each of these but when you look at the new requests and increases for next year in relation to the projected actuals for this year it paints a
019much different picture and the conversation that I would like to steer us towards is one of an understanding behind each of these areas yeah sorry it's a little cut off but uh I wanted to start with a catchup for new and returning board members on what was a cooperative strategy to use Grant monies uh that became available in the wake of the co pandemic basically federal grants became available to schools Nationwide to help deal with the educational and mental health effects of covid and many districts took that hundreds of thousands of dollars that became available to them and immediately reduce their next budget request what we and Brookfield did instead and in cooperation with the town was construct a schedule to use those funds over the three years that we were required to use them
020and partially pay for some Investments slowly taper in those costs into our operating budget over time uh these were Investments that would not have come forward so quickly had it not been for the availability of these funds but the plan we devised avoided a budget cliff and gave the district a great opportunity to capture resources that would have otherwise taken much longer to accomplish so this is the exact slide that you all saw last year at this joint meeting the only difference is that our original Rollin plan for this year is smaller than what you were told last year the cost for summer school given interest and need is reduced the occupational therapist that we hired came in under budget uh we were unfortunately never able to find a math tutor and many of the
021other costs were able to be absorbed in this current Year's budget uh resulting in about 70,000 less rolling in than what we had all planned Building Maintenance so in addition to our planned Investments we do have a sizable increase in building repairs and maintenance needed for our older schools the condition of our facilities has been a very prominent part of the public conversation and we do address concerns that are actually brought to our attention last year we invested in a building condition study with Mark zbo and we are now following up on various maintenance items that they felt had fallen behind schedule or that needed more immediate attention these improvements will be part of ongoing maintenance and so we felt they didn't belong in our capital budget request the total cost for these repairs and
022Replacements is over 100,000 but if they are done uh they will supplant other building repair line items that were already in this account so we've reduced our request to only what we feel is additionally needed to get that done and going forward this will um this does catch us up on a lot of Maintenance but we do expect that the cost for staying on a better schedule of repairs and Replacements will remain heightened and not return to previous budget levels all right so teacher turnover um I wanted to discuss the current risk that we're taking in teacher turnover savings uh for the public and new board members you'll see in the budget details this line is recorded as a negative number because we have for a number of years assumed some of the savings from
023teacher retirements and resignations and the hiring of less veteran teachers that risk has increased incrementally over the years uh but the last two we have not achieved the level of savings that we budgeted for and when we don't we're over budget budget in our salary account now it could very well be that these last two years were true anomalies or reflections of the current economy and we understand that teachers are not going to work forever um so perhaps next year we will see these savings and as such we're not asking to reduce the risk uh but we will need to budget for our known teachers which increases the salary line by a net of $25,000 um it's an opportune moment to note that we fully recognize that there are many times when a teacher lower
024on the pace scale leaves and a teacher higher on the pay scale is hired and we've actually seen a lot of that this year however we have valued giving our administrators the flexibility to look for the best teachers for the job and not the least expensive and sometimes those two are one and the same but not always especially in high demand areas that are highlighted here like science language and special education of course if the board is forced to consider advocating for a different approach uh due to this budget being majorly cut or it faing at referendum you know that might be something that we explore all right substitutes so when I first made this graph I thought I would see something quite different since we've been contending with being over budget on substitutes uh
025for since the pandemic instead what it's showing is that over the last eight years the cost for short-term Subs has been a little up and down but overall there's not really an upward Trend you see the dollars are mapped in blue with the values on on the right Axis um Additionally the overall percentage chunk of the budget that short-term Subs has taken up has been fairly stable if not decreasing slightly that proportion value you'll see mapped in yellow with values on the axis on the left the takeway here though is that although we're seeing a sizable increase in this account year to year it's more indicative of a TR up of this account's true expenditures rather than a major change in how we use Subs um though as I mentioned before absentee ism is up
026and we're dealing uh with that and hopes that it doesn't contribute to some forward um upward Trend all right electricity so costs are going up for electricity naturally but most markedly within the last two years those dollars are the ones in blue um historically the percentage of the budget that this has consumed has been fairly steady but there has been an upward trend for electricity being a larger andar larger chunk of the budget in the last couple of years and it alone is responsible for 26 of the new requests 2.26% of the new request that proportion is mapped in yellow uh with the values on the left overall the rise hasn't been as significant as compared to the rise in the overall budget but this may be an area to watch now that clas is
027online and the dollars are large the especially large increase that we can call out here year toe is due to CES and we can talk more about this later if you have questions but basically to sum it up CES is using less kilowatt hours than Huckleberry and Center combined but less than the engineers originally thought um the increase that we see here is mostly due to increased Supply rates so for next year we have a better gauge on our usage at CES our run rates um but just keep in mind that a full year of electricity is in the 2425 budget whereas for this year our electricity responsibility only came on Midway through September all right athletic Transportation so we're requesting a significant bump in funds for athletic Transportation so I wanted to bring attention
028to Transportation as a whole and the sub account for athletics since it was over budget this year due entirely to a bus driver shortage and our forced use of private Charter companies unfortunately we don't anticipate that changing anytime soon so so looking at the graph on the left you'll see that since Co the cost for athletic Transportation has risen dramatically and is around 6% of our overall spend on non-sp special education transportation preo we used to spend about 125,000 a year and it has not only returned to those levels but surpassed it and I know that there's a sealing effect to this because assuming that the sports that we offer don't change dramatically we may not Contin continue to see it climb Beyond inflation um but in the years ahead we don't anticipate those numbers
029falling back to pre-co levels uh we do anticipate increases being somewhat unpredictable and affected by private Charter price changes um we do not and we may not be able to have contracts with these firms but that is something that we're looking into and exploring um looking at the graph on on the right you'll see that this plays a big role in transportation as a whole which over time has only grown um you'll all remember that even during Co we had to pay our transportation companies so you don't see a major dip um in those years uh but since then the costs have risen more sharply uh looking at the Yellow Line non-s special education Transportation went from being a little more than 5% of our total budget to now around six um those are big
030numbers when considering a budget of our size and what I'm seeing is that we can contribute some of that um including its effects on the entire budget to athletic transportation all right so status quo when we talk about status quo and what affects it what we're really talking about is salaries and health insurance and health insurance is the largest factor driving the increase in the status quo it is becoming a larger and larger part of our overall spend and we're not just talking about small dollars looking at the yellow line You'll see that health insurance was around 12% of our budget 7 years ago and it is now over 15 the total cost of that growth growth over time which you'll see in blue is over $3 million so this is one area of the
031budget that is growing faster than others take for example salaries which is still by far the largest part of our budget um but not only are the increases in salaries far more predictable but the proportional growth has been consistent with the remainder of the budget for health insurance the unpredictability of the estimates during this very budget approval process coupled with the sheer numbers of dollars and the year-to-year increase that's not in line with inflation means that this Factor alone puts one of the greatest pressures on our other budget goals and obligations now typically we are given conservative estimates for health insurance and we've already gotten some good news on that front uh with hopes of more in the coming months and the numbers in this presentation don't reflect that because I wanted to make sure
032you have the numbers that are in your binder um but it remains true that our actual spent on health insurance is growing significantly and it will continue to be front and center when we're back here asking for more funds in the future all right special education next year we will spend over $1 million on special education that is 20% of our entire budget what I really want to draw your attention to is the proportion of the overall budget that has been allocated to special education despite very minimal fluctuations in the number of students being serviced in just 5 years the expenditures have grown $2.7 million with a little less than half of that growth seen in this request Alone part of the larger than normal growth we're seeing this year isn't due to major changes
033in programming or to the number of students that are being serviced but due to a new mandate that requires us to provide services to students until their 23rd birthday we do get reimbursed somewhat from the state that offsetting Revenue which is that bottom line uh from the EXs cost Grant has been compara comparatively stagnant it doesn't apply to all costs for students with special needs and it has never come close to truly offsetting any major part of this and that's really what the problem is now this is a sensitive subject because we're talking about our students who have a wide variety of needs and deserve these services and I'm not up here advocating advocating against a single dollar of it but we also have to have a very honest conversation about how poorly special education
034is funded in this state and how its structure forces some municipalities like ours to squeeze other areas of the budget or contend with massive budget increases for local taxpayers what's worse is that this system is widely considered to be unsustainable by Educators and at the local level it pits families directly against um districts try as they're trying to advocate for their children and District dists are touting extreme costs and budgetary pressures both of which are valid points and both of which deserve the attention and solutions oriented approach from town leaders like us what we and other boards of edge struggle with is being both advocates for vulnerable students who deserve all of these Services as well as advocates for our budgets that continue to increase I want to make it very clear that while I
035don't speak for the board I'm confident each member is here to serve every child in this District equitably and we don't view these B these costs as burdens on our budget but we still have the responsibility to understand and communicate what is truly happening to the overall budget and be honest about what impact that could have on our other budget goals if we're not willing to fund it all a subsection of our special education budget is particularly unpredictable and it makes up around 7% of our entire operating budget and a significant percentage of the special education costs overall so what you see here is a summary of expenditures for our outplay students these are a relatively small population of students with needs that were unable to provide services for within the district the per pupil
036cost for tuition and transportation to various specialized schools is significant and we're predicting that these we're predicting these specialized Services a year out so really should circumstances for just one student change really and anytime after this meeting our budget can be greatly impacted in either direction our request includes over a million dollars that we will spend to fund just outplacement Transportation which is up 50% over this year's approved budget and 2.8 million that we will also spend to fund outplacement tuition which is up 11% from this year's approved budget but what I want to further point out is the effect that these growing requests have had on our our overall budgets the historical swings in outplacement tuition and transportation expenditures have been as much as a 3,000 three $300,000 savings against the budget to exposures
037close to a million having 7% of our entire budget be so volatile makes this a very impactful area perhaps more importantly the proportion of the overall budget that's been allocated for special education tuition this is just for a handful of students being served and it's profound 7 years ago these costs were a little more than 4% of our overall budget it is now 7% so if you want to look five or 10 years down the road having special ed out placements be 10% of our entire budget is not an unreasonable thought and if the goal is to come here with three or 4% asks it's going to be nearly impossible not to squeeze out other areas of our budget so uh since I talked a lot about history I also wanted to look to the
038Future when we look at our discretionary and some mandatory Investments the availability of arester funds made it possible to FASTT track what would have taken any District um any District much longer to accomplish through small budget increases in those areas and we thank the board of Selectmen and board of Finance for their cooperation and commitment to our rollout plan because of that the district has a lot of work to do and we're primarily focused now on how we capitalize on these Investments and continuously improve so what you see on the left most column is our widely publicized strategic Plan Focus areas and what we felt might help you understand given the size of the increase we're asking for this year what you might expect in the coming three years as far as investments in Staffing
039programming and capital again because the Arps are funds we invested heavily in the instructional coaching model and I won't go into details of that but we have discussed it at several of our own board me meetings over a number of years and I do encourage any of you to go back and watch any of those uh for tonight I'll simply say it's a structure that the board supports as a means of adhering to our strategic plan the biggest takeaway here is that we do have a lot of work to do and we have no anticipated needs for Staffing or large programmatic investments in the near future but the Marx aubo study did highlight that although we don't need new school buildings which is great uh we need um Energy Efficiency upgrades as as well as
040building envelope fenestration and security improvements at whis skiner and the high school totaling $12 million over the next 10 years all that said I wanted to remind you that one of our budget goals is always to remain responsive to changing organizational needs so should new mandates become known or should existing mandates change as they so often do or should the will of the board change or should students come forward with an investment request as they have in the past or should we experience the leave in a key leader or should anything else happen that would require us to rethink reorganization of Staff or programming this Outlook May absolutely change our focus is to change in ways that are best for students and advocate for whatever budget we feel does that but for now we don't
041foresee um anything known affecting our Outlook in that [Applause] way so thank you um we want to provide you with whatever information that you need that can be helpful so if this presentation was lacking in any way I just strongly encourage um an open dialogue and I know everybody is more than happy to provide you with whatever information you need on the budget details so thank you very much that was great no questions great you want to leave Steve uh one of the things that I am concerned about you know with the school budget coming in where it is and there's increased pressure on the town side also we're seeing increases just like you are and my concern is our ability to put together a budget that will get asked MH um we need our
042residents to pay attention we need our residents to understand these budgets and I know our residents are busy uh the good thing is there's I don't see any parents here tonight and that there any parents here today and this is much like when I first moved to Brookfield in 1983 I was working in New York City the schools were great my kids loved them the streets were paved the streets were plowed it was safe my kids could go out at 7:00 at night run down the street to a neighbors with no worry it was something I didn't need to worry about so I didn't pay a lot of attention to town budgets I didn't everything was working really well and I've heard we had great people running our schools running our town and it seemed
043to be really really good but back then the increases were in the 2 and 1/2 3 3 and 1/2 4% for the budgets that has change and I don't think it's going to stop changing given the increase in fuel given the increase mandates from the state all of these things are pushing our budgets to the breaking point and in doing that I'm trying to figure out a way we can better educate our residents so they understand what they're getting for the money that they're spending I think very often people go into the voting booth and look at it and they just look at that number that percentage increase and they're saying wow I got a three and a half% raise last year and they are asking for four and a half that's a difficult sale
044if we can't educate everyone in town and what I struggle with is how best to do that how do we get to our residents so they understand what it is we're doing I think the budget that the Board of Ed has put together is a good one I don't think there are any crazy asks in it I really don't I think this was well done as it has been over the past years one of the things we look at 87 of your budget as of today is money that we kept on the town side for special education transportation and we keep it on the town side if you look at the increase right now it's 585 you're looking for is that right effectively it's effectively it's down there under if we had put the money
045that is sitting on the town side in your budget last year for you to spend we're really looking at a 485 a 490 and that we have to educate our residents we've done this on purpose to make sure that the schools get every dollar they need but also to protect the town and putting money in the contingency and this has worked some years we had money sitting there that you did not need and every time the board Ved came to the town and ask for increased funding the board of Finance has per agreement per understanding um provided that but it kind of skews the number a little bit if we had put all that money for special ed and transportation in your budget originally we'd really be looking at like a 4.9 something increase and
046that's important for residents to understand and for right now that's all I have to say but I want to thank you guys the work you did as usual is excellent It's understandable I know that there's a lot of work and input put into into this the number of hours spent on budgets in Brookfield is just phenomenal the points you raised are really important um and even people but I think we have to say you know some elephants in the room even for people who understand the budget and I didn't even air quote that like even people who understand the budget may have a hard time voting for it because it's it's it's a big increase and the the thing that as a town need to contend with as the bigger elephant in the room is
047what Rosa was talking about what we've spent hours talking about the trends this the the the things that we by law have to pay for we have no choice and the children deserve it those expenses are spiraling and so it's it's a challenge to us as Town leaders to figure out what what can we do what can we do as a town to use our our our brain power our resources now we can't answer that here here um will the voters say gosh this budget is a big ass but we understand that you are trying to work on systemic Solutions I I don't I don't know I don't know I mean as a person who's new to all this I don't know what's feasible what's viable I don't know but but your questions are really
048important did you want to go next go no could been let the board of Selectmen finish off how's that I have a couple of questions and thank you all this has been really informative is this on yes it is um first of all I saw in the budget transmittal letter that um I think you had stated Wendy that there was uh creative ways of addressing the HR vacancy what what exactly does that mean that sounds like the first of maybe many questions that I will be passing passing along to the executive team so yeah thank thanks thanks for the question ter so one of the things we're looking at we actually are at the point now for a new HR supervisor and offering a contract and getting ready so we'll be able to uh announce
049that person hopefully in the next week or two um background checks and everything kind we're waiting for input from that person but one of the things we're looking at is consolidation um and to be very uh honest about uh the folks in our office and consolidating um while we have some ideas we're waiting for this HR person to start so we can get their input um once they land uh in the district so um we don't have a definitive plan yet but we are looking at some consolidation strategies that's just within the Board of Ed correct that's Board of Ed okay um yeah regarding the the increase you said it was a 7% overall increase for the special education is that correct um what did I say it was I remember it was 11 %
050just for tuition 50% for transportation overall um I do we have that Consolidated number I think you said that 7% of the total budget yes yes okay yeah and and the the part of the point of that is that it's incredibly volatile that you can see um slide number three from the end um that when the dollars are so large and the volatility is so great um and it's not volatility that's going down either that's that's the challenge like if we if we staunch the bleeding this year or if we you know pull a rabbit out of the Hat this year what about next year so that's that's really the challenge that faces all of us and that's that's just the out placements special ed as a whole like including the students that are serviced
051within the district is 20 like that whole thing is 20% okay so are you mentioned other towns are having similar problems right so have we talked to like Cog just within our Council of governments to kind of see we're on I think in a wealthier cog but um if there's any kind of relief that they're addressing as part of the 18 towns that have similar problems or that's really good question um there have been numerous conversations with the Cog about how to particularly uh special education special education transportation and unfunded mandates um many people at the Cog have been pushing the Cog to push the state to uh have the state take over the expense of special education therefore a child and a parent can take their child to any school in any district and
052know that they're going to get a good education there is some CU I know parents have told me this um shopping of school districts it does happen if a town is perceived as having a slightly better special education program though the state mandates everybody do provide the same levels of service the question comes in mind to me and it's understandable do I want my special education child in a school with 4,000 kids in the school or in a school with 800 kids in a school and I think most parents would say i' prefer an 800 student population for my students so that they don't get lost I would absolutely and I've advocated with our state senator I've advocated with our state representative who happen to be the same person right now um to have the
053state take over special education the expense of special education it kills School budgets it does and it's so variable it can go through the roof one year through no through the fault of no one and we have an Administration and a school district that I think works really hard to meet those needs of those those students and therefore we're going to see this volatility and as you said it's not I don't think it's going to change I think it's going to get worse I do know that other districts are they're having the same exact conversations that we are it is it is a it's a point of frustration for for districts because um and it's it's they're very frustrated mostly with how the state is is funding it or I should say not funding it
054but um there's a number of different ways that towns other towns are dealing with it some of them um have contingencies in their budget for things like this um out placements and things like that others have true non-aps accounts um so any surplus that we would see would go into instead of the town's general fund our own sort of non-aps account um and so that over time you see at least like the increases are a little bit more steady and smooth as opposed to what we're seeing which is constantly okay we're over budget we take money and now that brings our you know our sort of art increase like way up compared to the previous year's budget so it looks very Jagged the way we're doing it um I mean I not just say I
055don't think it's working well I just think it's it's a matter of communication that we um the boards change but the communication still has to stay the same is are we holding True to this plan because that's a strategy that we're all using together to fund our special education and you know if we're going to continue doing that we all kind of need to put out that message um yeah maybe something that could be beneficial is a is a joint letter or if we can join forces with other towns who are in similar situations and then send it to the powers that may be I don't know who that is but um we we did a letter last year I think it was for the health insurance to the state controller and that seemed to
056be pretty effective so it's just an idea I think it might be worth it but this this I mean that's a great idea and and any action as the committee I think we'd all be willing to to launch this is Regional probably National but I don't have the numbers Anna you might know more about that I mean I don't know about nationally certainly conne and unfunded mandates general in general and and to your point Tara our superintendent group caps is doing the same thing advocating at the state level as well that's a bear and I did have another question about um there was some recent correspondents from the public addressed to all of us um and the item one of the items was about town count uh Schoolboard Council um Can somebody kind of touch
057on that I don't know if it's in the binder I haven't looked at that yet but the amount we're paying for Town Council for the Board of Ed or I'm sorry not Town Council Board of Ed Council um just for the board or the total board of education budget there it's in two categories one for is it spelled out in here it's yeah $150,000 for general counsel and then 's $20,000 budgeted for special ed Council 150 and what was and is that is that um typical of a school district or yeah I I actually did um survey uh my uh my group casbo group and it was very much in line about. 28% of the budget and you're sticking with the same Council or right now we have the same Council we actually have a
058an RFP developed and almost ready to go we're actually meeting with the purchasing agent on Friday casc to go over that and the board itself we've been in communication on that process and how long has the current Council been working for Brookfield I want to say 2012 or 2014 general council's been the district we I think that all that information is actually provided in the Q&A budget document there's links to the engagement letters that we have with the firms there's historical information that there might be 2008 and a 2014 depending on the the the firms are different the engagement years but all that information is in the Q&A document with links to the to the Dr Data thank you yep and Terell just add a letter that we were did receive I saw that as
059well yeah I caught my eye um M on yes it is it's it's on um it's about the $20,000 piece of that budget it's not about the bigger one the bigger one I mean from my history is mostly driven by Union negotiations right and anytime you anytime you talk about a small budget number like that when it go when there's an overage it it comes out as a large percentage an eye-catching percentage increase which is why I think it's caught some people's eye but it's not a budget driver so um I I what caught my eye in the presentation was the increasing electri cost um and uh and I know I what I heard you say Rosa was that it's higher than we expected what the engineers had told us but the but it's more
060efficient than uh when we had the two schools before technically yes but why why is the curve going up as much as it is that year to year so can I can I just the December bill was [Applause] $52,000 one month bill was $52,000 30,000 of that was off peak hours it makes no sense whatsoever this number even in this budget makes no sense because it's based on a 502,000 center school and I don't know Mar what was Center School and uberry combined 12,000 for the month I don't think okay I can I can speak to that um the the last bill that you saw it did have a balance forward we were going back and forth between the MBC and and and actually with constellations trying to lock in the rate so the 52,000
061was for two months um so wait hold on so but this is where we're losing this because when I speak to Paul czecho 5 minutes before I walk in the meeting he tells me that's a one month bill so how are we even fighting the problem if we don't know what the the problem is if that Paul czecho doesn't know that that's a two-month bill so he has the last two he I sent him the last two months of bills one was the 52,000 which was inclusive of the last month Bill and then the balance forward and then he has the other electric bill which shows that balance forward so the last two months was 2,999 69 and then the very current recent month month was 26271 59 so that's the two months the one
062really big Bill that we saw that sort of set off alarm Bells was the first bill that was forwarded to us from the MBC once the school open and students were in there which was um early OCT October uh I think that bill ran through um middle of October and that was 33,44 so that was and that was one month of energy usage it did have the um um air conditioning running there was still a lot of weekend work and over you know after hours work so I think there was people in that building constantly um so we were sort of waiting to see is this a true is this a true month of electricity one month in this building we did see that the next month it came down to $2,453 that was um
063October to November and then like I said the last two months it's it's tend tending to level off the supply rate the problem is the supply rate that that we're using in these these bills here is um is not locked in so all the other buildings are locked in with constellation the the bill for CES was still under omg's name so when we got this bill we could not lock in with constellation because it was not under the board of education's name that has since you know we're now it's under the Board of Ed and our purchasing agent is reaching out has reached out to Constellation and we should be locking in at our at our contracted rate with constellation which is 0833 cents um you know per kilowatt hour the current rate the FL
064the fluctuating rate is averaging .17 cents a kilowatt hour so it is a massive um it's a a massive change in in the one month it's it's a difference of 7 $8,000 but isn't your rate in 6 months going to go to17 anyway so in six months the the rate that we used in this El in these projections was based on you know the point in time when we put this together in you know November the rates we got um that our purchasing agent received from his contact at constellation was .11 so we do so this bill or this projection for next year is using 6 months of energy at the 0.0 831 per kilowatt hour and then the second um 6 months January through June at 0.11 cents per kilowatt hour are we sure
065on that number because I got a different number I got 1.5 I thought because we were talking doubled Mara from point8 to remember we talk double the rate you were talking so we were that was the going rate that um um because it was off your email that um um but that was the going rate and and we we've heard the same thing on our side that that we should be getting better rates than the going rate um that we're paying we're thinking more of a 32% increase in the supply which is 0.11 point the going from 0.831 to 0.11 is about a 32% increase so sorry a I was going to say I asked a nice General you went right to the December bill I give you full no this is you and me
066man so also from feedback I've gotten on the fuel side the school gets beneficial rates and on the electric side the town gets beneficial rates why can't we combine them and figure out special rates for all of us why can't the town take on all the electricity for the schools and put it under our umbrella so we do have one contract for all of us for electricity we do go out for fuel together um there's some um problems this year with the fuel in that um um the school buses came on at Candlewood that are gas used to be Diesel and so we're using more than our um contracted uh contracted amount of of oil of gasoline um we're sharing the pain on that that um um so that but we are doing all of
067that together but are we getting the same rates across the board they get a little better rate I think it's on diesel because they've got bigger tanks that um one of the fuels they get a bigger a better rate because when they fill it they've got a a big a bigger tank so it's cheaper by a few cents yeah but oil and electricity and regular gasoline it is the same the same pricing sorry about I just don't understand that bill well I think quite frankly I'm listening to your question and it kind of goes with my question I'd love to see it all L out right on a piece of paper right um just P * Q how much usage what the rate is by time last year this year next year because to me
068building the new school should have had year-to-year efficiencies it may not be what we expected but it should be somehow paying off for the town because of the modernization of our utilities and it's not jumping out and I don't know if it's masked by the rates or something else but I'd love to see the usage y in the budget and how that's trending and tracking and what was hooked up by the construction budget versus not so we can show see how that behaved but somewhere somewhere in Here It just strikes me that we ought to be seeing a notable decrease in electric usage and if it's being eaten up by rates that's a different discussion right and I couldn't tell that from your chart so I can absolutely have that I actually do have that
069in my cheat sheet but I can share that out with the boards for sure really help absolutely the uh including the netting that was out of the construction project oh yeah flag where that happen y um the second question I had was on substitutes um you had a notable exposure this year for substitutes and into next year um and I guess the question I have is we've seen overruns of the substitute budget over many years over all eight years I was in the board we over in our substitute budget but it was often offset by the fact that teachers were on leave and we weren't paying salaries so I know you don't budget teachers that way so it was budget here and we're going to end up underrunning due to absences and leaves on the
070on the salary line and intended to offset the substitute costs have we budgeted the full amount of substitutes we are budgeting the full amount of substitutes um in this budget it also does have so it's interesting like the teacher turnover cuz my concern teacher turnover well but my because my concern also was well if this has been overrun historically um in the past so where is that savings coming from and what I've look what I'm understanding and I'm going back in the historical budgets is that it's probably due to teacher um leaves and vacancies right from them taking FML leave or vacancies that are not filled um and so so that's why when I when I look at when I was thinking of this teacher turnover which I know is something that we need to
071talk about if we keep it in or not whether we call it teacher turnover or just salary savings because of leaves and absences and teacher turnover from retirements um I think it it may be safe to keep that in there because of what you say is that we've always been able to cover that substitute cost I think it is because of those leaves and vacancies from salaries because we worried about double budget I guess and and that and that's why I think keeping it in there does alleviate that concern because while we do budget the full cost of salaries for the staff that we know to be returning at you know at this point in time um we do know that historically there has been leaves in in vacancies that we find savings from and
072that's different than turnover exactly so while we're not realizing the savings salary savings from turnover we haven't done that this year and and and not last year or very close um I think it's safe to leave that 200,000 in there because we will still see savings and salaries from leaves and vacancies am I clear so are you so I'm going to say it differently than you did are you advocating for a zero negative contingency for teacher turnover and call all of that for leaves and vacancies I I I don't I guess I'm not I it doesn't matter to me what it's called whether it's teacher turnover or savings from it does matter I'm sorry just so for us to understand the budget you can't keep moving around in there right so I think we need
073to I think we need to really be precise y on what are we assuming are we going to assume we're going to have a much higher substitute budget because grow gross spending actually have over exceeded but we've assumed this much leav in vacancies that's an offset or are we going to assume no Lees at vacancies and and kind of the net cost of of substitutes so it just struck my it struck me that the way the budget was constructed when I looked at it that somehow we were getting we weren't getting the reduction on the leaves and vacancies but we were getting the added uh cost and that that was confusing okay I I understand I I guess my thinking is that um the salaries are budgeted whole right with not any netting down due
074to any anticipated leaves and vacancies because we're budgeting what we know salaries will be for next year if all teachers come to school um there knowing that there is I I so I would not Advocate to put that $200,000 back into the budget for teacher turnover because even if it's not realized in turnover it's likely going to be realized in leaves and vacancies so that's what I just the way I said it advocating of a zero for teacher turnover and put all that negative -200 for leaves and vacancies of just said to me we just don't have a leaves and vacancies budget line so what's been the history on leaves and vacancies um it's last year was about 285 um it's usually anywhere from $2 to $300,000 okay a year so it does cover that
075overage in Subs um and so so I I I would be more than comfortable leaving that reduction of salaries in there um whether whether we actually call it salary savings from turnover and leaves in vacancies do you know what I mean like it's it's a salary reduction line um and so it is I think I think it is important to leave that in there um we probably won't based on the last two years see it in turnover but we likely will see it from leaves and vacancies and I know I know you feel like I'm conflating those two things but they're both they're both impacting salary lines but in the past two these this two-year anomaly not withstanding past we've had the the leaves and vacancies and the turnover savings so it was let me
076I'll just give you some of my history here and so to me it I think it makes sense what this conversation is making sense to me okay um the when you've got you talk about substitutes um there sometimes you need a substitute because the teacher's been pulled away for a day or a sick leave or something like that you're still paying their salary and you have a net incremental cost for a substitute you have other situations which actually become the bulk of the substitute cost is people taking like a maternity leave and they're out for 6 months and it's an unpaid leave so those you tend to have a substitute uh and a cost and a offsetting savings in the salary one um so what you're when you budget it historically substitutes you're really trying
077to deal with that first C right which is much iset incremental substitutes and if you look at all the reports we've ever done we've always over over spent the substitute line by a couple hundred, and leaves in vacancies has been in fact often a little bit more than that right because sometimes you do you don't get a sub or you can't get a sub right that's to me very different and and that's been consistent right if I remember and I'd love to see that leads in vacancies versus substitute overruns and how that l out over time because I think it helps with precise budgeting then we also have the issue of teachers who retire and get replaced and I want to go back in time we went through four or five years where we were
078saving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can't go back in time happening again things are just different now no I understand let me just finish my thought right we went through a period of time where we were saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and we were retiring a lot of teachers each year and we could readily hire every teacher we wanted you could get a lower band teacher and you'd have a a group of um of 50 75 teachers applying for every single job that we had right there were very few teacher shortage uh situations um that changed in Co it really did I so I was going to the current situation and the two things that changed is all the retirement that happened happened there's not a lot of new retirements
079coming there were some and we say I saw in the sheet that you the chart you put up we saved money on those when we replaced them the issue that I know we struggled with is what do you do with those areas where there's no teachers to be found in the specialty and and that's really hard um and so my next so that's why that's been eating up all the savings we we probably would have met the 200 if you just gone straight with retirements that shart but I saw that all those blue lines it um it ate up all of the savings so I guess John this a question for you is is it even possible to change our hiring so that we can get more like for like bands and those shortage areas
080or is it you got to take what you can get I guess that's the question I have just management and and I think it it's really alluded to it it it's a combination um but in the shortage areas specifically and you can see them in the chart in your packet the um finding those teachers many times their unicorns to to find a bilingual teacher in a particular language to find a physics teacher to find even Math teachers now are shortage jeries World language special education speech and language very challenging to find um particularly in the times we're now nationally and around the state in our shortage area we've got a lot of Educators at the table and people married to Educators they can tell you um we're all we're all going through this um the
081principles um are very deliberate with their hiring committees um as part of our process in the summertime when we're looking for new teachers or when an opening happens during the school year and we have a uh electronic platform where um uh applicants put their uh their candidacy candidacy materials and they really go through those with their committee members and who are often teacher colleagues and so forth um and other admins and do the best they can there is often one or two applicants for some of these shortages areas it is really really there is just a dir of candidates in fact in a non- shortage Area English language arts this past summer you'll see in your chart there were a couple couple uh higher paid more veteran employees teachers that were brought in because for
082whatever reason unbeknown to us we can't tell you why there was not a lot of newer maybe um uh less experienced teachers in the candidate pool and so we had to go with what we had so to answer your question Bob if we get a converging on less experienced teachers who we believe are the best fit in our school then honestly that's where we go um and frankly when a higher experienced te a higher uh salary step teacher comes to us Anna and I we actually do a little bit of an evil eye at each other and go let's go check the candidate pool just to We Trust our principles but we want to trust and verify and we go in there and double check and they will tell you it is very very challenging
083um we don't have the traditional 200 applicants for an elementary position anymore when one opens you know there there are more Elementary applicants that's more of a generalist type teacher not so specific in a shortage area but we do not get the candidates that we used to get in either kind of the inexperienced just out of college younger teachers um or even in some of these specialty areas it's getting harder and harder in those areas and it truly is an employees Market um many Educators um were a bit of a victim of our location being in Western Connecticut um our teachers many of our newer teachers actually grew up in New York went to college in New York and or came to Western and they get a job with us and what we're seeing is
084some of the younger teachers after a couple of years they train up they're moving back to New York where the salary is a little bit better um that's just the way New York is and they're not commuting 45 minutes or an hour and we just lost a social worker over at Candlewood Lake because of this exact situation um who we did not want to lose we love her and so that's what we're dealing with the other opposite effect we're dealing with is we're in Northern Fairfield County South it's again shortage areas every every town is facing the same thing those teachers if they can get a more competitive salary um and add a little bit to their commute and leave uh bethl or Brookfield or new town and go down to new Kanan or darianne
085they're making that commute um and making that decision so it's uh it's a challenging situation the great thing is about this is we are actually fully staffed with our faculty you know we're not operating so like some districts where they're they're missing three or four special ed teachers they can't find a physics teacher they're spreading kids out all over they're not running classes at the High School we're not in that situation so that's that's a real positive for us and the reason we're not is we have a very competitive uh salary uh for our faculty in Connecticut we actually through the last teacher negotiation actually um worked on consolidating the steps and a lot of work by the board on that and working with the teachers unit um but our veteran teachers that help fill
086those shortage areas that we brought in that are higher on the salary schedule that you'll see come from a little bit east of us typically um because there's they're getting paid a little bit less on uh east of us to the center of the state so they they're coming West like this is an opportunity in the way our teacher contract is written um we basically um bring teachers in on their experience level um so like if a teacher comes in with 13 years experience we do not have uh if we're going to bring that person in if we'd be breaching the contract if we put them on step two for example or something like that they would come you should you should follow the contract yeah you have to follow the contract so as a
087long answer to to to a a a complicated question with a lot of pass and if I could just add one thing one of um the goals that we have with this the HR supervisor um that we thank you that we've created and that we're looking to hire is to come up with um kind of some as creative as much as we can creative approaches to Recruitment and and retention obviously um there are some mandates that are that are requiring us there's a um increased Ed Equity educational diversity plan that has to be be put forward to the state this year so that person will also help us with that but in as part and parcel of that we're looking to get new and and interesting ideas on how to recruit I'm going to change
088change gears on you thank you for that that was very helpful um and it goes back to recruiting bus driver recruiting right I I see I saw in here a number of places where Transportation costs are just going up a lot right and it struck me in special ad and Athletics probably more than anything so the how much of that is driven by bus driver short um that that that impacts um athletic Transportation primarily it doesn't impact your special ed or your regular no okay no fortunately we um we have enough bus drivers to staff all of our regular bus routes to get students to and from school on a regular basis um and so we don't have any problems there which is which is fortunate the problem is the after school activities having enough
089drivers to to finish to complete the runs at CES and because we have buses we do have extra buses to do some um after school uh athletic runs but we don't have the drivers to fill them because all the drivers are still compete in the CES run so um Deb Jones at Allstar is has been working non-stop since the beginning of the year um I think she does have another candidate all these candidates get you know so far in the process and then something happens and they fall out or they it's just hasn't hasn't materialized um it's also important to note that even when she does get a backup driver it is important to have a backup driver um for drivers that call out that Roots need to change that we can you know get
090get our um our kids so how many more drivers is it going to be required to keep get us out of going to uh contract yeah I think she's I think she's diligently looking for at least three drivers and with that all then we wouldn't have to get I think it would alleviate and again we do we do have um we do use Allstar for some of our athletic Transportation it's not 100% you know outside vendors they probably do about 50% of our athletic runs um so I think with just a handful more drivers it would really alleviate that even more okay and and and she she's how many is she trying to recruit I mean I think she's actively been trying to recruit two to three since the beginning of the year that's lots
091of districts well trust me some of the other things I heard from other districts are much worse than we have exactly they can't even get regular bus RS we're very fortunate um you know with Deb as our Depot manager I mean as always it's so all about the people in in the right position and um we're very fortunate to have Deb who knows the town so well and so committed it's very different than some of the other stories I'm hearing with Allstar specifically uh in some of our neighboring communities so we're doing really well with that regular Transportation but is it is it hard to recruit in those drivers John what's the reason it's so hard I think it's I is it pay is it uh just people don't want to do that anymore so
092I did I did ask Deb um you know I said are they are your salaries competitive is it is it a lack of advertising is it a pool like what what is the issue that she that she might have any insight to um I believe that the the employees her employees through Allstar did just vote on a a new Union change so there's some shifting there I don't know if people were unhappy with previous I represent I'm making assumptions I don't know but she did she does believe that that the rates are competitive um at least for the area for uh what All-Star is paying our drivers um it's just finding interest finding the people that want to commit to doing that job and I don't know if it's um you know the hours of
093the job are just you're looking for a very particular person that that can fit that life that lifestyle right um but but and people get get along along the way and then you know um don't seem to be able to complete the process so okay how much of the budget increases the outside buses is that uh is that is that yeah so we're we're anticipating about 30,000 30 to $40,000 increase um in athletic transportation and it's and it's related to to those outside vendors and it's important to note that we have all made uh on on the education side of things uh made a very conscious decision in supporting our students to make sure they get to those away um competitions yeah um we we are um it's not all that common for Middle School
094to have sports we do have it we're fortunate enough to have it here in Brookfield and we want to make sure those those students are getting to their away away competitions and so um Mr baldman worked very very hard to make sure they have transportation as well um a number of our neighbors um who um also have Middle School sports and can't can't find drivers for their middle school sports um have just canceled or have parents driving and we're trying not to do that to our parents as well we want to support the you know having the drivers and then of course you know we have the whole High School situation so there's a there's a lot of runs I mean it just you know so we've made some conscious decisions as well that we're
095going to support our kids to get to their a away gam and we have a tiered layer right so Allstar who we contract with um they are certainly the most economical uh first choice if we can get our Allstar buses to take our students that's our first choice there is another vendor that is while while more expensive not astronomically more expensive so that's always the second call and and I would say more than half the time more than probably 3/4 of the time about 3/4 of the time they and even better later in this year they're able to take those runs and so we're building a a nice relationship with that vendor um and so so so half of the time we can do it with Allstar and 3/4 of the remaining time you can
096do with this relatively inexpensive so that one4 of 1/2 or 1/8 of the total buses is driving the $30,000 yes so it's it's cuz those for those that bus run if we have to go to that third tier Last Resort is is $1,200 per instead like instead of like 4 instead of 300 or 500 it's it's significant wowow so it's our last that's why it's always Our Last Resort yeah got it yeah um next question I'm sorry I'm going to jump around a little bit you mentioned that there's new news on the health benefits how much is that worth about 150,000 150,000 reduction yes in our in okay from what's what we see in the book okay that's why it's yeah um and then lastly on special ed uh tuition and transportation I mean you
097showed a dramatic curve of what that's H what's happening to that the year-to-year growth is it rates it's not the numbers of kids it what's causing the year-to-year growth is it the rate of outplacement is it the Staffing we have in District is it the um is it Staffing on buses is it bus costs what what is the underlying drivers of the year-to-year growth do want going to take yeah um so with in in regards to tuition um tuition costs there were for this current year over last year's or or over the the budgeted this year versus actuals um when we made the budget last year at this time uh we budgeted for just one less outplaced student okay but important but important to note five of that PO five students from that population that
098known population at the time either moved out of District or exited the program and came back to Brookfield and that saved us um it's in your chart it in the charts I saw that so so so I think that saved us about 400 uh $340,000 something like that six new students be uh became outplaced the per pupil cost for those six new students was much higher than the five so while while the number of students being outplaced only went up increased by one that cost was I think it's um $110,000 at by that that makeup of those said differently the kids moving into the program are have high needs higher needs very high needs correct and then the um in terms of the transportation those students required additional Transportation some of the students I believe
099that were outplaced and it's in the in the chart but um either didn't require it didn't require uh Transportation or the transportation was much less expensive um and so those that again it's that mix of students the costs were just that much higher there also were um rate changes so we went um we contracted with Ed advance for a transportation Consortium this year other area districts we figured if we all had um the same students going to similar schools we would sort of carpool right and cost share those expenses um that contract um does state that if if for any reason the rides have to then go become individualized then that the towns that are continuing those rides sh um would absorb that burden of the extra cost so we did have a number of
100runs for whatever reason um had to go to individual runs and in that in a case like that if it was split between two towns or even three towns we would then double or um or more uh our cost for that one particular ride so that also had an impact um there were also some instances where um um we got into the year and it was understood that a a student would need a parah you know to ride on the bus with that student so that added to that cost did we add a lot of Paras on the buses there were a handful and that is it's noted in in the um rate changes in other um section of that table um so it's it's it's a few it's not it wasn't um you know
101all all of the rides but it was it was enough to have an impact um on the budget for sure okay yeah all right I wanted to change gears a little bit away from the year to years but um I want to talk about the mandates right so could you there's a couple of items that you noted as mandates here that in the budget request one was the K3 literacy one was the bilingual teacher could you expand on those a little bit and uh and talk to me a little bit about for example on the K3 literacy is there any room for dealing with our timing on when we roll that out that would allow us to spread that c over years I had the same question on the so just third mandate that I
102had written down was the up to age 23 for special services another mandate that's there as well I'll turn the K3 reading over to Dr M sure so um as you may remember last year it was supposed to actually be implemented this P this current uh school year was the K3 um reading mandate and just as a quick uh synopsis you know this is the Mandate from the state of Connecticut where um all districts are required to m a um science of reading based program for K3 uh reading um for literacy teaching and those uh there's a menu of choices that the state is approved so the state is pre-approving these programs so it's not like you can kind of go on the open market and do research uh on your own you basically go
103to the state um originally it was supposed to be five or up to nine uh approved programs at this point um and there were options for for districts last year they could either submit a waiver or submit a request for for postponement or just adopt um we submitted a a request for postponement so we've already postponed for a year um and based and the way that we rolled this in is that we actually adjusted along with the program you also had to adjust your assessment tool um so we use this year to bring in a new assessment tool for our um K5 students and next year we're looking to uh roll in the new K3 reading so while there isn't actually another opportunity to say let's just say kindergarten and then first then second um
104what there what was made available um was were grants grant funding to uh help defay the initial cost and so we um over the summer applied for that it's called the right to read Grant um and there are a variety of um caveats associated with this grant including some professional learning throughout this year and um you know kind of obviously making sure that you're sticking with the the plan um to purchase the new the new program we are in the midst of researching out of those nine which program will best fit so we have and we've gotten some um some different proposals so we have an idea of kind of the ballpark of where we're going to land but the grant that we received based on our size of District um was $85,000 so it
105is taking off it is defraying the cost of what will roughly be $190 to $200,000 cost um it will take off 85 of th000 of that initial spend um and so that is that that's a benefit to you know not having submitted a waiver and not having um kind of you know decided that we're going to do it last year um and so that's kind of the work that we're into so there's actually not an opportunity right now to postpone that K3 um and in fact it would be so they don't allow for a roll out type of approach it's do it all at once that's not how this mandate has is written man it's full sale adoption are our teachers ready for change CU if I remember last time you and I had spoken
106this is a pretty significant teaching change yeah and I I would love for Debbie to um she's the one right in the on the front lines if she in terms of the work that we're doing but so Debbie has been our spearheading the K3 I'm sorry the right to read group so there again part of this is you have to go through a series of trainings so part of the grant is that they provide regular training monthly um for a team of of Educators and in addition to that we've been using grant money um for title 2 money for letters train for training um to help uh prepare teachers for instituting the science of reading so the great thing about that is that it is not tailored to any one particular program it is you
107know professional development based on science of reading um and there's a Cadre of about 21 Educators that are going through a 2-year um professional learning plan for that I don't know if you want to add anything yeah I mean our teachers are actually very eager to get a science of reading program um we're using Teachers College units of study right now k38 and um while it's has some alignment to many of the standards it is really not aligned at all with um the science of leading so we've been you know supplementing and using our open court um foundational skills and word study uh units in K5 um but as you know we have invested a lot of um you know professional learning uh time and also instructional coaching um to be able to help teach
108in the sence of meeting honestly for the last probably about six years so the teachers are really eager for this um new progam and in and in fact um when we were so last year um the K through five who was at that point K through four instructional coach in literacy uh Julie vaugh is the one who brought the letters training to me um while she and de Debbie were working on it because she had participated in the letters training prior I think about when you first did it about six years ago right um and you know just looking down kind of the pike of all of this um so uh because she thought it was such valuable training and really set set everybody up so um it would allow her to again kind of
109push into that that ongoing embedded professional learning as instructional coach but everybody be speaking the same same language um in the s of reading approach okay how about the uh thank you sure um how about the uh uh bilingual teacher sure so um there is a statute in Connecticut that if a school has 20 students who speak the same home language they must the following year develop a bilingual program in that particular language um two years ago I think here in town um we had at Huckleberry umu enough students speaking Spanish as their home language where we had to bring in a um multi a bilingual teacher excuse me specific to Spanish um that population is way over 20 now at C somewhere in the range of 40 plus students so we have that program
110up and running knowing we were getting ready to consolidate to um Candlewood Lake there was a chance this year that Under One Roof we would have um we hit that threshold 20 of students speaking Portuguese and as it turned out on October 1st we did our census and we literally landed it on 20 and I did ask Katherine Our World Language coordinator sure it's not 19 and she said no it's 20 and so um we for next year have to have a bilingual program in Portuguese and so we're looking for a part-time teacher now is that an incremental requirement or is it in replacement for the ELA teachers that we have can you can you guys just swap in one to the other it's a special certification it's a special certific very special certification and
111they have to speak that particular language so in this case it'd be Portuguese and they have to have the bilingual certification as well um we going talk about a shortage area to find that the the Spanish speaking bilingual teacher um we were very lucky we had a real Pro come to us a veteran teacher from Waterberry two years ago who's been with us now and is's doing a heck of job so it's really hard to find those folks okay so it's it's a shortage area at the state yet they're making it a mandate yes okay and it's just just as John said but just to clarify it's based on that October one attendance corrent um report for this current year so even if we are below 20 students next year which we probably won't be
112but just let's say we were we still are required to offer because they go on the year before but you can't substitute out a Ela teacher it's not a one there's not a chance for a one to one type of swap it's a truly incremental is there a certain proficiency that the students have to reach before they graduate or is it just set on that number of this is a Portuguese at home speaking family and there there that's why we have our um the specifically certified teachers there are specific assessments that they have to pass to be exited from the program um differently than bilingual or multilingual Learners one of the charts that uh Wendy spoke to showed 16 more in October of this year 16 more students um that qualify as multilingual Learners uh
113in our um in our schools the real number is actually 36 more students because 20 tested out wow because we're doing great work with them our staff is amazing so 20 tested out so 36 move in so really the net is 16 more so you can see the diversity of our community is really changing yeah the numbers can't can't represent that dynamism you know what I mean so it's important that people understand that story okay and the third one we talked about was was the Mandate for mandate on the 23 age 23 if I remember we had to get them to almost a 23 before or was like part of the year of age 23 I'm going to let Bill speak to this a little bit champ the bit we got to give him a
114little air time knew this1 22 23 that's what deal there was a a as as those of us who who've been in special education or or know education it used to be 18 to 21 was the trans I time and the exit date was the day before they turned 21 then the law changed to the day before they turned 22 the question of equity then came up of a student who turns 22 in September and has exited the day before that isn't getting the same benefit as a student who turns 22 in June and has exited the day before so when we talk about 223 really we're talking about the school year in which the student turns 22 which then impacts the the capacity of those programs it impacts the um tuition of those programs
115the ability of us to place them in programs that are appropriate for them and we have to kind of cast a wider net and look for that but really what it comes down to it is small history lesson it went from 21 day before they turned 21 22 the day before they turned 22 and now the year in which they turn 22 they get to finish the school year and and so my first question when the law was passed for July was so a student who turns 22 in July I thought well they they finished in June they should be all set no it was anytime after July 1st if they turn 22 they get that they get that entire school year oh my God so that's where the idea of a student could be
116on the verge of 23 if they turn 22 in July July 1st let's say they get that entire school year which again is a is a response to a student who turned 22 in July before would be exited the day before that but a student who turned 22 in November or March or June would get that much more service than the student from July and that caused the legislators to change the law to 22 inclusive of everybody who's 22 in that school year and these are all outplaced students no or they for us because we don't have an 18 to 22 program so we send them the Danbury if I recall and there are there are um again speaking of capacity in some cases because of this law programs that used to have a turnover
117during the year of a student who turned 22 in September there's now an opening there not me more that student who turned 22 in September is there for the rest of the year so a student we might want to place in the fall that capacity is not there for that particular program so we looked at other programs as well to try to find appropriate services for them but also programs now are holding on to the students by law for that entire year so there's a capacity issue it's a capacity issue born of an equity issue born of an age issue okay so so I misspoke a little bit it's not yet I misunderstood the law a little bit so it's not their third their 23rd birthday but their no I appreciate that but that year
118can be Bill how many how many how many students do we have in that situation roughly uh it's really not that many it might be you know it's somewhere around 10 to 15 students at any given time um and again there's a rollover of that because not every student is going to qualify for 18 to 22 services so if we look at our 365 students of of all ages with IEPs it's specific students with specific needs that might need that extra year 2 years 3 years four years and just to put a a fine point on it even though they may be eligible until that school year of 22 some students may just do a year and then they move on to let's say a community college or college or work or things so it's
119not that they're getting all four years but they could depending on their need and depending on but we're budgeting based on known people who are going for that year correct and and again that's a year to year just like with an annual um IEP you're assessing that every year of have they mastered their goals are they ready to go either through DDS or BRS or estate agency or outside to adult adult work or adult College that's helpful so I mean you called it out that's why I brought it up but it doesn't sound like it's a major driver to an in I mean it's variable so you never know but okay and it was implemented effectively this year July July 1 of this year so so now we're feeling the initial for the upcoming year
120or is it we're seeing it this year It Started From the Past July 1st 202 so we're seeing it in the current year corre and carrying it Forward got you thanks both I'm going to quit ask any questions let other people ask questions all right can we all go to this page please is it okay if our doesn't have so much writing on it next year it's how I think all right all right let's let's let talk about this he open up the meeting say we have to educate the town on higher budgets and increasing however we haven't passed the budget over 5% in 25 years at the to of Brookfield so we got to keep reality into place and people voting if you also look your increase the people needing reduced and free lunches
121has gone through the roofs so we are also bringing in people that can't afford 6% tax increases along the way and got to vote out of necessity so we also got got to keep in mind B ofed ask we got fire and EMS asks we got police station asks how much can we go to the town and get them to pay for and keep this reasonable this board of Finance has supported the Board of Ed immensely over the past four years since we've all pretty much been involved this is a huge ask so we're all on the same page here I was always brought up in the the budget process of you have to control what you can control you can't control what you can't control you have to squeeze down on what you can't
122control so looking at this if you take the number one item a mandate we can't control a mandate a mandate's put on us it is what it is we have to understand the Mandate and Bob you asked all the questions however that's something that okay before I go into this also Casey yes did you budget 100% out on all of these numbers like to the maximums pretty much in on all of these I mean like your 31 I mean uh your 31,000 for the just using it just so I understand the numbers your $31,000 for athletic Transportation which you said was driven by The Last Resort of 1% of 12200 per run that's 25 trips are you planning on that being the 25 trips this is outside of the 7 or 99% of Transportation so
123this is this is absolutely based on I took the schedule of I believe the first two years two two years two months of current um current athletic transportation and I I determine what percentage are we using Allstar what percentage are we using the second tier what percentage are we using the third tier I'm not telling you straight to your face right now that that that mix can't shift because it was slightly different than what the mix was in the previous year um but I tried to get as precise an estimate as I possibly could based on you know the the current mix of uh Transportation um s sources that we used at the time that this was created yes so then speaking to the budget process you've done history you've looked at this but you
124are new to this too absolutely so these numbers are a new process to from our old Ken knowing the numbers so this is a new look at this so some of these numbers realistically and I understand cannot be quite what they're going to land on because again your new look at this and it's hard to judge some of these so let's walk it through the Mandate we can't change a mandate line one line two can't change a mandate line three we can't change the excess cost Grant because that's the formula right Bob you looked at that formula in fact I think we both wrote to the state to get an understanding of that formula uh was that was the uh the educational Equalization Grant that's a different thing than the access cost Grant but we
125spent a lot of time on it can't change yeah those are formulas so now we get down to the Arps or phase in uh this is something this board of Finance agreed to uh it's something that we bought into the three-year plan on this I know there is some resistance even at the board of ed level on these and what I would like to see is what is the total spend on this whole program the curricular program with the teachers uh I looked at it I'm coming up with a number of about 1.3 million so is there a structure that we can get on what the cost of this is uh again I know this is total the salaries yeah I'm just saying I don't yeah and it's also summer school and some other pieces
126so we could put that together I just want we're getting letters from the public about this I know two of your board of ed members had questions on this and I'll go back to and so we all understand and Dan you can kick me if I'm wrong we agreed to support that Arps or Grant so this is just to understand absolutely the basis behind the whole makeup the structure of this curriculum the whole like hierarchy who's on the top the next three the next five and the next three under that because like I say I when I did quick math it came up to like 1. 1285 million but I could be wrong I mean I I just did it off of my notes what's the 1.25 uh you have salaries of the six coaches
127the three admin level curriculum Plus benefits there's Al no that's no benefits yes this is then you have in your in your salaries you have another curriculum ml teachers and then I know Debbie farious is involved in curriculum what percentage of that I mean just give us a breakdown of what this whole program costs so we can again the board of Finance stood behind the SR implementation which is the basis of all of this but it's no it's not it's actually a a small increment I was I have I have that question when it was not it was definitely not all of it right we've had killing people for a long time right I just want to understand the whole structure so it's not a matter of I will just add like for the record
128I understand that that that you may question sort of the the value of it and and and all right okay but as it stands right now it is still something that the board that's our position is that's how we adhere to our strategic plan there has not been in this entire budget discussion before we adopted this budget a single vote to remove any of it so so the board's position is still the same I just wanted that on the record it's that a value question this strictly is not a value this is strictly understanding the structure we are getting letters uh and and need to the letters should come to the board if people have don't value I think this one can all of us well so just I just need to want to understand
129it Glenn Glen I just want to be super clear so you want the total cost of of the arer investment the fund curriculum right the whole anybody involved in curriculum all Coes Coes correct the value is posted online back in last year's budget and it present has a whole letters in there and there was a presentation two or two boards ago on the value I'm not questioning the value I need to I want to understand the costs that's all okay uh ARA phase in the town Grant I'm okay and again you all the board of Finance you'll get a chance it's just me going through real quick the salary line we can argue debate and everything else that's a controllable I mean I I know we talked about the teachers it's that we have so
130many hurdles in front of us that's got to be a controllable we got to do a better job that's my opinion and only my opinion but that's one of the only line items here that we got to manage in my opinion uh you know last year and semantics not semantics misunderstanding shame on Glenn like the Dina students wasn't in the three-year plan it was a savings line on a salary that you were able to afford it because it was a net zero cost but yet we're absorbing that cost this year if we had the Dena students out that line would be lower on the salary say I know that's mixing you're saying the salaries but to me it's still a savings of we wasn't in the three-year plan and I'm saying to me it's my
131opinion only managing these things is this is where we have to manage this if we have needs we still got to meet the needs but if we have a chance to get a teacher at a little bit less we got to try to manage that and really get it down you're mixing the I'm mixing but it's still in a big pocket no we we I'm going to defend what the board did a year ago we traded off a teaching position for another teaching position we did not add a single position to put that dean of students in so it was in the long-term plan it just it was a different role it wasn't part of our besser it wasn't part of our our besser it wasn't part of teacher turnover it was we reduced the
132sign uh reduced the Spanish teacher and and use that savings to fund this it was a very simple straightforward Staffing thing and it what therefore it was in the Baseline plan we can agree to disagree because you can ask three other board the board of Finance members and they saw it different as well we put it explicitly on the charts I built those charts I presented those charts I can just only say again even I took two phone calls from two board Finance members just today okay and said this is a position position that really we didn't understand and that's shame on me I said that when I preluded this question but this is where we got to figure out ways to create the savings if we can short-term Subs is there a way to
133think out of the box now we have all these curriculum leaders and teachers can you utilize one curriculum leader one day a week yes in these substitutes so so there's there's kind of two areas so one is in the the pure sense of our our curriculum specialist that we've um essentially they've become coaches and we've added this responsibility of coaching um to their role um they're not supposed to and but we know when the principes are in Dire Straits and they're faced with covering classes our uh coaches step up and and do that to your point for life so that is something that happens um the other piece to that is we are looking into partnering with uh you know Sacred Heart Westcon Fair of you um with intern programs so we can have um
134you know and there's a cost initial cost for the intern but usually it's a little less expensive than a full year sub and you have a body who's learning how to be an educator and then they're um part of the fabric of the school and have a one-year interview essentially with us because they're working toward their certification as well so that's another area we're looking to try to have more subs and find some savings so we are working on that as well as and that recruitment piece yeah yeah I was going to say that that would potentially alleviate two areas the short-term sub area having that constant body in the in those in the buildings and also the teacher turnover because if you have this brand new year one step one teacher that's been in
135in Brookfield for a whole year having this Mutual interview process that could alleviate um you know having to go out and hire um at those other levels so to go back to my point I forgot to also bring up uh again I know it's a hardship by this way we can manage if you take your year on-year salary percentage increase for average teacher for the average teacher back in 2021 it was 79,000 it increased the prior from the prior year 1.59% if you go to the next year it increased to 81655 which is a 2.53% increase then the next year it went to 84169 a 3.08 increase and in 2023 20 24 we went to an average salary of 87 743 which represents a 4.25% increase this does follow the storyline of bringing in more
136experience your step increase is also increased from the prior year 7% your step and I know you Consolidated but your average Step increase increase and again this is where that line is creeped up as well and that's where I'm saying if we to manage that salary line is key to this process from the point of view is these numbers are going up and in history they were not as high the increase average increases because of the turnovers and and I understand and Bob has did a lot of work on that but we've slowly crept up to a point of we got a in my opinion Glenn Rooney's opinion nobody else on this boards is to to manage that number I mean we have so many things ahead of us that these are some of the
137areas you can't control much of your budget you can't control 90% so what we can't control I I think we have to look at controlling uh going back electric athletic transportation we talked about that electricity that's just mindboggling to me I can't even wrap my head around to do and it's it's mindboggling I I don't get it I I I understand a lot of things there's still wor to yeah there still work to be done that we while we talked to Paul and provided him some of the bills and we have not sat down with him uh our purchasing agent has started to do work on that so we are ready to roll up our sleeves on this so we're already rolling up our sleeves we we want to get a handle on this too
138and it's very disappointing what we're contending with now because going to CES we were building in savings there and so it's shocking to to get those uh initial invoices can mandate can't do anything about uh on your K3 literacy program you say partially funded by the right to read Grant now is that an annual fund we're going to get or is this now going to roll into operating next year one time so how much money is rolling into next year's operating well so um and I don't know Debbie if you have an idea of the of what the ongoing cost would be but this is essentially when you when you purchase a program like this you purchase some initial startup pieces with kits that are reusable so you it's not the same cost every year
139that is rolling forward so this is again an attempt by the state this is an an originally unfunded mandate that they then found grant money to help partially soften the blow so it's the the there would not be a full $200,000 roll in necessarily to the following year that it would only be a one-year um reprieve the initial year reprieve would be the initial year of the largest expense so this now Falls and yet well I mean you have any idea of what this cost is next year is it 100,000 the 25 26 yeah uh it would probably be um I don't know what do you think I don't we don't know that yet we we didn't the program consumables I'm sure potentially some digital licenses we also I we also have I know but
140it's just trying to understand what's behind the doors no just to be fair every program you have has annual costs right so that's a going rate type of thing that happens so the bump costs tend to be when you have to buy all the new kits and all the new textbooks right that's what kills you and the training right and we have we have some current um M you know ongoing costs that would be swapped out right so we wouldn't necessarily it's it's not like like Bob said we have current regular costs that we but we won't know the net impact of that until we understand like what we need which program what we need to buy what but the other thing to to Mr room's question it's really important to say is um and
141Rosa had it in the slides that she discussed um we're comfortable and confident with K3 as we roll that out during this time next year the K3 program is is very logical for us to roll into fourth and fifth grade right so there there could be an investment cost there and throwing round numbers out here and we'll all record this but it could be in the in the realm of maybe $100,000 or something like that you know when you think of sixth grades and and we're spending two-thirds of it to to start up now and that cost what were two more grades of fresh materials cost in 25 26 year unless there's also more grant money that I can find uh I am math okay it's know college algebra not a big number the maintenance
142number now we're looking at 82550 and I understand why you didn't put it in capital because it's like painting and all of that I get that but then you're rolling out a 1.2 million per year roughly $12 million need over years where' that number come from from so yes so we did so the building facility building condition study of VHS and WMS does propose an overall investment of about 12 milli million over 10 years um the the one of the first things I did when I got here I think it was the second week here I sat down with the facilities our facility supervisor I we combed through these um two studies and we pulled out those items that really truly would be like a capital investment a larger project and we put those into
143the 10-year Capital plan these other items that this year one investment um or increase in maintenance of $882,000 addresses some of those um some of those items that can be rolled in we felt could be rolled into operating and can be done sort of Peace meal over time such as repointing of um brick mortar and some like out exterior envelope things that just sort of have fallen by the wayside over time but just to start it on start these buildings on a program of of continuous upkeep and maintenance so that we don't you know become faced with having to replace an entire section of um you know if if we have an whole section of rooms that have you know or or windows that have totally dilapitated because we haven't been resealing or recocking or
144doing some of those repairs so it's really sort of getting these buildings on an ongoing maintenance plan proactive maintenance plan there are a couple of items um in this $882,000 request that are sort of a larger you know one-time fix um there's some um repairs and maintenance to um fire protection um areas that are that should be addressed there's no it is not an emergent thing that has to be done immediately but and and most of them have been um already addressed but we just want to close that Loop um Marx zbo has um an estimate of $155,000 for fire maintenance repairs we're estimating we only need about 5,000 of that because a lot of those repairs have already been done um there is a lot of sections so that comes from your 100,000 down
145to your 880,000 is that how that number 15,000 we don't need it all no the total the total request from Mark cugo was 17,500 I I we brought that down already to 104,000 we've also reduced other areas of Maintenance that don't need to be you know um that were in last year's budget that we have taken out um and that brings us down to the 825 the 825 is the net it's on yeah it's on the slide yeah I yeah that's where I was that's why I asked the question I just want to make sure yep um other things like um there are exterior sofits around um the athletic wing and the entrance of BHS so there is um a you know a significant um ask of about $7,500 of that 82,000 is to do
146some repairs on those sofits um a steam steam heating um there's um a hydronic heating system at in this and again I'm not a facilities expert so please forgive me um trying to say say this in layman's terms but all of this really is in this study and we've truly pulled out these items that we said these could be good year one fixes um uh the steam trap survey and repair is $25,000 of that $ 82,500 um there the plumbing at um at uh the high school is a lot of old copper plumbing and so this study has recommended year over year um replacing sections of that plumbing so not doing one foul sweep of placing all the plumbing in the building because that would be astronomical but just taking sections so that it's more
147manageable but addressing these things so we don't end up with a major problem um at the end of you know five years or 10 years um and so I hope I hope that that answers your your question so on this 82,000 which is an increase from prior years yep do you anticipate using all that 82,000 again each year to maintain M this or is this a one time we're going to catch up and then it's 50,00 I mean have you talked about this going forward so this increase of the 82,000 brings up the ask for building maintenance and repair to about 231 um and and I don't anticipate I think I think that if if we can get there and stay there I think that would be a manageable thing I think there's there's plenty
148of things in this building condition study that we can pull out year-over-year and just continually address um to keep these buildings maintained because like you said like something like the pipes or something if that's just a section and like next SE another section exactly uh so it wouldn't be an additional increase of another 880,000 on top of the 231 as this year if that's what you're but the base would be the base would increased and then stay yes yeah the enrollment study it's a small number but just out of my past history is how accurate was the last one we did because if I remember right that really was not close haven't we changed a lot I mean the we a pandemic there was a lot of movement um yeah but that wasn't based on
149the people moving into Laurel Hill or the people moving into the the condos we haven't done one in about five years we Haven an ex there Ros the number in there I think it was 2018 or 19 the um so I mean with the new Elementary School having births during the pandemic here you know it's March 12th will be for years since the beginning of the pandemic um I'm not a health teacher I'm not going to get in or a sociologist get into the whole thing there but um you know we really need to have a very detailed study um there are there was a medium-term a couple years ago uh enrollment uh study for $1,500 that we did it's actually pretty accurate but really doesn't dig deep on some of the data that um
150uh some of the firms can do when they really look at housing Trends and birth rates and really um dig deep under research but again it's not a mandatory kind of thing um if we really have to sharpen the pencil we can wait another year but the question was just basic what are we looking to get out of it I mean we really want to get an accurate sense because um it's been a while and you know again we're all looking at projections and we want to see down the road we want to see around the corner those help us do that obviously manage our staff to match the cas thank you all right I'm going to go in no order here but Dan you want to ask I'm going to go down Line This
151Way May I'll I'll be quick most of my points or questions were asked more eloquently than I would but can we turn to the the rfer rolling page I also took notes I just want to this is to clarify some stuff and ask some questions because this is what I'm focusing on we not all I'm focusing on but the three-year plan of rolling in Investments is important to me the what I I you probably brought it up Rosa but I don't F didn't follow what is the incremental column represent what is that what are those numbers so those were the amounts that were supposed to it's so the 2425 column is the amounts that we're supposed to roll in the incremental is the amount above the previous year okay and then the last column is
152the so it's not it's not incremental to the threee ass it's incr it's it's it's year-over year okay IA done that Ma that's good okay um not not um making any as Glenn said any value judgment on coaching or not coaching or that model that's not my job or my expertise and I have no idea but you guys do but this you rolled in two coaches during this time period but there are six coaches in the in the in the Staffing so just to confirm that there were four coaching positions on staff prior to this period so in the 21 22 period there were they were called curriculum Specialists they were called curriculum Specialists they were familiar with that okay and there were four of them at that point so and and so that the
153we're really e English language arts and math at the elementary English language arts in math Middle School essentially it's how broke out so if we if we mapped out and I'm not asking you to do that because titles Chang and things like that but if we map if we took the time to map out status quo 21 22 22 23 23 24 those those those four positions would be status quo from pre ressor to today yes yes okay okay and just to clarify there are three instruction yeah there's a thing that's called technology consider I want before you I clarify one thing before we go I apologize just so we all understand too is when we're talking about this and we're not going back back so I'm not saying that under your contracts all of
154your coaches are teachers so if we not we say wrong qu if the town vote this goes arai and we don't want to go arai the savings aren't really what you're going to see here because these teachers are going to replace the lower end teachers so you're only going to gain the less experience not lower whatever I don't know the te so you're going to take and I'm going to use numbers I'm not say 100,000 to replace a 60,000 that 60,000 goes away the 100,000 moves into that position because of of the way the contract works and Rift Lang achieving of savings is minimal compared to the big overall number correct correct yes so I just wanted to clarify that when we're talking about this that you can say oh we're going to get rid
155of one point whatever we're not getting rid of I just say it's not truly that number because when it Cascades down it's it's it's really the old last in first out the way the teacher contract to clarify sorry it's okay problem no problem and then my last point and question um and this is not to go back and reargue about the Dina students but I want to use that as an example to ask a question and prove and not pro to ask a question um so I did I I was one of the board of Finance members that Glenn was referring to uh who questioned that and I went back and watched last year's meeting um to re familiarize myself with it and the way I'm seeing it now is and again this is to
156illustrate you there there were really two different decisions in that swapping you were able to absorb not having the Spanish position that's one discreet decision that created money that could be used as a savings could be made a SE a second decision to bring on the Dena students the offset was coincidental and and and nice but it was two separate decisions to eliminate or absorb one loss position and add in a new position with that savings that's the way I am interpreting the order of events so I do see that dean of students as a new investment decision that was made discreetly of where the source of those funds came from I kind of agree with that I it's more link than you know fair enough because we we actually talked about it in our
157budget proceedings about the fact that we were going to have the savings on the one side and put in this new position that was needed right so in so in the spirit of I understand your point yep so in the spirit of managing through through all that my my question is it was our understanding my understanding that this list was the full extent of new positions so as we as I just said I I believe that the dis of students was added as a new position with with the the stipulation of the offset were there other offsetting in this 3-year period are there other situations where there was a position that was eliminated a position that was added absolutely every year we're going to add a third grade teacher we're going to reduce a fourth
158grade teacher that's I take that that's different no it's not different it is eliminating a Spanish teacher and creating AA students is different than reshuffling somebody grade to grade the other position that was eliminated in this current year from last year into this current year was the center School principal position so that is and that there was no replacement there there was another area we found savings okay I take your point of of of shuffling things but I okay good yes so I understand where Dan's coming from if you don't mind me jumping on that and I agree um I think it's important especially to Steve's point if we're going to try to communicate to the town that this is a solid budget you know not to talk to value but you know the need
159that person has now been in place for what 6 months so how do we articulate that it is a necessity yeah well a little bit of history on the Deon students and and Mr Renda provided a presentation um and it's up online so you could see the activity of that individual and how much they do in the school um just as a reminder when we talked about the transition of whis andir becoming really a different school now is a true middle school instead of having 800 kids down 600 kids with three grades we had um in our structure uh an assistant principal two assistant principles at the middle school when it was four grades and each assistant principal had a direct responsibility for either fifth and sixth grade or seventh and eighth grades they had
160400 students under so in the case of and I'll just use her name Mrs Gordon who was the the 56 assistant principal to make sure kandlewood lake with 1100 students in upper school and a lower school was properly staffed we moved that assistant principal uh position and specifically was wonderful that Mrs Gordon and had all that Center School experience over the years um to be our lower school assistant principal um that still leaves 200 students the sixth grade um without an assistant principal or someone supervising them directly and so working with Dean working with Ed um and really the whole team brainstorming some ideas to find a cost effective way to have a proper uh licensed body supervising students to maintain to start with maintain a safe and orderly environment it was critical that we
161figure out something to make sure we were not going to have our administrators running around with their hair on fire and chickens with their heads cut off trying to manage student Behavior trying to conduct teacher evaluations running professional development engaging with parents and all the things that go into the day of of a middle school administrator so the decision was was proposed and made that we have a dean of students in the teacher contract and maybe the name is a misnomer to be very honest with you it sounds sounds administrative I guess in a way um but the dean of students really is in charge of student uh management throughout the day um and there's a lot of other pieces there um but having said that we saw the cost of uh the consolidation with
162World Language so we didn't need to have the additional Spanish teacher um so this cost- effective option we knew we weren't going to have to um uh have the additional principal position from Center School we knew we had some savings and said hey if we want to maintain our safe and orderly environment we want to keep our school as safe as possible and have our administrators in classrooms more um doing the professional development they need the evaluations they need to do the family engagement they need to do we need to bring in kind of a if you will a lower level um uh administrator even though they're not administrator they are a teacher they don't supervise teachers someone who could be an authority figure in the school to work directly with students all day long
163whether it's the cafeteria whether it's pushing in the classrooms uh whether it's in the hallway whatever it might be in all the IND idual work that goes in and also engage with parents so that was really where the DEA students was born from and so that's what we have and we also looked at I remember there was some slide when we were talking about the um the Staffing with the new school and and the changes that we were making the ratio there was a ratio yes we were talking about um how schools should have an appropriate administrator or upper levels type teacher somebody supervising students and that ratio what that should look like to the student body and it was is that we didn't need another assistant principal at whisking but we needed something there
164that that was that would have been lacking and so hence the dean of students but we felt that that was especially since it was budget neutral I mean it was kind of a Nob brainer for the board to do that I'm not arguing the I mean yeah I'm not debating the nether I'm just debating the budget neutral asting it's not budget neutral budget neutral it might not be no that that that particular decision was not budget neutral the fact that there was a decision to offset it made a budget neutral well it wasn't a decision we didn't need that other we didn't need the Spanish teacher when we moved to CES so it's not like we eliminated a position in order to get the need of students that's not how it happened but I think
165that goes to the point of we've really got to manage this to get through this these are the I get you had a need and I understand that but I think the point Dan and I are trying to prove is where we can achieve savings we got to grab them now when we're talking about 6% increases we can't live on the side of luxury we got to live on the side of leniency and when you have an opportunity you can't control so many aspects of your budget I I I full and I fully appreciate that the jobs you guys have is incredibly difficult in that aspect but you have to understand that we're looking at it as as a different lens like we cannot we're here to advocate for the the budget that we feel
166is best going to serve our students it's always going to be that it's not going to be from a perspective of well let's figure out what the town can afford and only put forward that it's just a different we understand that that's a conversation that we have to have and we will work obviously we always do work as best we can with the funds that were given um but that it's it's it's a different job that we have and I I think I just want to say I to to validate this I think this is a really necessary and healthy tension that's inescapable if we're if we're going to you know follow the important points that you're bringing up Glenn I mean they're obvious we we have to um as a as three groups uh
167come together and do our parts um for this and I think you can appreciate what Rosa is saying is that it is our responsibility that we hold very tightly to um to to use our particular lens um in this discussion and so I and this is my I I know that it's impossible and it's my seventh time going through this but I I and if there and this is rhetorical if there were a way to say if this then that sure sure that would be a great way to educate people but I understand I don't understand why but I understand it doesn't happen so and I think I think the best job that we can do and I think we we try to do it is to say you know when we can achieve the
168same results at a cheaper cost we do that and I think that that's that's something that I hope that over the years we've shown but that doesn't mean that we're not going to increase costs if that's what we feel is best or at least advocate for those costs is is really before I pass it down I I understand that and and I can relate to all of that my problem is I don't want to get into the 11th Hour like we got into last year and we start making decisions in a week on cutting numbers and and making what I call 11th Hour decisions that really you're not thinking them all the way through we could only meet one time after the budget failed last year I'm more of a preactive proactive type of personality
169of planning ahead and getting to a spot where and we have really State neutral of not dictating money to the Board of Ed and that's where I think we got to you know you stand behind that line of we're advocating for the children but we got to all Advocate together to the town and come up with a solution together cuz when it gets to 11 hour it's not going to be $125,000 cut this year it's going to be something that you all are going to go back and say Where Do We Stand now we don't want to get to that point of where do we stand now we we I think standing behind that line of we're going to advocate for the children I get it I understand that I actually respect it however we
170got to find a way that this is going to pass not where they come back we vote it down we're not going to look at we we take 125,000 out of next year's budget if it fails we're going to get run out of town it's got to be 250 to 500 to make sense to some of these people that are voting no so we got to sell a budget that makes sense and so some of us are going to have to come to this middle of the table and some of us are going to have to come to that middle of the table and Bob's going to have to get in the middle of the table we're going to have to figure this out Dance all right and that's where it's not a tension it
171becomes a reality I think I and I think I mentioned like if you like I know you you want to like focus on salaries a lot as like a sort of and and I mentioned that if if it comes to that if we have to change our approach we don't feel that that is the best approach but if that is something that we have to look at then that is something that we have to look at um and that's that's okay but thank you n fresh face know welcome you being the to oh thank you so much for all the hard work it was really impressive I'm still learning and trying to figure things um but I have a newbie question solar with electricity yeah have we great question good that's one of the things
172in the study that there with the studies that are in the capital request which I didn't over Capital yeah but the design studies um that are in our Capital request for both um well for for all of the schools um will look at um well not the new school just whis BHS but look at the possibility of solar what that would cost and you know sort of the the net value of it is thatc that would be involved in that I mean I keep thinking you see the solar parking lots where they have the shade so you I think if if we go back like eight or nine years if you remember when we redid the high school 20 years ago we didn't do the roofs we're now going to be finished with that and
173this is last project is the last roof section that's being done no we have we have we just we just did finish uh the roof section on the guidance Wing but we do have plans for roof replacement large the library here part of the thing holding up solar was the condition of the roof you do not want to put solar on a roof that's got a 5year life yep right now I know also at CES all the um infrastructure is there already to put solar on the roof you know the access points the chases to come down I think that's something we really should look at I don't think I I know my last I made a mistake and I did not lock in on my electric and I got an electric bill last January
174that was literally equivalent of a one-year bill in my first house it was unbelievable so solar be continues to be a very viable option it continues to be less expensive to install so I think it's something that we really should look at it and I think all our buildings are situated in a way that it they're all flat cruise for the most part and would be incredibly good sites for sold so that's a very good point and that is in the S it's in yes it's in the which is in the capital and in the short term maybe a creative campaign switch off the lights you know like you said off I think there are on automatic time so what about when glun said off peak was really high they're looking into that they don't
175know yet they're they're doing they are doing a study right now they don't know if it was construction and you can John and and kick me if I'm speaking out of school but they don't know if it was overnight people working that plugged in things that Drew a lot of juice they're trying to figure it out it's everything that I've been told and again correct me is there's settings on the switches the windows there's dimmers there's everything that should be total energy efficient tools to manage if someone's not walking in and Bob you correct me too if someone's not walking the hallway the lights aren't on they come on if someone there's all sorts of mechanisms bu this I abandon that building when the lights turned out on me so we are that's why the
176number is aggravating and that's why it seemed aggravated aggravated for all of us absolutely because it's not understandable we also need leadership from our eversource people to really help us understand that and reduce it properly because it's frankly it's not what the engineers had so it shouldn't be that it's very frustrating Mary hey um GL this been a really great robust discussion thank you for all your hard work on it um so many questions from ask answer already I don't have anything new thanks Mary Brian um maybe two more comments than questions uh a lot of great stuff here I'm not going to get into some of this detail you guys know the details more than me as I've listened to all this two things I've heard first is um when you think you kind
177of started out with this the special education stuff is the biggest driver and it's untenable and unst strategic and and you know I know a lot of smart people are thinking about it but I didn't hear any strategy on how we're going to deal with this other than maybe someone out of the blue help comes helps us right so if there is a if there is a I think we got to get a strategy on what we're going to do about that Maybe not maybe we can't solve much on this budget or do much different but we just can't let this be hanging over our heads right so I think that's something important can I comment on that of course I think that's a really exciting idea I don't know what the possibilities are within
178the town I think there's a lot of Goodwill of willing to investigate probe how can we use existing talent and resources including spaces um can we transfer some of those costs to local programs but this is that's that's the end of what I can like say because this connects to so many people and other decision-making levers that are beyond my perview but I mean we would love to do something about this such a big percent of overall budget gosh and getting bigger every year yeah I think it's it's important John by the way um we we had uh two separate phases of special education program reviews um and uh I'll send you I'll send it over to you I me on line but I think it's important for the folks here to take a look
179at that because in there uh Dr corvo Who was from C who did the analysis for us really uh gave the gave the district kudos for a lot of the work doing whether we have in-house programming or the the the way we're looking at out placements um always areas to improve of course but there wasn't a lot of room or ideas in there to address the things you're thinking about and we are all thinking about that new all over the state uh you know Monroe came in with a 7.1% ask from the superintendent uh you know a month or so ago I mean uh five 58 59 in New Fairfield it's and and it's the same kind of drivers there really isn't a different story John I'm going to go back cuz that's that's a
180nerve that you hit with me sorry come back to Monroe why did Monroe increase 7.1 can you come back to the when you present us they might have a a budget clip thing there 12% increase in students yeah they had to add a lot of teachers they added 200 students so that 7.1 was driven by sure that's right we got to be careful when we say other towns are 7.1 we we are decreasing students and Monroe increased 12% so that number is driven by Hands-On teachers MH they they're fcing the same battle we are yeah but they have a big driver of 12% and that's why I don't like when we throw out numbers I know yeah we can't trying to make that point I'm just having a conversation but I appreciate where I I
181appreciate it call me on it that's fine all right and so you almost yeah jump right on kind of the second point and maybe Steve a little bit to you how do you explain this to people I w't say sell it but explain it um you know a lot it's very easy to say our student population changed you know there's roughly one tej for every 20 students goes up or down that's you know that's easy I think the thing and I don't I hadn't I haven't studied the data yet I'm not sure it's in here the thing that people focus on you got into one Deep thing was is infrastructure creep right so is is our infrast and I won't even Define infrastructure because I don't know what it is in an educational environment I'm
182not trying to get that type of debate but are we growing our our Less Direct stuff faster than we're growing our direct stuff and I don't know but we shouldn't be right so I just and I didn't see it laid out that way I don't know if you think about it that way um when I heard kind of where we're getting some savings it was some of the infrastructur kind of things so that was good production of the principal position and HR reorganization so we're watching some of the Investments are infrastructure things are mandates okay it's not like we have our our say but have to watch those um and I think we need to look at it from that lens um because I think that's that's one way people can understand it if we
183say hey we need a lot more money because we're adding a bunch of infrastructure that's not a great story to to have to tell so I just think that's something that'd be good and that's all I got so I'm going to follow up on that before we go any further that was one of the questions I sort of been asking is at what point are we administrative good now and we are going to get back to because we've added administrators and we like not administrators but like curricul I'm just saying I'm using a choice of bad words I don't know the right word and Brian was said it in a way I didn't understand I had to have Bob explain it to me even uh it's the overheads where are we at with those and
184how we grow we have we have an enrollment that's flat Bob that showed us last year it's declined or been flat for four years now not long quite a few years it showed a good Trend now I understand we're doing an enrollment study I get that that might change us but if we are flatlining on enrollment and I'm speaking more in layman's terms sorry Brian then worries I tried to L is uh why do we keep having to add support staff if the student level is maintaining and what point does that support staff say we have enough for the students that we have and now we're pretty much at the point of if the enrollment isn't going up we have teachers in place your class lines are pretty much in line they weren't that far
185off even the Reds were Min are off on the teachers of your your class sizes so so where do we stand so we're actually in a really good place we're we're down in administrator position just talked about that um we did add uh the de of students position is a big let's give ourselves a little bit of credit here we had a massive massive change in our entire Community we went from the four schools to the three schools Brand New School uh start times I mean all kinds of things um we're really in a good place the um addition uh in terms of talking about the the curriculum Specialists that became instructional coaches we've had those in place now this is this is year two and a half right we're right there um so it's
186just paying for it on the on the phas in now we've had that in place so we haven't added to that so you know talking to you know Dan's uh terminology in terms of that ad of the dean students position that's that's really it um when we bring you a mandate like a bilingual teacher or something that's it Rosa showed the last slide there really there isn't anything in there except maybe $100,000 worth thinking for the fourth and fifth grade reading program is a big ask in the 25 26 budget so we're thinking we're settling into a good place provided to your earlier point when I talked about enroll that enrollment stays you know stable you know en goes up you can't change that that's another thing you can't change we really we've got you
187know we've got technology covered digital tools is a big part of our strategic plan we've got our language arts our math right science social St we've got the big pieces covered and those are always been covered at the high school with our stem and our humanities people and our world language people across the district so and I think we all just have to like remember that the the arer funding like what we're looking at is just like a Super Hyper fast implementation of it because it would have taken a lot longer so you're kind of seeing like a lot of like new positions or new titles I should say like all of a sudden but it's really kind of just because we were capitalizing on that we bought into that I mean that wasn't all
188of us bought it I mean I one at this table I bought a tera you weren't around when we first did this agreement so you can say you didn't buy in and respectfully that's respectfully saying that I mean I'm not I think it's a solid plan I wasn't opposed to it at all I think we did better than most towns so we did do that I think my angst you answered my angst my angst is Big ask this year what follows it because if a big ask follows relatively in line ask the big ask isn't so big right you know in the point of view of hey you take this and then you say we're going to be smaller of the so you average it over to three years and you're averaging in a relatively
189um small increase that's why I was driving for what's behind it because if it's when Brian asked the question like you say if we have more overheads or whatever behind this we're going to keep going the wrong way in my opinion so thanks Brian you you clarified more of what I was trying to say but I didn't ask just a little bit more on that so um I saw what you said answered Glenn are there any other mandates coming down the pike or anything big that way there is a lot of mandates well so if you say if you just gave him a good feel and then we have a huge mandate there is I can actually send you we have a we have a little uh uh planner document that we put together all
190the mandates coming down the pike um and I use the the uh the terminology I use with the board on my weekend update to them on Friday which is we really get through the majority I mean the super majority of the mandates that come down without a lot of fanfare we operationalize things it's it's extra work here it's a new policy here it's a a little bit of a training and we move forward on it um it's a it's a meager minor investment um that can come from maintenance or something like that um it's changing of our practices it's a lot of that um but when a mandate such as the reading program comes in we need to ask for money for that to to make that happen because they're unfunded mandates for the most
191part so um there isn't anything coming down the pike that is so scary that it's going to be a major jump in the next couple of years so um but we're again that we know that we know right and some will get delayed because of push back from local communities and and Joint letters and all that kind of stuff that they may get pushed pushed a little bit to give more time and thought to implementation and some of just if I could just add in some of the mandates that are um that do come to fruition um don't impact the operational costs of a place like Brookfield because of the forethought of boards like this and the Educators such as personal finance is now a requirement for students um right it has has been so
192it's a graduation requirement many school districts have to add in teachers because you if you have every kid who has to take personal finance um but we don't have to do that because our kids already take personal finance and frankly that was a mandate That was supposed to happen in 2018 which is one of the reasons Brookfield planned for it back then and then it got pushed got pushed and now it's supposedly on the books for now but that could change but those are the kinds of things that also balance those things out my opinion on it as long as there's a legislature there will be unfun probably know if there's any that we knew coming down the pike right y you don't no you don't all right alen you want to close us out
193from the board of Finance sure um so I mean to piggy back on you know we we look at board to finance people we look at numbers a lot and you know we look at the numbers of students but I think the other thing we need to keep in mind and this is why you guys are the experts at the table is the needs of those students are changing I mean the the contrast between a pre-pandemic and a post-pandemic kindergartener has got to be Monumental and you know if we're making Investments and looking at the students that we have coming in or the kids that had gaps in those time periods and making sure that we're catching them before they become and outplay special education because we can meet their needs in house that's a
194cost savings it's an investment um you know things like the dean of students while not everybody had the same opinion and I understand when you look at numbers maybe that seems like it could we get excited when we hear about potential cost savings but I also realized that having a Dean is a need that you guys saw and that was an opportunity and I think that's important that we we use our skills where we use them um so for me I think the budget presentation was fantastic I'd love seeing the the trends I think things were presented a little bit differently than we have in the past sitting on the um the finance committee have had seen these numbers evolving over time so not much of the I mean not that anything was new to
195the existing members but I think we had you know we've been seeing a lot of these Trends and we've been looking at it but to see it in a graphical format it was great so kudos to all of you who put that together um in other minor things just do c uh quick questions like so with the um with the K3 literacy program will those teachers that getting trained maybe offset a future curriculum are coaching position later on if they're you know if they're brought up to speed will they be able to possibly replace a coach that is currently doing literacy so just to kind of start us off and Debbie at any point jump in um one of the things about the coaching uh positions in general um and the literacy coach in specifically
196is that with any of these mandates it almost um reassures the necessity for a coach because Co what the coaches provide is ongoing embedded professional learning and so it's not so much like train them up and then let them go um if you think about it more of as kind of you know uh someone who is you it from an athletic standpoint um which debie kind of brought to light the at one of the board meetings is that you know you wouldn't just say to an athletic team okay I'm going to coach you in the preseason and then good luck right so um the idea is that you know you want to make sure that you are embedding that professional learning on an Ono going basis and obviously the needs of kids change the needs
197of programs might change um and the other thing is that actually one of the other changes which is I wouldn't call it an unfunded mandate but it is an adjustment from the state is that there have been new guidelines set forth for um teacher and administrator evaluation which many you may or may not remember the seed model which was very you know kind of heavy-handed and focused on Summit of evaluations for teachers for evaluat for educators um it has shifted now to a more ongoing and embedded professional learning program and so um the coaching cohort will be integral to that because what teachers will have to do is set uh kind of long-term goals for their own professional learning and then realize those goals over time whether it's the year or two year or three
198year or four year um and so actually utilizing the coaches to help set those goals and then help monitor those goals and help teach into those goals is that's going to kind of it's going to be another way that that investment that you spoke to is going to be actualized um because we already have them built in and then the other simple things on the capital request um the design service for the energy envelope solar and security are there I know for residents there's like the energy audits that can be done and they give you proposals and that's all free and then there's like a bajillion rebates do the schools have any possibilities like that to look and see you know you have the potential you have the the roofing structure to be able to
199handle solar panels or you know and if we do that you know is that something that is offered for for municipalities and schools to to do free one yeah I mean yeah so there is a there is a um a vendor that has been in actually Tara when you were first select woman you put us in contact with um with someone to reach out to and Dan has been um setting up meetings with them so we are working on um exploring all those different options absolutely our roofs many many sections of our Ro dude still need to be replaced so I want to caution that you know there's there's probably not um a ton to work with at this point but um as you saw on the capital plan there's there's um requests for sections
200of roof to be replaced so we hopefully could get up to that point where it could be all utilized so but yeah we're certainly looking at all those absolutely good all right uh a couple things uh for to close out our side of this is one it was a great presentation Rosa it it was well thought out and John and Casey it was easy follow uh as well it showed things that we it was a different way as eileene said and she brought forth a good point it showed Trends and allowed us to to you know take notes and ask decent questions uh also we talked about mandates and was there is there a mandate on the 5-year-olds and is that going to have an impact that's another mandate um we actually we're we're planning
201for a full compliment Dave's got the uh da de have the kindergarten registration out there um there is a waiver process that's part of of the law so the September 1st you must be 5 years old by September 1st is actually um there's a wave a process it's not like December 31st January 1st that we're all used to where they're a cut off and that's it uh parents essentially who believe their child is mature enough and ready to go to school even if they're not meeting that September one uh being five by September 1 have the opportunity to write to the principal requesting uh the waiver opportunity and an assessment um and so we're engaging that right now um I would say um Dave we around a dozen maybe at this point or was a
202little less than that L yeah so we are we are anticipating full compliment and we're going to continue to monitor that monitor that just like we monitor if we need you know one more teacher you know because all of a sudden we have this surge of kindergarten students if we're you know seeing that it's very light on students there might be some decisions that need to be made there too so we shall see we're we're preparing for a full compliment which is in that 167 and 170 kids range then on another note as we've invested in these curriculum leaders and teachers we're looking to increase our our excellence and we do have Excellence so let's my daughter lives in hopkington Massachusetts they were rated the number one school district in all of Massachusetts and one
203of their things that they do for enrollment is every two years they make proof of residency do we have anything like that in place or can we put in that because once you gain excy you find students coming in from out of district and you find these things can we implement the program as we're growing here say every two years you got to show proof of residency so we make sure that we are we've actually at District leadership been talking about what our protocol would be and so that is something we're we're developing right now we're doing um um I guess you would call this a little more randomized um or need based based on the things we're seeing and things we're thinking about um but to your exact point we're thinking of putting in
204a protocol there that's a big part of working with Eric and our our team with power school and U demographics they do it every two years and every student every two years and they found that they've weeded out a lot of uh out of District students yes Dean and I were just working on one the other day Okay uh from my point of view a board of Finance you all good you want a second crack at this right now or no all right from our point of view thanks uh appreciate it question anybody have any further issues no thank you very much thank you thank you anybody from the Board of Ed want to speak sat here and absorbed a bunch nobody wants to speak all right um let me just say before we close
205out um first of all thanks very much you know sometimes Tuesdays could feel like three days this this might be one especially for Eric who's been skiing um this these conversations are really really important and we're going to continue to have them um and so so thank you very much for being willing to walk into the messy Waters with us um and we look forward to continuing the conversation and the back and forth it's it's essential so thanks drive safe wait we got to adjourn who we got to adjourn Steve no other business I adjourn the board of s Board of finance will also adjourn and the Board of Ed will also adjourn