001sharon's joining now too bob all right good all set all right um so i'd like to call the uh public budget forum for the brookfield board of education on today january 12 2022 to order so it's not as an agenda item but i'm going to do it anyhow let's stand for the pledge of allegiance you could i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right so this is uh for those of you who are attending and thank you for the members of the public who have come every during every budget process we run a round table in november to get input from the public before we uh prepare the
002budget and gives input to the superintendent superintendent and the administration and to the board uh before we actually prepare the budget uh we did do that in mid-november um and then after we've been deliberating and we've actually talked about the budget i think in three different board meetings at this point and i think five different finance committee meetings uh the board is faced with making decisions on the budget that it will submit at our next um at our next board of education meeting it then gets submitted to the first selectmen by the end of january and then the whole deliberations process with the first selectmen the board of selectmen the board of finance public hearings of the board of finance and then the general vote in may so there's a long process ahead of us
003but the board of education is faced with submitting a budget um at our next meeting which is a week from today we put this public budget forum on the calendar to get any last input from our members of the public before we deliberate and so that's what the purpose of this is uh the agenda is limited to budgetary items there's no other business items on the agenda and we really are interested in hearing uh input from the public on but budget items they've heard us talk about or that they're not hearing about or things that are a priority and so with that what i want to do is open the floor to members of the public on any budgetary items they would like to discuss so let me start by if you could just use
004the raise of hand button uh on i'm using the reactions key under the zoom meeting if you would like to speak and uh we'll unmute you and um and then see where it goes on any discussion so i see jamie clavin's as uh jamie raised your hand you were quick so i'm gonna let you go first um so let's unmute you and uh um and go from there am i unmuted yep you are oh okay thank you thank you for coming thank you for coming tonight appreciate it oh thank you um i have a question about um how the budget is allocated for sports um i couldn't find it anywhere and i was curious to know how that how how it is allocated and the reason why i'll tell you why um is because i
005it's been brought to my attention that hockey is pay to play at the high school and it seems to be the only sport and correct me if i'm wrong um that is and it's it's quite a chunk of change okay so look um it's a good question so thank you for that um i'm going to ask dr brill if you could first walk through the process of how we establish the budget and then specifically on hockey how have we treated it in the in the budget sure so the direct answer to your question jamie yes there is a fee for hockey that's true we've discussed it over the years um it hasn't risen to the priority level uh at this point for us to have brought it forward again in budget but it is something
006we do need to think about and consider so thanks for bringing that up um in terms of to answer mr belton's question very briefly we start the budget process just so as a review for everyone the administrative team um begins talking about the budget for the following year in october uh october one first week of october the principals and the central office work together talk about priorities um at that time the principals begin to talk about priorities well they're always talking about priorities but prioritizing for the following year working with their staff at faculty meetings and so forth and then mr post puts out some frameworks for how we're going to collect data and submit the budget going forward we continue to have those conversations all the way through the rest of october and november
007we then have individual meetings with each principal uh that is the central office team with each principal and um we we weigh all the different priorities and then actually prioritize uh those priorities under each of our goals that we annually put forward with the budget and from there hone that down to a presentation that i bring forth as what we call the superintendent's proposal usually the first board meeting in december this year of this budget cycle it was december 1st so that's kind of the general process and then like mr belden said five or six finance committee meetings over the last two months we've been meeting almost weekly probably with the exception of the holiday break and then um at every board meeting we've been talking about the budget and and the and the athletic
008director brings forward as part of that process yeah the athletic the director brings the budget forward uh again he works with his coaches he has their input he receives uh anecdotally all year long from uh what what experiences uh the athletic department is having feedback from students and parents works directly with mr bellanda that's part of mr valentine's budget as well as a smaller part of mr renda's budget um but i could let mr post kind of tie this up with where where the athletic budget kind of lies in the overall budget as well okay it lies within the athletic sorry within the high school budget and the the process as you described is the athletic director brings his requests to uh principal olanda who then puts it together with all the other requests he's
009received from his other department heads it brings to me and we can certainly provide the uh details if anybody wants to see in the athletic department budget and did he bring forward a elimination of pay to play in this year's budget no okay so so it wasn't brought forward so it wasn't actually evaluated do we know how much money is actually in in process for the pay to play on the hockey they pay two thousand dollars each player and it's the only sport in the high school from what i understand that charges a fee to play and that's including the new sports that you know that are um this year like gymnastics boys volleyball um swimming which i know rents you know the pool they don't pay anything so i mean i'm just curious as
010to why hockey has such a huge fee there's a significant cost and so jamie i'm happy to answer some of that questions um obviously and whether you know or not i am i'm a parent of a seventh grade hockey player so i know you know who i see at the rink all the time so i do yeah so you know it it is certainly a challenge right and it's it's always been it has been one of my experience and um and talking to other uh principals and other places that have um uh hockey programs it's kind of ingrained in the system the the significant cost uh for uh rental of ice time um you know when you're looking at ice time at least for practices um three to four times a week in addition to
011um you know in addition to games that you're playing officials things like that ice time can be you know upwards of 600 an hour um and sometimes even more than that um so depending on when it is uh it's it's something that we certainly have looked at um you know it always steve baldwin and i do talk about it every year and clearly more frequently now that i'm more aware of the cost personally of what it is um you know we don't have a ton of players at the high school um it certainly has been that way we are currently in a hockey collaborative in case people don't know we do not have our own hockey team it is the um the bethel brookfield danbury co-op between those three schools um and each of those
012three schools um you know there there is a fee to play that particular sport um for all of us so we work together um and yeah it's a significant cost um and i think quite frankly hockey parents and and for some person have been used to shelling out money um for so long for the cost of the sport it kind of rolls into it um you know it is it would be a significant cost and it does vary every year based on the number of players that we have sometimes we have more than a lot more you know we may have two players sometimes we have five um you know so it's certainly something we have talked about we have not brought it forward at any point in time um so that just gives you
013a little a little more background about specifically about hockey and and where we are but it is the only sport currently that is paid to participate uh in the sport mark what i had heard at one point in some conversations that um hockey also has very high insurance costs associated is that part of what goes into that rank rental fee you know i to be honest deb i would i assume absolutely there's high cost um you know i don't know exactly um you know what the i don't have the numbers in front of me is what i'm saying so i would need to talk to steve to get that exact specific breakdown um i we are not the lead school this year every year there's a different lead school that really takes the lead in
014terms of paying bills and one group pays for the buses one group pays you know so there is certainly money budgeted um for the hockey team i want to be sure and clear that everybody understands that it's not like the hockey team does not have any part of the budget um certainly whether it's paying for different officials or it's paying for buses or you know sometimes depending on the uniform cycle where we are you know so there is certainly supplies pucks things like that but the the rental cost is usually the highest thing that we have to pay but i can look into that more and get you that information uh in terms of what it is you know given particularly the most recent incident that happened last week and uh donna greenwich was pretty
015tragic so you can imagine the um insurance cost and what the overhead is there i remember dr brella at one point i must have been four or five years ago we brought forward a proposal to eliminate paper play for hockey and we just could never get it into the budget because it was i mean the budget's always struggling with priorities so um it was uh i remember that discussion yeah so i mean maybe there would be more players if the fee wasn't as high i mean it costs more to play high school hockey than it does to play you know midgets next year um that that i wouldn't know jamie that that seems um also heading after this meeting actually heading to my son's hockey game um as well uh there's a few of us
016here on the calls involved in this sport um that i'm not sure that i would say the the fee is as much as a full season of uh of youth youth uh travel type hockey um yeah but again wouldn't you you can do those comparisons yeah i mean i i can easily get the numbers for the local rank and what it costs for western junior colonials for um you know for a program programs and i apologize for these the term that's a hockey term um that they use for an age group um so it is uh you know typically there's a shortened season because some students will some athletes will play the shortened season in the fall and then they'll go and play high school hockey um and if you look at the combining what
017it costs for that program privately and then plus this it does it is pretty expensive there are also full year programs um kids don't play hockey uh at the high school so we can certainly run some numbers and get that stuff back to everybody if you want to if you'd like to let's look at it at our at our upcoming meeting absolutely i think that would be a good thing it's a good item to have been brought up so we can decide if we want to uh carry anything forward but i appreciate jamie you bringing it up joy were you did you raise your hand up because you wanted yeah yeah bob was just going to piggyback off but you said it would be helpful to get like a little bit of a snapshot of
018the history so maybe the past couple years our enrollment you know how many students have participated and maybe gage like jamie said you know it can be a missed opportunity for many students who may want to play but money is an issue um [Music] so if we can get like a snapshot of the history of enrollment and then maybe somehow gauge interest level too sure if we can get interest level we'll get that to you um if there's data on that and we certainly can get you a net cost of the pay to play with hockey bring that forward for the board to uh talk about considering okay good thank you and that's the whole reason we're doing this session right is you know item so we can take a look at them so thank
019you jamie for bringing that up i appreciate that thank you for letting me thank you [Music] um all right so as anybody else just lose the hand raising so mr korea um you've uh raised your hand you're next if you want to unmute yourself yeah can you hear me yeah yeah so um i had a question about the board of education legal budget line item 530 and um i noticed that it came down significantly in 2020 versus 21 and i was curious as if there was a reason why um mostly because you would i would have expected it to go up because it was projected higher um and then with covid and then going into 2122 how does it inform that mr post why don't i have you jump in on that and talk about
020the year to year trends usually it has to do with what negotiations we have or uh what's going on with special ed is usually the big driver so yeah so the i'm not talking about the the negotiation budget but the board of education budget and with the special ed that that was you know why i thought that with covid you would have had a lot of special ed legal spending but go ahead mr burst sure the the uh the budget did not go down in 2021 but the actual expenditures did go down um i think we had fewer negotiations that year that was a coveteer the legal budget is usually driven by negotiations employee discipline issues when you have to get the lawyers involved in the unions it could be investigations special education budget uh
021legal fees have been relatively flat uh in the five and a half years that i've been here but the the board of ed legal budget does fluctuate again based on how many times we need to engage a lawyer for those various factors and other like business controls around when and how to use the budget like potential clawbacks for things like services rendered you know in their quality level like the cheney investigation for example like will we be able to call back twelve thousand dollars for that um we're not gonna talk about specific investigations here that's that's not a matter here but uh if we're unhappy with the uh the work that's been done we would go and and try to work that for sure i'm not sure there's a automatic clawback clause in in contracts
022so okay you know are there policies in place for you know who manages the investigation in terms of if a investigation if they're if there ends up being a conflict in terms of um the content and who is managing it at the time well the superintendent's responsible for that and what if there's a conflict there uh superintendent is responsible for the budget it's much like the ceo of a company they're responsible there's no further oversight it just ends there if there's an issue that's raised to us as a board we would take it under consideration but the uh but in general operational matters are done at the superintendent's level that's correct okay good question okay thank you so much all right um so and next hand anybody um okay so both jamie and andy's hand
023are still up i don't know if that's a new hand or an old hand so you might want to hit your reactions and lower your hand you can do that um is there anybody else who had any input that they'd like to bring forward okay i'm presuming jamie your hand's still up just because your hands still up um i'm not seeing any pause and give it a second if somebody's not figuring that out on how to do the hand raising i just don't want to give it as much time and i do see uh susan and jeff and kathy and most of the rest of staff here right yep so let me just ask specifically um susan um and jeff i'm just gonna i'm doing a request to unmute just so you can speak up
024if you uh if you did want to say something you can unmute and bring it up if not it's fine hi good evening i'm all set thank you for the opportunity thank you susan i appreciate it yeah i'm fine as well i was just listening and i didn't have access to a tv to watch it on the channel so i i want my phone that's all oh that's perfect okay cool glad you're glad you both could come i appreciate it okay and i think that's it for tonight uh and any other board members wants items that you'd like to bring up while we're together and we have had plenty of times to talk about this so um okay so look the uh um would we have a comeback specifically on the hockey costs in history
025and participation you know basic fact pattern on that and uh and including ken what the total aggregate is because we can take it into evaluation as we look at what budget we're carrying forward and uh and we'll do that at our next meeting next wednesday and amongst our general deliberation so thank you all for attending tonight and i think unless there's any objection from the board members we're uh we're adjourned okay thank you all thanks everyone thank you good night thank you you