001as we're being live streamed i got a message yeah okay um good evening today is wednesday september 29th and i call the special meeting of the brookfield board of education to order uh in accordance with executive order 7b suspending sections 1-206 of the connecticut general statutes the public will not be able to attend this meeting in person but will have the ability to view or listen to the meeting in real time by way of the brookfield board of education youtube channel also you can call into the meeting and listen i assume on the meeting id is 914-5798-2892 uh passcode is 704-105 the phone number to dial is 1-929-205-6099 [Music] okay let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands
002one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all debbie i love the flag it shows up backwards on the uh on the screen though does it i always try to like yeah there you go okay all right um so we have all seven of our board members here tonight um so the only item on our public part of our agenda is the 22 23 budget planning calendar amy do you want to read the motion or all right i will move that the board approved the 2022-2023 budget calendar as recommended by the finance subcommittee and director of business and operations ken post yes second okay um so here is hopefully everybody can see it all right so what you want me to go ahead and kind of walk everybody through what's coming just yeah
003that would be great and we'll get it and then we can vote on it um so every year around this time uh we actually the first thing we do relative to the budget season is we put our budget calendar in place um and just as a reminder for anybody who monitors what goes on in the in the world of the board of education it it our budget cycle is ahead of the town budgets because it's a key input into the town budget cycle and i'll touch on both of those uh through my short talk tonight we are kicking off the budget for a year from now's budget now um it's always amazing to me that and by the end of september we're kicking off the board of education budget but it takes a a bit
004of work to pull together a budget for the upcoming season so this week we've been distributing the material out to the administrators um we will have budget assumptions uh they're working up right now uh mr post dr burrell are working on you know what should the budget assumptions that they would bring to us for our approval uh and that we'll see those in october uh we will those assumptions and the kickoff material then guide everything that goes on until um until we get to early december when we actually have a budget presentation and i'm just looking at the chart i think that is on the first of december this year now just as a point of reference if there's any new board members that will be the day they're sworn in as board members it'll
005be their first meeting as a board member of our board so uh we do have a couple of incumbent members running but if we have any we're gonna have at least one new member this year and uh and it will be like trial by fire we all have to help that new member or members you know and to get through the budget cycle we've all been there um we will have a budget round table in november uh so that the public can give us any inputs that they'd like us to consider and then in december we will do like we did last year we'll go through a bunch of very detailed finance committee reviews the board as a whole can submit questions in and we'll go through a very detailed set of reviews at in
006the finance committee and then at our board meetings and we have a couple of bites at the apple um through the month of december and into january um the um and you can see those are all calendared here all those december meetings and into january we will um have a public hearing on the budget in the beginning of january on january 5th that just precedes our regular board of education meeting um and that's a formal public hearing where people who will have had a chance to see what's being submitted to us will have a chance to uh give us formal comment on on the budget and in that respect it's called a public hearing um and then we have an another uh couple of that evening and then our second meeting in january a chance
007to deliberate and we submit on the end of january so it's a busy budget cycle we will be as a board busiest during the month of uh december and into january and we'll have some of important events in november in terms of assumptions and in terms of uh you know a public roundtable um what happens after that is the it gets submitted to the board of selectmen at the end of january that's by statute it has to be the end of january the board of selectmen deliberate on it they have to send submit by the beginning of march to the board of finance the board of finance then has some time to deliberate and they will also hold a public hearing in april and then uh we have a town meeting to set the referendum
008date on the first tuesday of may and uh then the referendum is usually about two weeks after that but that date's not established yet until um we're talking about having one of the three-way meetings again in february um so you know where the board of selectmen and the board of finance and the board of ed can all be in session together we would present the gist of our budget that seems to have worked really well the last couple of years because the board of selectmen gets it exactly in time to for their deliberations but the board of finance is gets it early and we don't have to have multiple presentations of the same thing so it works out very well for all three boards i think so that's kind of the schedule of events um
009december and january for us and with an end of january submission date um and this is again for the 2022-23 calendar year so that's kind of a quick walk-through of what the schedule looks like ahead of us uh dr burrell anything any color you'd like to add to that dissertation you really hit it all about the only the only thing i'd like to add is for the public and just for the board and anybody might be watching who is running for some of those board spots you talked about the budget really is is one of the main uh most critical functions of of the board of education in terms of the direction of the district because as i always say the budget is a financial statement about our values you know and our roadmap forward
010with what we're planning for the district so um it's important for people to know how serious it's taken with the formal budget calendar uh in addition to all the back office and behind the scenes work that goes in with the input from staff up to the principals and then from the principals in each school into central office and all the work that we do on it with dr ruby and mr post and myself um and mrs wagonic our special education director so all of that goes in it's an eight month process from this week all the way through until the referendum at the end of may so it's a it's a very long um process and sometimes it's tedious and very busy um but um it's important to be able to understand that the the
011dollar spent the taxpayers of money is as well vetted as we get to the final uh vote from the board of education and certainly through the process with the board of selection and board of finance before it goes through i will also give some kudos to dr burrell and his team that you know when over the years the budget used to be presented either in the second week in december or the second meeting in december or the first meeting in january even and we've gotten into a good routine of having our first budget submission in uh early december gives us more time to look at it and therefore we have a chance we tend to have a little bit of iteration in that window and that's a good thing in my mind so uh um
012so it's a uh so kudos right uh getting it focused and delivered on time the other thing i will say is mr post and our town controller mrs marion have a fair have a very tight working relationship on the budgets in terms of formats and deliverables and things like that so every time i seem to ask a question that i think i'm going to say i was expecting the answer oh we'll get together and work on that they've already worked on it so i'm actually very pleased in our finance committee meetings at the working partnership we have with the town side so i i just have a quick question yeah um for that um october 22nd date john could you provide us with on the request that the directors and the administrators uh make for
013the preliminary you know they're approved well yeah ken will have all of those so when you want those we'll get them to you yeah that's not a problem yeah you're right it's always useful to see what was asked for not just what the result of uh deliberations are any other questions all right i took a peek at the dates they don't seem to conflict with um with anything um holidays or anything so christmas shopping because i'll be in i'll be in for the finance committee me or finance committee meetings all the time do you think there's any value um i'm just thinking about the attendance at past roundtable meetings and the fact that you know historically we haven't really had a lot of participation from the public i'm wondering if it's worth setting up like
014a dedicated email address like we did for the covid questions just to address budget suggestions um or you know even just a communication to people to say you know we're starting the budget process now is the time to contact us contact us with your thoughts and ideas or requests or suggestions you know i'm just trying to think of how we can solicit feedback and encourage more participation in the process like even if people can't come to meetings i think one easy way is we can make it via zoom or add that to it i was thinking it's the same for sure you give people the opportunity it might just be you know with child care or just work schedules might be easier via zoom for people too six o'clock especially is hard is there anything
015that says this round table needs to be the traditional format of a round table where you know we sort of sit around a table and and take feedback um because it wasn't there was there was an app or some some tech and i think eric probably would know about this where i don't know people were able to um submit sort of ideas and they get i don't know if they get categorized um uh thought exchange yes yes that was it yeah so i think the idea is worthy uh i looked into the cost of thought exchange just that the base platform is 24 000 it's quite expensive and for the amount of time we've imagined we might use it in an annual in a year's time we didn't think it was worth it um we
016know for strategic planning since we're using the yet advanced consultant to give us a hand come later this semester into january to get started um we probably could get one or two uses off of their um you know uh their subscription okay but other than that so that was that's the balance there okay yeah no that that makes sense a lot it it makes sense the suggestion is right there it is a good tool it really is for that yeah and maybe just open like on our maybe put six to six forty you know six to six forty five you know not like a hard start at six o'clock people can maybe like come and go i know it can be um maybe like office hours yeah yeah just make it seem a little more
017open right okay because i know we've had people in the past where they feel kind of they came just to listen right and then they felt like on the spot because we put them on right well you know i think the other thing uh joy i think you know you're going at the same idea where debbie was also talking about maybe a school message earlier than right up against the round table so i i know debit dev and mike and amy we have our policy and communications meeting i think in about two weeks maybe we could talk about it then and then shortly thereafter get something out to get people's juices flowing and start thinking about things no one would ever think you know that isn't involved on a day-to-day basis like we are that
018you start the budget process for next year this early when the school year is only four weeks old so the earlier we announce it probably i would think we'd get more response yeah i was thinking in line with debbie's idea maybe just a call for comment could be through school messenger and you could um supply that comment via email and gather the dedicated email something like that i love the thought of an email that people just send us i think that's a great idea yeah i mean if it wasn't no i was just saying like email us at budget input at brookfieldps.org or something you know just um i just thought i'm not sure that people really understand how they can participate i know we say it all the time and it's like intuitive to
019us but i think we're seeing more and more that most people just aren't aware of the process um so the more we can educate them even if we think we're repeating ourselves i think the more we can educate them and and simplify the process and make people know that they can be involved in a productive way i think that would be good yeah and thinking if we're doing the same thing you know expecting the same results is you know as albert einstein says insanity so we have to do something to do you know to expect different results if we want more people to come out and be involved then we have to change our process all right so i heard we're going to open up that time frame to maybe 6 to 6 create an
020email and maybe hold this via zoom maybe maybe the three of those will will get some more particles didn't we hold up via zoom last year and nobody came yes that's right because we were there for like we didn't do a ton of advertising of it so i think policing communications think about how we can have a drum beat of communications on it maybe maybe you start with uh the budget process is starting here's a place you can send inputs and then the next one is a reminder that there's a budget roundtable you know office hours if you want to come make a comment or a suggestion you know we're all ears you know there's some you know you could have a drum beat of trying to get attention which i think would be great
021and i like the email idea because if we are all sitting in a zoom we can hopefully some emails will come in and we can sit and discuss them rather than us all sitting here looking at each other 6 45 if no one comes i'll be happy to put a little proposal together and bring it to the communications committee um and um then we can talk about that and really hash it out because i think i think the the policy and communications meeting is october 20th prior to the second board meeting of october and i think that's a perfect time gives us about three or four weeks lead time before the round table and so we can get it out shortly thereafter if everybody's comfortable with that sounds good i will i will just say
022to the board i'm fully expecting that we know already what the big things in this budget are right we've got a new school coming online it will have its budget implications and we'll have a new bus schedule and new start times are going to come online that will have budget implications i mean there's some big things we've been pushing on that all come to life in that school year so i think uh you know the the really getting on top of that it will consume a lot of our energy and ability to do other new things i think right we'll find ourselves saying can we really bite off other new ideas um it doesn't say you don't exercise them and turn and check it but we ought to all walk in knowing we got a
023couple of huge events happening um in the in that school year so and i think the board of finance we also ought to walk in they will also have that new debt starting to cut in that they're going to be so focused on so i think they're going to be you know i know marcia marianne has been working on how do i kind of cap off the debt peaks you know so that it doesn't become a town wide issue and i think that will be a it'll also be a big discussion point on the board of finance side when we get there so um so i think it's uh we know a lot of the stuff we're going to be dealing with so and i was texting i apologize attorney murphy was just making sure
024he wasn't missing the uh oh yes just so you guys know so all right so um any other further discussion on the budget calendar um so then we have a motion to approve these dates uh all in favor okay that looks to be unanimous so um the only other item on our agenda is sorry i just want to make sure i read it correctly um is our executive session um actually amy do you want to read the motion yep i will move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing an attorney-client privileged communication okay all in favor hi okay so that concludes the public portion of our meeting um i will invite in dr john brill and attorney dan murphy into the executive session and i will meet you guys over
025on that link good night everyone