001We have some folks online tonight. Um, want to welcome Representative Laney Gro for being here today. Thank you for being here. And I know Senator Hooding is going to be here also. So thrilled to have you here and try to move things along. So with that, why don't we stand for the pledge of allegiance and we'll kick this off. 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 for that. And we're going right to public comment. And uh just a reminder of the public comment, just give us your name and your address. We ask you to limit it to three minutes uh as possible and try to keep it germaine
002to board education activities, if you will. So with that, we'll open up to public comment. Anybody in the audience first that would like to mention anything in public comment? >> Sure. Your first thought. >> Sure. Absolutely. >> Um good evening, Dr. Good and members of the board and representative Zra. Um thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to urge our lawmakers to support full and sustained funding of special education. Our district is legally and morally obligated to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Yet, state funding consistently falls short of covering the true cost of those services and fall short of covering the amounts that have been promised. Historically, special ed services make up a quarter of the education budget, which is roughly what it's projected to be this year. When state
003funding to meet our district's legal obligations falls short, the district is forced to make difficult choices which increases the strain on the general education side of our budget and which has a corresponding impact on our students achievement and the retention of qualified staff. Some examples of this have been difficulty on hiring pair professionals at the middle school um under oversight as part of the commissioners network and other grade levels are performing below achievements. Fully funding special education would allow the town to allocate adequate funding to general education and would be less reliant on local property taxes to fund what the state promises but fails to deliver on. Last year, members of the public, including myself, came to this board event meeting um when you came to visit last year to make a similar request uh
004to support any bills that fully funded special education. I believe one or both of you supported a bill that funded 40 million for special education. However, there was an amendment that had been proposed to House Bill 7163 that would have fully funded special education at 92.2 million within the state budget. Um and Mr. you voted no on that. So my question my first question I apologize if you just walked in um is for Mr. H or Senator I'm sorry if there is an opportunity to when there was an opportunity to fully fund special education why we vote on that and if a bill is proposed this year that would fully fund special education would either of you how would you vote on something like that? And um lastly, unrelated is there's been a lot of
005talk about the administration's um school choice program that's being offered that more than half the states have opted into. And my question for both of you would be um what's your position on that? And lastly, I just board and the administration for advocating so state funding for special education. Thanks for your time. Thank you very much for those comments. Anyway, we'll when the U representatives get a chance to speak, I'm sure they'll address your questions. >> Okay. I might not have to bring my tutoring, but I will follow. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Anyone else for public comment? Anybody else have anything they would like to mention? >> Okay. Then we'll go online. >> Sure. So, if you're joining us online tonight, you can use the raise hand feature of Zoom and I will
006call on you by your Zoom name and you'll be allowed to make public comment. >> Okay. Anybody uh like to raise their hand? >> Okay. Hearing none, I'm going to close public comment and thank everybody for their participation in that area. So, we'll go right to administrative reports. uh in the chairman's corner. The only thing I want to mention is uh at the CIP meeting the other night. Um it was approved by the committee that we are going to be moving forward with the board of education's top six choices. So if you have your capital plan with you and you may not um those included the emergency boiler repair at CHS. It included CIS CS CIS, I'm sorry, at CIS. Uh it included the uh schoolwide public press system. It included the door replacement at
007the high school CMS. Uh it included the athletics uh some of the things that needed around the netting of the athletic field of the Nancy Bracefield and uh at Cherrybrook and included the bathroom updates and finally there was some updates to the fitness room at uh CHS and CMS. So those are the six that made it into the CIP. Um and the board of selectmen will be taking that up at their next meeting. We have a great uh relationship with the way this committee has been set up with finance selectmen and um education. Uh I feel that um even though everything falls on the selectman's budget, my feeling is that we have a good relationship and everything that we're putting in here. I mean I things could get trimmed but I think they'll be done
008uh equally uh going forward. So, I'll take any questions on the CIP. Hearing none, we'll move right along then to the uh superintendent network. Super. Thank you, Mr. D. Good evening, everyone. Good to see our body here with us in the the community. Uh since this is our second meeting, I really don't have anything to report. The only thing that I do want to add is um yesterday I spent a lot of time in the the K public schools uh touring and walking around our schools and checking our facilities out on the outside and also on um Sunday working with our team. I I can't say enough about our town crew getting our roads ready for schools to be open in a safe way. We were the only Farmington Valley school to be in. And
009that's credit to our town. Um, and I would never put um children in buses or in cars if we didn't feel that it was safe for it to happen. And our town crew felt that it was safe. Our bus company felt that it was safe. So, they they've been going nonstop and doing what they had to do. So, I I I greatly appreciate what they've done. It's a lot. kids aren't in school for a couple days and they're they're home. Um the three-hour delay, I know that was hard, but the three-hour delay worked and it helped. Our school team did an amazing job that when our um black tops and our walkways are pretty clear and people can walk. They worked really hard yesterday and on Monday getting the schools ready for her. choose on
010the days Sunday and Monday uh getting our schools ready. It's just a tremendous predator. Our town crew came in last night and we're removing snow out of the CIS parking lot and out of the high school parking lot that yesterday there was probably 50 spots in the high school when I left here in the afternoon. And when we came in this morning and I was in town pretty early, uh it was completely basically free of snow. the best that they could and we were able to fit our staff and our students. So, I just can't say enough about that crew and from the town and the school really working together and our police department keeping our the roadways safe and our bus drivers and our I was getting pictures from Martell Transportation of all the
011buses yesterday afternoon clear of snow and the vans clear. So everybody really took some pride in the work and valued it of course of children being in school in a a safe way and that was going to be here for a while as we know and we're monitoring another uh storm on Sunday. We'll do the best that we can um to keep everyone safe. So that that's all I want to say. I'll take any questions from anybody regarding that. Any questions for the superintendent? I would just say I you know sometimes you see students say what's the point of a three-hour delay you know why have a day I will tell you I've talked to my grandson and you know there's classes are maintained just as a normal schedule but at 24 minutes instead of
012the full time and he says a lot of things go on in those 24 minutes there's good learning that still happens. So what people say what's the point? Well, the point is we saved the day. We're not tacking on an extra day at the end of the school year and there's learning that's going on. So, I commend you on the on the call, the three-hour delay and the fact that we had school today. So, all good. All right, let's move right to new business and I'm going to turn it right over to the superintendent that's going to talk to us about a boiler issue. So, on your agenda, that's a new item. It's to review and approve the use of available capital improvement funds for an emergency boiler replacement at camp middle school and camp
013high school. I I want to thank Mr. Craig for being here. So, a week ago, I got a call from Mr. Craig and in saying that our boiler's down at the high school and he doesn't think that it will be functional at this time. now and and I've heard that before boilers. Yeah. Okay. We we'll get that going. Just get it going. And he's like, "No, you really rolling." I I said, "Okay, I'll be all right." And we were all right for 24 hours because the next morning he sent me a picture of a a bursted boiler with water just shooting out like a river. Well, I honestly could say I've never seen anything like that. Um and our companies came out and said that the the it would cost more to fix the boiler
014than replace the boiler. Um so we have a major problem. It's the the boiler for this section of the building and the the new wing for the middle school to high school. So right now, Mr. Greg, if I get any of this wrong, just help me out here. We have a heating unit on top that blows hot air in. It doesn't maintain the heat. And so this room realistically could be 85 90 degrees right now. But what's happening is we keep shutting it off manually to make sure that it gets hot. Well, this morning besides snow, I got the phone call from Mr. Craig saying that that unit um went down this morning and I'm so with the five of these people came in. So, it was a good thing we had a little bit
015of glide, but they got that going. So, what we have here is something that is 25 years old. Our boiler needs to be replaced. We worked with the town um to discuss how this needs to be done. And we have um and I'll ask Mrs. Robbins to speak about this. we have money set aside in reserves within our capital um improvement plan and it's allowed for us to move that those funds from the board go in for an emergency purposes. I would say this is an absolute emergency. We had our custodial staff in here over the weekend with uh what do you call those? >> No, the uh just infrared thermometers. provide thermometers that make sure that our pipes didn't freeze. There's a a district in the far that pipes did burst uh over the
016the weekend and they're shutting down uh three classrooms and one of the grades is not going to school. I don't know if that has been announced yet, but we'll keep it there. Um and um we just got to make sure that doesn't happen. So, you have on your agenda a motion then Mr. Daniels will lead, but that's where we are. Mr. Craig, you got anything to add to that? >> No. Somebody don't ask him. >> I can't thank him enough. Um, here's the benefit of having the superintendent of buildings and grounds um for the school. And what I can tell you is that if this is approved, we will have the the company in here ready to go start putting the boiler in and we would have a boiler in a week, week and a
017half. >> Correct. >> Okay. Any questions on that? And I'll take a motion that we move that the camp board of education reallocate up to 125,000 from unallocated CIP interest income to support the emergency replacement of the Canton middle and high school boiler that serves the first, second, and third floors of the 2003 edition. I have a motion. Thank you, Felicia. May I have a second? Thank Thank you, Michelle. Further discussion, questions? Yes. >> What's the total cost, >> Anna? >> Um, right now we're up to 110. >> Okay. Yeah. Okay. >> Which is a great question because you'll see in the CIP that the um replacement for CIS is budgeted at 153. But I think this was a special situation where they found the boiler. >> It's a smaller unit. Yeah. But it still
018does the job. >> Okay. Okay. >> Other questions? >> Hearing none. We have a first and second for me board of education. We allocate up to 125,000 from unallocated CIP interest income to support the emergency replacement of the camp middle and high school boiler that serves the first, second, and third floors of the 2003 edition. All those in favor? I opposed six tonight. Six. >> Six of Okay. Thank you very much for that. All right. Moving right along. I'm going to ask Dr. Gman to introduce. We're very fortunate to have our our pupil personnel services Barb McQueen here tonight. I'll ask the superintendent to kick that off first. Thank you, Mr. David. So, I'm excited to have um clean here this evening to give us a a special education up. I think it's very timeless
019since we heard a speaker speak about special education as boss. What I will tell the the community and our legislators, we've done a great job of bringing in revenue also and development programs which is part of the statute and and this is McCain will describe that. should give the board a brief update on where we are and just the um the program update that you know that was started and the revenue that is being brought in from those programs and then answer any questions I may have as soon. >> Great. Good evening everyone. Uh thank you Dr. Bman for that introduction. Members board of education members of the Canton community senator and representative Degraph. Thank you for being here and for supporting special education. Tonight, as Dr. Gman mentioned mentioned, I'll be sharing a tuition
020and programs update. Going to be talking to you primarily about what we're noticing, what those costs are, and how Canton is responding in the way that's right for all of our learners and responsible for our taxpayers. A district of our size should be incredibly proud of the programming that we've put in place over the last few years. We've made tremendous strides and all of that is truly possible because we have excellent educators, committed administrators, a supportive board of education, and families and students that work in partnership to make sure that each and every one of our learners can succeed. So tonight you'll hear where the pressures are coming from and you'll also hear more about our system level response. So to understand why this matters, we have to start with what's happening across Connecticut and
021right here in Phoenix. So you'll notice uh and I even ran the figures to make sure that they were accurate. In the 23 24 and 2425 school years, we have in Canton 271 students with IEPs. Our enrollment in Canton is going down, but the complexity and concentration of specialized services continues to remain at a high level. So, our prevalence rate rises yeartoear. In the 23 24 school year, we were at 18% and this past year we're at 19%. That's not a trend that's unique to Canton. That's a trend across the state. And when we see the complexity of cases in our town, we feel pressure in a few different areas. That looks like staffing supports, specialized transportation, tuition, and consults and therapies. So that leads to a question that I often hear like I'm often
022asked how much does it really cost to outplace a student? Well, the honest answer to that is it depends. It depends on the level of need. Each student that we outplace is determined based on the PBT. We look we determine placement last and we look at programs, supports and services and what that learner needs to access a free and appropriate public education. So when I look at these numbers on the high end those aren't just statistics those are individual students and those outline what they need. So at the high end we have over two well over $230,000. In the low end, we might have a oneoff program like an extended two-year program. The average base tuition, not including any related supports and services, is $126,000. And then you add in transportation, the average of that
023is 54,000. So you can imagine those costs add up pretty quickly. So that was kind of the high level. This brings it down to what the variability of outplacement costs look like right here at Canton. I took out any identifying information and you what I want to point out to you up front is that you'll notice that there's a swing in the tuition line. And that's because again each learner is individual and unique. So their needs could range from 141,000 all the way to that higher number that over the $230,000 mark. related services and transportation are also big drivers that add up uh to our budget. So, one of the things that we try to do to mitigate costs is we look for opportunities to partner with our neighboring towns and offer ride shares and
024things like that. So, you'll see uh on the high end, student fee requires almost well over $60,000 because they have a onetoone aid for a medical need and a safety need. whereas student C were able to partner with a neighboring town and that brings the cost down significantly. So that's something we're always looking to do as a way to mitigate those high costs. So this slide is a visual of our continuum and the key idea here is when our continuum continuum of supports is strong we're able to keep more of our students program who are here in town and that's not just for academic needs right it's to make sure that there's a sense of community and belonging when our learners are here they can join unified sports they can join the school play participate
025in chorus dungeon Dungeons and Dragons Club. I just learned we had that last week. You name it, they have an opportunity to be part of the camp community. And that's really what we want. We want strong programming here. We want to invest in our staff to make sure that they have the training and support that they need so that all of our learners can access. So that brings us to our next slide, which is going to talk about the how behind our strategy. Right? So this wheel represents kind of where we stand as a district. We believe in the vision of the graduate here in Canton. So that's at our center. Our learners always come first and foremost and we want to see every single learner grow and achieve their highest potential possible and that's
026access for all. In order to make that happen and in order to have continuous improvement in all outcomes, we need to do a couple of things. We need to train our staff really well and we need to build our programs. We need to make sure that they are the strongest available. Doing those things ensures fiscal sustainability. And you recall in our district strategic plan, fiscal sustainability and efficient operations is a key part of our board of education goals. It's also a key part of the pupil services continuous improvement plan. So all those things are connected. I think of it kind of like a neighborhood, right? When one park is stronger, the whole benefits. Uh so that will help keep our out of district placement stable and it gives us predictable staff in class which improves
027and strengthens the Canton community. So jumping now to in our continuum we have that large range of supports and programs and services. This year we're incredibly proud of a brand new program that we started. It's our very first off-site therapeutic uh program. It's called Bridges. It's a full-time program for students with neurodeiversity and truly it's servicing students from here in town and in our five neighboring towns. So, we're bringing in revenue. So Canton is now not just a consumer of special ed services, but we're also producing and we're giving the opportunities for other towns have students here with us. That that that's a strength of Canton and unique to our district. So this visual breaks down the traditional model which used to be that when a student reached a high level of complexity, there weren't
028many options. If the district couldn't program for them, we had a one-way road out, right? It was to an out of district placement. What Bridges does is it gives us a pathway back and it gives our families the opportunity to determine and answer the question. It solves the problem. What comes next? Many times we have students that may get hospitalized and require stabilization services and then parents reach out their learners ready to come back to district but there is an appropriate place in the public school and there are long wait lists for our out of district placements across the state and families are waiting in limbo. That's unacceptable for our families and it doesn't work in our school district. So the bridges model gives us the opportunity to keep our learners close to home in
029our district, stabilize those supports, and give us a pathway back into our public schools if and when our learners are ready and available to do that. And that's our new program bridges. So this is really my point in showing you the operational costs here is not to go line by line but to let you know that we've added in addition to the BCBA support and the behavior tech support that our partner at Quantum provides, we provide a full-time specialed teacher and a social worker for therapeutic supports. Um, and our operational costs are just over $80,000, which is very reasonable considering the fact that we're bringing in revenue from other towns and we're keeping our learners here in district. So, this this next slide is a breakdown of our funding model and our operational net. So,
030bear with me. There's a lot of information on this slide. uh but when you look at personnel and consult that costs us about 86,762 as I mentioned earlier we have five leas that tuition in students from neighboring towns we charge a very very reasonable the per pupil expenditure amount which is about 24,000 that's our tuition that we charge that the district takes in as net revenue. So that times the five is where we get the 120 from. And then we're leveraging the special education development grant which is our seed grant. So we have a total amount of 170 and after we expense detail out personnel a little bit of curriculum and software right as of December we had 81,000. when you when you assume that well not an assumption anymore I can confirm we have
031two additional students who are joining our program one from Winchester and another um from Simsberry will be hitting that over $104,000 mark that we've been projecting. So this slide really just shows um that we've been able to also because of our strong programming we've been able to bring students back to district uh which resulted in 151,575. When we program well for students we can meet their needs here in Canton. And our goal is to continue to do that year after year to invest in our staff, to invest in our resources and our programs so that we can meet the needs here in town. These next couple of slides, I'm zooming back out on our continuum, right? I'm going to go all the way now back to the left. The bridges was the far right. Now
032we're at the beginning. So it begins with a a brief breakdown of some of the programs that we offer here. It starts with canon parents as teachers short for we call CCAP. Um and this program supports 23 early learners and we've had to add an additional section. We're supporting over 40 families this year. It supports early intervention. We build relationships with families and we get a sense of what our needs are so we can be proactive in our planning for resources and supports. From there we have our Cherry Brook Primary School preschool. We have 36 early learners in that program and the goal there is to make sure that our learners are ready for kindergarten. So our preschool team partners with our kindergarten teachers and we're working on that vertical alignment to make sure that
033all children have the developmental skills and that they're ready to succeed and grow by the time they enter kindergarten. The next program I'm going to talk about is our learning lab. This is a district-wide program. We have about 20 students in that program. We have one program in each school. And this is a program that supports students with complex neurodeiversity. So they may require uh ABA support. It's a very language-based nurturing program. Um gentle ABA, relationship driven, strengthbased driven. Uh and we really partner closely with our related service providers, our speech and language occupational therapists and physical therapists pushed into that program um to ensure that all students are able to have access. And to give you a sense, I broke down the operational cost of running our learning lab. So you'll see here we
034have we have quite a few student quite a few staff 23.6 six in that program for a total cost of $856,000. Share that with you for you mainly to so that you have a comparison. If we were to outplace the 20 students in our learning lab program, we'd be spending close to $3 million. And that's if we outplace them at the average rate of $126,000 a year, which I talked about on slide three. So just for small amount of $856,000 we're able to save close to 2.7 million here in district. So that shows you the cost avoidance and the value of operating districts operating programs in district. Another district program is Thrive and Thrive supports about 15 students across the district. This is a program that's geared uh to supporting students with social and emotional
035and complex behavioral supports and needs and supported with BCBA support which are behavioral consultants and again it's small therapeutic we bring it we work very closely with our social worker we provide uh group sessions for social skills and students are able to thrive is as flexible as it needs to be. So if a student needs full day Thrive support, you can be full day in your Thrive classroom or you can be fully included in a gened environment with check-ins with the Thrive teacher and the social worker. So there's a large swing there and we really make Thrive very flexible based on what our learners need. From there we have transition programming for our students with disabilities that qualify for 18 to 22 services. We have a partnership and collaborative with the program bear at district
036town. So that's another example of how towns work together to support programming and access for all learners. Also, our bridges program for our more complex learners offers a transition program as well. So we have two really strong transition programs here in this town. Um, we're very proud of the fact that we partner with VRS and DDS to make sure that our learners not only have daily living skills, but pre-employment skills and that they're ready to to go and and be their that vision of the graduate that we envision for each and every learner. I also broke down the operational cost of drive which comes to it's about 14.8 staff at almost $700,000. And again, if you do that same exercise, we're saving about $2 million by operating here in district versus having to outplace those
03715 students. So, it's significant savings. >> So, so not to interrupt, but just to summarize for a minute. So, you're telling us that there's $2.7 million in in the lab and $2 million in Thrive and about another 150,000 or so in bridges. So, we're we're over $5 million. So those are cost avoidance. >> So if we had to >> we would have to spend it would affect our budget coordinate by about 500. >> Correct. Correct. >> Just wanted to get >> actually Brian car just so summarize our commitment is clear. We want to serve more students locally while protecting and instilling a sense of belonging. When students are in Canton, as I mentioned, they can be part of the community. We want to continue to strengthen staffing. We want to strengthen our program capacity through
038training and high leverage evidence-based practices. I will say since our reps are here from the state that the district and districts all around us could use support from our state in funding staffing pipelines so that we can bring stability to the special education workforce which has significant shortages across the state. I know of many programs uh from our ress and our universities that are looking to partner with local districts to help non-certified staff have opportunities to become certified and certified staff to have opportunities to become certified in special education. But the funding around that is a barrier based on our local operating budgets. So if there were ways to make funds available, that would be a wonderful gift to our towns and to build our workforce. It's just since we're on is there a dollar
039amount that you know around like one kind of dollars per >> staff? So I'm most familiar with uh the program at one of our universities and the tuition is reduced. It's about $21,000 per staff person to get them certified alternate program. Additionally, we look to maintain sustainable and efficient fiscal practices. And again, I urge the state to consider and really seriously look at lowering the excess cost threshold. Right now, it's at four and a half times the per pupil. Please consider reducing that to three and a half times. I'd also ask that you look at the weights on the ECS so that highc cost needs are funded fairly and districts aren't forced to carry a disproportionate burden on our liberal budgets. Lastly, and really most importantly, when it comes to our students, it's about improving
040outcomes for all of them. We'll continue to provide discipline investment opportunities and give the right supports at the right time for each and every one of our learners. Thank you for your time. Open up for questions. >> Excellent presentation. I applaud but that would embarrass you. But anyways, excellent presentation. Uh questions by the board. Sure. Felicia. >> Um I have opportunity to tour the bridges center. Great. Um couple questions I had is what is the current max capacity as far as students that were able to serve and are there expansion options? I know I think we talked briefly about that when I was sharing the expansion options that are available there at that. >> Thank you for that question. So right now we're looking at if we were to have full time our maximum capacity
041is just about where we're at with the two students that we're adding. So we'll have 12. Uh that would be max. What we find though is we have some flexibility where sometimes students are there for that short-term stability with a pathway back to district. So some of those learners come in for part of a day. So, we're always looking to see within our schedule if we can fit in another hybrid. We call it hybrid, another hybrid student. Um, so it it kind of depends, but I'd say the range for full-time would be 12. Um, and in our current setting, that's the max on what we can fit given the resources in the space. Um, but always open to exploring other options to expand. Thank you. >> Sure. I had a quick question just on um
042making sure that I'm understanding this correctly. So the five students that are from out of district that we've brought in were about 24 25,000 each. >> Okay. >> Um and then the students that we have tuition savings for that were students brought back to district um our total savings was about 151. How is Bridges able to service these children? Like why is our tuition so much lower than the tuition that we had for these students at the 89 and the 56,000? >> So it depends on the programming and supports. So approved private programs there's no rate set there. So they can set whatever tuition rate that they want. And we really do try to keep we keep our base tuition at that 24 $25,000 mark. And then from there there's alart services. So if a
043learner needs speech and language or OT that would be added on or if they need BCBA support those costs get added on. So other towns are paying more than just the 25,000 but that's the revenue that Canton receives. And you remember we're in partnership with Quantum. So Quantum's providing the behavioral supports, they receive the revenue for that kind of share the cost. That's why it's broken out that way. >> Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. >> Other questions. >> Um sort of a follow up to Felicia. So if right now about 12 students is the cap, what priority are we giving students and then out of district students that we're then we can drain money from? Is there is that always going to stay kind of the same percentage or >> Canton is always going
044to be our priority? Right now we have we have four students from Canton in the program. There's possibility that we might add an additional um and then that the comes first and then as there's room and availability if we can take it on we accept other students. So we do have a wait list for bridges. We have districts sending packets on a regular basis that we review and not everybody's right fit for every single program, right? So even in can even with bridges there are still cases where we have to look at other programming options. So that 120 that we're taking in now will fluctuate depending on >> and it could fluctuate in both directions, right? If students leave and come in. So it all depends. >> Yeah. And first of all, thank you for
045presentation. very informative and very very well done. I appreciate the fact that you start staying you pointed out that we currently are we want to do it especially young we have to the town pays four and a half times the per pupil cost state was supposed to pick up the rest of it but it it doesn't takes up part of the rest of it. Uh and lowering three and a half times assuming the state would pick up more would be even better. uh the the youngsters that we didn't outplace you mentioned uh get the exact number but it's a very significant number. If we outplace them obviously there would be tremendous more expense to K but it's also a tremendous additional expense to the state because we would we reach the four and a half
046times amount and then the slab then reimburse some percentage of that. U the state had a was a $40 million uh >> yes >> for in-house programs. >> Did you mention what we got from that? >> That's the seed grant. I refer to it as a seed. It's a special education uh exactly expansion and development grant. >> Um we got we received about 49,000. >> Right. which would have covered the peril expenditure insurance for one or two of the or three of the the 20 or 20. >> It was a right there was a tremendous savings to the state there which >> hope would would encourage the state to fund more in-house programs at a higher rate than because I think we all agree I assume the vast majority of parents we'd rather have our
047kids here rather than put them on a bus to send them someplace else. >> Thank you. Well, look, but let's lay it out there, right? $40 million for the entire state of Connecticut was nothing. >> That was not fun. >> You're you're spot on, Joe. How you describe them? >> About $4,000. So 49. It's a little little better. You look good. >> Not a lot. It's better for March. >> Yeah. >> Allie, I don't know. Do you have a question? >> I did. >> Good. Um, so thank you. We appreciate it. So I'm going to ask you one question. So you you mentioned to our representatives what you would like to see from the state. >> Yes. >> What would you like to see from this board of education? >> I have to say that
048I I think I told Jordan this on a regular basis. I am incredibly grateful for the support that this board has given towards special education. anytime it come with a need um or if there's been a swing uh they've come with open ears and a willingness to understand uh some of the the pressure points uh so I just ask that that continue and I appreciate the support can I add to that please because say this number one this has done a great job uh programming enhancement. I do think the board needs to discuss during uh budget. Um a big piece is special education that for the past several years we have been over budget in in special education not due to poor budgeting on our part. We planned our lunch in February and this past
049um August we've had eight to 13 students that had special education needs and some of them were malaced. So for the past several years we've been over budget. We don't plan for students that we don't know about. So, I think it's going to be discussion with this board and possibly with the board of finance of how we want to handle that moving forward. Is it something that we just want to keep going back to the town saying we're 350,000 to $400,000 in the red or is it something this board wants to put in the board of education budget um three three students or two students at 300,000 or is that something that the board of finance wants to deal with? nothing that I think needs to be like decided tonight, but I do want to
050uh throw that out there to everybody that for the past several years we're averaging about three $400,000 and it was probably more back in the day you probably were looking at a half a million just done in a different way. Yeah. The issue the issue with that is you know last year we were cut for about 750,000 that's our budget. But when you create a reserve fund, the first place you're going to go and we need to make a cut tends to be the reserve fund. So we'll need guidance from Mr. Miller's here. We're going to need guidance from the board of finance on how to handle that going forward. But Mrs. Robbins, we're running what about 286 right now in deficit. >> 296 for special. Yeah. >> Yeah. So another year we're we're in
051the red. It nobody's fault. It's just it's just reality. So thank you so much for being here tonight. safe travels home and uh >> we'll see you next time. >> All right, that that move is probably going to our legislative update. We are so fortunate to have both our representatives here taking time. I know how many nights out you are and uh we're we're thrilled to have you here. So, um I guess do it from right from there. Do you want to go to the podium? What's easier for So, I would just do it right. The representatives had questions that were Yeah. sent to them. We can start with that is the conversation. If you'd like to prepare Paul, you're you're first session over >> you're in the first session waiting. So you want to
052kick us off a little bit on what's happening on your side, what we should be aware of and news of the day kind of thing or >> um Sure. Um in the Senate Democratic caucus um there's you know a lot of concern about the ECS formula and uh we formulated a working group that look at like reforming the ECS formula. I joined that working group probably I six or eight other senators on it. Um, and you know, I know in my district with 11 towns that I serve, uh, every extra dollar of PCS money is a dollar less in property taxes. Property taxes are a huge problem for people all around the state. um you know as far as you know what we've been discussing uh on the ECS formula there's uh there's three components
053of it there's the the base uh base cost the equivalent number of students and that a state funding percentage um I know the governor is interested in having some sort of like lubricant mission um to study this for like a certain amount of months. We understand that you know the need is immediate. Yeah. >> Um so we've been talking about like what are some like simple things that we can do like raise the the base cost which has been raised since 2013 I think. Um and we had a presentation from Lisa Hammersley um a few days ago u talking about you know we just started from where it is now and started raising it with inflationary type numbers um it would make a huge impact around the state I think the cost for a 5%
054increase in that from uh 11,500 through the current level to a little under 13,000 is $1 million. Uh seems like it will be uh money well spent like all funding issues around the state. Um and then you know also looking at you know can we do better than that would have to adjust the guard rails again in order to do something like this. would uh totally support trying to find ways to get more money to towns so that experts need some things but there were I I just want as you're going on the ECS there were some questions that were sent in regarding ECS I would recommend just stay with ECS to start several questions about ACS So, >> and I I think maybe we're answering some of this kind of thought. Um I will
055tell you I am not interested at all in the blue ribbon commission of any kind. We know what the problem is. >> I I don't think we need to study this any further. And in fact, the plan that um Paul is referencing from the school state school finance project I think is the most logical plan to move forward to adjust that foundation that base part of what they're saying. And I and the and I actually was able to fold some some of what the numbers would look like for him if we went this direction. Um you increase the foundation from 11,525 in fiscal 2026 to 12,210 in fiscal 27. So the cost of that policy with a four-year phase in would be 177 million in fiscal 27. Um if we did a 5-year phase in
056it's 173 million. But, you know, regardless, I think a four-year phase in would be more fair, honestly, considering how long we've waited for this change. So, the difference in what Canada would actually receive if that was the way that we went with this would be in fiscal 27, you'd see an additional 431,000. In fiscal 28, you'd see an additional 804,000. In fiscal 29, you'd see 1.21,000. Um, and 1,621,000 fiscal 30. So while it is not entirely um I'm sure we'd love to see more but that you know tying that to those sort of inflationary measures would be a significant step forward. It would be huge. >> What's the likely? >> So I don't think it's unlikely. I mean we're in a short session but I you got to remember we're also I mean to be
057blunt we're in a campaign cycle right? So there are people who are trying to be great elected including us. I think that, you know, I don't mean to be cynical about it, but the reality is we we know what this year is, right? So, we're looking for I mean, we were asked very specifically in our caucus, what are the affordability measures, ideas that you have that we could put forward that would put more money into people's pockets and and then, you know, that helps with obviously the burden with the the work of taxes as well. Um, I I I can't say, you know, this is guaranteed that this is going to happen, but I can tell you this is what I'm going to push for the hardest that I possibly can because I think that
058we hear it every year. I mean, Paul's been here a couple, this is now my sixth time, I think, being here and hearing the same conversation. I remember that first year when two kids came in, it cost $500,000 for a week. Um, I would also point out in terms of special ed, because it is a conversation that we continue to have with our colleagues all year long, especially when you consider the talent cities that end up getting more money because of the types of students that they have that we don't have. They are not taking into account the types of students that we have that they don't have. And so the conversation that I had with one colleague who was very brocher school, I said, "That's great." So, but your charter school is our special
059education and what are we going to do about that? Because that is what we hear from our towns over and over again how critically important it is to fund special ed and we're legally required to do so. So, we should be doing a better job of this without just requiring it to go entirely on the shoulders of the town. Um there has been in this last legislation we were sort of um whispering to ourselves the state department of education is now able to set rates on those out placements. So we are hoping that that will also help bring down some costs because they will be able to say this is extraordinary when you were talking about you know how is it that we can set this like this but then out placement is so outside
060they've never had the ability to set those rates before so that was part of the bill that we put into place last year and then what I was saying about the seed money the seed money is a good start but I think they're sort of looking for proof in the footing and I would highly recommend that you spend as much time talking to the State Department of Education as possible because if they have something more impressive than this, I don't know what it is. Um I certainly have not heard anything as impressive as what we're doing. >> So um I I think that when they see sort of the proof and the pudding of the money savings, the ability to actually educate these children, I think that goes a really long way into saying, "Okay,
061now we have an argument for why this should be funded better." And you know, when I saw that they came out with that for 40 million, I actually laughed out loud because I thought 40 million for the whole state. But that that shows absolutely no understanding of where we're headed or where we are. But it also shows us how restrictive those guard rails can be when we have overflowing is that even the things that we know would be sort of agreed upon generally by a lot of people, we still can't fund it appropriately. So >> to your point um that an in-house program like you have going on here saying that the state like is more reason why the state should take greater interest in supporting that >> especially this program >> they're going to
062say over and over fact I might just have to call commissioner tomorrow and say have you seen this >> thank yous >> so I mean that it is it is really significant and important so I don't know the First one was um special education costing to rise placing significant strain um reimbursement reform mandate relief. Um I don't know within special ed that you could really do a lot of mandate relief because some of that is obviously most of that is coming from the federal level. So I don't know there could be mandate relief like we've talked about the reading program endlessly and you know I wholeheartedly agree things should have gone differently with the way that you know it kind of sucks out. Um but in terms of what was done last year, there's the
063seed money. It was you know enabling SD to be able to set those rates um you know trying to rate in the cost of those out placements. And then though it's outside the school budget talking about the school construction pieces even in the housing bill there's a piece that if you end up building housing and you end up with more students you would get more money for school construction than u than if you were not building housing that that would serve more students in their district. So those are some of the >> um yeah I don't think I have anything to uh add to that. >> Were there any other question regarding PCS? You had a couple there. I just want to make sure those were >> Yeah. I I think my only question would
064be is is that a priority of yours? >> Okay. Yeah. So >> yeah. And I have there's a number of my colleagues who are very interested in actually doing this. So, >> okay. And do you believe that the 5% increase is accurate or is that something that you support or would you support a higher increase to the base? >> We're looking at all sorts of scenarios. to get some numbers back from um the school finance organization with you know what if we uh instead of the first year going from I think 115 127 I think it was what if we went up to 14 like what does that cost and you know know I think they said that if uh the 115 number which was set in 2013 uh just went up with inflation today
065would be 16,000. So what if we had a two-year phase in to get six,000 and from there on indexed it because you know when when we when you flat fund ECS for however many years it's been flat funded maybe some districts were you know part of the phase in to get more money so they didn't see the flat funding but the districts like can't did see the slide funding. You're just, you know, putting inflation on their property taxes, right? So, >> the other bonus of this would be for Avon and Camp for sure and I would imagine other towns that have been overfunded. Um, but I don't know off the top of my head. It, you know, we've been helpless for a certain period of time, but then we'll actually flip from being overfunded to
066underfunded, which would then you would receive annual increases in support over time. Uh the biggest thing last year after we were with you for the meeting was that we had to fight we the legislature had to fight the governor because he was determined to not fully fund at all last year. And I don't know if that was a negotiation tactic or not, but I don't think it's remotely fair when you have the budget ahead of us to play with towns in such a way it's like we're just not going to give you anything. It's like I mean that it's just financed. Um so I I think that you know as an equal and separate branch of government we continue to try and exercise our checks and um you know Paul sits on finance by now
067on appropriations and it it has been a fascinating education coming four years off the finance committee on to the appropriations committee to really see how I mean we are duking it out even within that committee on how everything becomes funded or not funed. Um, so my, you know, I think in I feel more confident saying stay tuned this year about this. I mean, I do feel like incremental progress was made last year. You know, again, is 40 million enough? Absolutely. And force grants, but um, you spent that 49,000. Um, and so I feel that we're in a we're in a very different place, I think, in the legislature than we have been, at least since I've been there, where I feel like we are more powerful in terms of pushing our leadership towards these things
068than we have been asked. >> Is there anything we can do, letterw writing? >> Absolutely. Yeah. Um, I think the governor needs to hear from you on a regular basis. I would specifically address those to um, his chief of staff, Matthew Brockman. Um I mean obviously you're going to see see the governor but Matthew Brockman is his chief of staff and that's where a lot of the bonding and other power of the force resides. Um so it's really important and again having these conversations with STD really you know now it's going to be twice a year that STD has to get from you a sense of what the special ed costs actually are because that is better for our budgeting. I mean, if we hear halfway through the school year, oh, you're now we're x
069number hundreds of thousands of dollars, that's much better information for us to say post pandemic, this is how many more special a kids we have or this, you know, I still think we're seeing some of that left over from the pandemic. Um, I think the fact that you're catching kids earlier in those programs, but that is significant because I think over, you know, you will I just think about my own son and thank God he was caught. sober early with some ADHD and some anxiety and some meetings of that social cues class kind of thing. Um, and you know, after a few years of that extra support, he didn't need any of that. Uh, but but that also to be again cynical, that lowers cost when you're catching these kids at that age. Um, it
070lowers your cost later on. So, um, I just be loud. I and I I hope that your parents are loud, especially special education parents. I think just, you know, you'd be surprised and I I will use the housing bill as an example. You get 2,000 emails from people about the fact that special ed's not being funded in an election year. Wow. That turns the tide, doesn't it? >> So, >> good. >> Um, push push push because we will push as hard as we can, but we we always appreciate our having to back up our constituents is really important. >> Well, we'll we'll certainly get some letters, but you want to be CCed on that. >> Absolutely. I'm I'm happy to get those letters. Okay. >> I'm happy to get all the letters, but any other
071questions on GCS? >> I'm I'm going to ask you about Fred. >> Okay. And are is that going to be released soon? >> You you could hear about our budget issue March 1st. >> We were told March 1st. Um I don't know if you have the little chart that I got. Um the total proposed grant for camp is about $85,000 just around. It's 84 939. Um, so I again we reached out to OPM this week and the response was soon. So we know the deadline's March 1st. I wish it was sooner than that, but that's that's what we'd expect to hear at the latest. We expect you to hear. >> Are there other grants or things that we should be looking at and maybe we our team does a really good job singing out to
072>> So I know there was a question on the reimbursement amounts. I'm trying to remember. Yeah. >> Yeah. There's one on new construction, renovation. >> Um, new construction is 37.92%. General construction is 43.93%. >> And I was even thinking about the boiler because when Avon was considering replacing a generator, I was told, "Oh, you should run that through to see if you can get reimbursement for that." And I believe was through GAF, DIS. So, you might want to consider >> I don't know. I'm happy to poke around at you because if we could get a little more money for you so then you could replace the capital dollars that would be wonderful. >> Yeah, I think the school construction program now includes that. >> So that's good to know. >> I mean we we have
073good >> we're getting there. >> Yeah, but let us know we can be helpful to even if it's just a letter of support. Happy to do that. Why is singing ancient grant? >> Um, >> it's it's an ongoing program each. It's just for what we're experiencing now. Not sure that that qualifies, but >> we're definitely working. We have more. >> Yeah. So, we have more. So, definitely. >> I got it. I got it. >> Now, when I think of the reimbursement, which is so that's that's important as well. I know I know you have a little bit of listening questions. I just go through them if you want to take any others. If >> Sure. Sometime missing the third one. No, that was the drip program was the third one. Um again, moving forward with
074the school building project. We just went over the reimbursement rates >> and then the ECS formula. Again, um I'm happy to address that housing question also. Someone had a housing question. Um, so I'm always happy to talk about this. I I know it's sort of not exactly education, but it does sort of fit in with your preparation if you got our students, that sort of thing. So, we continue to have all this misinformation around the housing piece that this is putting some kind of extra burden on the towns. And if Neil Page was here, which I wish he was here, he could really tell you that no, it's not. In fact, when 5002 was passed in the spring, he prepared a briefing for selecting whipos. And that's why you may have noticed um Kevin didn't
075come out and say a whole lot of negative things about it because when Neil walked him through it was like well we've already done most of this. This isn't really >> bells and whistles we have to worry about. Um additionally I would say the planning that's required in the document really is just replacing the affordable housing plan. So it's not new planning. We're lucky that you have a full-time planner. Some towns don't have that. they'll probably be using their cal as in terms of more of a regional plan sort of bulking in that way. Um, but there's not really an incidence of we're going to burn the town so much that this is now going to cost the town money. In fact, depending on what the towns decide to do, there are now additional pots
076of money that could help benefit the towns in terms of actually participating. Um, the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, which was briefly called Murder, which you can imagine why they changed it, the Municipal Development Authority, because I kept getting people saying to me, are you saying Murder? No, I'm not saying. Um, if you become a member town as of the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, that's a pot of money. There's another pot of money that's going to be around sewer connection. uh we're trying to think of it in in terms of everything that we've heard as feedback from towns like we can't build because of this, we can't build because of that and those were the pieces in terms of incentive that were being put into place. Um even in the initial bill it was really we
077are asking you to plan to make a plan to make a plan for the next 10 years. I I was saying in an interview today, it's really wild to me that we spend so much time planning our budgets, telling our children that prior planning prevents poor performance, and then when we say, "Hey, we got probably have a plan around housing to figure out what our town's going to look like over the next 10 years." And then people sort of have this outsized reaction. It doesn't mean it has to be bad things. And if you're thinking about the density of planning, that actually promotes open space because you're saying, "You know what? we're going to put it all here instead of, god forbid, buying a farm and sticking, you know, a bunch of single family homes
078for instance on on on farm property. Um, so I hope that sort of answered the housing question. I'm not sure. I think did you mention the piece where if towns like do create this housing plan and are making progress on the plan then there's room for uh additional reimbursement rates in the school con construction program. So if you do actually get you know more people coming into build more housing that there is opportunity to get additional resources for the state to help with that. Isn't that only a 15,000 population or higher though? >> I don't believe so. I don't believe we put a population back. >> Okay. >> Um I will have to look it up. But I in the last draft that I remember seeing we didn't have a population. >> Okay. >> Might
079want to repeal that deal. At least take it down to 10. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Because we're not close to fifth. >> But okay. I'm not a big fan of this population apps generally because I think it really if if you're opting to do something why wouldn't we just want everybody to have access? >> Yeah. So >> I don't have any I don't have the questions in front of but are there any other things that was the majority of the questions? I don't know if anybody has any questions here. I don't know if you want to go online and ask questions. So, at least submitted some questions. They're not avail. >> Okay. So, this is from a member of the public. Um, and I'm just reading this on behalf of her. So, um, she says,
080"Good evening, and my apologies for not being able to be there in person tonight." Um, her first question, I responded to her and said that she can send this to you directly. um it has to do more with housing and planning and zoning. And then her second question says that at the two most recent CIP meetings, um Mr. Daniels, the chair of the board of ed, commented that our schools are nearing the end of their lives and the state does not provide funding assistance for repairs or rehabilitations. Recently, I was able to take a trip to England for several weeks over the holidays to visit family. The majority of buildings in England are made of brick and many have been in place for several hundred years from homes to businesses, schools, and churches. Why does
081the state of Connecticut not offer funding to rehabilitate existing brick buildings like the schools in Canton only providing funds for new construction? >> I I was saying I think we do. >> Yeah. Okay. But it's for renovation, which is a And I guess um the renovation is a it's a total renovation. there's strict guidelines about we have to go from the top to the bottom. >> So like if you're a new construction or a total renovation, there's not really a lot of middle ground and I think that's the trip is starting to help, >> right? Right. >> But it's but it's something >> but it's start as we say on policy it's incrementally painful and so it is with education dollars >> like when something breaks it building like >> right >> sucks or we
082wanted to do a new cafeteria let's say CIS that's not a total renovation >> surprised by that we do like quarterless. >> No, some of that stuff for reimbursement >> for sure. >> But I think if you were doing like a I don't know a small additional special ed room within that probably would count. It's a >> we had to do the nurs's office that that wasn't >> right >> but the drip >> that is specifically for repairing spending maintenance which is great which is great when we utilize that 85,000 I'm hoping to see the application for the state or when it comes out that it's not an exercise of us having to fill out a whole bunch of applications. >> It's supposed to be like low like that's your allocation. >> I hope that's
083what it is because we have to go out and get quotes and submit them like we have to do with the >> a lot of districts don't have other questions. >> Yes, one sure. >> Um and then she said, and lastly, the state of Connecticut is a major asset to federal government when it comes to supplying defense materials. that is considered a donor state. Pratt and Whitney, Zakorski, EBAND, Electric Quote, and many other defense suppliers have done business in Connecticut. But as a donor state, we give more than we receive in funding. In 2022, we had a net loss of 7.7 billion and projected loss of 553 billion for education in 2025. If we were able to recruit more of those federal funds, there would be additional state funds to help with essential services, special
084education, and infrastructure to small towns like Canton. What can you do along with your other fellow legislative representatives in order to retrieve money, sorry, in order to retrieve more of the money that we send to the federal government? >> I even hate giving this answer. But that is really a federal delegation issue. Um unfortunately because we have recently been asked quite a lot about not sending any federal dollars to the federal government by a group of people. Um or say if martial law was declared maybe we stop sending our taxes or if they tried to call off the elections in November stop setting our taxes. And ultimately you don't know what's going to stand up in court or not. And in addition to that, you know, our federal dollars come right out of our paychecks
085and go straight to the federal government. And we are a different state. Um when state it's it's interesting to hear red states talk about um their issues with welfare because we're all welfare states. They take all of our real estate dollars and and they're able to do whatever they want. Um, so I I would say the best place to pose that question would be to Senators Marie Lindell and our congresswoman case. >> Okay. Thank you. That's all she had. >> Other board questions potentially. I think my just main question is I in my research and you both coming is that I found that there seems to be a very big push for funding the pension deficit by the governor and by other legislators and it kind of seems like a push in a poll of
086if there's if that's your choice to fund the pensions or education and I guess my direct question would be is what would you choose to support. >> So, we have a big uh unfunded pension liability problem state >> $35 billion >> ish these days and you know the state essentially has have a mortgage payment plan on those liabilities where we pay I think approximately $3.2 two billion dollars a year and over the next 25 years about we're going to pay off that that liability. >> Um on top of that $3.2 billion a year, we have these fiscal guard rails which limit the amount of money that we're allowed to spend in the state budget. And one of those guardrails, the volatility cap, um has uh it's it's a guardrail and all the guard rails make
087like perfect sense. I I support that all in principle. Um but the the volatility cap in particular um was meant so that um if you have a volatile stream of revenue, you're not in a good year with the floods of cash. You don't spend all that money, put in a bad year under short, you don't want to have a cut program. So if you spend the average, you know, in the good years, you take the excess above the average, put it in a rainy day fund, and the bad years can pull from that rainy day fund. But the way they set the limit on that spending was arbitrarily low. So we've only been able to spend about 70% uh of that income, not not the average of that income. And as a result of that,
088um we've on top of this $3.2 billion a year payment, we've put in like10 billion over the last seven or eight years into the pension funds. And that's a really good thing. Um because you know in 2016 I think our liabilities were funded at like 35%. Now it's like around 60%. That's like huge progress. Know it's in the right direction. It's really great for state >> and it frees up hundreds of millions of dollars in budget. That's part of it because we're not paying that >> that 3.2 billion would be 4.2 billion if we haven't made those extra payments. Um but no, you're right. There is there is a balance to like you know I think this year we're supposed to have like $2 billion of extra money you know do we spend it now
089on things like uh updating the ECS formula and and increasing that base amount or you know do we continue to like pay off these pensions? I I think there should be a balance to it. I think we should be able to use some of that money to do things um like sending more money to towns. Um and you know we also have a spending cap issue like which limits the amount of increases spending every year can't increase by more than a inflationary amount. Um in order to do things like reform the ECS formula send send the monies to town. We have to adjust that as well. Um I I think that makes a ton of sense. Uh I think that when we're making spending that is just going to towns that's a different kind of
090spending starting programs. I mentioned earlier I think like all the answers might be said to towns it's effectively a property tax cut. So we should look at things that I don't think our constituents that well. Um I would also say I don't think it's just between pensions and education. It's between pensions and everything. It's between pensions and are we going to fund new meals. It's between pensions and are we going to fund are we going to put money towards people's healthcare? We want to put money towards nonprofits who for years government has pushed off so many of what jobs the government used to do onto those nonprofits and then people expect the charity is going to be the only thing that um funds those nonprofits which is unrealistic you know considering most people are are
091struggling to get by and we often hear from our nonprofit providers like in for instance in the in the realm of homelessness a lot of those folks that are providing services to the actual homeless are either bar you know barely hanging on or already living in their cars homeless themselves. Um, so I think that it's not everything Paul said is accurate and also it's not just between pensions and education because I I don't want people to walk away with the perception that we're pitting, you know, those pensions against whether or not we want to fund education appropriately because that that's not entirely true and and the fiscal programs are important. We we have reached the point where it is very difficult to explain to people why we wouldn't put more money towards our schools or
092towards valuable programs that benefit people in our state when we seem to be so flush with cash and we're trying to plead up for decades of mismanagement by both parties in terms of not paying the pension debt appropriately. Um, I mean, if you didn't pay your mortgage after two months, they'd take your house. So, um, it's it's very frustrating. >> When I look at that, that 3.2 billion a year that we pay every year, say myself, if we didn't have to pay that, we could have a giant tax cut, raise CS formula. There's so much >> pay for school meals. >> There's so much stuff that we could do. We didn't have to pay that that money on. Well, essentially if if you brought more money into the schools, you are given property tax relief
093in a way. So, >> yes, but I will tell you that unless you hand people a check, they do not see it that way. >> That's why it works so well in the stimulus check. >> I'm going to close this this uh portion of it and I want to on behalf of the board of education, thank you both so much for being here today. Your answers were great. We uh will be cheering you on especially for some of the things we talked about tonight and count on a few letters coming out uh to the governor's way based on what he >> Thank you for all the volunteer hours that go into this from the board of education as well as I we so impressed with all that you're doing to make sure that campus students
094get everything. >> Yeah. Congratulations on the awards. >> Yes. On the award. >> Yeah. Thank you very much. >> Very exciting. Thank you for having me. >> All right. Okay. Uh let's let's move along then and uh we're at the point of the budget workshop and I know last at the last meeting we submitted a bunch of questions and uh the superintendent went over it very eloquently. Um are there other questions you received or other things you like? Now, I would just like to let everybody know that we'll be presenting to you on February 10th with administrative budget. It'll look very similar to what you saw with the forecast budget with some things that changed, but we discussed it last at our last meeting. Um, so yeah, so you'll get the budget book that night.
095You'll get the I'll do a presentation that night. The administrative team will be here. I'll answer any questions that night and then we'll have more budget workshops to follow. Um I know traditionally Mr. Daniels in the past we've open it up to the the public to ask any questions since it's a workshop and we'll answer those questions as best. So we can't tell you online. We'll do that tonight. Barbara, please go ahead. You're all set. Thank you. Thanks for being here. So any questions in the audience on the budget you like to ask, Steve? I just I didn't hear the date >> the 10th February 10th that's when the official presentation >> I that that's I just I the acoustics here I could not hear most of the presentation a lot of discussion so I
096think >> I know we got to get microphones at the uh at the speaker session do a better job at that especially when we get to the budget so I know when we filled the room people can't hear it was the biggest one of the plaint last year but thank you anything else Julia Do you have anything? Good. Then we'll go online. Anybody online have any questions with regard to the budget? Can raise your hand. Hearing none. Okay. Then I hope everybody uh who can hear us tonight will be here on the tent to hear more on on on the budget from the superintendent. We'll get into the uh into the weeds a little bit more at that time. All right. Moving along. We got the consent agenda to to approve. Can I have a
097motion to accept the consent agenda and the approval of the minutes from the 13th of 2026? Thank you, Jordan. Second. Thank you, Ally. Okay. First and second. Any any questions on the consent agenda? All those in favor? I. Thank you very much. Thank you, Congress. >> All right. We're we're into the review and possible approval of policy 6151 that was class size. There was a meeting of the policy committee tonight. I'll turn it over to Mr. Shider to give an update on that. Uh we reviewed the policy again released the third meeting. Uh we we have uh discussed it. We've looked at what research is available to us. We looked at comparative data dozen 15 districts around the state. Uh we tried to determine what makes the most sense, what makes the most educational sense.
098Uh not easy questions actually. Uh we heard from the superintendent uh about some of the issues he's dealing looking at in terms of glass makeup. uh where the assistant superintendent provided some more background data and we we we came up with in your packet the last page is the uh class size policy. So if you go to that it's it's very expensive packet and the issue we had the most discussion was over grades four to six and we decided that it would make the most sense to change 18 24 to 17 to 23 u and it came to unanimous that that would would serve us the best. Uh so we certainly would uh open to discussion and questions and I guess for closure to approve it see >> right or >> is that the only
099one that changes >> that's the only one that changes uh from the proposal. >> So at at our last meeting when we asked the policy committee to go back there seemed to be a little bit of a split on that but it was unanimous um 30 40 sorry 40 thank you very much. So 40 to move uh that we just make the modification at grades four to six to be that 17 to 23. Other than that the policing remains the same. The superintendent the line here I think the base makes gives it some flexibility. The superintendent may approve class sizes that are outside the recommended ranges stated above and shall report such instances to board of education. So we feel that provides some flexibility there and some discretion for the superintendent. Yeah. and not to
100speak with a superintendent. I think he did himself but she made it quite clear that if he did go outside of policy then they would be be informed as to the what the issues were. Why why do I feel this is important to do the injustice there? Dr. Chris, you did. Okay. U so um I'll take questions then we'll do a motion. Any any further questions? Yes, Michelle. >> More statement. I just want to say that the part of me that was able to catch tonight, um, I appreciate the back and forth, but I very much appreciate the compromise. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Oh, you're done, man. I wish we should had you on this. >> I keep wanting to look right. >> All right. >> Question. >> Sure.
101>> Just for clarity. Um, depending on the fluctuation of number of students, the support staff needed would fluctuate as well. So it would the amount of coverage would always be the same more of a statement but >> right accepts. >> Okay. So, what I'm going to ask for is a motion that the camp board of education approve policy 6151 class size with modification for grades four to six stating that the range would be 17 to 23 motion. Thank you. Second. Thank you, Joe. All right. So, I have first and second further questions just a clarification. Sure. But we're looking not to approve this as a first read. We're looking to just approve this. Correct. All right. So, we have a first and second on the motion. And the motion is move the camp board of
102education approve policy 6151 class size with modification in grades 4 to 6 moving that range from 17 to 23. All those in favor? I oppose. Okay. 6. Thank you very much. All right. Moving right along. Uh I need a motion that the board of education enter into executive session by Dr. Jordan Gman superintendent schools for the purpose of superintendent midyear evaluation. I have a motion. Thank you Michelle. Thank you Alli on a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? I we move to executive session. Thank you all for being here tonight.