001oh yeah no it's okay you can bring it on we got two minutes you're good [Music] are those the folks that are online that can speak or are there more in the way we have a couple attendees as well okay and Peggy is joing us got it now julana so you were one of the producers pris phen really enjoy my grand kids enjoyed it too fantastic not no not all okay I like to call this meeting of the C Board of Education our regular meeting for Tuesday February 11th at 6:30 p.m. I'd like to welcome uh everybody that's online uh and some of our board members online unfortunately sickness and illness is prevalent out in the district and uh so as you can see we have four cting board members but I would like to
002also acknowledge tonight with us M Barbara mcleen is here he our director of people Services Mr Jeff Moore is here is our Middle School principal Mrs Rebecca Corto is here is our CIS principal uh Mr a ammer is here as our Cherry Brook principal and Jeff delmastro here on our it side so I welcome all you and thank you for taking time time out from your your homes and your dinner tonight and uh Dr Gman assured me we'd be out of here by 6:40 so all right with that said can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for okay tonight's meeting is really uh most of it
003is going to be on the superintendent's presentation of the 2026 uh budget but we're going to start with public comment and um we will open it up to anyone in the audience and I don't know if we have anyone in the audience who would like to speak in public comment and hearing none I think we'll go to online is anybody online would like to make your comments if you do I'd ask you to give us your name and your address and uh keep in mind that we try to keep public comment to about 3 minutes if that's possible thank you Kira I do have a raised hand from Aubrey Bley so I'm going to allow her to talk Aubrey you should be able to go ahead and speak now good evening Aubrey I'm good thank
004you how are you why don't you just stay sure Aubrey blachley Bart Drive um I wanted to thank you guys for your work on the budget I know it's a difficult job and you put a lot of thought and detail into it and um I'm I wish there were more people in attendance online or um in in person and I wanted to encourage the public if they are listening to get involved in the process early um I look forward to hearing about the budget and as you begin this process I would make a request that um as you work on Crafting your final budget you ensure you are appropriately addressing ing the critical security needs for our district and that you're exploring all possible sources of funding for that purpose um beyond that I would
005just like to make a comment about the minutes from the last meeting um because I think a few things were missing that I thought were important um Margaret Lynch spoke she made comments about RF radiation and that's reflected in the minutes but um what's not reflected is that it was in relation to pending legislation I think there's a there's proposed Bill 90 which is an act to prohibit installation of cell towers near schools and um what I gathered from what she said was she was requesting that the representatives not only support that legislation but also consider amending it to increase or provide a safer distance away from schools um and additionally the summary in the minutes of my comments um only states that I asked the board to continue to offer meetings hybrid which I
006did ask um but I did also ask the representatives um I spoke to them about the difficulty of passing a budget in town when the special education costs Drive the budget so high and I asked them specifically what they were working on to help our district with special education costs and whether they would support any of the pending legislation that has been proposed that is seeking to reduce special education costs generally and that are passed down to the towns um I know that might seem nitpicky but I think it's important that the record reflects that there were several members of the public that did make an effort to speak to the representatives to ask them um to continue to work to help our district specifically and um that isn't reflected here um that's all I
007have and thank you for your thank you thank you for those comments um I I will say something about um communication and trying to get more people out this meeting I know Lisa kagan's made a great effort in trying to get people to come to this meeting uh through social media I also sent out a townwide uh notification about this meeting I also used social media myself and I had like 700 folks on it not often can't but uh in any event and we uh I know we ized it in other way so uh we have been making I think this board of education has been making a great effort I commend that uh unfortunately um it just it's not resonated yet so um I think as we get towards the end but one comment
008I won't accept down the road is that we have not been transparent and tried to make any effort with the public to get them out to these meetings we have workshops that are scheduled we publicize those workshops coming up so I'll just make that comment to leave it at that anybody else online who would like to uh speak public for public comment I don't have any other raise no other ra stand okay with that I'll close public comment we'll go right to the uh the Chairman's corner and um what I the one thing I would like to say was two things one is regarding prism's concert I just thought that that was fantastic I when I see our entire Orchestra out there I mean it has to be 90 kids strong I would think uh
009just a phenomenal job and I know that Juliana was one of the producers and um I think we look forward to that every year so great job and uh Kudos uh to Mrs antonucci for all the work that went into that and the rest of the staff the second thing I'll bring up is uh the CIP uh the capital Improvement plan um I did put together a a memo it's not here but I'll make sure the board gets it electronically uh to the board of finance and to the Board of Education uh to the board of Selectmen regarding CIP and uh our CIP has been uh moved along uh it's it's with the board of Selectmen and just so you know tomorrow night at 6 pm I'll be making that that presentation on Capital Improvement
010to the select at the select meeting so if anybody would like to attend that any Board of uh uh education members um would like to attend that would be great so we have small Capital which you're going to hear tonight from uh Dr Gman that's in our budget and then you'll see the capital Improvement things that we're we're uh moving forward and then there's also the bonding issues that we're thinking about so if you can make that meeting it's at 6:00 tomorrow at the community center those are really the only things that I have uh from the Chairman's Corner any questions for me from board members okay with that I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent for his announcement thank you Mr Dan it's good to see everyone thank you for the administrative
011team for being here this evening and actually our evening the president is here also Chris so I thank her uh this has been a very busy couple weeks uh getting the the budget prepared based from our forecast budget to where we are tonight with the administrative proposed budget and there was as Mr Daniel said a lot of exciting things have been happening in the can pooke schools ranging from our Athletics program who've been doing a great job for can high school and I know the students will speak about that and then last week with our prisons concert which was just tremendous and tomorrow night for those of you that are available 7:30 we have our Coral concert here at the high school and hopefully we want school on Thursday so the CIS staff can play
012the the CIS students that that gym I went last year um it is louder than the high school gy for athletics um so it it'll be a fun event and then next week I've also been told that there's a CHS science night at um here at the high school the Mr Bishop and I actually attended last uh last year and then we go into hard budget workshops which we'll talk about in a few minutes I'll take any questions out of the superintendent's office at this event any questions for the superintendent any questions online from uh board members hearing none we'll move on to the assistant superintendent report thank you for the opportunity to share and I'll share briefly our schools are working incredibly hard I want to be able to share uh briefly some gratitude
013for the hard work and Cherrybrook with the uh soft launch of Benchmark Advance uh that's the new uh reading core Ela program that began uh in the middle of this last month uh we held a parent meeting um Abe and Kathy Watson and Chris Woods did a phenomenal job presenting also with a representative from Benchmark Advance who came up to be able to to present as well but we had a number of uh folks who came up to be able to hear more about the program and learn it uh learn about it we also had a professional development opportunity for staff to be able to work with Consultants from the program to as well uh again trying to work through a a thoughtful U continued progression of the program so that we can have a
014a really strong launch going into our second but kudos to the Cherry Brook team and to all of our staff with great any questions out of my office questions for the assistant super any questions online okay thank you Mr Bishop M Robins oh I'm sorry student reps I crossed you off before I quick sorry so Maggie you want to start tonight sure I'll start us off I'll be reporting on CIS so CIS had their Pat night which was a huge success thank you to the PTO and Mrs Costello for all they did to plan and prepare for this one event and they had over 100 people in attendance fifth grade students went on their field trip to the Old State House and the State House staff provided many compliments and were very impressed with the
015behavior of the students the CIS quiz lit team competed in January at Sedwick middle school and represented CIS very well CIS celebrated two students at the C annual celebration of the Arts and today guest speaker at Ed met with students in assemblies and shared his messages of gratitude dreaming big setting goals and having a positive attitude and this week CIS is celebrating random acts of kindness week and we'll end the week by participating in no one eats alone day through sing of props very good very good Juliana um so I'll be reporting on Sher so on Friday uh January 24th uh Cher reld their fifth all school meeting um the theme of this meeting was connected to their cultural employment around um developing the their necessities and at this meeting the everyone students and staff
016watched the video of the third graders that were modeling their Necessities um to this point they uh schoolwide has collected 2,000 positive cards I'm sorry 2000 2,000 positive cards wow which is quite good um the on February 6th cheer book celebrated the 100th day of school and this included the 100th day food collection which is where all the classrooms try to collect 100 items which can be donated to the K food and then on January 29th Cherry Brook hosted The Benchmark Advance uh orientation and then coming up on February uh 25th at 6: p.m. will be the kindergarten uh parent orientation great very active Lucas all right I'm reporting on the middle and high school so in January uh the Thursday the 23rd to Saturday the 25th a group of just under 40 students that
017are all members of the model un Club the high school went down to Yale for their annual um committees and it was super successful everybody had a ton of fun and we all enjoyed it um all CHS students will be registering for their 2025 2026 classes this upcoming Friday the 14th um there's a choir a coral concert coming up um tomorrow uh the 12th at 7:30 um this past Friday the Jazz Band went and performed at yukon's annual high school music festival um the prison's concert was on the Saturday the 1st uh some exceptional choir students were able to audition for All State also on February 1st basketball senior night was this past Monday the 10th um science and astronomy night is this coming Thursday not not um like next week next week Thursday not
018uh two days on the 20th um for the middle school they will also be registering for their classes very soon um this last February 5th Miss Mrs Swagger Mr dep pipo and Dr Kidwell met with e8th grade parents to talk about the process of registering for high school classes Middle School uh chamber singers will be participating in the high school concert tomorrow um there was recently a middle school dance PR by the CMS student council and bus driver Appreciation Week starts next Wednesday led by the CMS PTM that's great so when do college acceptances start coming out starting to hear yet or yeah yeah they're starting to come out I think um early decision and early action are pretty much out okay regular decision comes out around March okay great everybody's hanging in there fingers
019crossed okay any any questions for the student reps great activities thank you for those reports appreciate it now I get to go to Mrs robins and uh let's hear about our financials great thank you um this evening where we are um reporting on results for the month ended January 31st um we um are winding winding down uh in the business office getting ready for year end if you believe it um and we are forecasting unfortunately an unfavorable um year end at $613,000 um general education is forecast to be favorable 75,6 37 which is also slightly better than the previous month special education I'm still unfavorable at 688 728 which is uh just a hair better than the previous month like under $2,000 um still um we have movement in the following accounts on salaries and
020benefits um we are to had to slight movement there um due to some um long-term sub needs um we do have a couple of vacancies there um as well in a in the par educator um category purchase Services um projected to be under budget um and that is due to a special education change um with a um a reduction in some nursing Services Legal Services continues to be higher um than budgeted um and specifically at in special education at this point but regular education is up close behind facilities repairs and maintenance is projected to be over budget this is a consistent category um which we hope to rectify maybe with a CIP budget for next year we have had hot water heaters boiler sections Etc in that area that um have given way due to
021age transportation and tuition um um the category is a major driver for the special education over budget condition but there is some Savings in the regular education area in both in fuel and in Services um and general supplies is um generally um it's slightly over budget and that is due to maintenance as well um but we have um adjusted the forecast in several categories based on a midyear review of spending to include savings where possible um these categories include conferences and travel heating oil du and fees Postage and supplies and Student Activities um and then lastly during the month of February all the Departments um will be um be put the request out to submit requisitions um that remain for the end of the year um and that exercise will assist us in more accurately
022projecting our year- end results um for the financial close for February and March so as you can see we already starting our activities to start closing the year um we're pass the 100 day Mark um and closing in on the end of the year okay I I will say thank you for that report I will say today at the finance committee meeting which we'll go into that report later but um Jordan attended that meeting um Kim was at that meeting felici was at that meeting Russell was the chair so the financials were thoroughly beted and some of the comments that were made by Mrs Robin Stewart um questions and and I think um did a very good job Dr brosman any comments on the as I mentioned last month I'll mention it again the the
023overages due to um special education relative to the state underfunding excess cost where we budgeted at 72% which was supposed to be 88% and it was 72% and they came in at 62% so that's a short call right there 370 students or $370,000 and then as you recall from the beginning of the year we we did our budget and then we had new students move in that we didn't forecast for or project for that was another $3 to $400,000 so right there um I want as the board knows know what theity know it has nothing to do with for budgeting or po planning it has to do with being underfunded by the state and with excess cost and new students moving into the district and the board of Finance has been totally updated on this
024from September right and uh very grateful to uh this morning at uh at our 8:30 meeting uh Board of Finance member Tom Blackley attended so they're very much in tuned and plugged into where we are so I'm grateful for that any other questions from Mrs Robins okay thank you very much for that report um so we move right into the budget presentation Dr BR super thank you um Mr Bryan's going to pass out budget books to the Board of Education members and K maybe you can help her out and uh PowerPoint and then to the administrators that that are here pass out a budget book also this will be going up online so those that are you you guys get okay for the people that so the people that are online people that are online
025uh kir is going to show you where the budget book can be found and where um the slide that can be found for tonight so it's on our K schools website under District it right there under district and then budget and then all the materials are there okay so K if we could just put up the slide deck I'm going to ask the board members if you could just stay with me in the slide deck and then I'll explain to you the the book it it gives me great pleasure to present administrative team proposed budget for 2526 FIS school year I want to thank the entire administrative team for being here and again I want to thank our teacher Union president uh Chris for also being here this evening I do want to uh put
026a special thank you to Mrs Robbins our business manager for putting together and her assistant Hannah Bryant for putting together the the documents and and of course Claud and nardy for just putting everything and making it look really good without the complete support of the administrative team that is here and those individuals um I would not be sitting here today presenting the budget this budget is grounded in the vision of the K public school's graduate creative thinker Communicator collaborator critical thinker compassionate Citizen and most importantly the budget is grounded in the Board of Education goals board goal number one student growth and achievement board goal number two partnersh Partnerships and Community engagement board goal Three Financial sustainability and efficient operations board goal four learning environment and belonging board goal 5 embracing equity and board goal
027six Workforce Development what I'm very excited about next year when I'll be presenting this budget not only will it be grounded in the Board of Education goals but our 5year strategic plan the administrative team budget priorities when we were putting this together was one student achievement in all areas across the district maintaining class size according to the can Board of Education policy and guideline focus on teaching learning professional development and social emotional well-being of students and staff provide a safe and healthy school environment and propose a physically responsible budget that aligns with the cam Board of Education goals this tonight to the Board of Ed I'm going to present a lot of information to you through the presentation I would ask you to write things down as we're going through and let me go through
028the presentation and then throughout our budget workshops we'll answer as many questions as we possibly can it's so important though to talk about the successes of the C public schools and where we are and what we're trying to build on for the 2324 school year Cher Brook primary school was recognized as a school of Distinction by the State Department of Education in 2022 Cher Rook was one of the best element elementary schools by the US News and World reports it was ranked 149 out of 575 best elementary schools in Connecticut it was ranked 42 out of 158 best public elementary schools in the Harford area and Canton Intermediate School was awarded among the 2025 best middle schools in Connecticut per US US News and World Report in Canton intermediate school ranked 48th of 212 middle
029schools the school performance index which we've spoken about before improved 11.4% over the previous year with increases in each of the 13 indicators and the K Middle School awarded also among the 2025 best middle schools in the Connecticut by US News and World Report it is working in partnership with the Commissioners Network approved by the the Connecticut state board of education the school performance index at the C Middle School improved by 11% making K Middle School the highest performing Middle School in the Farmington Valley on state assessments K Middle School showed growth that brought it or above the durb average its science performance math and its math growth for high needs Ken High School Ken high school was ranked in Connecticut as a 20 4th best high school in the US News and World Report
030in number nine in the Harford area in 24 combined sat reading and math of 1070 for the class of 24 in 24 130 students tested in a total of 205 AP exams across 17 subject areas and 35 students were designated AP Scholars with 10 students earning AP scholar with distinction recognition in 83 students earning a passing score of three or higher can high school has earned silver recognition in the 24 apor role as 58% of the class of 24 Experience One AP course before graduating we have a lot to be proud of here in the C public schools in this budget it is the hope of this administrative team that this budget will reflect this and will move our school district forward for many years what we need to understand and we've discussed this before
031is that student enrollment is changing within the can Public Schools district enrollment is projected to decrease over the next 5 years and this budget reflects that with growth projected primarily at the middle school level by fiscal year 30 District enrollment is projected to decrease from the present by 121 students the projected prek through 12 District enrollment of 1383 in fiscal 26 reflects a 34 student decrease from 25 while specific factors contributing to these Trends may require further investigation this overview provides a snapshot of how enrollment has evolved over the past 15 years so you can see in the chart at 2425 we currently sit at 400 1,417 next year 1383 but in 29 to 30 will'll be down to 1296 and that's if you remember in the forecast budget I mentioned to you that I
032Envision that we are going to be decreasing in staff non-certified and certified projected class sizes average class sizes vary this graph represents the variability of class size based on class population in number of class sections over time varying bars indicate average class size for the past 12 years across grades K through 12 in adherence to the class uh guidelines the black bars indicate projected class sizes for the 25 26 school year and then next chart you'll notice on page nine this is the one that we often look at of how many sections are we going to have prek through six so you'll notice in fiscal year 24 we had a total of 54 sections fiscal year 25 53 sections and you will see in fiscal year 26 we're going to 52 sections we're projecting and
033we actually got the number to very appropriate we're projecting 85 students in our kindergarten for next year that would be a five sections at 17 and if you remember the nzda and the Peter prow report had that number up into the 120s we're going at an actual data point of what we have in the Cher Brook staff is collecting this year's kindergarten is in five sections we're anticipating that next year's first grade will be in five sections and then you'll notice in second grade we'll have six sections third grade six sections all the way down fulfilling within the class siiz guidelines I'll bring it up now and because it may be a question and we discussed it during last year's budget process that grade three that is at 15.8 in six sections that is the
034kindergarten class if we remember from 2 years ago struggled in the area in kindergarten with academic achievement and behavior that is a class that is progressing along nicely from a student in achievement so it's been the recommendation of the uh the the principal of the assistant superintendent to keep that class size um where it is right now expenditure and performance it's always good to look at per people expenditure and how we perform the camp Public Schools ranked 76 out of 165 reporting districts and agencies and per pupil expenditure our per per pupil expenditure is 22334 which is below the state average in the next chart we start comparing us to our Durk very difficult to compare Kon within der B if you recall last year we were in dur c a lot of smaller districts
035are in dur a lot of bigger districts than us are in dur B so when you look at our per pupil expenditure we're at 16 at 22335 out of 20 reporting districts but you will also notice that we are what do we say Mr Bishop the third smallest um District in that chart so it's it's a difficult comparison per people expenditure because it's not like every kid is costing us 22,000 it's an average so if you have more kids in your school you could do a lot more with less money per people but that's just how they average but you could see our students are performing well based upon the per people expenditure that we are 11 out of 20th in that dir and if you recall when we did our presentation if we were
036in Dirk SE which we're not but if we were in Dirk SE we'd actually be number one in Dirk SE as we reported um when we did our accountability index in the next slide just shows you per pup expenditure in our accountability index in the upper left hand corner realistically showing the lower PPE with the higher accountabil accountability index that we are scoring really well for the amount of funds that that we we uh put forward in the next slide we did when I presented the forecast of budget I asked Mr Bishop to there was a a lot of uh questions that we received in the the beginning of the year related to inflation that our budgets were increasing at a higher rate of inflation and Mr Bishop actually did an analysis and that we
037did when I presented the forecast of budget I just wanted to remind you that the analysis was that across the 14 years that we looked at this the two rates are within a 01 so we didn't out see out exceed the inflation rate we actually right within the the inflation rate over that period of time now this really goes in to where we are the next slide this chart should look familiar but I'm going to take some time really going into this because it it it's very important for you to realize on December 10th I proposed a forecasted budget at 5.97 over last year's budget and I said to you at that time that I didn't think I'd come in at 5.97 I didn't know if I was going to be above I didn't know
038if I was going to be below but it's always good to get a forecast and get you in a a mindset of of where we were at on December 10th and at that time if you remember salary benefits Insurance profitability liability Transportation electricity which we would refer to as fixed costs were alone 4.56 and we did reduce some uh funding in special education at that time $41,000 lower than what we're spending this year Athletics and all the other things were about a 1.4% and that generated a 5.97 the number on that chart that I really would like you to pay attention to is the benefits that benefits was at that time a $476,000 increase of 1.36 that is that was at that time a 7% increase that's what we were budgeting for so now I
039will bring you to where we are right now and that's the next slide you can notice in the top there's a big change and there's a big change in the health and benefits this is a number that I am given to in our business managers given by the town in December 10th that number was $476,000 now that number is $989,000 which represents a difference of $577,000 in a percent it is now a 3% increase of our budget you may ask well what is that that's a 20% increase so I went from a 7% increase to a 20% increase so that category went from a 4.56 to a 6.28 that's a big difference and you may ask why did that happen well in help me out here a little bit we have a fund that is
040a self Insurance Fund and the Self Insurance Fund didn't have as much money in it as needed that you need to regenerate that fund so that's why there's a difference between this 7% which I was given on December 10th by our brokers in the town to now 20% so now you start looking at that chart and the chart start starts looking different the special ad we reduce that a little bit more which I'm going to talk about and the the line items below with Athletics educational technology .12 new Personnel it's actually negative 32 and then what's different also is we had to add in small Capital anything under $25,000 in of capital items is now in the budget so now you can see the number that I'm at is 5.88 I'm going to give simple
041math here if I didn't have to add in the 20% number and was able to keep it at 7% if we didn't add in the small Capital this is a budget that would actually reflect under 4% the insurance really brought that number up so coming out of the gate after December 10th if you go to the next slide I had to add in for my proposed forast the budget to where we are now the administrative team had to add in [Music] $577,000 for health insurance increase different from the forecast we had to add in 72555 for small capital in some Union negotiations of 4500 so right out of the gate my budget wasn't 5.98 I had to increase it now to by $654,000 which added another point and a half so now I'm up in
042the upper sevens from the difference of what I did with forecast so I knew as one of the goals that we had was we needed to be a little bit we needed to be more fiscally responsible so that's when the administrative team and myself we got together and we started to make reductions we did have an extra section in the forecasted budget for classroom teacher at Cherrybrook and we're going to go with the the sections that I proposed so we're able to reduce a classroom teacher a special education pair professional we reduced an non-certified staff there the there was a request from the town to have a new maintenance employee next year I want to make this very clear it was a new position that was proposed in the budget for 71,000 that was reduced
043we did have some teachers uh uh announced that they were going to be retiring at the end of this school year that produced a $75,000 we reduced software and INF structure by $42,000 we remove soft from here of 242,000 and put it in open choice you may be asking well that would increase our open Choice number I'm going to show you that in a minute there was a request to put in middle school basketball we reduced that we reduced $20,000 of professional development reduced $5,000 of Board of Ed supplies and recognition we had a savings of Social Security and Medicare a big thing that I want the board and I'll probably say two or three times we have a preschool at CIS right now a classroom and we have a preschool classroom at the Cher
044Brook the recommendation to save funds for transportation is to move the preschool from CIS to Cherrybrook we have room now because we have one left section it doesn't solve our space constraints because the goal was to move some tutoring into a classroom but we need to save some money so that's $46,000 we proposed playground equipment of 12,900 we won't need that at CIS we move some Personnel to various grants such as the Commissioners Network Grant district meeting in travel 5,000 and I've mentioned this to you before um and we'll give a slight presentation in one of our budget workshops that I've worked very closely with Mrs McAn and we have established we're pretty close in signing a contract with um an organization that we are going to create another program similar to thrive for different
045set of population of stabilization for children of bringing them back from out of placement schools and creating our own School within the cam public schools that our kids could go to at a cost savings next year of $55,000 with the possibility of it being more than that and Mrs mle will be at one of our uh workshops to explain that program and then the next slide is we did have to make some changes to our open Choice budget we moved the dishwasher out of the open choice and move fits a small capital for 16,500 I want to let everyone know this is not a dishwasher for our house this is a commercial dishwasher for class there's a big difference so when you see 16555 it's not a dishwasher that we we have in our HS
046technology replacement we move $330,000 for our Chromebooks for our seventh graders into the commissioner Network BR another positive relationship of being part of the commissioner Network our teachers and residents program if you remember this is to increase diversity with than our staff we reduce the $60,000 for that line item number one uh because we may not have a position for the person with our role going down Human Resources Specialists we put in the grant for human resource specialist we reduce that by $75,000 the two mtss par Educators that Mr Amry proposed for kindergarten 43,00 ,800 total reductions of 225,000 and if you remember I had to move software from the operation in to choice so I needed to get a wash there so you may be saying well what's new in this budget not much
047not much from a Personnel standpoint the three new staff members which we mentioned this before is a05 FTE districtwide social worker to to support our Thrive program if we don't include this in the budget it will be in the special education budget because a student will have to be uh outplaced um for this so for us it's cost savings and then our three after school campus supervisors to help with Safety and Security one for after school and then two for chair Brook and CIS these three total 929 00 so any new staff is $92,900 the next slide you'll notice and it's pretty simple that 80% of the fiscal year proposed 26 budget 80% is salary and benefits and you'll just see the breakdown of regular education non instructional special ed but 80% and then the
048next slide really breaks down what makes up this budget and you can see that salaries again is 80% but it really gives you a line item analysis of this is not a budget we use the Consumer Price Index and this is not a budget of supplies that if a board of education ask me well where would some of the cuts be it's not going to be in supplies because the administrative team did a great job putting things together of not being uh too much over from where we were last year and then you'll notice on the next slide with the small Capital here are the line items that we moved into small Capital the permanent Mountain gy wall padding a cherro primary school that's safety bathroom Renovations at Cherrybrook 10,1 each year syn and fixtures
049only there was a question on um would it cost $10,000 to to do this yes because there there's fixures and there's different things uh of the cost I correct on now this is Robin this was all quoted out the family consumer science room two dishwashers we discussed this before commercial equipment to clean maintain floors as Mrs Robin explained we're looking at a lease ceiling tile issues at the middle school the high school CIS the AC piping for the library roof and then the District maintenance garage for a total of $ 72,5 155 so if you take the $92,900 and the 72 555 which is new money small capital and staff it's a total of $165,000 and then our large capital [Music] projects as Mr Daniels said we have a committee made up of the board
050of Selectmen Board of Finance member is an exop ficio and the Board of Education coming together with our large cap a list and these are all this list it was agreed upon of $515,000 will be proposed in the selectman the C's budget and then um we'll have to go from there athletic tur and field place the driveway bathroom updates for the high school middle school the library AC handling you've seen this before Library room at CIS schoolwide public address system add water for sink at the the high school and then HVAC project of getting it the AC at the auditorium which is the majority of that money is coming from the ARA funds the highlights of this budget is we will continue to refine student performance establish this responsive technology Improvement plan alignment of culture
051and climate practices will occur collaboration with State and Regional Partners professional learning and responsibilities provide continued Safety and Security of the school Community Trend analysis of our budget history you can see where we were in 22 and where we are in 26 5.88 with a total operational request of $ 34,848 which is a 5.88 increase over last year's budget and if I had to give some thoughts of what's driving this budget as I said its benefits and Satur and and key budget workshop dates for the board and the public February 25th we budget Workshop February 27th budget Workshop possible adoption of the Board of Ed budget March 4th a board of ed Workshop if needed adoption of the budget Mr Daniels will present the board of education budget on March 19th March 25th the Board
052of Ed budget Workshop dependent on if there's Board of Finance reductions annual budget hearing on the 28th of April May 8th is a budget referendum on the last slide I would request as we always do February 18th I believe this next Tuesday if you could submit any questions to uh Mrs nardy Mr Bishop myself and Mrs Robbins and what we will do is we'll put a presentation together of all those questions that you may have on this budget what I'd like to do right now is just quickly orientate you with the budget book and I'll go right to the table of contents you can see what we try to do and this was one of the reasons that it won an award is we try to tell a story with our budget and really explain
053Who We Are are and what we need but what I do want to share with the board is on page 17 is a Personnel summary that was asked by the board of Finance last year and Mrs Robbins and her team W done that you will notice a 1.5 addition in staff and that's a net and it's because of three positions that we have with the social worker and the three campus supervisors if we didn't have those as you know we'd actually be reducing staff and then you'll see on page 18-9 line by line operational and then what's new to this budget book this year and I think Mrs robins and her team on page 20 to 25 you will notice again a breakdown of blind Adam but explaining to the community and to you what
054is in each one of those and what makes up that account and then on page through 33 is a [Music] 5year line item detail of how we've spent money over the past five years I want to caution the board that when you see something at 160% Inc increase it may be $500 because we didn't ask for something last year for example or if it's an equipment repair we need to repair something so when you see 160% please look over to the dollar Mount again I want to thank the ministrative team and the the business office f guardy for putting this budget together it's a budget that I feel will move the the District forward U the only new program that I would say that we have in this budget would be the possibility of creating
055uh another um special education program but other than that it's to move the district forward of what we have now in moving the the district F I'll take any questions at this time so uh the idea behind the questions are uh just any clarifying points any deeper questions I'd like to hold those to the next Workshop as Dr Gman mentioned to submit those so that we can uh have a deeper dive conversation at the next Workshop I I am going to make a comment on the uh on the U Self Insurance Fund so that was that was a Miss somewhere down the line it was a Miss uh it was something that the town was managing and I'm not casting aspersions on the town it was more from the broker the broker should have been
056informing the town better about that account and uh what happened was because we are a self-insured fund um our funding of those claims have come to a um a very low level and to get them up to what is a an appropriate level is the reason for the increase now um that that's not over with we're still meeting with the broker there's there's a lot of conversation going on about this problem I don't want you to think that it's it's not being discussed and and U we're laying some wood on this thing um going forward so I would just mention that uh the other thing I would just say is as you go through this budget there are things that you know like things you don't like there maybe things that you think um might
057be trimmed and there may be some things where you think should be added back in that that's that's the board's prerogative to go through this and to take a look at it as I mentioned earlier to you by way of just U over overview of this meeting uh that's something we have to decide and then it's up to the board of Finance uh to tell us what the to can for from that point and then we have to roll up our sleeves a little bit more so um that's what we'll be doing so are there any clarifying questions things that you might have misunderstood in what the uh what the superintendent said and I'll go online first Felicia quick question um for after school campus supervisor did you say three positions no there's a total
058of three there's one at the high school for after school high school middle school and then the other two would be at charer Brook and middle school I said it wrong when I first said it and then I corrected myself after so good catch on that part um okay so the total but the total amount listed is the total for three or it's that times three 19 19,800 * 3 you're asking for three we're asking for three okay got it okay thank you online anyone else no so I'll go to the board any clarifying questions I one quick question so on on the PowerPoint on page the budget for fiscal year 25 differs from page why 15 date December 10th December 10th the chart is where I was on December 10th okay February 11th is
059where I am today the top number the open okay different on February okay what say okay thank you no M information very very excent yeah two reps any questions digest it all some you're going to sit in this seat so you got to be ready all right I think that was a great presentation thank you very much we will submit our questions we'll be ready uh at the next budget Workshop which is the 25th I think yeah we like I said we'll have um dependent of on the amount of questions that we receive Mrs mcen will ien run have uh she'll either be with us on the 25th or the 27th just to give us a 5 to 10 minute update on what we're thinking what we can share does not need board approval because
060it's a special education program but we just what's that okay um then we just want to give you a high level view of things that we're thinking about I have one more question sorry when will we have an answer on the benefits we we'll have more information I tried to actually get some information today but she didn't return my call we'll have more information tomorrow and I'll share with the board uh any any significant changes when that comes out that's a good question okay uh we'll move along we're going to go to reports if you folks want to go home and catch your dinner totally understand yes okay uh Finance Russell's on Russell's a little bit on the weather Russ do you want to just give a quick overview or you want me to do
061it's up to you um I mean there I think we pretty much covered everything with Anna and in Jordan today that was the bulk of our meeting was going over the budget and going over our our January 31st financials so I don't think I have too much more to add on that that's fine thank you I agree uh policy uh we met uh for a shorter time today um decided that we would focus on bylaws and try to get that all cleaned up in the next meeting or two so we work through about about half of the bylaws are not terribly complicated there few these pieces we need think through and discuss we hope to have that uh down for the March meeting correct and the uh no update on the cellone policy the new
062regulations have been implemented that's coming was there any thought I know we discussed it but um Jordan stepped out but any thought about maybe doing budget Workshop you want to try to can can you get would it be helpful to have policy meeting before before before the yeah February discuss that yeah sure we can do that John can you just work with CLA to be able to make a special meeting if we needed to okay that'll be February 20 25th the clean up policy if we can clean up to byw yeah that's what I mean bylaw exactly okay thank you anything else no okay curriculum there uh yes we met end of January um we had a group of various Specialists and coaches from each School in ela and math and science um I did
063a informative presentation of the assessment processes and the data um from each building we did a deep dive into interim assessment blocks iabs and Fs focused interim assessment blocks um but it was really interesting because we uh were able to hear you know just compare from each school and then and the ELA versus the math and look at the data so quite important are you anticipating any changes coming up to the curriculum or anything that the state is mandating that we have to be worry of not yet we usually do that at the beginning of the year usually like September's when we address state state guidelines or mandates coming through unless John do you have anything else to add not that I'm not that I'm aware of things they change yeah and if they do
064I'll be sure to let youall know as soon as we know that okay um I'll take up different time that's fine okay thank you thank you so much Communications I know we're challenged on getting the message out for our budget as hard as we tried for this meeting uh we really didn't pull in what we were hoping for but what do you think Felicia well we met on the 29th of January try to brain brainstorm different ways um to get the word out I know there's a few things in the works we're checking on um cost to see you know what those are um I know we paid a lot when we had other people mail things to us so we talked about having a printed version of information um in the schools and also
065within the community at local areas like the post office things like that to get the word out so we're still kind of working on that our next meeting is the 24th of February but I've been kind of going back and forth with John just to kind of see what we can do to get the word out and also utilize social media when we can um I I would just remind you I'm John I got J sitting for in my desk for you but uh the C Education Foundation would be an Avenue that you can go to for um to get the message out about the budget I see that as an educational function you can go to them for grant money if there's money you needed for that I don't know if that could cover
066the entire but uh I I know we're probably leaning on staying lean and not maybe maybe more electronic than we are print but anyways just an idea of for you thank you appreciate that thanks for that update um that's it on on um standing committee reports the calendar of events you know you have when the next workshops are any questions on upcoming meetings events hearing none okay so let's go to the consent agenda I know on the TW we made some changes to the 28th uh hand was nice enough to make those changes did you get a chance to look 28 uh minutes was 4 14 oh the 14th right 14th there was a recommendation to um by m yeah to do that and I think you could approve that if we add those in
067y we can so yes Lou there's also uh Margaret Lynch who wants something amended from the am minutes well I know Aubrey spoke about it but margar has actually sent in a specific email for for the ones that you're talking about for January 28th yeah it's aach is it yeah so let's stay with the 14 let's get to the 14th is there any changes to the 14th kid that you're mentioning no okay so on the 14th we made we made the changes where I you see in red inquired about the $300,000 from the town I think that was Jordan's uh does that me your yeah and then added on Anna's description as well was right and then on page there's there's an additional description so everybody good with uh the um the minutes of the
06814th everybody's good okay so we just accept those we don't need a vote on now all right let's move to the let's move now to the um 28th minutes if everybody return to those Mrs blad made some recommendations we have those um we have those recordings can we just incorporate those uh from from the recording a little bit yeah she I think Han all we would have to do is write a few sentences on that she um spoke about um with the legislators regarding more funding for special education be specific about that and then take um the Marv Lynch comments put them more specific relative to um and she sent an email an email specifically about that so maybe I had that are you talking about so we don't by according to our attorneys we
069don't need to put the email into public record in the minutes but what we do need to do is she did speak about that and we should summarize that better that she was speaking about the um law we could do that we totally could do that but that's not in the minutes the attachment is not in the minutes minutes no it's not in the minutes that are posted yeah it's not so we need to add summarize that y all right so we'll summarize that better secretary you can make sure that happens Hannah and I will discuss it and we'll um she'll have we'll have it readying we'll bring that out at the next meeting y yes so so we've approved the 14th the 28th is pending is that fine with everybody yes okay are we
070adding in for Aubrey as well Sheed that we add in on the yeah Margaret and yeah said she's taking thank you okay with that is there any other pardon me you got okay uh I will take a motion on the financials to approve the um the February 11th financials provided by Mr robberts I have a first from Erica second from Jordan any discussion on the financials any question issues hearing none all those in favor proposed unanimous from who's here I is also voting by raised hands thank you Peggy the only missing member tonight is Cindy Muller right absent okay thank you for the record okay with that any other business for the Board of Education with that I move up I will adjourn the meeting at 7 uh 7:35 I have what do you have
07173 6 7:36 we're Jour thank you for coming tonight everybody go home here