001television I'm sorry I should hear that heads up right um for our February 7th meeting tonight's meeting is going to be primarily and specifically on the superintendent's budget proposal to the Board of Education so we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance then uh we'll go right into the public forum and then we'll go right into the superintendent's presentation okay so if you stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance please pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America foreign okay thank you very much we'll go right into public comment and I do want to say that I have a public comment which will be in a minute and everybody will get the letter from a Jennifer Abel uh talking about the school zone traffic study making the crossings safer for pedestrians
002so we'll we'll leave that into the uh it'll be in your consent agenda for the next time around okay right so I have that uh and then here we'll open it up for public forum anyone online if you'd like to speak to the board of education on public forum you can go ahead and raise your hand if you're joining us uh tonight you want to make a public comment and I'll call on you by your Zoom name let me just um again if you're online and want to make a public comment tonight you can go ahead and use the racehand feature zoom and I'll call on You by using them okay so I do I do want to recognize three Board of Education members are on a video tonight so uh Cindy Motors on Felicia
003Jordan and Ryan O'Donnell so we do have a uh with the exception of Kim Sullivan who's ill tonight so I just want to make mention that public forum for anyone in the audience sure how are you how are you doing I'm Margaret Lynch at Courtesy um I have contacted the high school principal about this but I haven't heard from it in about two weeks so it might have things that might have changed I'm coming now and then but um uh I would like to know why the athletic department is not allowing the use of physical cash to pay for tickets to support for our sporting events expressly after the sports boosters have requested a cash option to be allowed according to the ACLU if Connecticut and their public written testimony for Public Act 2160 and
004acts concerning successful forms of currency as payment in local businesses which has been made law as of June 16 2021 and it states that packed must be an option there are several reasons why cashless stores are a bad idea first a cashless Society is bad for privacy when electronic payments or other payments that use the middleman are involved in transactions the middleman gets to learn about our purchases and can potentially mine that information for its own benefit based on weak privacy laws there are also a few prohibitions on the middleman but be it be a bank or a credit card company or the seller itself from profiting from our spending data cash on the other hand maintains equals privacy and keeps our spending choices confidential even more than that though a cashless Society hurts marginalized
005people in our communities low-income people often do not have the resources identity documents or spare funds to obtain bank accounts credit cards and other practice payment methods because of systemic racism in the United States and Connecticut this lack of access Falls unequally on black and brown people and other written testimony from the greater Harper Legal Services according to the Institute for Women's policy research many abusers use economic abuse to limit their victims options and make them financially dependent on their abuser credit cards allow abusers to track the spending of their victims through their credit card use using cash reduces the ability of an abuser to track a domestic violence victim by allowing the victim to erase the electronic Financial trial and from a community outreach consultant when consumers pay with cash they control what they
006buy and their purchases remain private and firstly when an individual uses electronic payments he or she leaves behind digital breadcrumbs of all purchases for merchants financial institutions and technology companies to tracks collect and sell each time someone uses an electronic payment he or she exposes their personal data making that person vulnerable to data breaches so domestic violence privacy concerns marginalized populations prohibiting the use of cash transactions is ignoring diversity equity and inclusion goals we have as a community I also question why the Canton athletic department does not need to follow the state's Cash's currency law why is it allowed to prohibit the use of cash and force the use of digital ticketing through tickets for it this company doesn't even list its privacy policy online and is also not listed in our District's student data
007privacy approval list so hopefully going forward we can offer cash we can let people use cash in our school system from here on out thank you thank you for that comment I'm going to let Mr Case address that because I think he has some thoughts on that sorry thank you Mr Daniels and Mrs Williams thank you for bringing this to our attention I am aware of uh the email exchanges first of all I want to thank you for bringing it to the attention of Mr Department High School principal um because you did bring it to our attention uh we checked with our school board attorney on the on the state statute and whether or not we were allowed to do this um currently there are some cases in court right now that have yet to
008be decided so our attorney is saying yes we can continue to do this we can continue to use the tickets ticket for uh ticket purchases for our musical performances for our athletic events I also um need to let everyone know that this is the direction the CI ciac has advised um all of its schools to um to not collect cash for athletic events um for a variety of reasons so we will continue to use tickets ticket however um in your comments tonight where you talk about the reasons that a cashless Society can be detrimental marginalized people um in abuse situations I mean those are interesting statistics so I'm going to submit into public so that would be very helpful so um I know the board and I will um we'll continue the discussion on that
009uh but we did check with our attorney it is legal for us to continue to do that but we will discuss it further but why why is it that public schools are are able to be above the law yeah um I rely on our attorney to give us that information I'm not an expert in that um I'd have to look back at his uh email that he sent Mr depipo and me thanks thanks for your comment so I we hear you and I look forward to reading the comments that you read to us so thank you okay all I have is uh administrative staff now so I don't think Jeff you want to say anything for Public Works no just kidding sandwiches okay all right so that uh that will close out I'll give it
010one more time anyone online that would like to speak to public forum before we close it out okay same none Karen okay so uh we're gonna move right into the uh into the budget presentation by the superintendent schools and thank you so much good evening everybody good evening uh board members and good evening to um Mrs Lynch and our administrative staff as I begin tonight I want to thank um all of our administrators as I have said in the past and I will say now that it used to be the budget development process was just a few months out of the year now it's a 12-month process so we begin the budget development process um early on in the summer for the upcoming school year as we analyze student enrollment projections we analyze our teacher
011staff ratio we analyze how we've used our resources in the past for instructional supplies and other items and we look at the goals that we have set for ourselves based upon all of the student achievement data we've collected and then we prioritize and determine how to use our limited resources to help move the Canton Public Schools forward so I want to thank our administrative team for for doing that um Rebecca Corto who's principal at Canton Intermediate School she um new to a family um issue she was not able to be here tonight but I want to thank her Jeff Moore principal of Canton middle school thank you for your efforts uh Mr dependpo principal of Canton High School also had a conflict tonight so he is not here but thank you to Mr dipepal thank
012you Dr Kidwell our assistant principal high school for your efforts and Barbara McLean our director of people Personnel Services thank you and Kim Hearth our athletic director Kim thank you as you worked hard to put the athletic budget together for this year so I do have a presentation that is in your packets uh that I'll be going over with you tonight my goal tonight is to give you a 30 000 foot overview of the budget this is the meeting where um after all the administrators presentations to Donna John and me this is the meeting where I share with you my recommendations for a budget that will help us meet our goals and move us forward and I didn't mean to leave out um Mr Bishop and this is this has been zakowski who also are
013instrumental in getting this budget developed um and Dad I know you've worked tires tirelessly over the past week to pull all of this together so with that being said I think it's important for us to start out with what we know about our fixed contractual obligations and our fixed costs so um you see that on the screen and it's also the one pager that you have in front of you so what this shows you is what the difference is between this current Year's budget 22 23 and next year's proposed budget 23-24 and you can see the increases for our personnel for each one of our Personnel categories for most of the Personnel in our district I'll remind everyone that they are part of bargaining units so we have negotiated contracts with personnel and I will
014let you know that according to the contracts administrators are receiving a three percent increase uh teachers depending on their step placement um you would see a different increase depending on what step a teacher economy of 14 steps based upon experience based upon degree level bachelor's Master's and six-year degree so their increases would vary depending on their years of experience custodians and maintenance Personnel will receive a three percent increase as well para Educators again depending on their step placement will receive between a 1.97 increase any five percent increase what you see here is a decrease and the reason that there's a decrease is because um we allotted um the funding for Paras to several grants so um so it looks like a decrease in our general Ed budget but it is not a true decrease overall
015so that just stands out and I wanted to mention that we have teacher extracurricular stipends um we have some new clubs that we're going to be proposing for this year which is why they increase there secretaries will receive a three percent increase as well we have a provision in our contract uh to pay out certified and non-certified sick leave for those staff members who are retiring based upon the contract language so we have funding available for that so overall our total known contractual increases amount to an increase of five hundred and two thousand three hundred and thirty one dollars tonight you're going to hear me propose some new Personnel positions and those include listed in bold um underneath the negotiated contracts area I'm going to be recommending a math consultant for the middle school high
016school we're going to call that position the math interventionist and coach I'm recommending three learning Labs special education teachers a structured literacy teacher at Cherry Brook and in an edition of three para educators that comes to a cost of 358 295 which is not included in the increases above any questions so far please so just a little different from this morning but you've taken 122.59 you've taken it out of this morning yes okay and you just moved it down got it okay I just want to be clear on that because yeah so that's something we noticed right after our okay the figures are the same shall we just move that amount to be more accurate and then other fixed costs are medical dental insurance is increasing by 329 which is about a six percent increase
017over this year's health insurance premiums our transportation contracts for K-12 Transportation according to our contract with Martel that is increasing two and a half percent and then we needed to add an additional bus run which is why the increase is forty seven thousand dollars I want to bring your attention to the utilities line item utilities and heat so these are huge increases this year utilities are one of the major drivers of this budget we're all seeing increases in our utility costs um here in our school district we're looking at an increase of over 200 000 just in utilities um to keep the schools up and running as they are now and then of course special education is a main driver we're looking at an increase of in-district Services of over a hundred and fifty four
018thousand dollars in out-of-district tuition and transportation an increase of 580 701 dollars those are the known fixed costs so tonight I'm coming to you with a proposed budget that represents a 7.9 percent increase over this year's budget before I go into more detail does anyone have any questions about any information on this street well Claudia I don't know if you have any additional copies for people in the audience of this you mean that yeah I'll just check with my board members online are you guys following you tracking okay okay all right thank you Peggy uh Peggy Joe and I had this this morning so and Russell sorry so if you have any questions just um I mean I'm assuming we'll get more oh yeah thank you okay I'll now uh turn your um attention to
019the um so of the 7.9 and this is done I would I kind of uh left your voicemail on this oh 7.9 what what what accounts were fixed in that 7.9 again oh you got that okay everybody I have a slide for that right yeah okay the first few um Pages um of my presentation um you've heard before so I will only use those when I talk to the community to remind them about our vision our mission and our values um and our vision of The Graduate so I just want to remind everybody that um all of our resources are aligned to ensure that our Canton Public School students graduate Canton High School with the 21st century skills we being important we want students to be um creative thinkers effective communicators effective collaborators critical thinkers
020and we want them to apply all of those skills by most importantly being compassionate and kind citizens so we align all of our resources to ensure that our graduates have those skills briefly just to remind everyone about the budget development process the administrators worked with their staff who identify the goals and to identify the needs based upon those goals they presented their budget requests to cabinet members the cabinet of our school district includes Donna our business manager Mr Bishop our assistant superintendent um this is McLean our director of people Personnel Services and myself I then considered all requests and made changes both increases and reductions mostly reductions so prior to um tonight um I reduced the administrator's requests by over eight hundred thousand dollars and you can see that on the spreadsheet one of the
021first colonies I'm presenting to you my proposed budget tonight February 7th we are looking for public comments uh we're asking the public to come out next Tuesday night February 14th um to give us uh their feedback on my proposed budget we will make sure that my budget and presentation is posted online tomorrow for community members um to analyze so we'll be looking for feedback next uh Tuesday and also on February 22nd those are our next two board meetings as you know we have a board of education Finance subcommittee the subcommittee met this morning to get a preview of this budget and we'll also meet again next Wednesday morning at 7 30 to continue to to do a deep dive of the line this board will need to adapt of the budget by March 6th according
022to town Charter that's a Monday so our hope is that the board will be ready to adopt the budget on Wednesday night February 22nd if not the board may consider adding a special meeting prior to March 6th excuse me so we have to adopted by March 6th yes by March 6th and that goes to the board of Finance yes thank you so once you adapt the budget it is sent off electronically and to the board of Finance on Monday March 6th the Board of Education Donna John Lou and I will present the budget to the board of Finance at their meeting on March 15th and that's uh here in this room at 6 pm the town Board of finance will then hold the budget workshop on March 27th the mail consider both the town's budget
023and the board of education's budget and then the budgets will be presented to Citizens at the Town annual meeting on April 24th according to town Charter um the budget goes to a referendum automatically and that referendum date will be set prior to May 11 2023. so those are the important dates to remember as we go through this budget process any questions about that so as we develop this budget we had four priorities in mind first of all to determine well let me know priorities is the wrong wrong word these are the steps we follow to develop this budget we determine staff and student enrollment projections we looked at the major non-discretionary accounts to see what changes we could make we prepared reviewed and prioritized school and program requests and then we re-examined and re-prioritized expenditures
024and made potential reductions prior to bringing the budget to you tonight the budget was developed with these four budget priorities health and safety and school security high quality instruction for our students social and emotional support for our students and support for our students with special needs the next slide answers the question the chair had what are the known issues with financial impact that we entered this budget season with these are the increases that we have just to maintain what we currently have to open up our school doors on August 28th of 2023. keep everything the same we would need um a 2 million 239 328 increase which is um a 7.57 percent increase over this year's budget and that's just to keep things the same why is that it's because of the increase in special
025education costs for our students who are outplaced you've heard in our discussions on this year's budget that we had eight additional students needing outplacement five of those eight students moved into our district over the summer we had no control over that along without a district tuition comes out of District transportation which is a major increase and then the utilities and overall increase of 259 000 for heat and electricity and then our employee benefits the 353 000 increase so just starting out of the gate we were looking at a 7.5 7 increase and I'll stop right there and see if there are any questions or see who painted any questions online so far you're tracking everybody's good yes good Erica you're okay [Music] so I I you know I think it's important um I don't think
026we can emphasize enough the fact that um the budget right now 7.57 is is are fixed we really don't have any control over you going forward and that that's that's part of the story I think that we have to uh begin planting those seeds if you will I wrote an article today for the Farmington Valley and I said we were more like six percent fixed and nobody nobody fixed nobody changed it but um you know we're well over six in the fixed uh costs so so it is what it is which leaves very little or academic enrichment enhancement and those types of things so okay now the next slide this is a slide that Mr Bishop put together for us just showing the comparative rate of growth of inflation versus our budget increases over the
027years so you can see all the way back to 2011 uh the um the first bar is the U.S inflation rate for that year the second bar is uh the percentage increase of our budget so you can see the years that we've had very very very small increases um zero percent in 2011 1.51 2012. 3.65 percent 2015.35 percent 2016-17 1.81 percent 1.05 percent our budgets were increasing at that low rate while our contracts were going up two and a half to three percent so we've had major challenges um in the past that now with inflation at an even higher rate we're trying to make up so I think this is an interesting slide for all of us to take a look let's go to the final the final bar here is uh inflation is going
028up on average 2.58 yet but our budgets are 1.92 so that's the uh that's the message and if we would have extrapolated that 2.580 over the past 12 years it would predict us to be right at where the budget request is today say that again if the educational budget would have grown at a 2.58 rate consistently over the past 12 years on average it would be exactly where we're proposing today so we're right which John's saying it's not unexpected that we've come in with a 7.9 increase so I always want to be able to point out what our average class sizes will be at the elementary level because that's something that um we all are concerned about one of the major priorities of this budget was to keep class sizes within the Board of Education
029policy so you have a slide in here stating what the class size policy is and you also have a couple slides that go you what class size policies are in area districts and I'll draw your attention to the class size report for Cherry Brook Primary School so this gives you data over the past few years it gives you data for what we expect next year our projections so um you can see that we're going to continue uh to have two preschool classrooms each preschool has two sections so that's why you see we have four sections so as you know one of our preschools is at Canton Intermediate School this year but it's this for preschool purposes it's listed on the Cherry Brook report we um we anticipate having approximately 104 kindergartners based upon our projections
030that number can readily change as um kindergarten families register it's always a moving Target we have our enrollment projections and then we have the actual number of people that register some people choose to have their child um linked a year before they enter kindergarten so we're working on all of that right now but for Budget purposes we're planning on approximately 104 students six sections which is what we have this year with an average class size of 17. you can see that we'll continue to have six classes of first grade six classes on second grade and we will only need six sections of third grade next year because we have 106 students moving into third grade which would give us an average class size of 18. this year we have seven sections doing in the moment
031next year we will only need six I've already taken that into a pound in our budget a reduction of one classroom teacher are there any questions about enrollment and charity work okay moving on then to talk about enrollment and Hanson Intermediate School um we will continue to have six sections of fourth fifth and sixth grade um you might wonder why we had seven third grade sections and we're not continuing with seven uh that's because according to board event policy we can do with four I'm sorry with six sections and that helps with our teaming concept because our philosophy our overall curriculum philosophy um at Canton intermediate schools that teachers uh team teach in Partnerships um having six classrooms will allow that to be done very effectively we found in the past when we've had an
032odd classroom if we had seven classrooms there would be one teacher working in isolation that has not worked well in the past so we're learning from the past so we'll continue to have six sections of fourth fifth and sixth grade with very appropriate class size numbers are there any questions about that okay so when you talked about the fixed costs now we want to talk about what is included in this budget request these are the items that will help us move forward as a school district in accordance with the Strategic goals that we've stated for ourselves and you can see there are there's a main driver here and it's all about student support so the top few items are all about supporting students the last few items are all about providing students additional opportunities so
033this is very student driven we're requesting a math interventionist and instructional coach to work at Canton middle school and Canton High School there's a need for this position because when we look at student achievement data in the area of math we're seeing a dip in scores at the middle school level it's unacceptable Mr Moore has been working with the staff to identify the learning challenges that students are having and we're looking at bringing in a person with a math content background and also expertise and outstanding teaching strategies to work as a coach with the teachers in the classroom in collaboration with our math department chair who evaluates teachers to make sure we are all in alignment and all using research-based strategies to help our students in math it's a definite need foreign budgets you're always
034going to hear about our special education budget because that budget changes on a daily basis and why is that because the needs of our students change on a daily basis as I said tonight we've had eight additional student outplacements most of those student outplacements you would expect we might expect to think it's because of academic needs but it's not the case we're seeing students with behavioral needs social and emotional learning needs that currently we in this situation we cannot meet their needs our director of people Personnel Services um Barbara McLean is presenting a proposal as part of this budget request where we would have an additional learning lab teacher at Cherry Brook Primary School at Canton Intermediate School and a Canton middle school and high school to work with behaviorally challenged students and she's going
035to talk about that in a couple minutes um we're calling this this um proposed program the Thrive program so when you see thrive in parentheses those Personnel would be in that thrive program and again Barbara will talk about that in a couple of minutes those are the positions we're looking for for additional student support we had a request from the friends for football for our Canton Grammy Co-op team they were looking for additional funding to assist with transportation currently in our budget we've only provided I say only that that's a judgment sorry about that I'll just say we've provided four thousand dollars for the cost of a football coach that's what we provided in our budget for the past few years the request was to assist with transportation between Canton and Granby and um I
036put that additional request in at an increase of eleven thousand dollars which would go towards transportation at a small cost I'm recommending we add a middle school into intramural volleyball coach and we continue to provide additional Club opportunities for our students last week we heard from our student Representatives about the wonderful save club at the high school that's just one example of many clubs happening across our schools and overall we're looking at increasing the stipend account by three thousand dollars which would provide more opportunities at the high school for a chess club a literary Club Science Olympiad at CIS we will have disc golf and at Cherry Brook Primary School we'll continue with the program where we that we just started last week where every Wednesday afternoon we have 127 students staying after school for
037chorus so we'll be able to continue those opportunities at a small cost which I'm very excited about so so can I ask a question or would you rather just finish your job that's okay so the three the 376 or 96 302 that is is thrive 15 3 of that is called extra curricular type that exports in it and only only 59059 is really um specific right and so that 350 that 376 496 that's the small part going on top of the fix to get us where we are yes so so the only really new initiative is Thrive um and we're addressing Jeff's name uh as far as a map uh specialist right yes do you have a requirement for a new uh is that yeah so um we need to purchase new shot clocks yeah
038that's at a cost of nine thousand dollars where does that show up right that shows up in our athletic budget Donna do you know what oh it's totally in the budget what's in there okay okay so um stated the hard part here is that we're faced with um fixed costs of what 7.6 did we say 7.7757 and then the only enhancements enrichments that are going on is a small poultry 376. into the entire District's budget okay I just wanted any questions so far no Eric are you good online you guys you guys okay okay all right yes Tim thanks for coming hi Lou I just I just wanted to tell you we're at the superintendent's budget okay Tim legit is one of our selections so um word is 7.9 that's where we started so the
039superintendent is making his presentation right now where it is 7.9 and he's going over and he's he's cut about 804 000. so he's going over our fixed costs are running at about 7.57.6 of that there's very little in terms of former Educators so or maybe not a former once an educator always an educator he said I like being a parent you know exactly so I just wanted to give Tim just that uh that quick well I don't think you'd be surprised that you're not going to be an outlier of numbers like that sure the town side is going to come in Steve as well thanks again but I just want to give you a little update so as you know the biggest driver of our budget is one of the biggest drivers is special education
040now Placer um Barbara McLean is here tonight our director of people Personnel Services as you know Barbara started with us in November I believe it seems like she's been here forever which is a great thing Barbara is really doing a fantastic job and in the short time that Barbara has been here she's been able to identify a major need of our district and that won't be of any surprise to you and that is the need to support behaviorally challenged students especially after the pandemic where we're seeing students who lack socialization some students did not go to preschool and they're entering our kindergarten in kindergartens across the country as their first school socialization experience and students need a great deal of support Barbara is proposing a program tonight which is a a short-term investment that will
041save us dividends thousands of thousands of the in the future in my opinion so I've asked Barbara to be here uh to talk a little bit about her vision of this Live program so there are some slides in here and Barbara thanks for being here tonight thank you for having me again becoming a regular we like that uh good evening thank you superintendent case for uh that nice introduction and thank you Lord for having me here tonight so Thrive um where the name comes from it's not an acronym uh but by definition uh it's about growth and at the heart of all students um and we care about every single child in this District we want to see every single child grow and develop to the greatest extent possible so that they can reach their
042personal Excellence um so that's how the name was chosen a little bit about the program so special education is not a place it's a service and through the Thrive program what we're hoping to do is to provide some in-district therapeutic behavioral and academic supports so that all of our students are able to access and that are getting their their needs met holistically so this goes beyond the basic reading and writing and math and it's really taking that Equity lens and it's looking at what areas do we need to continue to build upon and develop in terms of Behavioral expectations and social emotional expectations um so it's a learner Focus with the holistic View um the focus of the program is to keep the student to teacher ratio small we want to keep it around a
043one to ten we're using our multi-tiered systems of support uh which is something that we're focusing on district-wide to support all Learners uh this program will allow us to partner with some of our resources that we're currently using such as our behavioral Consultants the hater technicians physical therapists otpt speech and language but we'll be using them in a much more efficient model where they can provide intensive Services they can complete evaluations we can can complete in District 40-day diagnostic placements to determine if a child really needs special education or if they just need some intensive tier three behavioral and academic supports so it just it's it's a way to work smarter and not harder essentially and it's a model that I've used in past districts so I've got experience with getting it off the ground
044and running and what we need in order to make this happen is an investment in certified special education staff and along with an additional uh three para Educators with some Ada which is applied behavioral analysis training for the next slide so what I did um initially when I was uncovering the need as I wanted to be thoughtful about the needs in the district and I presented this to you already so I won't go into the nitty-gritty of how I got there but things that I looked at are were our projected numbers in the learning lab from this past school year and then what we're projecting for next school year and part of that analysis what I found was there are certain students a couple of students in each learning lab program that really don't fit
045the neurodiverse complexities of a student that required this free trial and it's non-verbal there are other students in that program that have that um are able to access the instruction but they've got a behavioral need that's getting in the way and that's that's a little bit of a nuance and a different thing and it needs a different type of programming so that's where Thrive comes in we also have a number of students in District that we are supporting through Paris support in the classroom um and being case managed by the rest of our Special Education team and depending on the grade level they have a different case manager and it's stretching our resources so this model and Thrive will allow students to get what they need by a focused One Core special education teachers or
046case manager and when they need intensive specialized resource room support they'll get it and the goal is to move to the at least restrictive model as soon as they're ready and available to access their learning and then they'll move back into the mainstream the goal is to get them our students all back in the mainstream in the least restrictive environment that's where we want all learn years to be but they have to be ready and available to access that learning and this program allows us the flexibility for students to come and go because sometimes we'll have kiddos that are on a good path and they're making progress they go in the Gen Ed and then something happens and they kind of take a step backward they need a place to go in the meantime and
047this this program will afford that with minimal demands on spacing I'll need one extra classroom at the primary school one extra at CIS and then uh you know looking at creative options potentially even the ability to share some spacing at the middle and high school through our learning lab but that's where those bottom numbers come from and the little ass Earth those are students that are currently here they're just being programmed for in a different model right now so total students estimate wise uh that will benefit from this program we have 26th um and we're requesting those four additional certified special education teachers the repairs at a cost of just under 300 000 299 235. question Barbara can you talk about um our hope to bring back uh students who may be currently outplace yeah
048so a long-term goal uh would be that with this program in place to Pilot it next year um that we will be able to bring back at least two to three students which would well overcover the cost is closer to half a million dollars in savings we're able to do that um so not sure that that would happen as soon as next year but I am talking about the following year so 24.25 that's something we'd love to do and then the year beyond that our goal is to make this a revenue Source where we can open up slacks to other area towns and students can join so so this has been a Board of Education wish list for years Mr scheidler has talked about it in the past and Ford Finance member Andrew laid labor
049he had called that special meeting to see what we can do about special education so this is this is a uh this is a bit of an investment with it with a pretty good Roi at the end of the day so um the only question I have is so I I see the the addition of Staff would there be any reduction in staff because of these is there some offset or net net that comes out of this potentially so I appreciate the question and that's something that I would take a really close look at next year uh to see right now as it stands I'm not comfortable saying yes but that would be something that we'd look for down down the road 425 budget so we kind of absolutely make this investment yes talk to
050the board of Finance about what this investment can do something that they've been looking for you know how this can help us reduce special education costs by limiting the number of outplacements yes questions Joe yeah I'm delighted with the concept uh I think there's a step in the right direction the couple of quick questions there's 26 junctures you're envisioning being involved next year uh they're all currently in District yes um would it be possible that some may wind up we don't have this program being out of this absolutely um the room you mentioned the classroom in church where the classroom at cas ual Middle School same space concerns or uh so that to be completely transparent I'm still working out so I'm working with Mr Bishop on taking a look at space and what that
051could look like I've been creative at the middle in high school and wondering if there's an opportunity to use some of the current spacing that we have within special education to share space so it wouldn't be an additional room there but there's always a potential that I might Circle back on that and say actually we need to look at a different a different space for that as well so we're in the very beginning stages in terms of identifying space um but I'm pretty confident that we're going to be able to to get the space we need at Cherry Brook and CIS for next year for next year I'd also be concerned about the following year because while there's there may well be a classroom available at church but next year the following year is anybody's
052guess right and I assume to be successful you need space yes particularly at Cherry Brook and CIS yes so I guess I guess I'd ask you and John to look at that we need to be thoughtful in our planning for that absolutely we need to make sure that sustainable over time um so I don't know if you want to add to your comments but while I look at our projections going forward and the um the required the required space need for that we've been in conversation all along with this to be able to say our capped for Need for space is going to look like X Y and Z based on program but also based on classroom they need so we're taking that into account as we're working with us it would be a shame
053to get this off the ground next year and then out of a place for it it's a Halloween this has got to be sustainable for us and that's what we're what we're we're working hard on and I had the same question that Lou had in terms of you're going to add three ABA trained parents which is very important in their training yes which should relieve pressure on cairo's and especially teachers and possibly we might not need all those patterns it's possible it's possible but I I would caution that we just pause and leave our resources in place for this year to be certain we um have been very stretched but Staffing there are shortages and it hesitant to make a change on that I want to make sure that we have what we need and
054that's that's really important it's all about these programs in order to keep them going and sustainable it's about the staff that you put in place so I couldn't agree more yeah so I I will make good on my word and look at that and analyze that in the future um um like 24 25 25 26 and hope that we can find efficiencies in the training for the parents which is crucial you can put that in the budget too someplace so that's kind of as you said earlier baked in to contracted services within special education we have contracts with our behavioral consultants and part of the bcba's job is oversight in training for our parents so that that cost is is already accounted for so it's not an additional boom I think it's a great way
055to go so English success thank you any other questions can I have a question yeah um just looking at the the learning lab teacher editions that all of the schools and then the structured literacy special ed teacher yeah I'm just wondering knowing that we already have a literacy specialist in Cherry Grove why there would be a need for a question an additional one yes I appreciate that question but still what we are seeing at Cherry Brook um and throughout our our elementary level is we have a significant um more than half of our identified students are presenting with sld sld dyslexia so there is a need for investing in our staff for training and structured literacy specifically Orton Gillingham which is a special um philosophical approach and best practice for teaching reading to students with
056disabilities so it hits at the heart of that learner academic need and foundational reading and we believe that if we intensify our services at the foundational level and can hit through our multi-tiered systems and Regular Ad so here's one two and three and then give that extra you know extra ounce of of support through special education um that we're going to be making really solid gains because our goal is we want to have all of our kids on greeting breathing on grade level by the end of third grade so we need to close that Gap that we have for our Learners in investing at the primary level is where we need to kind of place those bets foreign budget resources in special land because of various issues and challenges so are we being properly staffed
057at this point I hear you saying are we a proper Staffing level based on what you've identified as our needs we are working toward it actively so we should have proper Staffing levels but because of Staffing shortages and I believe we've talked about in the past we hire a para and another one leaves we have ongoing para support needs for yeah so so there are still openings at that level um and so what we've done to try and triage some of that as we've contracted out with crack and delta T and some other staffing agencies all Point care and Allied Staffing to help fill those support needs um so we're we're actively working on it but it is it's just something that's that's always in motion so when I hear that we're working with outside
058placement companies there's fees for that yet we're placing pairs in a very I mean we're minimum wage for our pairs if we just went up on on on what we were paying our pairs we wouldn't need outside placement agencies because we're getting picked off by a minimum wage is at 16 and I heard that Avon's offering 19 to start so that that's that's the dilemma I think we have I mean we're paying placement costs and if we just took those placement costs and we paid our pairs what they deserved we would have less turnover and we wouldn't be fighting this battle all the time but I guess that's a question for another today with me there's something for our negotiations committed to um you bring a ballot points okay thank you I just wanted to
059be validated but yes you did okay all right let's keep moving thank you for that presentation excellent thank you Barbara um I always want to be transparent uh with the board in the community about the use of Grant funds um what I've listed on the next slide are um what we're using from the open Choice attendance Grant um the philosophy is that we use Choice attendance grant funding to um to support the majority of the students in our district so we traditionally use that funding to offset the cost of educational technology technology replacement Equipment Technology infrastructure we pay for our Magnet School tuition costs which we're projecting to be about a hundred thousand next year and for newer board members um this is an unfunded mandate where citizens have the right to send a child
060to a Hartford area magnet school if there are seats available there's a lottery in some cases but the local Board of Ed is required to pay the tuition to to attend that magazine the state pays a portion of it then the Board of Ed needs to pay the other portion we never know how many students will be in a magnet school until August but we need to plan for it so our tuition has been between 85 000 and 100 000 per year that money has always come from the open Choice Grant and then we also have salaries for our non-certified special education staff who are working with um Choice students coming from this grant also so we're looking at using 1.1 million dollars of the choice grant funding for these purposes now a Community member
061requested at the last Town Board of Finance meeting that the Board of Education be very transparent with all of its grant funding which is why the spreadsheet you have is so comprehensive on this budget spreadsheet that shows every line item of our budget you will see various columns showing all of the grants that we have so we have in the third column from the left we have what's called our surname ARP is American Rescue plan um this is the funding that the Biden Administration uh um gave to school districts in towns and we have until 2024 to spend that grant funding you can see where that grant funding is going in that College then we have the open Choice attendance Grant which I just spoke about and then moving to the right we have the
062open choice this is an acronym a-s-s-g academic support Grant I don't know what that other apps academic and social okay academic Student Success Grant and then we have title grants which are awarded to US based upon student need student poverty level students at a pre and reduced lunch so we get certain title funds that need to go for academic support so we use those funds to support salaries of our teachers and tutors we're also billing for Medicaid which you have heard about and so you can see where that funding is going and then we have our special education grants the idea grants um and um we have the sr3 which is another American Rescue plan grant that we received and then a forty thousand dollar Grant we receive from crack that we're using to offset
063again non-certified staff so we couldn't be more transparent with this spreadsheet every grant that we have every dollar that we have in our grants to use we're using to fund this budget so that was the high level look at the budget like I said every line item is listed here you can look at the increase over last year and um we'll finance committee will have the backup for all of these line items and we're happy to provide each of you with a thick binder with all of the budget information if you'd like but we didn't want to assume that you would want that big one so if you're not on finance committee and you like that binder just let down and we also have it the ability to just put it all uh electronically do
064you still have the information so just let me know what you want um which is better for you so again I thank the administrators I thank Donna and John for all of your hard work and collaborating to make the difficult decisions that had to be made realistically we knew we couldn't fund everything be fiscally responsible at the same time because of our fixed Costa shareit and may I asked a question even so he said you weeks of going through this what do we miss it are we missing anything I mean you did a good job getting it to where it is Jeff you satisfied I mean eight hundred thousand dollars was coming right so there are ideas out there about how we can move forward and invest and none of those are bad ideas my
065no one here was proposing anything irresponsible of course but we also have to play with the parameters within which were presented and I am completely supportive of these as the priority areas and expenditures so given where we're at these are the Right Moves to make but I've got great ideas for next year don't worry I'm going to save them and come right back like you can have this year's memo next year I'll just change your name so what I just want to add to what Jeff is saying what Jeff isn't saying is that um he proposed some new positions um which would allow the Middle School to operate on a different schedule because right now we share positions between the high school and the middle school so Jeff is being Progressive has worked uh diligently
066with the staff over the course of the year to look at what a different schedule might look like um he's going to come back to you next year with a proposal to add the staff this year just didn't seem like the right time to do it um Jeff will tell you he wanted those staff members okay tell us why about goddess Springs but we also as Jeff and I talked known that Jeff will have an improved schedule next year with the resources that we have available but he'll come back to you for the 24-25 budget um in a very thoughtful way and how to change the middle school schedule and Jeff you can add to that no good work is ever in vain right so we've had good people working for a long time on
067what we need and I presented you through my annual report what some of those key areas are a lot of those good lessons and insight and focus areas are not dependent upon Personnel or special expenditures we'll take the good ideas and we'll Implement those and we'll keep getting better and then as we can and when we can make a request additional people allows additional flexibilities to dive even deeper so we'll take the good ideas and we'll run to those and we'll make things better right now and next year and then we'll build it as we as we can you've done a good job planting the seeds about the scheduling change we've been hearing about that like to hear more about it in the spring again and keep watering those seeds so we'll do it yeah
068I'm surprised to hear that that was I I was under the impression for curriculum that that was one of the top priorities for the middle school so that would be an additional 80 000. you could always put it back in but you know these are the difficult decisions yeah the the priority of adjustment around time and efforts to be able to support students however is not off the table and we will be bringing that to the um uh curriculum committee as well to be able to share we may not have these resources to be able to enact this plan but we'll have another plan in place you have a plan B for everything to be able to work through and the work that you and your team have been able to do have helped to
069be able to um and I think you said as well realize the opportunities that are in front of us right now to be able to keep building for the future so we're not standing Pat Erica with where we have them because that's not a spot that we can be fruit what do you think I would just everyone reiterate you know knowing that the constraints that we're all working in and everyone trying to make the right decision with what we have you know I know there are a few things that grew and I've been looking at but I think I'm pretty excited about some of the stuff that's still in this I'm very excited about the surprise program and thinking about what impact I could have even on other pieces that we haven't even talked about
070our Academy program and kind of the repercussions there and like them too you know we're talking about the math intervention this is a middle school in high school will absolutely benefit from that so um just knowing with what we're working in but there's you know there's a couple good pieces on the table that have been hold on to so many business thank you Jim I would ask you in the world if I could but um no so again we have these uh grammars that we have to abide by and um I appreciate the things that did add in the budget for this year for athletics so thank you for uh presenting that and proposing that to the board of Finance are there any final comments on your side um only that I'm incredibly grateful uh
071to the this board and the board of Finance for being receptive the idea of the addition of this of the Thrive program in this District I think is going to do wonderful thing thanks for our children thank you I'd love to say that the 7.9 budget would survive but it's not most likely and then one percent equals 290 000. let me say you're 333 300 000. so it'll be up to this board and what I would uh leave this board with tonight is for you to just consider everything you've heard tonight and then on the 14th I'd like to take up a deeper dive on this you can um you can formulate your questions to come back to the superintendent about um you can formulate where you think this budget should be um and and
072I'm ready to Advocate and fight for whatever this board thinks we need to be at and if it's 7.9 at 7.9 but um I'm also realistic on having worked with the board of Finance over a number of years um they're going to need a little bit more information in order to be able to uh maintain this so um I would ask everybody online just to come back with your questions come back to where you think we should be based on your experiences and what you think is reasonable I've often told the superintendent I said your job is to come in here and tell us what we need to be thriving to be growing uh and to be moving forward and then it's our job to go off and make that happen so I think Kevin
073I just want to compliment you with Donna and the whole team on what you've done and what you've put together because you've you've been fiscally responsible um it's great to see that you're not demoralized that you're it just really makes me feel good that you're thankful and grateful for what you have and where you're going with this and see the smiles so I think we appreciate that as a board of education and you inspire us to go out there and fight for what you need so thank you for all that work John and then to mention YouTube so um any questions anything that's on your mind tonight I just feel obligated to say Jeff I'm disappointed that you're standing request didn't make the cut because I think they could make a um a significant difference
074for you hopefully the year after okay and I appreciate your support board members online anything that you would like to say mention question are you good um I just to Echo what Joe was saying I too was thinking that the schedule change was going to be something that would end up there as well for Middle School okay any other any other questions comments education yeah thanks for listening and for your questions emotional adjourn how's she doing here today thank you Russell all those in favor let's call it unanimous okay we're insurance