Board of Education 1-21-25

001hello okay good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the second session of the public budget review um this evening's agenda will cover instructional expenses for special education services um curriculum overview Support Services maintenance and operations including capital budget so um at this time if you would please uh Miss jinsky roll call here here thank you can you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and with liberty and justice for all if you can remain standing um I'm going to ask Dr Solen to give us some words for a moment in silence um good evening everybody uh over the weekend we learned of the passing of a member of the treasure High

002School class of 2025 her name is Adana Donovan she um unfortunately was diagnosed with cancer in September and uh fought valiantly throughout the school year here uh unfortunately succumbing to that illness um this past weekend um so it's obviously with a heavy heart that we start our meeting this evening but I'm going to ask you to join me and keeping Adana and her family in your thoughts this evening uh and prayer for their family thank you thank you okay I am going to um pass this over to Dr herrian Who will begin our budget review thanks for coming everyone one I assume you're all here to cheer on Robin an excellent uh as um as Sam said we are on our second uh public review public budget review session and uh I'm GNA pass it

003to Mr Mariana to get us started here he has all the Powerpoints so he's in charge thank you Dr harrian good evening welcome ladies and gentlemen uh yes so tonight we're going to just jump right in you know I do have a goal tonight to complete the presentation of the budget it's a little bit aggressive so the agenda for tonight I'm going to jump right in here it does include uh instructional expense there'll be a presentation by uh Robin an Cary on special education services Marlene Solano will present curriculum instruction and then we'll go through Support Services maintenance and operations and then uh Dr Solen will conclude the uh presentation of the workshops so just to um review and and highlight the budget assumptions that we have built into this 2526 budget includes a projection

004of net enrollment growth of 70 students we know that special education along with that en growth the needs are growing so in this budget which you'll hear a little bit more about tonight we are adding a uh 05 school counselor and two positions for speech and language pathologist assistance and then on the certified side for curriculum and instruction there's a Grade 9 through 12 s science and math coordinator and a K8 healthed District art wide teacher and a 05 t- Sal teacher we talked about medic IAL benefits at a meeting last week at length I do have some follow-up items that were questions that I'll be talking about in a minute and then an increase in our operations and maintenance budget which you'll be hearing more about so the assumptions obviously haven't changed the budget

005request is here as you see this year's budget request is 7.09% an increase of 6.35 million to the 95 million 892 631 that is the superintendent's recommendation so we're going to go backwards a little bit to respond to some of the questions that were asked at our meeting on the 14th uh this what you're seeing on the screen is a page from a report that Signum made in November it's called a total health Insight report this is combined for the town of chesher and the chesher Board of Ed and this is just one page of a you know very extensive report that gives us all types of statistics and Analysis on our medical claims and the spend that we had this is for the um 23 24 plan year so one of the questions that

006came up and you'll see that it's circled you know here on the top right is the average age of our um the people that are being served by our by our medical benefits and this is town and bard of Ed combined and you'll see that there's a total of 1814 members so that's not employees but that's also spouses and dependence and you'll see the average age is 36.2 years that Norm 39.7 is for similar size municipalities and Boards of Ed so we do skew younger I will tell you from the report that we received the previous year the average age was closer to 37 uh and the norm age was 40 so um our enroles are moving and trending towards a younger age so that was one of the questions that came up um the

007next question had to do with gop1 um Pharmacy prescription claims and um just coincidentally in the report that siga made to us in November they did highlight OIC which is one of the gop1 uh drugs there they are prescribed primarily to to treat diabetes although there is a a trend to move this class of drug to treat obesity which improves overall health you'll see in the next slide which is I'm not going to spend a lot of time on but the reason that this was highlighted by Sigma is that there was a significant increase in the number of prescriptions from last year to this year from 174 to 309 we had 26 enroles that were prescribed that drug last year it increased 42 in the current year so it's a 77.6% increase and here is

008uh the Highlight that that prescription drug is $872 71 so it is a high cost pharmaceutical and this is just OIC there are other drugs in this uh drug class but that is an increasing Trend that we've seen inside our medical claims and it's not surprising it's happening all across uh the country and this is I just put this in here just as a piece of information but you know siga does have a program um that's dedicated to address the demand and the growth for gop1 drugs um so the stats here I I thought were interesting and we're in 42% of adults in the United States are obese um because of that obesity the average claim is about $1,861 higher per year um and just a 5% weight loss can decrease the risk of chronic

009diseases related to obesity which includes diabetes so you know there is a you know Trend to prescribing this drug because it does help improve People's Health Health you know especially those that are in the obese category so that's just some some information that's above and beyond what was asked at our meeting last week the other question that came up had to do with our per pupil spending so we added some additional information this evening this is our durby right this is all the school districts in Connecticut with the same socioeconomic U factors um you see chesher here is on the you know lower end at 20,158 uh up at the top is reading with a per pupil expenditure of 28,000 again these are looking at it from a durg b perspective if we look at

010it and I believe this was part of the question that was asked if we look at it instead of by dur B if we look at it based on the enrollment of the school district so this is not just dur B this list is STO sorted by enrollment has treasure at students again this is as of 2324 um here has Darian at 4600 students nogat at table are within about a thousand students of chesher yeah so just eyeballing it it looks like the low is about New London at 3,100 and then on the upper end Milford 5300 but again if if it's sorted by PPE but these are all similar size enrollment Cheshire Trends towards the lower end you know based on that type of a of a view um and then kind of moving

011off a little bit from the uh per pupil expenditures you know one of the um other questions that came up had to do with you know budget and how we rank related to other school districts this is again dur B this is this year's actual budget for each of these districts so um chest's excuse me uh South wind's adopted budget was a 7.21% increase you see cheser is right in the middle of the pack at 535 and on the low end is New Town Public Schools so you know we rank right in the middle in terms of budget increase this year did you want to add something to that Jeff generally speaking the districts toward the top not surprisingly are those that are seeing more growing enrollment I think New Towns enrollment fell by 72

012students or something last year so th those at the bottom are seeing a little bit of a decline in enrollment generally speaking and then this is really early data this is the districts that have reported superintendent recommended budget increases um in dur B so you could see there's probably about half of durg B is reporting their budget increases so far you know chesher is at 7.09 the average excluding chesher is 5.33 but there are districts that you know will continue to come in so you know I I would expect that all these districts are dealing with the same thing we are from the point of view that inflation has increased the cost of of everything we do and that includes wage inflation um but also Cheshire our enrollment is growing which is another Factor that's

013putting um you know requirement for us to increase our budget a bit further maybe than the other dir be districts that may not be growing um you'll notice that South Windsor is not on here South Windsor you know has been one of the fastest if not the fastest growing district from an enrollment point of view so we'll see you know what they look like when their numbers come in teacher contract to the other factor that we just settled our teacher contract that'll impact us next year where others may have already settled and aren't seeing the they saw the jump last year um where we're experiencing it for the first time this year okay so that wraps up the questions from last meeting we're going to just move right into instructional expense and again as in

014the past you know members of the Board of Ed if there are questions as we go along um just go ahead and fire away uh so this budget section that we're going to review next is instructional expense and instructional expense is our non-payroll instructional expense just to be clear obviously the cost of instruction and and salaries for administrators and teachers and other staff we covered that on at last week's Tuesday night meeting so our non-payroll instructional expense the budget request this year is 5455 million you could see from last year it represented 5.7% of the budget and the request for this new budget also was 5.7% of our budget in total uh 64% of this instructional expense line is for special education outplaced tuition for students who we cannot serve their needs within our district

015um or the cost of Consulting and related services that we provide to those students um when you get Beyond those two items 11% of the budget request or 11% of this this total budget line is for for instructional Supply another uh 8% or so is for textbook software curriculum and then new and replacement equipment is about 6% in total 300,000 and you could see the rest of of those lines are a smaller percentage of this particular budget line I'm going to just highlight this is a page right out of the budget book so just to highlight quickly the the larger dollar cost items um our outplaced tuition is expected to grow based on you know increasing enrollment in those students who we cannot serve in District and you know as Miss Carrie will point out

016we do a really good job in District of of keeping our students here if we could provide the services that we need and Dr Solen and I we're we're looking across a list of other districts today and you know on a relative basis we do have very few students out plac as compared to other districts of similar size so that's a good thing um the uh reason it that it needs to increase again has to do you know with the number of students and also the cost of those outplaced facilities um you'll see that the next largest increase is for our replacement and new equipment line we're requesting an increase from 18750 to 150,000 again we know that we need to you know invest more in in furniture and equipment in the schools that were

017you know um going to be keeping we know that in two years we have a couple of school buildings you know Chapman and Darcy in particular as well as Norton they're going offline but we believe that we've been a little bit short in in funding this budget line because of budget pressures the last couple of years so we'd like to increase those line items you know back up to the levels that they used to be the 150,000 so as a total increase request is 6.57% we're going to now start to focus our attention on special education costs what this um chart represents is the total special education cost including our teacher salaries our par Professionals for the 2425 this budget year the total cost for special education is 22.3 ion we're looking to increase that

018to about 23.3 million next year you'll see that the uh special education cost as a percentage of our budget is between 24 and 25% historically so that's not changing on a percentage basis for next year um and right here you could see that our growth as our enrollment has grown um our special education enrollment has grown actually more rapidly on a percentage basis than the general education population so um about 16.1% of our students next year are projected to be special education students and to give you some more detail about that I will ask Miss Carrie to come forward and present you ready Robin get you going here forward and that's the the little zapper zapper okay okay good evening uh I'm happy to be here tonight to present to you our special ed budget

019um it also gives me a great opportunity to highlight some of the wonderful things that we're doing in District and all the hard work that our staff has um been doing to support our students with special needs so I want to start off with just recapping some of the things that have happened in our um Department um some of the enhancements that we've had in our department since 2020 um most of you are aware that we added two intensive education classrooms at Norton school over the past two years those classrooms traditionally hold about eight students they work one to one majority of the students are on the autism spectrum and require that intensive support in order to make gains we have three classrooms at Highland School that were chalk full um and we really did

020need these um additional classes and it also allows those students to be uh closer to their neighborhood uh and their School of of their original School of origin um so we have a program on one on both sides of town um so we have the five elementary intensive Ed classrooms that feed into the dod classroom and then there are two classrooms at the high school and then we have our transition programs for our 18 to 22 year old students that all um address the needs of our more more intensive students we did add a speech pathologist in 22 um the majority of the funding for that speech path just comes out of the Ida grant our Ida Grant funds you most of those funds are something like 90% of the funds go towards salaries there's

021not a lot left over um to then you know add some additional things um because it is majority of it is dedicated towards salary and that was how we were able to add that speech pathologist in 20120 we added a halftime board certified Behavior Analysis you'll hear me refer to that as a b CBA um we had two in the district and with the growing numbers and the growing intensive population uh we really needed to increase the um increase the time of uh and adding that more time of a bcba in 20123 we adjusted some things at the high school and we implemented our new program called the Aspire program uh that program it has four special ed teachers dedicated to it of which each one covers uh a a a grade A grade level

022and then there's a full-time dedicated social worker that works with those students the Aspire program at the high school is really an extension of our bridges program if you've heard me speak of that before it's our therapeutic uh program that helps students that may be impacted by anxiety or by trauma they're having a very difficult time in functioning in a school setting and in some cases being in that classroom and so um we extended that into the high school with our Aspire program and we're seeing really great results from that um we did add a transition coordinator in 2023 that was required by state regulations we had to have a transition coordinator uh that had to be in place by last July we already put it in place knowing that we had a need there

023and she has been helping to support our students in the high school as well as in our transition programs and this year is shifting a little Focus down to DOD because we do need to provide transition services for students 14 and older that have um special needs and identified with a disability at the high school we expanded our integrated academic enrichment program this program is great for um allowing or helping our students with intense needs that need to practice their social skills um many of them have lots of interest in various topic and by being part of the integrated academic enrichment class they have that opportunity to work with um gened students and while also studying and participating in various tasks and various um activities around science topics social studies topics and things like that

024um and then we have our specialized transition programs uh we have our two programs um one located at the high school it's the Community Life program and the bridge to Life program which is located on the Q U campus the quinia campus um those programs really focus on building our students um employment skills and giving them opportunities to go out into the community and practice those employment skills um so that they may someday be uh once they leave us and they're being supported by DDS they can be in a supported employment um position um also we focus on our community Life program not just on building daily living skills uh but also working on um their Community skills so they spend a lot of time going out into the community visiting various um businesses practicing

025at restaurants working in some in some cases working or completing tasks in various businesses in town um so those are our two specialized transition programs and in those programs our students are 18 uh till 20 to 22 so would you believe if I told you that this is one of my favorite nights it might not look it on my face but it is one of my favorite nights because it's an opportunity for me to really um uh thank our staff our administrators our parents and um and our the people in our department um for all the hard work that they do because I wouldn't be talking about celebrations um if it wasn't for all the hard work that they do and so I just really like to this opportunity to be able to share in

026their accomplishments their accomplishments that they um you know are able to do every single day those small accomplishments getting someone to do something or to finally Master a skill or or even performance scale um independently um but these are some of the highlights that we have that are more on the bigger scale so both chesher high school and Highland were recognized nationally for the Unified sports program our DU little best buddies program was recognized as an outstanding chapter across the United States um and our ESA scores continue to be very impressive um we were 14th best overall espa performance in Connecticut for identified students and fourth best of all in our durg dur be so that's really uh exciting exciting news so for the past couple years um we have aligned our focus with the

027overarching district focus on complex learning and social emotional but we're looking at it through that special education lens um we started off really focusing on Executive function skills um and if you don't recall what those are um we're looking at those organization time management self-regulation attention and focus task initiation working memory flexible thinking and impulse control so all of those skills are very important to a student being successful and independent um we have also added um looking uh deeply at specially designed instruction um specially designed instruction is designed to Target specific skills that are identified as deficits so it's really honing in and targeting in on those skills that are preventing our students from being successful in the gened curriculum um we have also added to our Focus on increasing time with non-disabled peers and

028we're doing this very uh thoughtfully it's not just putting students into classrooms we know that doesn't work there's lots of things that um we have to look at in order to make that successful so we're targeting we're looking at those students with disabilities that typically we find they have average to above average intelligence uh average to above average cognitive skills and um we know that allowing those students to have access to the gened instruction and focusing on not modifying the curriculum or the tasks but placing more emphasis on accommodations and providing specialized instruction that's going to Target the gaps so part of the reason one of the big um pushes that we we've tried to help our staff to come along and understand is we don't want to modify the task we don't want to

029modify the um information that we're providing for students because when we then are asking them to perform on a state mandated test we haven't given them the tools or expose them to the skills that they need in order to be successful on them so what we have to do is look at what are the barriers that are getting in the way for them provide them with the appropriate accommodations um that they may need and then Target The Gap so that we can give them the skill to be independent in performing on those tasks we're actually already seeing some promising results in our benchmark assessments some of you may recall this uh slide that I took out uh basically the the saying or our Mantra I guess you would say um you can't teach a child

030to swim by taking them out of the pool and that's really something that's near and dear to us uh on how important it is for students to be able to have access uh in the gened setting okay so when we started looking at increasing time with non-disabled peers we all agreed that the majority of our students are average to above average cognitive abilities we all agreed that General Ed teachers are the experts in curriculum and that special education provides targeted specialized instruction to address the barriers that get in the way of learning and we all agreed that the important pieces we need as special Educators is that we need to address the gaps so students can master all standards so we started to ask ourselves some questions and we and we work a lot with

031staff in looking at these questions and developing our ideas and our strategies so what Universal supports and accommodations can be provided in the classroom what is specialized instruction who can provide it how much time is specialized instruction actually taking place and what accommodations can we use that are not person dependent so these questions have kind of helped guide us as we look at and develop our programs and develop our IEPs and look at um providing the necessary supports for our students these questions and these thoughts tap into the true me the true idea behind the special education law idea it was the law was never intent for us to take children out of the classroom and and move them into separate settings there are always going to be some students that need that but the

032majority of our students should not have to or require that type of intense um intense instruction or intense um taking them out of the gened setting for that instruction there are lots of ways we can support them okay challenges I you know I know we're all dealing with a lot of challenges um so some of them that are impacting Us in special education is the Staffing shortage um and I want to point out that the shortage I know we had a conversation at last week about Paras but we're not only shorten Paras we're also shorten certified staff um lots of districts currently are struggling with finding certified staff um to fill their open positions we're fortunate no we still have a position that's wide open since September um have not been able to find um

033a a a a candidate for that position um but I think that one of the things that I'm F we're finding is that there isn't a pool of people to choose from there's a puddle and we're all vying for the people coming out of that puddle and so you have some staff that is moving from one District to another in some cases we've lost staff because they're moving closer to home they've been traveling for a time now for 45 minutes to an hour to come to chure and something has opened up closer to home and they for their families they've made those choices um since 2020 as pointed out in Vinnie's slide just a few minutes ago we have seen an increase of about 150 more students with IEPs um so we've gone from 12.7%

034in 2020 to around 16% of our student population is students with IEPs we've seen an increase in the volume of students that U requiring 504 plans um that is around 10% of our population has a 504 plan we're seeing that increase in the outof district um not necessarily so much the number of students cuz we've varied we've hovered around 20 but the cost of that program has gone up tremendously and the trends that we're seeing are any different than any of the other districts in the state it's taking us much longer to find staff um and so you know you know it's a it's difficult to then try to meet the needs of the students we're we're filling in with subs or we're shifting case loads um but hopefully those positions will all be filled

035we're seeing an increase in student needs so as I said about 16% of our students have IEPs um and part of why that number may have gone up along with the fact that we have more General Ed population so we're going to have more special ed population it's growing around the same rate but in July 1 of 2023 the new regulation came out that we now had to educate our students up through the age of 22 so prior to that once a student turned 21 they were a they were then um they then left the district they were wed their their diploma and they went into um Adult Services then they changed the the age to 22 and as soon as that child turned 22 on their 22nd birthday they would then exit the program

036and then they changed it that no they're going to stay for the remainder of the Year and that starts in July so if they turn 22 in the month of July they are entitled to another full year of Education transition Services if they turn 22 in May then they're done on the last day of school so that impacts Us in the numbers of students that are still under our umbrella and that we're still providing services so that may contribute to some of that increase as I said earlier 10% of our students have 504 plans and H because 504 is a gen a general education plan that supports students with accommodations there are times though that the recommendation may be that the student receives a support service like counseling and um there are uh students who

037have 504 plans that have counseling and some may even have like OT on their 504 plan um so now our special eded staff our support service staff is providing Services providing that counseling piece um so it does have an impact on on the department about 4% of our students are in out of District placements um as I said that usually hovers around 1920 students but um the average cost has risen to about $122,000 plus ,000 per placement um and the transportation is another $ 37 plus, thousand um for that student um we have also we are seeing an increase in students at the prek level so students are coming in with needs um from birth to three which we've always received students from birth to three but what we're also seeing is that our students

038that are coming in as our role models our peer models at some point during the course of the Year may be identified as a student in need of special services and so what we are seeing is that tipping uh in the classroom of we're not 50/50% which is what we ideally would like to see 50 % Role Models 50% students with um IEPs but we're now seeing an increase in the students because they're getting identified or referred during that prek year um we are also seeing an increase in the types of needs of those students um recently I had to contract for um consult consult services for a teacher the deaf because we have we're see seeing a growing population of students with cular air implants and needing that teacher of the deaf in direct

039instruction and also um working with the students and their their equipment so based on all of this we're requesting a0 five school counselor um as was discussed previously this school counselor is currently in place it was put into place two years ago through the ARP funds and through the me um through the ARP mental health grant that Grant expires in June of 26 so the first two years it covered 80% of the cost of the counselor and now this coming year it'll drop to 50% so that's why I'm looking for a 05 school counselor to supplement those funds don't be surprised when you see that in there next year okay so um and it's really important for us to hold on to that position because first of all the size uh with the size of

040dood dittle and how it's growing um there is a definite need for school counselor there the additional school counselor to help with that classroom instruction so the school counselors go into the classroom they develop they present that developmental um uh curriculum um to each classroom and um various units they also provide IEP counseling they also may be providing 504 counseling um they take in small groups whether you have a IEP 504 or not you can still be part of a small group if there is an identified need um they complete risk assessments so if our students are um vocal uh verbalizing um concerning remarks or or engaging in concerning actions then we want to be able to pull the student in to do a risk assessment to make sure that that they are safe um

041and also to share out that information with parents and they are also there to consult with parents and with gened teachers um in help and again helping to support those students so it it they this year they've engaged in um revising some of our our um assessments that we've been using using for those risk assessments and um an additional training in conducting those the other uh request is for the speech and language Assistance or slpas as I mentioned last week when we were getting some questions around this so an slpa is a person who is in the midst of studying to become a full bone speech path pathologist you have to have a m a bachelor and master's degree in order to be a speech and language pathologist a speech and language assistant may only

042have the bachelor's degree but they're working in many cases they're working towards that master's degree so they are able to provide small group instruction under the supervision of the speech and language pathologist they're able to push in Services into the classroom and they're able to um support the speech and language pathologist so that that pathologist can then focus on assessing students writing IEP goals and objectives attending ppts without sacrificing the time in missing their students for their direct instruction so that's what we're looking for those slps to do is provide that instruction when the SLP is not available majority of our students that come in with i that have IEPs also have speech and language needs um on so they many of them still require that we have 10 full-time school um speech and language

043Pathologists in the district right now um and some of them are shared amongst buildings based on the numbers of students requiring that um support service in their IEP um having the two speech and language assistance will allow us to place one part-time at my plan is to Place one at dittle part-time so that our Darcy speech pathologist that is helping doitt will be able to focus on Darcy we'll have two full-time speech pathologists at Darcy um then um the other one oh the other half of that person's day or week would be at Norton school when we added the two um intensive Ed programs of which many of those students get an hour week of speech and language Services we didn't add any speech time and so we are in need of having a speech

044pathologist assistant at least halftime there the other full-time speech and language pathology uh assistant would be at Highland school because I don't have to tell you about Highland you already know what's going on there very very large population um you know part of my other reasoning for looking at a speech and language assistant is that we know that speech and language pathology just are really difficult to find um it's been a shortage for quite a while um I think that if we can tap into these very talented um uh assistants who have training in in communication disorders um and in in the process of getting their master's degree um I think that um it would really benefit and be able us to kind of spread some of those um those people out a little bit

045um to help our speech and language Pathologists we're seeing a a very huge increase in use of what we call AAC devices those are augmented communication devices so most of our students use an iPad it takes a lot of time for that speech and language pathology to program add new vocabulary in there train people on using it train the student help the student um make progress on that um so with that increase of AAC devices um there absolutely is a need for more support and then I'll go back to our students with hearring impairments um they have lots of equipment that they use FM systems sound systems some have cular air implants that do need some monitoring um hearing aids a lot of This falls on the speech and language pathologist and so when you're

046seeing an increase in that number in that intensive population um it's it's really um impacting our um Pathologists okay there's one other need that I is not in the budget but I thought I would mention it our community Life program spends a lot of time out in the community um they currently they go out at least once a day you might see the van driving around town and then see a group of kids and adults getting out of the van um they do go into town to the various businesses and the various entertainment um recreational places um to meet their goals in the areas of employment training and living skills it also is to enhance their social skills and their generation generalization of these skills to other settings um currently they're using a 2016 Ford

047that seats 10 passengers um we were looking hoping to add a um at some point a Vian that seats 12 to 15 uh persons right now some of our Paras travel to the site they're not on the van with the students because we have we're full of students on the van um this will service our 18 to 20 year olds 18 to 22 year old students and then um the 2016 Ford would be re what I would say recycled and used within the district if we have a replacement van so I mention that because I think it's something that if we can um find a way to fit that into our budget once the numbers all tease out it is something that I think will enhance our programming so that's my presentation do you have

048any questions for me okay so my first question actually might be for you Jeff uh and this might just be a rhetorical question right now but uh you had mentioned the idea funding and I was thinking about Federal funding and the potential for the Department of Education to just get eliminated fund to get cut so just to um I don't think we've gotten that I mentioned it but I don't think we've gotten that information from you have you sent that out it's fine if you haven't it's just it's just a placeholder as a reminder like what money do knowledge it wasn't one of the executive orders that was signed uh to my knowledge defunding idea or anything like that wasn't one of the executive orders signed on the first day so um I mean I

049know that the legislature is aware of that in artford and cognizant of what those ramifications might mean mean for Connecticut and other states yeah I guess I guess my question is just at some point if you could tell us what the total dollars are we got for federal funding this year that's in the uh budget book under Revenue yeah right on the revenue page is one of the grants of budget b 93 state federal grants so for uh estimated 256 Ida would be $1 million yeah it's a significant amount of money yeah but that's there's there's other F there's other funding Federal funding sources Beyond idea right but that's by far the biggest gr the others are much smaller than that and I will tell you that the federal government would eliminate idea you know

050while the impact of ches is a million it would crush get a lot more money than and that's a Federal grant that the state it's passed through the state so every school system in America for the mo nearly every school system in America would be substantially impacted by that decision yeah and I'm not putting anything out of the realm of possibility right now right so anyway that was but all the all the grants that we have are in that Grant section of the back of the book on page one there it's got the history from 2016 to projected for next year thank you um oh so you had mentioned you were talking about how the age for students had increased over the course of a couple years with the dates changing I'm just curious you

051also mentioned Adult Services yes who funds Adult Services is that TR Public Schools or state no that would be the state okay so that's like um DDS and BRS um and I'm I'm sorry about the acronyms the Bureau of Rehabilitation Services and the Department of Developmental Services um so our students that might have intellectual disabilities or on or on the autism spectrum would qualify for services um through DDS and many of them and then many of uh our students that um require more support in the employment looking at more like employment would BRS would be an area that would um support them but parents have to apply for that and we do a very very good job of I think of um educating our parents on how to access those funds we actually just um

052just put up our transition page if you on the website that highlights um what the law says and then what are some resources there that um are helpful for parents in being able to access um those Services once they leave us and we also um Jessica mbaka our transition coordinator um has been putting on um parent information nights where we've had um those Adult Services come in um and have we've had um an agency Fair where parents could come in and speak to various agencies that provide Adult Services across the state we've had um attorneys come in and speak about how they can um set up trust funds for their children um and um and any kind of other legal um advice that they might need um so we're we're doing what we can to

053help ease that transition into the Adult Services thank you thank you for that I am you just were talking about it you know moving from Adult Services out of a state budget into the CPS budget I'm just curious would if that was a choice that you were making is that a choice that you would have made over the last couple years to be moving it from the state budget to the town budget you mean like the age changing the age so that services that are provided by you versus provided by the state because I'm a little cynical and I'm thinking oh let's just reduce the state funding and ship this over to the town I'm but I don't know that that's the case that's why I'm asking you from a professional perspective is that a

054choice that you would have made take the budgetary impact out of it I I I'm hoping I'm understanding what you're asking um but um I think that chure provides phenomenal services for our students and I think you know um that when parents do move into Adult Services because they don't have a choice but it they students leave us at some point um they um find it difficult first of all to maneuver through that process it's a it's a very cumbersome process it's um it's new to them so that makes it difficult um and um and I think that you know they experience some frustrations in finding just the right fit of a program and um they may find a program they really like and then find out it's not available because it's full so and

055I think when they CH in my opinion when they change the um exit date to for everybody to be on the last day of school now you've got a pool of people all trying inv vying for placements at the same time whereas before it was kind of staggered so you turned 21 you turned 21 you went to Adult Services if my birthday was in December December 15th I was in Adult Services December 16th if everything was in place for me whereas now everybody goes in June okay thank you thank you um and two other points that I think are um kind of related that I've I've asked about in the past which is um the percent is increasing and I'm wondering why is it you've said in the last couple years you said better identification

056special but so I'm just speaking generally about about that and then also in general about kids moving in and out so is this just you know a continuous increase with kids moving in or there kids who are moving out of special ed services I didn't hear you mention anything about that tonight well yes we do have students that um exit from special ed okay um and but I think that um we always start lower in October okay so like when we Comm in in October we've had our now our seniors have graduated our students that have reached 22 have left there may have been students over across of the school year that have mastered their goals and objectives that no longer qualify for special ed services and are exited we come in we do a

057count in no we're required to do an October 1st count by the end of the year that count has increased because now there are additional students being identified additional students moving into the district um so there's various reasons but you also you also do have kids who move out of the move out of special ed on a regular basis throughout the year and yes we do have students that exit what is I'm curious what's the what's the percent of kids who exit and I'm just saying real generally just a guess I I I think that's really hard to say okay I think I I really um I mean you said you have you have what the numbers in my mind we've got 4,500 kids in the school system right now give or take and you

058said I thought you said we have about 500 kids with IEPs which is the broader number the more expens 600 600 plus so of of those 600 kids would it be like two or three or a few dozen a hundred and just a sort of a general number like across years um well we always lose you're going to lose that graduating class which is typically Mar could probably help me out in this 4550 students graduate that have IEPs typically yeah and then we we can lose anywhere uh we can graduate anywhere from 1 to five in our transition programs it varies year to year um and then students exiting um because they've mastered their goals and objectives um you know typically we see they might start out with uh more intense services and then we

059okay start to reduce those Services as we see them become more independent and then um and then it's a matter of whether they're able to meet meet standards whether they're they're scoring in the average range they might still have a disability but they're not showing that Gap yep so then we're able to then then they don't need the specialized instruction anymore and we're able to exit them um I don't know how many that would be a year our supervisors attend most of the ppts and so to our um administrators our building administrators principles thank you yeah no and I appreciate you explaining the part about how it's not necessarily exiting but reducing reduction yeah for some disabilities um we may get there or some cases where a student might no longer requireed specialized instructions so

060they don't need the IEP but they move to a 504 because there's still a disability that's impacting them but they just need accommodations which they can get through a 50 plan thank you okay I that hope that was clear as mud no I I think I I I got out of it what I was hoping to get out of it thank you okay any other questions um you had mentioned about obviously the need to have our students with disabilities mainstreamed or in the gened as much as possible would you know out of the 16% and if you don't you can just let me know what percentage spends more than 50% of their day in special ed that is a very good question and I try to look that up because um it's really important because

061that's our Focus that's one of our focuses to increase that um I wasn't able to find any updated numbers but what I did um what I what did um happen was recently in the springtime uh the supervisors Marie and Christina and I were at a um workshop and we were um identif ified as one of the districts that was um recognized as increasing their time with non-disabled peers so it is something that I need to dig deeper see if I can get those numbers um what's on the website right now only goes up to 2023 he just pulled it up did he pull it up it's old though yeah it's 234 and it's uh you asked for more than 50% the state identifies the percentage 79 spending 79% or more time with non-disabled peers for

062all disability counts the um prevalence is 66% of students do that's that's the Statewide average uh the chesher average is was around 6667 I think for the 234 school year uh is 65.9 y so when that came through and we saw that the state average was 66 and we were at what 63 65.9 65 just below we didn't like that so so that's when we shifted and added that time with non-disabled Focus the pool yeah exactly learn how to swim by being in the pool exactly um and uh so um you know really looking at all of of those you know factors and and how can we support them in the classroom what is it that we need to change about our practice so that we can increase that not a lot yeah I'm good

063thank you yep Mr good evening hi um so to start um the uh five uh councelor dittle that is a cost recovery of a current position that is a position that's being supplemented right uh by a grant and that Grant will expire next so next year so ramping down it's right it's ramping down so next year it'll be 50% and that's what that's what's in this Bud that 0. five is 50% of that that one position that was used to be fully funded yes so by so next year it'll be covered by the grant 50% of it will be covered by the Grant and I'm looking to cover 50% of it in this budget okay um the uh you gave a statistic on your outpatient cost uh right I'm sorry outpatient out of District uh

064cost was was that a typo or was that that say $150,000 per student was that correct it's like it said 122,000 and then 12275 plus Transportation plus the $ 37,3 for transportation that was that's average per student per student okay just making sure um and then um lastly the uh you're asking for an additional 215,000 for out placement tuition out placement so that's well I guess now two students I guess so is that anticipated for next year or is that a precautionary ask oh it's anticipated we have we have um we have some students right now that we're looking for out of District placements but the process of finding an out of District placement has um become a lengthier process um in some cases it it it takes us more than half the school year

065to um find uh an opening of a placement that we feel is appropriate and going to meet the needs and parents are happy with too we try to work in collaboration in determining what that placement is um it's many of our placements for students that have um behavioral needs are full um I called a couple places about a week or so ago and was told that they were starting their waiting list for the 25 26 school year because they had a waiting list for this year already so there that's an anticipation of knowing that we have needs is a you know point of comparison too Adam that you know Vin mentioned that we were reviewing some of the outplacement data today uh all this stuff is dated because anytime you're pulling State data uh there's

066a lag yeah but it's been you know uh viewed and vetted and you know it's legit so um looking back to 223 school year which is the most uh recent comparative data that we have of all the durby school systems we had the second least outplaced students at nine at that time um Rocky Hill which is a a smaller District had eight um Rocky Hill has 2 200 students at that time and at the time we had um 4198 so you know we're very sensitive and we that's why we've Divi designed you hear that sticker price and it blows your socks off and we said with that same money we can give an in town experience to kids at a which is better for them uh not just from a traveling perspective but from a

067belonging perspective we can do it better uh in many cases uh at a more cost effective way so we design internal programs to do that there's a cost to that but it's it's substantially lower than what we're paying on the average outplacement cost um and for our students who are outplaced their needs are certainly more significant and we wouldn't be doing right by them uh in District so those are students who who certainly need outplacement cost but you look at you know another comparable District in terms of size to chesher like simsberry you know they had 31 outplay students at a cost of uh 4 million plus so you know I think what we've done is strategically uh for the benefits of our kids but also economically tried to provide high quality in-house programs you're

068going to see cost one way or another but I think this is a better cost uh better expenditure cost for kid outcomes and for uh and for economics um when when we explore that one more question so Robin I'm sure you know there's a special ed task force that was empowered last year and they've come out with a bunch of recommendations in one of them is they want districts to look at their neighboring districts and see if one District could provide a program for and someone else could provide you know and then you would share those students have you had an opportunity to look into that yet because I I think we'll be asked um and and the task force report is out and available it's brand new um and I don't expect you have

069to with everything else on your plate I downloaded it I mean it might be something in the future to think about yeah um because do have a good recommendation um you know yeah um you know the quu program the quu transition Bridge To Life program um when it uh was originally designed it was um with the intent that we would um have students from other districts uh pay tuition into it and and be part of that program what I have found is we have a cap on how many students quu gives us a cap on how many students we can have in that program and that cap is 12 next year we'll have 11 students in that program and the following year we'll have 10 students that so it's we've been filling our programs um

070but you know if it came to a point where we weren't filling I absolutely would work with another district and see if there was a way we could share cost um at one point uh their W wallingford's transition program was utilizing some of our space at quu and we did collaborate on that and share cost um but then we got to big and we couldn't host them anymore so I think it's a little bit as we sit here today A little bit of a catch22 because we're trying to design right siiz programs right for the students in our population uh to your point uh Miss Cullen and I think we're going to collaborate more with other districts as we forecast what is that right siiz population knowing our strengths um all right well we could

071add another section here uh potentially avoid an outplacement and collaborate with Southington and wingford for example and pull in three students and then now it's right sized for that whole population um so it's right now we haven't been designing programs with openings in mind per se aside from the qu option that we delivered the other thing is that um I know superintendent and PPS directors have been clamoring for uh the state department of Ed to review some practices adopted by other states to help kind of contain costs on outplacement and uh just today uh commissioner Russell Tucker announced that they were going to undertake that so um you know I I know this has drawn the attention of politicians across the state it's been a a long growing challenge for PPS directors districts uh and

072so we're uh optimistic hopefully that uh the legislature will do some things to help alleviate some of the stress that is caused right now Financial stress and parental stress and professional stress right it might be a good time for us to look into it too because there is supposedly some Financial backing for a district that would undertake even if it's you know a program that we we just you know try to start up and um invite other districts to participate with us but yeah right now we'd be looking at you know even Middle School is probably a little bit tight High School uh space is a little bit more available our biggest problem right now is space at the elementary K to K but um you know as we move uh there could be some

073space freed up which would be real really nice uh for programming and economics um this question really is directed to Jeff so you're off the hook for a minute um so when do we find out because I have been seeing a lot of emphasis from the state legislature um for funding more to the municipalities for the special ed programming and um I'm wondering when we when do we find that out that'll be a while um so it's it's going to be more like when our budget gets to the town right um it's not going to be something we're uh going to be apprised of until we can build into thisd yeah spring no this is spring you know um uh I'll I'll address that a little bit more when I make remarks later thank you

074Robin thank you very much I always appreciate your in-depth um analysis and presentation I just have a point of clarification um the request for the transportation does that not go into the transportation budget though for the vehicle that you stated yeah it does it's budgeted in a transportation line but it's still identified as a cost of specialed no she's talking about the van the van that was the 2016 that wasn't included in the budget no yeah no that wasn't included in this it's not included at this point right okay um and I think to uh miss Colin and's point if we can kind of get the um delineation of um I was looking at kind of year over-year first thing was to try to see how many kids without being identifiable um how many kids

075transition out versus them you know coming or being identified for special ed services so if there's some sort of um report that you can kind give us at all I think you gave it to us a couple years ago but I might I when we were seeing a lot of that growth um as the the housing developments were coming open and being occupied we were seeing a lot of that growth but um in looking at it we're also noticing that or at least I remember from that that we're not just growing in special ed we're growing in the Gen Ed population and it was pretty commensurate with that yeah I think when we're looking at the special cost year-over-year we're we're just looking at the increases and within that number from 675 to 680 this

076year or projected for next year where in between how many exited versus how many you know entered through that system so there's some way again without being identifiable I totally understand that aspect of it um and the percentage of spending uh like Miss gullin had asked in the regular Ed setting as well too if we can get that information um I I put that qu because I I somebody had already asked you but I think we do a great job trying to you know keep our kids in District as much as possible and I re recognize that you know a lot of things are driven by the IAP um which we can't control necessarily at all so um outside of that you know I love the theory and I again Express that it's theory that

077it's nice to collaborate with our neighbors but I also feel as though I don't want other districts to be dependent on us you know we have come up with some really innovative ideas and so forth so I I'm looking forward to see exactly what the state has to offer um because you know I think our services and our programming is pretty top-notch MH I agree y Mr gripple sorry I did have one more question um your predecessor used to give us a report on the mental health of the general ed students so we've talked a lot about special ed tonight but um in your professional opinion uh how is the uh mental health of our general ed students I think that our students are very well versed in coping strategies I think you know we've

078done a lot with mindfulness and talking about the different strategies taking space I think they have increased their understanding of when and how to ask for supports um I think that also um they you know our staff is getting better and better at implementing strategies um they're always looking for new ways to support students um I think their collaboration with outside providers is um they do a really great job of doing that as well um one of the things that we are we've been working on I mentioned to you are at risk assessments that we do so the data that you're talking about that um the previous director would often provide is our at risk data on threat assessments self- injury and suicide ideation and um I so I've been doing some work with our

079counselors and our school psychologists and our social workers um because in looking at that data and if you begin to drill down and tease into it um I was finding that there was first of all I think there was a misunderstanding as to when it's the time to pull out that assessment and to begin to go through that with a student um identifying those times um for those situations um some of the what I was Finding is is that students especially of the younger population will throw out and say things like uh out of anger out of losing on the playground out of being upset with their friend because they wouldn't share something and these um making statements that are concerning um and then you know we conduct our assessment so I think that some

080of that really um if you didn't know that that's what some of what was increasing some of those numbers if you didn't drill down into that then um you in some cases I think you would you would be concerned about the numbers are they really growing are they really growing or are we assessing more and more students um more frequently um even in cases where that student may be demonstrating some anger management struggles coping Str you know how to how to cope with with disappointment um so some of our training that we're doing this year is looking at those assessments we revised them our our suicide ideation form we revised it um regulations came out that uh we needed to have a screener one of which was suggested it was the Colombia screener for suicide

081ideation and so we've Incorporated that into our forms now and we're working with the staff on how do you go about using that form um what what are the situations that you would bring that form out and in using that form too we're able to quickly assess what's going on and determine this is not a viable um risk so we can then follow up with the student in a different way than I would if a student was at an extreme risk risk or something so that's where that that I felt like that data is it's it's really difficult to say it's the pure data you know what I'm saying it's clean data um and so now I'm hoping that with working with the staff in understanding when you're going to pull out those assessments under

082what circumstances how can we clean it so that we know yes we filled this out but it's not a viable situation that we need to take further steps with and yes this is a situation where we need to take further steps with um so that's what I'm hoping to do before I start looking at those numbers again so thank you you're welcome no more questions I think that's it okay up next sorry vny you told me to be quick I'm sorry nice work [Applause] so we're still on instructional expense that was part a of instructional expense and now I'd like to introduce Marlene Solano our assistant superintendent who will take you through curriculum and instruction see worked are we ready for curriculum in the back so I'm here tonight to highlight for you a little

083bit about my small part of the budget which we're terming curriculum and instruction so let's break it down into a couple of different parts first is overall our curriculum which includes English language arts reading and writing Math Science Social Studies all of the general music instrumental music I won't read the slide but you get the picture it encompasses everything that we teach here in the schools it also encompasses curriculum development which includes a lot of research and finding out about best practices and keeping that really at the Forefront of any new um educational instructional practices that are out there and then of course there's curriculum writing and selection of resources another part of that is implementing the curriculum which is all about professional development our own professional development the administrator's professional development teachers paraeducators and

084this includes a lot of time and it also includes compensation the other is curriculum resources and that includes not just textbooks but it also includes boring things like subscriptions that hold are the holding place for for a lot of the work that we do and then finally there's assessment so I know especially my folks who are here from the curriculum uh committee we do a lot of talking about the five-year curriculum review process and part of our curriculum Team Works on listening to those reports we have an entire CCC team which is the chesher curriculum Council of which we have members from across the district sit on this committee and they hear from subcommittees of folks let's say in um social studies or in math people who have done an evaluation of the program so

085they're evaluating that program and they're surveying parents and students and staff teachers and they're looking at Best Practices and they're doing some research and they're looking at our curriculum to see what about it needs fixing cuz it's very good but we want to keep it fresh and we want to make sure that we're changing with the times the other thing that we do when we pull people together is talk about what's the next textbook that we need to be looking at this year we're looking at a US history textbook and that in in incorporates um time and getting people together around a table to do this research so for example if we have um our eure curriculum that we that we looked at a number of years ago we had to pull folks from all

086the grade levels kindergarten through fifth grade we had to get their opinions about it we had to research different programs that were out there so sometimes that can be done during school hours and we can get subs to cover that work that we do other times it's a little more difficult if we have a middle school and a high school curriculum that we're looking at let's say Algebra 1 it's taught in two places so in those cases we might need to pay folks to come in after school when they are you know outside of their contracted day and that might cost us a small fraction of $40 per hour doing that research the other thing that we have is a curriculum library and I wanted to show you that library today because it's something that

087we've been working on and I'm going to show you the elementary because the elementary is where we're really strong I must be logged in is Vinnie and Vinnie doesn't have access to our curriculum library this is so sad if you went through this and if I was able to have it working properly you'd see that all of our curriculum documents are internal documents for teachers if we hire a new teacher tomorrow they can come in and they would have access to this library with all of the lesson plans generally and links and access as to what our standards are what we're teaching what we need to be teaching from month to month week to week when our assessments are given Etc we're trying to build upon this and make sure that we have this available

088for Middle School teachers and high school teachers it exists in some fashion but it doesn't look as as slick as this should have looked when I pulled it up there for you then I'm having trouble getting out of it help me out yep okay there we go and then the last thing which I won't go into you've heard me talk a lot about the curriculum writing Institute that's one place where we write curriculum but we also can't always do everything there so there are some um pieces that need to get done outside of those spaces so the next part is curriculum resources and I don't list them all here but I wanted to give you a little a little bit of a flavor of what the money in the budget that's targeted towards instructional expenses

089and curriculum resources goes to so the first one that we have listed here is the one I used as an example it is Eureka Math Eureka Math is the resource the program that we use in kindergarten through grade five as an example that's one of our bigger ticket items it's $135,000 when last we paid for it another example is I ready for seventh and eth grade that's running at about the $40,000 Mark so then we have things like TCI bring science alive that we've had for too long now we're looking for other solutions to that and that's one of the reasons why we've engaged our science teacher coaches another is what you approved this year which is the human anatomy and physiology textbook which also exists within an online platform so and many of these

090resources which were in the past just the textbook that you lug back and forth every day are now just part of a platform that exists so students can go online they don't have to take the textbook back and forth they could click on videos and and other resources that are within that platform as you call it another is zern zern is a math resource our teacher of the year a few years ago used to use this partially in her classroom and partially for homework it was a great activity a great platform for students to get some extra practice to deepen their skills or for students who had some um intervention needs to practice it give them an opportunity to practice at home or to self- select to do that so that's zern we also have

091that World Language lab up at chesher high school that runs on a special kind of um subscription so that it keeps updated and that it's a nice resource that the high school has that they can practice and hear and speak to the voice in the in the in the computer and they have headphones there we had a showcase there many years ago so we're continuing Al though that was new years ago we're still continuing to support that resource for students others are um Capstone which is a virtual book resource so it's again practice for reading both at school and at home fact site which is sort of um a a relatively new subscription that we've been using that sort of is um along the lines of the Old World Book Encyclopedia and then our classroom

092libraries which I know you and our Town Council have heard me talk about because we've tried to defray some of that cost by going and using some of the PEC Jones money so then we have our library books that are in individual School libraries and we have lots and lots of consumable materials and I only highlighted a few here that were um for Science and this one happens to be science at the high school so they're needing to buy chemicals and dissecta bles and mineral and rock samples and then in fifth grade I believe it's still fifth grade we have owl pellets owl pellets for whatever reason and however gross that might sound are expensive and their kids like to use them but they always hit principal's budgets and people are always clamoring for the

093need of more owl pellets [Laughter] so then we have our instructional subscriptions and these are um less sexy to talk about but this is like the SMART Notebook software that's loaded on every computer in the district that enables students to go up to and touch the Smartboard so it becomes more interactive it's where the teachers create all of their lessons it's what they leave for the sub when they can't be there it's what they use on a daily basis and they're constantly um revising those then there's power school I know we've heard a lot about Power School lately but Power School is where so many of our things live it gives you the contact information and birth dates and grades and absence notifications for every student within our care we it's also where we pay

094for an add-on that enables us to do report cards in the way that we in chesher do report cards which looks different from elementary to Middle School to high school and also in kindergarten lastly under that same umbrella for power school we have something that's called performance matters and that's a a silly name for a data warehouse that takes all of our students assessment data so when they take a Eureka assessment or they take um a um um a reading assessment all of those things are housed in one place so that when we sit down and data teams and we look at how students are doing we're able to get a holistic picture of exactly where they've been and where we think they're going and we're able to Target our interventions whether those are teacher

095to student interventions whether there's those are coaching needs of of teachers but we follow those Trends and so performance matters is you know something you probably would never hear of or kids would never even know about but it really supports all of the work that our teachers do every day another one is School links School links is something that the high school uses this actually I give credit to Michelle KUSI up at the high school she was able to look at navian and didn't like the service that we were getting from them and so she did this lovely presentation to Jeff and I about how School links would be better we were one of the first um high schools in the state to Pilot this and now lots of other schools are coming along it's

096a better price point this platform allows teachers to make recommendations College recommendations for high school students it's also chalk full of career videos and different Pathways for students to learn about and it's where students apply for colleges so it's connected to the Common App we video is a video editing software where when we're not asking students to write their examples in this very Savvy age of of that we're all living in that students need to know how to navigate they can create these videos movies to represent the things that they're learning they have a lot of fun with that and that is something that can be used in library media classes it can be used in science classes research classes the Adobe suite which I'm sure many of you are familiar with such as photosop

097and illustrator and then um kind of a a nonf fun one is Destiny Destiny is a kind of the digital card catalog for our library it's a library management software where we can pull histories of books and find out which ones are in circulation and helps us to weed them out and also um keep track of of lending not All Is Lost some of the things that we use are actually free so the Google Suite Google workspace for Education that is something that comes free to us also another tool called canva canva is an online design platform it's a place where students can create visual content they can do presentations make posters create Graphics so a lot of this we're asking them to um make models of things that they're learning about and it's a

098fun way to do that so these are some of the Hands-On ways that students are really utilizing some of these um instructional resources that we have um clever is a digital learning platform that provides single sign on so if you think about all of the passwords that you have and all of the logins we want to make it super quick for kids to log on to all of our resources and so clever is one of the ways that we're able to expedite that also free so you had asked a question earlier about other sources of funding and while there these are certainly not to the same extent or the same amount as some of the funds that Miss kriy takes care of the title grants do give us some additional funding to pay for things

099so title one is about $153,000 that really helps us with intervention and student support a lot of that is salaries a little bit of it is supplies and a little bit of it is um either Consultation Services or other supports for teachers um title two which is not in there is very small at about $57,000 title three right now is 177,000 and that is to um support our multilingual Learners with support our teachers with professional development vment and coaching we have this great summer enrichment program for our youngest Learners where they visit the post office and they um know how to buy a stamp and address a letter and they visit the the um fire department and the library and get a library card so it really acclimates them to our town the Perkins career

100in technical education grant is another that we use a lot of that money goes towards transportation and field trips we bought equipment with that particularly to help defay the cost of the manufacturing equipment in the CTE lab we also pay for curriculum revision out of that and um club stiens and then pet Jones which we we've talked about before and the Cheshire Education Foundation which graciously helped us purchase robots for our fourth and fifth grade stem units this year those we were so grateful to have those two science teach coaches that were employed this year where the need was in fourth and fifth grade so our next slide brings us to curriculum implementation and here's where I'd like to talk to you a little bit about professional development all of our professional development is geared

101towards improving instruction and increasing student engagement so everything is around hqi high quality instruction and we use high quality instruction to get get to what you have approved as our our focus on social emotional learning and complex thinking and so that for this past couple of years has incl included ongoing reading professional learning all related to the science of reading or all the way back to the National reading panel it's include a lot of work I feel like a broken record whenever I'm talking with all of you about professional development and Consultation Services through the Connecticut Science Center because that we've done so much with Next Generation science standards both for our administrative team for our elementary coaches and then with a particular Focus as of late on chesher high school and DOD teachers it's

102also been a focus a satellite Focus dedicated to implementing or implementing curriculum writing the curriculum around those standards that's what a big lift it has been so that is a continued Focus for us um in addition is math you know that we um are now using I ready so that there's been some focus last year and this year on I ready professional development we've also engaged with a coach through partners for educational leadership who's done individual and group coaching with our Math teachers at DOD and um my goodness I'm totally forgetting what the conferences was oh we've sent people to conferences specifically on instructional strategies I know some of the folks in this audience audience also have been to Peter Lil jal's strategies about um making thinking visible teaching math it applies not just to

103math but we've certainly been there and been present for his wonderful sessions on um making thinking visible um in addition we've focused a lot on instructional practices we've trained significant number of our teachers in coaching and we have sent them to a 3-day training through partners for educational leadership on that they also have gone to building thinkings classroom training and we're bringing another group at the high school to Next Level instructional leadership and that is going to be our core for Department chairs for ELA math science and social studies Along with Dan tardelli and Moren Reed and myself in February and then coming up in March we are having a um full day on artificial intelligence and how teachers can be using that as a tool and how they can best make durable tasks using

104AI so that kids can't snap a picture of it on their phone and answer the questions but they're durable not vulnerable um to cheating but actually help support our initiative to make students complex thinkers so that is another place where our our time energy and money is going so a lot of times I get um emails about money that's going towards assessments and so the assessments that we're paying for are wrapped up in our I ready program uh PSATs at the high school for 9th 10th and 11th graders pass which you've heard us speak on frequently which we implemented last year which is really helping us Zone in on those needs those social emotional learning needs of students in kindergarten through 12th grade especially a support for our teachers gives them information gives our principes

105information on which they can then write school-based goals and also gives our school counselors lots of information to really accurately pinpoint either their individual counseling services or their group counseling services not to mention looking at tier one supports where the counselor goes into the classroom and provides instruction to the whole class edulastic is part of our Eureka assessments for Math and then I was thinking of other things such as when students apply for the Seal of biliteracy the um dependent on their language and the assessment we also pay for that for them to take that exam and then the others that I listed here those are all free they're all you know because they are required in mandated assessments by the state of Connecticut so now let's talk a little bit about Staffing so you

106know we we you've heard how much work we do and how significantly and seriously we take looking at what are the needs in our in our district at every level and So currently for curriculum Staffing we have Mr Kevin hanin who is our K8 curriculum coordinator and Kevin is an administrator and he is an evaluator of a significant group of teachers as part of that he oversees curriculum coaches and in our district we have one reading consultant for all of our elementary schools and we have one math consultant again districtwide for the elementary students and we have six curriculum coaches or Rams we have one at each Elementary School we actually have two at Highland because of its size and one of those women actually heads over to Darcy and is um assisting Kim desert

107over there with some instructional practices at the teacher level and I want to stress that our curriculum coaches are teachers but those that middle group that I just listed there they don't have a teaching responsibility meaning they do not teach a class every day rather they are spending their time working with teachers coaching teachers supporting teachers helping teachers find materials they are working with students who are need are in need of intervention sometimes giving the teacher those um strategies and those materials that the teacher needs to instruct that student in class they also over see our literacy our learning support teachers who are typically non-certified so they are have oversight over that and making sure that those intervention plans are carried out they are incredibly hardworking and incredibly busy and so while they don't have

108a class their days are chalk full it's just not in the same way that a teachers day is full because of their range of responsibilities so then we get up to the the Middle School and the high school and with those those curriculum support folks they are people who are teaching every day so they're in the classroom teaching math and teaching Ela and they are there as a support but they are less available to provide support to teachers and students simply because they have a group of students that they're accountable to every day so at the middle school they are released one period of the day and then um they are given a stipend and at the high school they are released two periods of the day and also receive a stipend excuse your battery's

109about to die ah thanks vny so it looks a little bit different based on the grade levels so if you take a look I'm going actually show you this in three different ways just to give you an idea and and Visually show you this differently so prek through six if you think about the support that Kevin provides Ides plus the support of those Rams and coaches looking at seven grade levels and four subjects plus making sure we're addressing the needs of MLS the FTE is about 8.15 if you look at grades seven and eight and you look at the two grade levels with four subjects and taking care of the needs of MLS you're looking at an FTE of about 1.125 grade nine four grade levels for subjects and here I only put in the

110math and and science because that's related to the ask tonight plus you're talking about not just those subjects but you're talking about all the elective courses all the AP courses the ECE courses which are for Yukon credit so you're talking about in science 25 unique courses math 23 unique courses so even if we say an extra 20 each in social studies and and Ela it's a significant number of courses if you're thinking about curriculum and textbook to go with each of those courses so here's another way of looking at it if you look at this slide you could see in blue are the core courses light blue are the core courses and then those curriculum leadership people are next to that in the dark blue so we clearly I mean it kind of speaks for

111itself the thing here is that we know that we've been very successful with our elementary model we see it in all of the data that we have we see it in the state standardized testing that comes back we see it in the quality work samples that the the students produce on a daily basis and we know how those teachers feel and we know that about the access that they have to supports when they need it supports and coaching here's just one more way to look at it the green is Elementary on the left are the course offerings and the content areas and then you have the curriculum leaders I'm sorry the green is the high school forgive me it's really tiny up here and I my my uh progressives aren't the best I guess so

112um on the left hand side are the courses Elementary in Green Middle School in blue in red high school and green so there's definitely a need here in our opinion so for the budget request for next year the money that is put into this piece of the pie will go towards a new United States history textbook at the high school it will also go to a new Algebra 1 Resource which we are in the process of vetting it will hopefully be used towards a replacement screening tool a universal screener for reading which we've talked about in curriculum and additional science supplies now that we have the science coaches at the elementary school they have been so excited about the new aggro science unit that um one of of the the women actually dragged her husband

113out and they went out and dug up soil samples loaded them into their car and brought them here when we turn this when we turn this unit over to the teachers next year I don't know that every teacher is going to be able to go and and you know procure different soil sources so we might have to look um look to one of our local nurseries to help us um with that and and and figure that out but um those are some of the the new things that we'll be using the money in this request for next year as far as Staffing you know that we have a request on the table for a 9 through 12 science and math coordinator and the reason for that is we are looking to alleviate some of the

114evaluation burden on the high school teacher High School administrators some of them today are evaluating up to 28 teachers it's just not sustainable and to spend the kind of time that you need to with a teacher and give them the support they need when you have 28 the way it's set up it's ch it's a challenge we're looking at this science and math coordinator to do all of the things that Mr hanin does k through eight that is to be coaching teachers to be coordinating the curriculum planning professional development along with myself and Mr hanin what running point on textbooks that are selected in math and science the way Kevin and I work that K through 8 we're looking at curriculum revision to help the teams prioritize what those needs are we're looking that to

115them to help Implement that curriculum and give feedback we're looking at for them to attend data team meetings the way our current structure is set up if you're teaching every day you can't be at all of your colleagues data team meetings and provide that support we're looking for them to keep up with the latest research and best practices and we need them to collaborate with Middle School on the all of this programming and to keep an eye out for the needs of our multilingual Learners so that sort of concludes my slice of the pie on all things curriculum I'm happy to take any questions that you may have go ahead um a quick quick question um do we see a future for a 9 through 12 social studies and what's what's Ela yeah curriculum coordinator

116ideal an this would be a part of that grand plan to have a humani counterpart at the high school to handle the others the other those other pieces at this point the reason why we're asking for the Science and Math First is we've been working really very hard on trying to make some shifts um at the high school regarding Math and Science and we've seen some really great progress um particularly in in science but we're not where we need to be and and really when we look at that the the hole in the support system seems to be this piece thank you yeah hi Marlene thank you for the presentation you're welcome um so help me understand what this coord Ator will be doing as opposed to what uh chairs of departments do sure that's

117a great question analysis and teacher evaluation yeah so our department chairs don't do evaluation that's all done by the administrators and so some of some of the um place we see this person being instrumental is as a Content area expert and as someone who can be in the classrooms observing as a as as a support as a coach as someone who could be at their what they call plc's or personal um professional learning communities those data team meetings that's someone who can be who can be present for those and provide that support the reason it's different from our department chairs is because the department chairs they just physically can't be in all those places number one they're not evaluating the staff and number two they're teaching so if you want our colleagues you know I

118might be we might be free at different times you might be teaching while I'm teaching I can't get into your classroom to really shoulder-to-shoulder with you help and support I can't know your students right because I'm getting to know my own I sorry I just had to follow up um so how is so this coordinator is evaluating what the teachers are teaching as because like earlier in the year we talked about self-evaluation for teachers and how you know and all of that and how they have to to coordinate that sort of thing that's different than what this is no that that is one and the same so we we have evaluations which are not a teacher going in and raiding you so if you came into evaluate me you would wouldn't be saying I was

119a certain number rather this person this curriculum coach going in is going to be able to give you some feedback you're going to reflect on on your feedback you're going to set your own goal but that coaching piece is a a piece that is missing in the in the breadth of the way we'd like it to happen because of the logistics and being able to take some of that responsibility the meetings the the goal setting meeting the midyear meeting the reviews of practice um the sitting in on those data team meetings is something that the administrative team could use some relief from and it's something that the the teachers would like someone who has a depth deeper despite the fact that we know that instruction is instruction and you don't need to be a Content

120expert to evaluate someone it is helpful particularly in the area of math and because Math and Science are tied together it it's it's more of bouncing ideas off one another as to how you can do this and how you can get better and so having someone who knows that is is I think um a breath of fresh air for a teacher and um have you evaluated um uh uh using a consultant versus a permanent position yeah so we've been using consultants in various capacities I you've heard me talk a lot about bringing in folks coaches from the Connecticut Science Center and the year that we had those coaches come in and they spent a significant amount of time shoulder toosh shoulder with um the science teachers at the high school not saying that was the

121only thing because we did a number of things but that's the year we saw the biggest bump in growth in our ngss scores so why not continue that versus a permanent position well because we still want to continue to grow and because th that resource is no longer available to us we actually hired one of the people who used to work for them as our science coach at the elementary school okay thank you and just finding someone who can who can do that they can't do the evaluation they could do the coaching piece but they can't do the evaluation they can do the coaching piece the science center who who we had used but they're not doing the they're not running point on our curriculum they're not running point on the resource that we're going

122to select next they're not you know in the room selecting the textbooks with them they come in for these um brief periods and we were able to to get them for a a significant amount of time but it's it's not a sustainable path if it were we would be doing something different but they don't they don't plug all the holes I was kind of surprised when you had the if I understood it correctly when you put the numbers of science and math courses up there oh which is probably about what six yeah six courses per year and normally when I and I'm no expert on this but I just think of you know algebra geometry trig calculus this sort of standard for math science has its counterparts with chemistry physics art Science Biology but we

123have that many so that seems like a lot to me I'm curious across all those courses yeah how often are they taught annually and what's the enrollment on the lower end of some of those courses so the numbers on the courses that I listed here came directly from the program of studies for this current school year which I have in front of me okay um typically a class that has less than 10 students is not set to run okay some that that's in general sometimes it will but those are often co-listed so if I have um a biology honors biology class or let's say an AP class is more than likely and I also have a Yukon ECE class we might bring those students together and co-list them so there may be 12 kids in

124that class with a teacher even though it's two separate classes CU because of where the material overlaps okay okay it's still it's still tricky and the teacher still has to make sure she's meeting the AP needs of these students and the ECE needs of these students sure okay all right thank you that's it for me so a couple more questions um are these positions these curriculum coordinator positions they're central office it's a central office position oh the one that I'm requesting would be a central office position yes is that pretty typical of I mean do most schools districts in Connecticut have these positions yes so it varies right they are they are typically central office positions and their administrative positions so in a place like Glastonberry they have a director of art World a director

125of World Language and elll a director of health and PE history and social studies language arts and reading math Music School counseling science career and tech ed and those positions you know are are in their budget as an administrative position for between you know like the salary that I saw in their contract from the one I got from a few years ago was about 142,000 we have local neighbors like in Southington that has a a science and math of exactly almost this job and actually um our our very valued uh math consultant who worked with us actually left to take that position next door a few years ago um and in Southington they also have a Humanities person who oversees the humanities part so West Hartford is another District that has something similar um Farmington

126does not but they have almost double the number of Elementary coaches that we have so everyone has something a little different and I think it is driven by their needs um I got a call from from a district because they were struggling with Ela and trying to increase their SAT score um and yet ours was in the 80s and their math was much better than ours so they they didn't need any support with math and science um whereas it's just this is our house this is what we need and this all brings to mind for me when we're talking about um teacher evaluation the learning walks are we still doing those I've heard really good things about learning walks we are as a matter of fact Jeff and I are doing learning walks with two

127cohorts of teachers um the last one we had to cancel because it was on one of those days we were supposed to be at DOD and there was a lot of people out and absent when they were going through that virus but um yes it and we've got probably we've got the two cohorts I'd say 20 plus teachers involved in that but in addition to that and this is where Kevin's position is so um valuable Kevin does regular learning walks with the coaches at the elementary and middle school so he goes over he takes a teacher they walk into all of the classes and talk about the instruction so we're hoping he can do a little bit of that while he's you know up at the high school we'll see thank you I do have

128a couple clarification questions if you don't mind I'm going to go back to title grants yes um regarding Title One um and if you can clarify some misconceptions Title One is it specific to a certain school that's identified as a tile one school and those funds go directly to just that school or is it dispersed amongst or throughout the district this year it is only uh for one school and that's typically what we've had actually no it switched to do little this year thank you um and I do also recognize the Perkins Grant I know one year it shot up pretty high across the state but I also saw a pattern that there's a decrease in funding support so if you can kind of get us kind of the year-over-year as to how much we've

129been obtaining through the Perkins Grant because it is a supplemental yes I think that is on page one of the state and federal grants it will give you a year over-year of exactly what was in Perkins and it will give you that supplemental year as well so it's 37,000 is projected for next year next year the last time that we received the supplemental Grant was in 2021 and that was in addition to the 30,000 base grant for $7,000 um I want to say we bought the CNC machine was that the year we bought the CNC ma it wasn't CNC it was something else but it was significant yeah it was a major piece of equipment that we bought for CTE that year um I appreciate the uh conversation about AI I think that's a critical

130piece in that you that you guys are tackling this in March um because it it will impact like you said um especially the ELA side um so I'm looking forward to seeing how that our strategic planning committee that's made up of teachers has been um wrestling with this and juxtaposing that with the anxious generation and our administrative administrators as as well have also been an audience for Matt mvis at Ed Advance who came and met with both groups and will be here in March I'll just add that awesome um I don't know if you intended to leave this blank but in the IAB section just says in I don't know if you were trying to oh I think I was going to write interim assessment Benchmark my apologies okay my editor didn't catch that spell

131out the acronym sorry Vin is that you I was working on the churs um so there has been some Buzz about exactly what coaches do um and maybe this is a conversation later for curriculum um but I you know I'm going to speak from the lens of having been a coach myself um exactly you know how critical that role is to support the classroom teacher and I don't know if we want to dig a little deeper into exactly what they do I me we have one reading consultant one math Consulting that's case six um and then we have the six Rams for the elementary schools personally I feel we provide a lot of support and professional learning for our elementary um but do we do lack in the secondary as you said earlier um and

132then as far as in the you know the teach the department leaders I think one of the questions that always comes up and you said this um they teach yes but then they have two periods off so can you kind of identify like exactly what their expectation is with those two periods that they have off yeah I mean they're looking at um ordering for their department they are looking at uh Department schedule that's been something hot this year that they've spent a lot of time doing they are um also they deal with a lot of parent concerns and they support any new teacher in their in their department so if they have a new hire they're really spending a lot of time with that person in the first one to one to three years on

133making you know helping them acclimate um but when I talk to them I hear that it's significant amount of time to help plan for a department meeting um attend their own plc's is part of what they're doing I hear a lot that they are trying to get into as many plc's as possible and the frustration with not being able to extend their reach into all of them it's I think it's a frustration that they want to be doing more but they also are wanting to meet with their students and wanting to you know do those teacher things they need to do so they're sort of always um there's always a a tug I think also if if you would permit me to talk about the coaches what we did a number of years ago was

134to send all of the Rams the reading consultant the math consultant the division leaders and the department chairs to coaching training and so Kevin and I went with them and we attended and we have subsequently provided coaching support um started out monthly it was a CO coaching community of practice where they could talk about problems of practice and the way the elementary we we Kevin and I Come Away scratching our head every time the way the elementary is set up because they're not teaching it's sort of easy it's kind of flawless the way they're able to um integrate all of that and the rub always with our middle and high school folks is sort of this I'm trying so hard to do this like I'm I'm trying to do it I just marleene I wish

135we had the time I I wish I could do more you know the teachers would like more coaching it's caught on but we're I'm limited and so a lot of this stems from hearing what the teachers have been saying over the years and identifying that with the other needs can can I go sure just um to continue with that line of thinking how much time do you think the coach is like the Rams and the coaches do they actually spend in the classroom with with the teachers they're in the classroom a lot okay I know that's not very quantifiable a lot no but yeah because it sounds like when you were explaining it it sound more like they were uh accumulating the theory behind it but I was wondering how much of that is they're

136certainly doing some of that work and the best practices work and and training they do a lot of the planning for grade level meetings along with the the principles I think the principles really heavily rely on those Rams um to to help and support the classroom teachers um they're also significantly involved in keeping tabs on the students for an intervention and you know that gets harder and harder as you are having a classes and you only see the student student for a a a finite amount of time so having someone to coordinate that and look more closely at those students to help and support them and them through the teachers I I just think makes a lot of sense thanks for clarifying I think that's one of the misconceptions is that the people might assume

137that they don't see students where there is some intervention support that they provide as well to aside from you know assisting with the uh teacher capacity building there um sorry I I think my last question really might help to kind of clarify um as somebody who does 37 evaluations myself in my day job um I I recognize the need for this particular position but is there something you can give the board where it spells out exactly um what the evaluation um if it's equitably distributed right now amongst the administration yeah sure that we have that I could get you that y great thank you um and then lastly do we have any articulation with tctt state in any of our courses I know we prioritize Yukon a lot but are there any courses that have

138CT State yeah that would be um we do have at the uh Valley ngat Valley courses um manufacturing pathway with ngat tuck um some classes also the business department are um are aligned for credit great if I just real quick um I guess close this section by bringing everybody back to what uh Miss Solano opened with in the sense that she talked about our constant effort actually I would I would call it a Relentless pursuit of improving instruction at the classroom level um for the last decade we've been deeply committed to that if I were going to point to anything uh that is at the heart of our uh rapid Ascent Improvement whatever you want to call it success over the last decade the focus on complex thinking social emotional learning in Relentless pursuit of

139improved instruction that is not a discredit to the the staff that we have the professional profs that work in our district uh to the contrary it's a credit to them that you know people who are successful get successful through hard work people who are exceptional don't stop there they keep working on improving their craft and that's what our system has been built around and the reason that this is being proposed is through our professional assessment over the last couple of years we've identified that this is the next step that we feel would substantially help uh the people at the secondary level level improve their Craft um that our department chairs uh given their uh current roles our Administration given their current roles have kind of carried the ball as far as they could and they're

140you know Tapped Out uh and they've done a a great job and as marene has mentioned we made some improvements and this is what gets us to the next level that's uh you know I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that Marlene or amen thank you Miss Lano and that concludes that portion right V are you up next yeah nice work you guys could Robin all right so I'm just going to have one more slide here on instructional expense and this will wrap because it's the end well that's not up to me I'd keep going but um let me just get to it okay so this is just um you know the final slide and instructional expense just to show like we've shown in the other portions of the budget instructional

141expense as a percentage of the budget you could see has stayed relatively flat since 2006 this year's request brings us in at about 5.7% we vacillated anywhere from around six to 7 so pretty consistent and obviously this is the non-payroll instructional expense but this supports everything that the teachers and the administrators do in our classrooms so that wraps up instructional expense um and I did want to go back to one item and that is the owl pellets because when I first got here I as as board members know I have to approve all the purchase requisitions and one came through for Al pellets and I didn't think we owned any owls in the school district so why would we be buying owl pellets thinking that that's what we fed the owls only to learn that's

142after you feed the owls we pay quite a bit of money to buy these owl pellets but the kids certainly do love them and you know as we were sitting here you know Emily sent me an article about this Al pellet farming um family so it's fascinating so Emily you could pass that you know along to everybody so the next section is Support Services and I'll ask uh the chair um and Dr harrian we could do support services in about 15 minutes do you want to keep going I would like to keep going can we keep going so I know majority of this is you VIN uh and I feel like we did cancel the planning meeting today and we would like to reschedule before Thursday if at all possible which then could help to

143support the remainder of the presentations that are on here so I would propose that we reserve all this for Thursday night's conversation instead if you don't mind I it's your call and wants to one to one with you precursor to Thursday but how do you feel about this I'm fine continuing to Thurs you want to continue I'm out I'm out voted I remain I Iain you obain I can explain later my only other concern is we have two board members also not present um so and they're likely to be here Thursday yeah that's it's warmer at home so I guess we're going home if there are any questions my dad has a I don't know what time I'm going to get here on Thursday my Dad's getting inducted into the Connecticut veterans hall of fame

144congratul yeah thank you got to take PR yeah that's at five o'clock so I'll be yeah are there any so if you want if you want to add like the capital budget before 7 o'clock like six o'clock I guarantee I would not be here for that yeah for Thursday night but that canel the delayed meeting I'd like us to tap a 10 if at all possible because the majority of this again you know could be had in planning and Tim yeah Ju Just One Last point that um I my my feeling right now is that I would prefer to uh not vote on the budget on Thursday right I'm guessing that's where everybody is right now um okay I just want to put that on the table because Jeff had posted it as possible vote

145but that's not going to happen right this would potentially push that off the table on Thursday and then we'll reserve it for um you know a full Tuesday yeah next week or something okay yeah just to be clear on that so I think to kind kind of um accommodate the two that would love for you to continue moving forward if we can end this at 10: somewhere here and then we'll pick up on Thursday the remainder so I don't know how many slides you have 40 minutes to well I mean Support Services I'll just jump right in and you know we can pause whenever you're ready so support services this year I think is pretty straightforward this is about um 8 and a half% of our budget the total Support Services budget being requested is

1468.15 million Support Services though if you look at the top three categories it's the vast majority of the 8 million 59% is transportation Fuel and insurance and I'll go through that in a minute um other Professional Services that 11% that's primarily um 650,000 of that is all our technology related Services it's Power School it's munice those are over $100,000 each per year it's out contract with Apex technology that serves as the chief technology officer and it also includes legal medical U expenses um you know bord of AD and audit so this 688,000 that's for our energy performance contract that we did 10 years ago those are the payments that we owe and we uh you know those are recurring payments probably for about about another four years and then that will go away and then

147the rest you could see is is smaller items as I advance to the next slide I'll just highlight this is the um 81 million being requested if I just focus in on this line You'll see that the vast majority of the $450,000 increase 331,000 is for Pupil Transportation we've got a couple of things going on in Pupil Transportation One is that we have a contractual increase of 4% that Deco is our service provider um we also had to add an additional route this year just because of student enrollment and in the budget for next year we're anticipating adding another type one route you know and each route costs about $80,000 that's running the the bus for 180 days you know beyond that the um number of runs that we do for special education even though

148we're not adding routes we're adding time to those routes so that cost us additional funding so that's what's that's what's built in to the $331,000 for Transportation uh couple of other things I want to point out this other services line that's increasing 35,000 um 11% most of that is for our student accident insurance we have student accident insurance that we pay for as a district so that if any student you know gets hurt on the athletic field if they're participating in sports or other curricular activities or in fizzed or at school that policy covers any losses that we would incur that policy this year is going up 43% it's about a $20,000 increase um and that's based on actual claims that we've received and that's mostly from Athletics so we did have that shopped by

149our provider and the premiums that we're going to be paying about 55,000 are pretty close to the claims that were paid out so it is what it is I just pulled a plug on it Mike sorry [Music] come on I know Mike's very nervous right now because he's been having trouble with this particular there it is all right sorry I know that cost us like 30 seconds um so what I was saying is that the student accident insurance is what's driving you know most of that increase in the line we just looked at and then uh we do have an increase in in office supply it's just based on historical expenditures and there's some inflationary effects certainly in there um and then we do have a pickup in Transportation Supply this 23,000 you know that's

150based on fuel consumption that we've seen recently and you know we think that fuel prices have leveled off so for next year we were able to actually decrease the budget um so that support services as a whole just quickly if you look at the transportation line again it's 59% of this our Public School uh general education routes 2.5 million of the 4.3 million special education about 1.1 million we do provide very specialized doorto door transportation for our special education students that's a function of their IEP their individualized um their individualized education plan so we don't have a choice transportation is mandated as the board members know and you can see the rest of the lines this 400,000 is fuel Student Activity those are the athletic and extracurricular runs uh private school routes this 105,000 we

151have to provide um bylaw transportation for St Bridget students and then you'll see there's a v vag Wilcox another and transportation insurance so that that's an overview of the the transp Transportation costs in more detail um really went through everything on this slide you know we you know even though enrollment is growing and we have to add routes we do everything we can to try and consolidate you know bus stops you know it's much more efficient from a logistics point of view to have students walk to the bus stop and pick up a lot of students up at one stop and you know we we work really hard to do that um within you know certainly safety standard s and what's reasonable um everything else are are things that we've been doing and the board

152members you know we've talked about this in the past and then you know in this line we talked a little bit about the the technology cost so uh I did want to point out that we only have about 30 smart boards that need to be upgraded to Smart flat panels we've been doing that from our operating budget for the last several years so we've only got about 30 remaining at chesher high school to upgrade the um PC Fleet is in good shape we um this year went to a new you know PC technology we moved away from Acer from a Dell desktops that you would either put under your desk or on your desktop we went to these um devices that mount you know right in the back of a monitor so that's the footprint

153um and this is important for the teacher as you still see there's a lot of wires there but that connects the Smartboard and speakers um and the webcam on our devices um we did launch some new software this year to we came off of school dude and went on Master library for maintenance and Technology work order ticketing we upgraded our building use software as well so we're doing all the things that we need to do to advance technology and we have a strong technology capability in District um so you know that that budget allocation is well spent uh so Support Services you could see you know even though we had this big spike um a few years back you know we're still at around 8.5% of our budget is for support services and I will

154pause there to see if there are any questions related to U the items we just covered next section is maintenance and operations yeah just a general question you had mentioned St Bridget I'm not sure if you would know this off the top of your head but just the general trend line across the last say five or six years maybe even sort of exclude covid if that did anything um private nonpublic school will say I don't know I'm wondering about costs or maybe enrollment has it fluctuated I'm not sure if you include homeschooled kids St Bridget cheser Academy well for the transportation budget that line is just for the St Bridget student transportation that we provide you know homeschool students they what yeah they wouldn't be covered by that well but we also cover books and

155stuff like that that would be instructional Supply I'm just wondering sort of a general Trend among I mean we do they do are entitled to some of the grant funding that we receive but okay so it's yeah yeah I guess I'm just wondering like is the enrollment sort of fluctuated over the last few years as has been relatively stable for St Bridget enr or from us I I can't really impact impact on chesher public schools like have been kids been leaving to go to chesher academy or St Bridget's yeah no okay we um or coming in from or coming in from yeah I wouldn't necessarily consider us competitor with either of those schools like we don't yeah it's not it's not so much as a competitor we don't lose yeah not a competitor I mean

156we certainly have very collaborative relationship with both but it's not something where we're fighting each other for enrollment okay but it's not just happening okay no thank you yeah that's it okay good maintenance and operations I will go through the first part of this very quickly because I know that as board members you've seen this but our schools are aging out and I always like to remind everyone that our schools are in use constantly not just for school but they're used as community activities so you'll see you know after school events at cheser high school is 2500 those are the ones that are actually recorded through our building use system there's probably more uses than that but this is just what we've recorded So buildings are in constant use and that speaks to you know

157the cost of not only running the buildings and keeping the lights on but also maintaining the buildings things wear out so we need to keep investing in the maintenance of our buildings um the good news here as you know that these three schools will be cut off and shut down Norton will be demolished when the two new schools are open and Darcy and Chapman those build bus will go back to the town to be repurposed or sold or demolished or whatever will be done that decision has not been made yet so you know the good news here from a maintenance point of view is that when you have a new Norton and a new North End School you will not be making investments in the the maintenance of those buildings for repairs obviously you'll have

158utility costs and you'll have preventative maintenance but you won't have any maintenance repair cost for those with those two buildings for years but these buildings obviously that will remain with us those five buildings will need to keep you know investing in in not only preventative maintenance but dealing with repairs as they come due so as a total um $5.2 million is being requested that's about 5.4% of the budget um and you'll see that the categories though in which that five .2 million is spent a good portion of that is just utilities and heating about 36% cleaning services 900,000 so that's about 177% which leaves about 36% for the maintenance and repair uh maintenance supply is 390,000 and the remaining portion of this budget is equipment maintenance and repair um just to give you a little

159bit more detail as we look at utilities and heat again 36% of the budget electricity takes up a large portion of that um but our electricity bill is lower than it would have been if we didn't have the energy performance contract where replaced Highlands Heat and the uh High School um the west side of the high school with natural gas heat um heating for you know the buildings is about 31% of utilities and heat and you can see the rest um occupy a small but not insignificant portion of that 1.86 million so that's 36% of the budget 64% of the budget is spent on what we're calling you know Building Maintenance and repairs again 900,000 of that is to clean the buildings we use um a third-party uh service to do that that building cleaning

160um at night um which leaves about 1.1 million for building repairs and improvements and you'll see there's other categories in here such as snow plowing you know maintenance services ground maintenance that we do across the district the um the request here for U maintenance repair and buildings you know is is 485,000 21% um I will note that you know point one is that our cleaning service contract we had a two-year contract we went out to bid awarded to um a company that is doing an excellent job however when we signed that contract was before minimum wage increases you know took hold the last two years uh and also they um had to um they were they're basically the employees of theirs that work here in our schools organized so that they're covered by Union contract

161so we've increased uh the budget about 10% just for the cleaning services because that's what we expect the increase to be and we will be coming before the board in February at the at the board meeting to present our recommendation to extend the contract for an additional year with the service provider and beyond that we are looking to increase that line because we believe that um we can expend those funds you know to do not only only building repairs but get ahead of some of the work that we need to do in terms of um preventative maintenance yes Adam when we signed or when we awarded the contract for the cleaning service did they have non-union employees at the time uh well when we went out to bid they did um when they provided their

162proposed number it was non-union but as the company that had the contract previously was exiting there was a an organization of their labor that was done so before they exited it was performance environmental their group unionized um so for the company that took over the service they had to accept those employees as Union employees however we already had a an agreed upon price that we accepted so they couldn't raise out price they incurred the additional cost and there a lot more detail to it I can explain it when we present it to the board but you know all these larger cleaning companies have um Master agreements with the Union that covers those employees and so the the short answer is when they bid out this contract they bid it nonunion they honored their price for

1632 years but now their employees um are under a Union contract how long do we agree how long is this contract two years so we reup the contract well that's what I'm going to present to to extend it for an additional Year we We won't do better if we go out to bid so um I think that the leave that discussion point for another time yeah all right thanks y um do we have revenue from the usage I know our buildings get used all the time and there is a fee associated with that does that come to us or to the town it's budgeted as Revenue so it goes to the town it's $10,000 is what we budget okay thank you and that's that's not a money maker for us we're offsetting our cost when

164when collect those fees yeah um you have uh $200,000 in here for garbage and recycling does that include the composting program that you still no we didn't budget for composting because right now the additional cost of composting is being paid um you know through the nip reimbursement um funds that the town receives so we hope to continue that we went back to the Town Council for this school year and they agreed to provide additional funding so that we are composting um at du little now as well as Chapman like we did last year so I did not budget for composting as I guess in my mind just I'm thinking that whether it's Grant funded or not I'd still put the grant revenue and the expense in here but um I'm just curious does that have

165any impact on the cost of garbage and recycling the composting Yeah by having the composting has that had any benefit to reducing garbage because I'm not even sure how do we get charged by ton we do pay I believe it's it's um a pickup of $100 um per ton okay no I'm sorry that can't be right it's less than that um but there is a a a small offset most of what we pay for the trash is the hauling yeah it's not the weight of the garbage but there is a a bit of an offset when we compost but the cost of composting far exceeds the offset no I got that I was just curious if there was any offset and I'll I'll firm up the number for the next meeting yeah I was I

166wasn't sure if it I don't even need to know the number that's fine I just wasn't sure how Our Garbage Contract worked it could have just been $200,000 and we pick up everything for the year No it's it's more precise than that per Pi per ton per pickup okay so there is some sort of benefit there okay thank you you're welcome okay um the rest of you know what I'm going to talk about pretty quickly here is the capital budget which um is used to um help support our buildings right so we know we have a a maintenance operating budget line to provide for repairs and and preventative maintenance but our capital budget that's what we use to make investments in our buildings of $110,000 or more so the planning committee of the board uh

167is going to be taking up the capital budget at when we agree upon a date but you know by the end of the month the planning committee will begin to deliberate on the capital budget um the only reason I put this slide in here is to show these are the general categories that we expect to make uh recommendations to the planning committee and ultimately to the board where we'll need investments in our buildings for items like hbac and window replacements and Roofing and cafeteria improvements um again the numbers are not on this slide because we don't have them yet uh I did want to point out this is the same idea except broken down by school but in our capital budget we don't expect to be making any recommendations for Investments in the buildings that

168are coming offline Chapman Norton and Darcy um and we also have not made a recommendation for central office or humiston because what we will do with that building long term really needs to be um decided before we make Capital Investments that are significant um in 23 24 the capital budget that was approved by the Council was 3.7 million and you could see the major line items were HVAC windows and uh Paving and and Roofing and that actually decreased last year to about 1.5 million um and you could see the the general categories changed a little bit with roof rep placements and emergency generator at Highland but last year the Town Council really was was pushing to get a capital budget as low as possible in anticipation of the increased debt costs associated with the new

169schools so what happens in 25 26 remains to be seen But it becomes a problem if we don't keep investing in our buildings uh so you could see this is historically what we've requested over the last 10 years has been about 2.7 million what's been approved is about 2.1 million um so we've done well relative to the requests but we need to keep those Investments up if we're dropping below 2 million like we did last year we're really not keeping up to the building needs so again more to come on the capital budget uh this is just a recap there is a an emergency fund is the the working name we have that mer that emergency fund uh that balance remains intact at 233,000 we haven't used it since 2019 so on the event we

170have an unexpected repair cost that we can't cover through our operating budget we go to the Town Council and we can get it funded that way last um last couple of slides here these are just some of the things that we deal with through our operating budget these are repairs this top picture actually happened just this weekend um after we had that snowfall three cars were seen on this band practice field doing donuts they weren't seen while it was happening we saw it on the videotape afterwards there's probably damage to the field so we'll have to deal with that um but the the three cars were identified and it has been reported to to the chesher PD so these are the types of things that we covered through our operating budget this is a a

171DOT boiler that um needed to be repaired somebody crashed into the Darcy School sign again got it fixed up it actually looks much nicer now but types of things that happen and this is the uh Highland fire alarm panel that um we were really concerned that it was going to fail um but we were able to get it repaired and a lot of this type of work we do inhouse so those are some of the items that you know we need to continually repair our buildings I know you know that capital budget is a little bit different and the important thing to note here is that you know when we invest in a capital budget item you you can't look at it as just an expense you have to look at it as an investment

172for the future and the long-term benefit of the building uh this is the lockers these are the projects that we completed this past summer uh or the fall these are the the new West gy lockers at chesher high school they came out really really great you know the lockers that were there were probably about 40 years old maybe older um but they'll be there for the next 40 years so you know this investment unless we do something with the high school this is a long-term Improvement uh I know that the already familiar this is the refrigeration equipment we replaced at chesa high school we kept the old stuff running for probably 25 years new boiler at DOD uh and this is part of that West JY Locker replacement so maintenance and operations very steady about

173five uh 5 and a half% of our budget traditionally it's 5.4% this year uh and that concludes maintenance and operations so if there questions Tim thank you um yeah uh with regard you mentioned that there would be no additional Capital costs anticipated for the two new schools and that makes total sense to me but I'm wondering about the uh the new North End School um the capital budget the the budget for the North End School I'm assuming it stops at the parcel boundaries yes so first of all are we thinking about putting sidewalks in there around Marin and J uh yeah Maran and Jarvis well definitely on Jarvis in fact uh I believe well not I believe there was Capital funding approved for sidewalk improvements um and they'll likely take place this summer so you

174talking about town funded ones oh yeah I'm sorry okay that that's the point that I just wanted to make about it being separate two separate budgets just so people are aware because I think the logical thing to do if it works and there's obviously you know pluses and minuses but generally speaking I think adding sidewalks uh over to at least Courier Woods if not up to Dundee I think on Jarvis and also further down to all these new developments that are being built on Maran Road um I I know that we talked about and I'm fairly certain that it's been approved to add sidewalks along Jarvis from the new school entrance down to past strollo I forget what the other streets are but they will uh okay run down that side of Jarvis yeah yeah

175yeah and there's already some sidewalk there but it will you know continue down as far as as reasonably possible okay um and then my uh second question is that Robin and Carrie earlier tonight had brought up a new vehicle not for this budget but so we didn't include it in this in this budget because we're looking at are there some other ways to um deal with that vehicle request and the 2016 vehicle that we provided was a transportation vehicle that you know it was there was nothing wrong with it it wasn't being being used and when it was being used it was being driven by one of our bordered bus drivers well and this worked out really great there was someone on um Robin an's staff that teaches the students that was willing to get

176certified to drive you don't have to have a full you know CDL to drive that van vehicle and so it gave them quite a bit of Freedom you know an ability to move these students around to get them to different job sites or to places where the students needed to be for some type of presentation so it worked out really well for everybody we'll figure out a way to fund that we just didn't think we needed to you know put it in this budget no yeah no I so what I'm wondering about is uh what happens with the uh old B the existing B the 2016 yeah we haven't gotten that far I mean I think Robin's looking for a second vehicle stud y okay and when you mentioned yeah when you mentioned Luther you're

177just talking about the transportation director I'm not sure what his title is but the trans the bus Luther Miller he's a transportation manager so we have to work out the logistics and details of this but you know we we understand what the need is okay and we always figure out a way to address the need so okay thank you questions from board members wow Vinnie eight minutes to spare well we got through it so I assume that Dr Solen you want to do your conclusions please tonight or would you rather wrap it up yeah I think Dr senen could probably do do this in eight minutes or seven minutes in yeah no warm up well sorry before I leave I just want to uh thank the board members for you know your patience and listening

178you know I do also want to acknowledge and thank all the administrators that put a lot of time into their portion of the development of the budget you know Heather Santi our finance manager working behind the scenes with me to put this together I really appreciate that and Emily as well who's you know served and and helped get this budget pulled together um so thank you everybody for all the the work that you know went into you know doing this and I just get to stand up here and talk about it but there's a lot that does go on beyond Behind the Scenes to get here so with that thank you thank you Mr maiana um what might possibly be a last budget Harrah uh at least at the board of education level so uh

179hard to think of the Cheshire Public Schools budget I appreciate the amount of time that our people have already put into reviewing this the board the administrators uh our professional staff I mean there a lot of time and energy that our folks put into this and uh what people who maybe just follow the minutes on YouTube or review or whatever they they don't recognize the the budget book that we provide is so comprehensive there's so much information in there that the board reviews and um that our team puts together so uh this uh is a is the culmination uh at least presentation wise of a lot of effort um and so in conclusion really with our board of education budget obviously our community is growing and it's driving and you drive around the community and

180you see that construction everywhere and it's not just two new schools uh we're growing together um and that you know we are an attraction for the community and an anchor and I think it's uh an investment worth protecting and this budget is designed to maintain the level of service that uh We've provided and that our community expects uh there aren't Frills in our budget um as a matter of fact I mean we were just talking about the the uh van as being one of those things that I don't think people would argue as a frill to replace a 9-year-old van um but we have to make really difficult decisions and uh we've tried to adhere to that in the face of inflation uh that's impacting every school system across Connecticut um there are a lot

181of factors still yet to be determined some of them were addressed this evening whether it be uh Grand list growth whether it be the state budget whether it be um our enrollment uh as that continues to climb um there's a lot that you know we're asking you to kind of consider as we sit here in January that won't be much clearer until April um um and with that in mind I think about you know what is my responsibility as the superintendent of schools and we've talked about this I opened with this slide it's to present you a budget um that is developmentally appropriate meets the needs of our students and is balanced across the district but also allows for the advancement of our district goals which we talked about here tonight um kind of the

182unwritten uh but lived daily goal of improving our instruction every day focused on complex thinking and social emotional learning the loan advancement request that we had um was around that science and math curriculum coordinator position um it represents 0.2% of our overall budget um but we think the return on investment there would be dramatically more than that um nevertheless I mean I I don't sit here thinking oh it's just easy you know it's just throw as another $200,000 every penny we spend we are very conscious of and um think deeply about the leverage and uh the benefit that it provides so uh I'm not I'm not suggesting that it's so it's just to $200,000 because it's $200,000 um but I shared here you know basically what what does school-based Administration look like on a per

183pupil expenditure basis across um Connecticut across Durk B uh some of our neighbors uh were pretty conscious about how we spend that money I have a different chart if you want to look at all different sorts of how to districts spend money um in every measure we are Beyond competitive um when we look at that return on investment we produce great results uh very economically and that's you know I guess leads me to my next you know kind of request of you and um that you know this is the Board of Education duties is outlined in Connecticut General statute which you know I I'm not suggesting you Sher your responsibility as representatives of the community and just say I pass it on to the Town Council um but I I am cognizant of the broad

184number of variables that are to be determined and I would hate to put ourselves in a position where we're making really significant Cuts uh at this point in the year only to find out that well gez you know the legislature infused a a legitimate amount of money into the uh specialed excess cost Grant and come to find out it would have been really nice to have that uh that stem support person uh when they could make a real difference for our our kids so I'm just asking that you know you be conscious of that um we always respect and value your feedback um we appreciate your questions uh Vin Marlene and I we certainly Marshall in the team as we need to we'll be happy to answer any questions you have if you think of

185something now we've already taken down several questions throughout the night that we'll come back Thursday ready to hopefully put out some answers for you and and respond to make you uh better informed in a better position to vote on the budget um but if there's anything between now and Thursday certainly don't hesitate to reach out call me text me email me um we're happy to respond to those questions we appreciate your your involvement and your engagement and don't take that for granted so uh please do share that with us um if if there's something that's you're just wondering about all right um the public budget review uh we have you know obviously gone through several now uh iterations we've done a number of of presentations and I look forward to engaging in dialogue I did

186send out an email to our parents through parents Square last week I think it was I don't even know what day it is but uh yeah I think it was last Thursday or Friday um certainly the public is welcome uh just as a heads up we will have open house here on Thursday night uh so there will be parents Milling about anyway uh hopefully some will stop by make a a little bit more of a date of it um and and certainly we welcome any public feedback if people from the community want to email me and reach out call whatever uh we're happy to respond to that too so that'll kick off Thursday night here at 700 pm. so when you see the cars here don't think wow we did a masterful job of soliciting

187the community to come out and speak on the budget they may just be here for open house so not open house but parent conferences anyway with that that's that's it for me I don't know if there are any questions now that people want to raise no but thank you Dr soly think you know you pretty much outlined it if if four members could please um provide the additional questions that you may have in advance of Thursday um that would help to at least hopefully um allow us to come to some sort of consensus is on Thursday on the budget um and if you can get us the response in return um I think one of the lingering questions that always gets asked is and I apologize if it was asked on the last session is

188the retirement projections Dr Sol um if there's any indication of retirements early on I know we have to meet that April deadline as well so yeah the history the history is available in our budget book but um to date I'm not really aware of any nobody's like formally sent me a letter uh indicating that they were going to retire at the conclusion of this year we did have uh retirement already so I mean we'll we'll calculate that in and and certainly share any information we have great any question no thank you everybody for staying past 10 o'clock um and hopefully we will see you on Thursday like Dr senen said at 7 pm right here um and again I want to reiterate you know I I think we're all well versed in this process having

189um been on the board for a few years here um and congratulations Miss Taylor for going through your first year with us here so thank you for your work as well um and with that I would like a motion to adjourn if at all possible Mr White Mr gripple all in favor of adjournment unanimous thank you everybody have a good night