001the budget from the superintendent um M jinsky roll call please here here here here here thank you please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you if there are any audience members that would like to um speak at the mic please do so seeing none um we will move on to our next item which is the presentation um Dr Solen than you thank you madam chair so I'm I'm uh flattered this evening to always have such a big audience of people I paid and forced to be here uh or people who are forced to be here because they're paying to learn how to be a superintendent it's wonderful uh very humbling anyway um thank you for the opportunity uh before I kick things off I I do want to take a moment to recognize
002uh a lot of folks in the room first of all our entire administrative team plays a significant role and not only the building of this budget the creative thinking around how do we uh deliver outstanding services to our students and Community uh and do it in a creative and and fiscally responsible way uh but the work that they do every day to execute the plan that you design the resources that you provide to get the best resources we possibly can so I just want to say thank you to our administrative team who's here this evening um uh applauding for yourself seems a little self- serving so we'll move past that uh thank you guys the um I also I also uh want to acknowledge Mr maiana and his team in operations uh Emily T Taylor
003and Heather sany are here tonight um they do a lot of work to crunch numbers to double check numbers to put this uh this budget book resource is really exceptional the depth in in this book is impressive uh not only for the current operating budget but the history so thank you very much to the operations team for doing that work and then of course um Miss Solano as well uh for our entire central office leadership team with with uh Robin and and um Kevin our whole crew uh working to to provide a great plan for kids so without further Ado I'll jump into board member responsibilities I just uh outline this for the community as much as I do for you because um I'm not sure that people understand the role that the board plays
004uh and this is dictated by Connecticut General statue that's the CGS obviously uh we need to provide adequate instructional books Etc Equitable resources among schools uh proper maintenance of facilities and safe School setting obviously this is a pretty broad Strokes uh oversight of what the board is responsible for as a superintendent my responsibility includes that collaboration with the leaders in our district um to build a fiscally responsible budget that en ensures that those elements of the board's work are met and then ultimately and I think this last uh italicized part is critical the advancement of the board's goals what we provide through our budget is a schol school system what this 256 budget covers is those resources and an incredible program uh for 4,257 students and uh I think you know we can recognize obviously
005that instruction is a core part of that but clearly we do so much more than that um Health Services athletic and uh artistic opportunities uh health and mental health services um transportation it's really um a lot and um so I think you know we have to figure out how do we do that again creatively uh to be able to provide a great experience for our kids in an economically responsible way and this is why we provide it at the end of the day our students are at the heart of the decisions we make and um we try and keep them at the Forefront uh is we we work through the our budgeting process the other uh critical filter that we use is the advancement of the board's goals which are of course complex thinking and
006social emotional learning um if there's something I get accused of beating to death it's complex thinking and social emotional learning and people don't move here for the night life right they move here because the the work that our our team does and that you do uh provides their kids a tremendous academic and social experience and um as we break down what what it means to be a social emotional learner and why that is is important seal is so critical to Student Success and I think that's what really has separated chesher uh from a lot of our peers in terms of our success uh that we are not uh exclusively focused on academic achievement but the whole student and until you it's a simple maslo hierarchy of needs until those belonging needs are met until the
007selfworth is addressed um you're never really going to leverage uh academic achievement to the greatest extent possible and ever since this community has been committed to those two goals uh you'll see a chart later that reflects our um success um in our our achievement over time just uh really Skyrock in complex thinking why is that important um the outgoing prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau said it I love this quote the world economic forum and it because it just feels so real like we all appreciate this the reality of the world just gets faster and faster every day the pace of change um and so as fast as is today it'll never be this slow again and so our kids need to be nimble thinkers uh creat cretive thinkers problem solvers be able to uh
008and you think about now the integration of artificial intelligence and what does that mean for our kids and how do they you know discern between fact and fiction and draw on different resources to figure that out kids need to be complex and strong emotional thinkers what was true when we adopted these goals in 2016 is true are still today um and so that's why those are our filters for this budget process so the budget environment what do the world look like entering 25 26 a lot of external and internal factors um inflation is probably the single greatest God bless you single greatest uh Factor influencing our budget as well as uh our economic growth in our community our um our uh you know I think we're a very desirable community and we're seeing our enrollment
009grow not only from the perspective of people buying existing homes but the development of new communities um not only single family but multifam uh multi-unit uh homes um so we know that these things are occurring we're entering the biannual budget this year um which makes our budget process as a community kind of tricky because we don't always know what the state resources will look like until the conclusion even of the Town budget so a lot of that gets factored in in June when we we come together and uh excuse me not June in in April when we um revise uh the town reconciled I guess the town's budget against our budget and the state budget so um those are uh certainly some external factors internally uh you know um Miss Cullen and mentioned you know
010the growth in special education and how impactful that was in our uh legislative conversation earlier uh that's a Connecticut um actually national issue but it you know we're not immune from that we've seen um special education costs increasing dramatically uh and then of course uh our new teacher contract is is frankly uh kind of catching up uh the for those who don't know teacher contracts are subject to binding arbitration and in essence um they don't ask like hey is this a good time to pay people more or less um what are other contract settlements and basically you negotiate uh and if you're too far out of whack with those settlements um then you go to binding arbitration and if you're out of whack with those settlements you lose if you're lower uh unfortunately it's it's
011pretty much just if you're lower uh you're going to lose those um those in binding arbitration and so you know frankly our teacher contracts have been well south of inflation the last couple of years and um this is on now to inflation and who knows what it'll look like by the end but this is uh you know a fair contract tied very closely to what settlements are across Connecticut um but it's the cost of doing business today non-certified salaries we're seeing a substantial increase based on the uh shift in uh minimum wage uh it was I think I site here later it was $10 an hour uh in 2019 it's now 1643 or something 35 uh thank you I'm in the neighborhood um but um the medical benefits outside of the wages is the other
012factor that anybody who's been on the board more than seven minutes will realize that um we're constantly chasing medical benefits cost as our other communities across our state um so with that um those are some of the significant internal factors uh per pupil expenditure when we look at spending across Connecticut how does chesher fair compared to our peers you see a history here um that in 201819 we were pretty close to the state average um about $1,000 uh short of spending the state average uh in 20324 uh the last school year that we have data for 23 24 uh pretty substantial difference there and so um for that school year we ranked 114th out of 165 Connecticut school systems and the idea that we would have to increase our budget by $1 million to meet
013the average I think is reflective of the good work that um we've done as a community to maintain high standards and a coste effective way um so we start with internal requests I mentioned the work that our team does to review um where our our incoming classes are what the students are um what where are our needs academically professionally and uh internally we had an 9.04 uh% budget request um again you know my responsibility is to uh provide a fiscally responsible budget that uh advances our goals and so you know our team spends a lot of time trying to distill that down ultimately my recommended budget is um an increase of $6 million uh a representation of 7.09% to a total budget of 95 milon 892 631 one so the um increase if you back
014out just the medical benefit increase if medical benefits were flat the our increase would be 5.33% and we're going to get into the different categories and where does this increase really you know um where is it we're going to illuminate some of the areas where we're feeling that increase more than others um momentarily but um just to see that it's a 2% of the the overall increase is attributable to medical benefits alone uh is pretty telling uh I will share for anybody watching at home and certainly for the board the um full presentation that I'm making right now will be available this evening on our website under the budget section of the board uh so you can read it to your friends tomorrow anyway driving factors in our budget again um our regular and special
015education Staffing our enrollment continues to grow to grow um and that is obviously not just general Ed classrooms but Specialists like art music you pe um things like special education costs not just teachers but par Educators as well um the addition uh you'll see in here of a stem curriculum coordinator for grades 9 through 12 that I'll talk about momentarily uh again the wage piece that I I shared uh medical benefits facilities operating costs this is an old clipping but I decided to retain it because it's as true today as it was uh the first time I used it that yeah we see jump in new housing permits uh you if you drive around the community you see again not just single family homes but uh substantial development of multifam units and so we track
016that very closely we um monitor uh these are this is a spreadsheet we have in the office of active tracking of of new developments and since the start of the school year we've added 52 students in chesher out of these multif family units this does not include single family homes this is only the multifam units 20 out of the Reserve at Stonebridge Crossing another 16 out of maple CR Village being the two uh Marquee drivers there a lot of these have not uh been inhabited yet so we're not seeing the numbers populate and so we are conscious of in the next six months what does this look like um and so we're we're kind of sensitive to that and um we certainly track it as I said closely our projected enrollment uh what you see
017here is dating back the last couple of years to get a sense of growth year-over-year uh October 1 22 23 24 and then again projected for 56 this only includes our residents as you know we do have open Choice students in the district predominantly at chesher high where um we have more uh space available uh to be honest we're so overcrowded at elementary schools that as you know we've added portable classrooms at Highland uh we're north of 915 students there um and so you can see where our enrollment growth is occurring uh and again it's it's predominantly at that prek to 8 level um included in the Pro projections too there was uh a period where we saw significant drops when I first became superintendent is demographically we had a little bit of a trough
018and now we are certainly rebounding uh to give you a another graphic representation of that growth this is a graph from SLR uh who did a demographic study when we were doing uh the designs for the new schools and they projected out in that green line uh like high projection like this would be wow things are exploding everything's um off the charts the BL lighter Blue Line um is the low projection and the uh call outs there where you can see our actual enrollment so as you track this out we're we're kind of splitting the difference between that middle and high which is a good good thing uh it's a good place to be uh we're outperforming what they thought would be the low and and certainly uh we're pretty close actually to that mid
019projection um from a percentage uh perspective so um We are continuing to grow I think you know we're still a really desirable Community um and uh not still we're we're I think even becoming a more desirable Community is is witnessed from all the development and um folks moving in I um mentioned that this this budget is really about maintaining Services um when you you'll see some of the graphs that highlight we're not looking to drop class sizes in this budget you know we're um not our class sizes are frankly I think what what we would agree is the ceiling of that uh where where those are comfortable um we're maintaining our special education services we're maintaining the medical benefit funding um Vin will go into pain staking detail um painstaking detail on our medical benefits
020okay and uh we'll highlight you know really we're we're not looking to close gaps our our board is certainly familiar with the um the medical benefits uh fund and that you know we try and keep a three-month balance we're short of that right now this does not close the gap to the three-month balance this only meets projections as Vin will you know certainly articulate uh Robin will uh talk about our special education services in great detail as well um the two italicized areas School counseling re resources and transitional K uh I have on here because uh the school counseling resource is a grant that we secured a few years back that the state paid for a School counseling position uh the demand is certainly there um this has been free to us the last couple
021of years um this year as we wean off that Grant the cost shifts 50% to the district now and so we want to maintain that service uh but it is a bump in cost by you know if we factor that it's roughly $90,000 for a staff member this is a $45,000 cost to us um and then transitional kindergarten is not a cost to us and I'll talk a little bit about that momentarily uh restore moderate increase to maintenance uh to address uh budget issues and then the stem curriculum uh supervisor that I I mentioned for chesher High School uh and I will further elaborate on those the the stem coordinator position at Cheshire High School is a budget cost of about $200,000 or um 0% of our overall budget 0.3% of our overall budget um
022and really the rationale there is that the there have been significant shifts in curricular demands uh in in standards um dramatic shifts in in standards for science in particular math is a little bit U more dated but still uh shift that's that's recent our staff uh existing staff has worked really hard to accommodate those shifts to to plan curriculum but more support is needed uh many of our peers have these uh supports in place uh in essence this person would be doing a lot like the work that Kevin handland does and uh K through 8 um programming and uh but addressing the meria to stem classes that exist at the high school level a lot of different courses there data analysis planning professional development and concert with Department chairs uh curricular review uh coaching instructional
023practices facilitating professional learning committees uh communities excuse me um just that that support I think our our teachers and admins have gotten us as as far as they can and they're just not the time to commit that we think will take us to the next level in that respect um the additional consideration uh and I didn't say advancement here because there's not a cost associated with this consideration um is the transitional K program and you know as I said to representative linan in the uh legislative meeting you know we definitely um recognize that that most every state in the Union has a cut off of five by the start of kindergarten and um there so because there's substantial agreement around that being a developmentally uh appropriate cut point and a Readiness place the experience that
024we've had already in the course of the first half of the school year has been eye popping I would say for our kindergarten staff our our elementary administrative team um just sees a pretty significant difference I don't think that they anticipated that um you know those several months would make a that big a difference in their classes but apparently it has um and we have the space to be able to continue to accommodate this program while we still are housed at Darcy um that may change um when we enter our new buildings in the subsequent school year but um the Future Families uh recognize the benefit of this program or current families appreciate the the benefit of our transitional program uh and sing its Praises now this is an email uh that I swear to
025God I did not write that was sent to me from a a future parent and I kind of anonymize it and I'll read it because I know you can't see point two font from where you sit um I'm writing is an informed and involved parent in support of the continuation of the transitional program at Dary in hopes it'll be offered for the upcoming school year the transitional kindergarten would be an ideal choice for our child as he would be with children his age and the cost is so is also affordable if our child does not get selected for the program via Lottery and the transition program isn't offered we may have to make a difficult decision and go the kindergarten waiver route for financial reasons we think he will do well academic Ally when wherever
026whenever he starts excuse me but we have done research and are aware of the benefits of delaying kindergarten we don't want him to feel like he needs to quote keep up with his peers as he does with his older sibling I'm sure other Chester parents are struggling with a similar difficult decision I'm hopeful that you will take uh our situation and that of families with we call them often bur babies uh November October September uh December uh fouryear olds with financial constraints into account when deciding if the transition program at Darcy will be offered in essence they're saying I don't want to have to make um a choice that may not be right for my child and and family because I I can't afford another year of preap um and and so we are and
027we have offered a really economical choice uh an option that covers the cost of the teacher and Par educator through tuition and um it it's really met the developmental needs of this this group of kids and so uh we're excited about what we've been able to do and I'm just recommending that we continue that uh again this is a budget neutral piece but uh I think it's important that we're all in agreement that we move forward or not and that should be discussed through the budget process what we left out of the budget um you know because this isn't a wish list um uh but you know things like a half team at DOD middle school when you see the enrollment there um the CHS Humanities coordinator I mean in an optimal World we'd have
028stem and Humanities in concert um but you know I have to make some difficult decisions sometimes certainly and you guys in the past have contradicted some things and that's great you know that's I appreciate that you know we added the robotics last year uh special ed transportation van early intervention Center teacher uh at Darcy a replacement van instrumental music teacher at the elementary level U so those were some things that were uh you know contested considered and um not made the uh top priority in terms of the presentation but certainly very um very much expecting dialogue the net certified Staffing changes include uh the addition of a Chapman Elementary teacher uh and and I'll highlight some of the enrollment and why that's um appropriate Highland uh growth of a teacher Norton is actually con um
029Contracting one teacher no change at do little uh the school counselor 05 position that I already talked about coming off the grant the uh health education art uh teaching positions that we're adding now currently we have too many sections to service with our exist existing staff so what we do is pay art and PE Health teachers additional Monies to cover those existing sections what we're proposing is adding full-time step because our enrollment is growing now we we even need more sections and frankly we don't I mean we're taxing the people already who are teaching additional sections at a cost so as much as it says a 1.0 cost we're already paying part of that cost now um and so those are additions TSA um more than 10% of our students speak a second language at
030home um our uh multilanguage learner population has grown significantly over the last five years um and the demand is there to increase uh a halftime elementary teachers uh teaching somebody who's teaching English to speakers of other languages t- Sal um and then again obviously I mentioned the stem curriculum coordinator so a lot of this uh four and a half of the five um excuse me three and a half I I apologize for the typo there three and a half of the five is driven by um uh the enrollment increases uh half of that is is the doitt uh shift to that and then one is the um the curriculum person so I apologize for the four and a half should be three and a half so additional uh enrollment impact is really felt with uh
031non-certified Staffing um six par educator positions that uh need to be retained uh through the course of this year those of you who have been around the budget uh a while have seen that you know we budget basically based on the prior year um as things come on we add those positions and then um you know kind of project out for the subsequent year it's really kind of challenging to do all par Educators in January when most um plans for special education services in the subsequent year are made late in the spring um so we we are you know really trying to project that out um one additional learning support tutor um an additional Board of Education bus driver to cover internal routes it's cheaper for us actually to hire than contract it out so
032there's a benefit in that you know some of the things that we're spending money on and I know you'll see in Robin's presentation uh things like um support assistance rather than hiring to assistants rather than hiring uh uh support professional uh certified person is more effective and more cost effective so uh we try and find those opportunities where they exist again I mentioned medical benefits as you know the reserve is at 1.24 months as of the end of November um we try and get to two months or higher um in a perfect world we're closer to three but um we have been uh able to navigate this year at that number uh thankfully and uh usually at the turn of the new year we do see a little bit of a dip uh in terms
033of the costs for us um so hopefully that comes to fruition in 25 um but as you know the data kind of lags a month or two behind as we wait for the reports to come in um so the again we're just uh basing the budget on the Run rate the projected run rate rate from uh our um provider Tom Loi we're our monthly rate is increasing 9% from 1.88 million to 1.26 7 million uh per month uh to cover our medical benefits cost again that's a 9% increase that does not close the the Gap to the two months uh reserves so where do these budget increases uh come from in terms of a uh parts of the whole uh teacher salaries represents 26% of the budget overall budget increase I talked about that contract
034shift in any year it's a significant portion of the budget increase we're a you know human business uh we don't have tons of huge equipment our our main resource is people uh our certified staff about 400 folks uh represent the Lion Share of that and then the medical benefits so between the two you're north of 50% of our increase in those two areas alone uh enrollment related salaries another 12% uh non-certified salaries another 9% increase because there have been years where those increases were lower but they were years that our uh enrollment was Contracting and now we're expanding and you see kind of that that impact uh of this the Transportation uh contract as you know we uh renewed the contract there at a very favorable rate um but it's a $38,000 increase over the
035previous year outplacement pupil service increase everything else uh generally uh rolls into that 11% uh as it relates to PD other areas um will be found in there and we'll again this is an overview uh if you're watching at home thinking like this is only this is only what they get now uh there are many nights it starts Tuesday of next week Tuesday and Thursday for pretty much the rest of the month um Mr White will be at the edge of his seat drinking in our finite level of budget detail that we share with the community uh 256 recommended budget this is overall uh requests by categories uh salaries represent and again we are uh human business a lot of where our resources go is to pay for the people who do the great work
036with our kids uh whether they be um you know um as par Educators nurses school counselors teachers of course administrators the whole shebang is 60% of our overall budget and in benefits represents 20% of our budget um there is not a lot of uh resources that we dedicate to things outside of that U because we believe the best banging for our buck is with the people who represent our kids so budget by category or um uh again the uh this is the updated class size data and if you thought some of the other font was small it's hard to see from the screen where you are uh but again it's available on our website uh long story short uh when you calculate in the additional positions that we had the contraction uh that we had
037at Norton and uh our enrollment changes we are are currently at 18.8 students per class on average the Elementary grades k6 next year's budget when I said maintenance it's 18.8 students per class identical to this year um so uh that is certainly uh easy to review on our our website on that slide the k6 class size averages by grade level is also available you'll um expect in in um not be surprised by the fact that our districtwide ratios of students per class is smaller for the younger students and it grows uh as kids age uh the um District average in K is 16.9 for example and 20.3 in grade six in grade seven and8 um the projected class sizes in grade seven are 25.4 um um those are those are higher than they have been
038maybe not over the last several years but historically um and that's a place where you know where I I would think you know we're close there uh so really looking at a half team the the challenge at middle school with you don't just add a teacher a general Ed Specialists who teach General Ed um expert who teaches all content areas their their certifications are more specified and so you know we team teach in uh seventh and eth grade with teachers who are generally content area Specialists math science uh La language arts and social studies and so you know it's not easy to just have we just add one teacher you you kind of have to have two or four um or else it gets uh really difficult to staff and we have to really compromise
039quality which we don't want to do um so this is another visual representation of that history that I just shared with you you can see that the elementary enrollment uh is higher um subtly Higher One in essence one student per uh class than it was preco um the uh Middle School class sizes uh we really peaked out unfortunately in 2223 at 26.4 uh in seventh grade but um historically higher than it's been um you know dating back in to when I was a administrator at DOD 2005 to 2012 um we were closer to those 23 22s our projected Revenue the uh I mentioned in again in legislative um conversation we had with representative linan our ECS uh Grant has been roughly $10 million for the last 35 years um the special education cost Grant is
040unfortunately uh shrinking um the reimbursement rate uh has changed I know that is really been a bipartisan talking point leading up to this legislative session it is my sincere hope that something is done to address that and provide um resources for our our students that Revenue however uh and and to be clear our our revenue does not come back to the chesher public schools it comes back to the town of chesher so we budget and uh an operating costs budget the revenue that you are seeing here here is money that goes to the town so our $95 million budget is net in essence 85 million um it's not 95 million you know plus the 10 or anything like that it's it's uh our our operating budget is the money that we spend the town collects
041all of the revenue uh so you know what does our budget really do how what is it address it's you know uh I think there are different frames of mind around this it could be you know what is it cost or what are we investing and the investment that our budget is the investment that the town makes in our school system basically falls into three buckets at this point our operational budget which I've shared with you this evening and we'll break down a little bit more our capital budget which is large items uh like um roofs and uh um windows and asphalt and and things that are really facilities driven and then school modernization and I yeah I'm so excited like you guys know it is school construction Eve in chesher tomorrow we will officially
042start building two schools that are decade Plus in the making and something for our community to being incredibly proud of so an investment in our schools is an investment in our community uh you've heard it before you'll hear it again people don't move here for the night life uh they move here because we make smart investments in our school system those uh Investments pay massive dividends and um you know I like like to remind people of that come budget time um you buy people homes homes have more value in areas where school systems are successful and I think we've seen that uh through covid uh and Beyond school modernization I mentioned that it is construction Eve uh really excited to be uh staring this down as a final product come next spring 2020 or 2026
043in our Board of edit work uh rarely do you get chance to see them wielding shovels so I threw that in uh for the groundbreaking ceremony very exciting um Conneticut revised durby I just want to remind people that the state um had a a district reference group uh cons comparison years ago that um had been quite outdated it all the same data was used to run it on a more contemporary basis and this map reflects that that um you we are in dur B the the kind of teal um towns there and you can see the list of towns um and so what do we spend relative to that peer group um we're kind of toward the the middle of that um uh group at 2,156 now this is again 234 spending this is not
044a projection forward but our old spending um the how does that spending translate into performance um this is not a comparison with our district reference group but the entire state of Connecticut uh were the eighth best achieving school system in the state of Connecticut uh something that we should be justifiably proud of uh it represents the best performance we've ever had I mentioned earlier since our focus on complex thinking and social emotional learning learning you see the trajectory line um it's pretty obvious that we're focused on the right things we're doing the right things we're investing it in the right places our resources reflect those goals as I mentioned and pay dividends for our students um and again it's a a real Testament to uh the board and to everybody who works in the Treasure
045public school system that we get the results that we do um beyond that you know our families and students certainly need acknowledgement here as well um it's with their support and effort that we are here um so lot to be proud of and again I think the Investments we've make made have been really smart ones and they paid tremendous dividence again excellent value uh we had the opportunity last month to celebrate a couple of really spectacular accomplishments and you'll see those in the next couple of photos but hitting some of the highlights about the value we provide our overall achievement has been Superior uh uh we have numerous schools uh of Distinction including a National Blue Ribbon School uh annually recognized as a top Community for music in America that goes uh it's important to
046cite that because again you know academic achievement is fantastic but that's built on a foundation of the whole child and the whole student music is an important part of that for a lot of our kids the reason they get up every day is their their passion for music we feed that same with Athletics um in our extracurricular activities vast majority of our CHS students participate in uh some extracurricular activity while they're there we are perennial winners of the CIA Michaels cup for sportsmanship winning and character uh um and that's not something that's just handed to everybody uh it is actually select but we tend to win it on an literally annual basis um again you know celebrating our national uh Special Olympics Champion schools something that is really pretty awesome and uh thank all the
047parents and and staff uh administrators who dedicate a lot of time to make that so successful and make it worthwhile event for all of our kids um awesome accomplishment we've been recognized before even as the best top best buddies chapter in America at the high school level and uh certainly in Connecticut as well um you know the accreditation we have at Darcy school for our youngest children so again uh reiterating the the value that we provide and this is always our destination the intersection of complex thinking and social emotional learning that has been our Lighthouse uh our Compass whatever metaphor you want to use and it I think has paid uh again great dividends um in the way that we invest in this community focused through that lens so again uh just in closing our
048budget is really focused on maintaining our trajectory of success uh there aren't significant ads in this budget um this is very much about trying to just maintain a fiscal status quo unfortunately the constraints of uh inflation have impacted what that looks like um and I I don't want to Short change that obviously enrollment has compounded that as well uh we are a growing Community um projected to to even grow further those the inflation and enrollment growth uh is reflected in this budget uh but it also means that we're placing people want to live and you know that's that's great and there are economic pressures to that but there are also economic benefits of that uh that we hope to reap in Grand list growth um even if it's not today we know I mean just
049by the sight of all the construction that we will get there uh our achievement continues to grow uh as we focus on complex thinking andal uh budget is grounded in leveraging our resources to continue our our performance and again you know I I you may have heard me mention that we're in outstanding value even if we adopted this proposed budget entirely tomorrow right if we we said yep we're going with this all in and we calculate that per pupil expenditure for this year and we compare it to the rest of Connecticut from two years ago we're still in the bottom half we're below the state average of the per puple expenditure from two years ago and we would had to to add to get to this to the state average from two years ago we
050would had to add another $3 million to get to two years ago state's average not 256 State average two years ago State average so um I think you know what this is is really uh the budget is more or less at least in the um wage area uh kind of a catchup uh where we've had the benefit of uh pretty low contract over the last couple of years um and now we're paying teachers on par uh and I know that the people on this committee believe that we deserve every they deserve every bit of that but um this is where our our fiscal reality is for 2526 I mentioned I don't want to Short change this but you know our success as i' I've said I think also many times throughout is predicated on the
051commitment of all of our stakeholders and I want to acknowledge our uh parents and students as well um as well as those who don't have students in our schools uh because the the business Community has has been incredible with their support of our kids um in our projects and our efforts so this really is a a CommunityWide effort to reap the results that we we have the upcoming budget calendar I mentioned it's pretty much Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the rest of the month uh with hopefully uh an approval coming at the end of the month uh a transmission of the board of education budget to the town by the middle of February ultimately they adopt the budget uh by the end of April and um we have to adopt the final budget make any changes
052because the town can only um increase or reduce our budget by a dollar amount they don't do that along line items if they increase or reduce our budget by the end of April um as is probably anticipated we will have to come back together and finalize that budget along line items sometime between the end of April and the end of June uh which we typically are pretty expedient at so um that concludes my presentation I appreciate your attention particularly when there are other uh huge events going on in the ethic world thank you thank you Dr Solen so at this moment in time um as Dr son stated we have the calendar up there um as far as the public to uh view the presentations we are going to be meeting um from this point
053forward uh specifically at uh do Middle School to review all the administrative accounts um and then if I could just you know as Dr Solen was speaking I'm writing my questions down right now and if if you'd like Dr s will forward that to you prior to the uh meetings anything that um any member of the board the public uh anybody if you have a question it is super helpful if you email that question to me um directly or there's a email address Board of Ed contact at treasure. k2. c. us very simple um sarcastically but if you can find it on our website the that helps us prepare and be able to provide that information in a subsequent meeting right are there questions currently for Dr sarin from any board members Mr White I'm
054just wonder a capital budget do we have that in the hopper coming along because that ties right into this right yes the capital budget we um just made a request this evening to set some dates with the planning committee to begin reviewing the capital budget we proposed three dates so when you get home tonight you could check your email um and we could do that you know the recommendations the email came from Emily Taylor our assistant chief operating officer so we could do it just before one of our scheduled um meetings around the operating budget or if the chair Mr eki and the members would like to have a separate virtual meeting we could do it that way as well but it's it's the initial capital budget is is pretty far along right Miss Taylor
055ready to go do do you have any uh expectation based on your years of experience that we would have anyone attend a capital budget meeting because I'm fine with a virtual meeting as long as we're not expecting anybody and and the truth is is historically we haven't um and again the planning committee does the initial review and makes the decisions and then recommends it to the board at one of our scheduled board meetings so is there anything that some people might consider like off-the-wall in there or is it standard maintenance and stuff oh it's it's what we've seen in Prior years you know requests around facilities you know everything ranging from Windows to HVAC to cafeteria improvements improvements at our Fields yeah I'd be comfortable with a virtual meeting if we did that not requesting
056any new school buildings or anything like that I'll tell you not today even though we should but we have it I I do have one other I think this is just a comment um about the transition okay my son had Jess GM Petro as his kindergarten teacher I trust her a great deal and she said that the program from her perspective is my words not hers fantastic but she was she was really she's really happy with it she's teaching yeah she's yeah she's teaching yeah I apologize for missing that point uh nonetheless I just always put on my budget hat and I know you said there's no cost but a little I just want be precise about it you're saying there's no cost to the local property taxpayer is there a cost at the state
057level because what I'm thinking about is the pension gets expanded by years of service and we're probably not covering that with the cost um no I wouldn't even know how to calculate that cost for one year of teacher service but conceptually I'm just saying there is there is a cost baked in there yeah probably for some the teacher does pay 8 and a qu % in um to that program so they that money also earns uh interest it would really be calculate you need some sort of um I forget the term I'm not asking to calculate it right now just at a conceptual level is what I'm saying limited it best but uh the other thing I would indicate is that there is probably a direct cost to us to not run the program because
058as that parent said in the email that I shared uh they would then opt into kindergarten yep we would therefore be adding another potential kindergarten section which would come at a fiscal cost to us if we don't run it okay and and the the last point so thank you thank you for that I appreciate that and the last point I know you said this year and it's at Darcy but next year is the last year that that situation exists right correct okay so I don't see if we did it for one more year that's one thing but based on all the discussion about space I just don't see where it would go a year from now unless unless the one other point I'll make without getting into discussion is it look to me like third
059grade and second grade had gone up in numbers but I was kind of surprised when you were showing the enrollment numbers that first grade hadn't really didn't seem to be going up at the same rate of growth where we were thinking and also caveat the kindergart numbers were low but I think generally kindergarten numbers tend to be lower anyway although it's got the prek baked into it this year but I my understanding is when I've looked at the numbers families don't necessarily move in here before kindergarten but they definitely move in here before first grade so the first grade can often times pop from the kindergarten number I think they often try to you know the cost of um real estate in Cheshire is prohibitive for young people generally speaking and um so you know
060it's it's not uncommon for us to see fourth grade with a a younger sibling or something like that so okay thank you thank you any other comments questions for the superintendent all right uh with that I do need a motion to adjourn Mr White second Mr grippo I am looking forward to our next meeting and I'm also looking forward to the spreadsheets that Mr gripple will be handing out soon as well too so all in favor of Jour unanimous thank you thank you everybody for coming this evening