Board of Education Budget 1-25-24

001M jinsky roll call please thank you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance stes the podium to speak please do so just give let give a little wait time for Mike okay seeing no audience members proceeding to the podium I'm going to pass gabo over to Dr herrian chair of Finance for the public budget review and discussion regarding the superintendent's recommended budget thank you um do I get to do this again you can do whatever you like um at this time I will pass the gavel on to Mr [Music] Mariana thank you Miss harrian welcome back everyone glad you could make it um so we're gonna just Jump Right In this this is day two of the budg workshop I did want to just make a mention that the budget book and the budget presentations

002are posted on the chesa public schools website if anybody wants to take a look or review it after the fact um tonight um we're going to uh this is session two so the areas of the budget that we're going to be covering are instructional expense which includes certain special education services and I will be introducing miss Robin an Cary to talk about special education she has a presentation prepared for tonight uh we'll go through Support Services which include student transportation maintenance and operations a little bit on the capital budget and then we'll conclude this evening the next few slides are just uh kind of reminders from what we presented on Monday night everything that's in this budget is filtered through the district goals and the focal points that we have for student education the budget

003assumptions as we presented on Tuesday night we do have increased student enrollment special education also is increasing in line with increased enrollment we have positions in the budget and we went through salaries on Tuesday evening that are being brought in from uh arser funding that was previously covering those costs we talked on Tuesday night also about the needed funding for medical benefits accounts and then tonight we'll be going through some detail on why we're requesting some additional funding for operations and maintenance total budget request that the superintendent recommended as you see is 9,132 265 that's a $5.1 million increase over the current year budget 6.05% is the requested budget increase before we hit tonight's topic though I did want to go back and respond to the questions that we had on Tuesday evening uh and

004these were all based around the the chesher pension plan um one question was you know what are the other alternative Investments that the town of pension town of chure pension plan invests in and I know this is really hard to read um but the alternative Investments that you'll see here are generally fun mutual funds funds of funds investments in hedge funds that are based in mutual funds and you'll see up on the left side of the screen there in the comprehensive annual Financial uh plan that the town puts out which is available on the website that's the web address at the bottom of the page the the alternative Investments includes Commodities such as gold and real estate that are held within mutual funds even though you can't read this what's not there there's no Bitcoin

005there's no digital currency in alternative Investments I verified that with Jim Jos Scott the town finance manager you when I asked the question you know I could hear his jaw drop and hit the floor so you know they they as I said on Tuesday the the pension plan is managed by the Retirement Board it's very conservatively managed and so that's the answer to Alternative Investments the second question was the town pension plan you know what's the funding percentage compared to the obligation and what you'll see here on the screen in this Top Line is the the funding net position as a percent of total pension obligation and you'll see there's a little note about gby 67 and 68 those two gazb are what control how pension obligations are recorded there's a lot of detail in

006the comprehensive annual financial plan again available on the website it's not my area of expertise but those returns are what are uh shown in in the comprehensive annual financial plan so you'll see that in 2023 this is as of June 30th so it is the most upto-date number available about 68.4% of the obligation was funded in 2021 it was 66.4 and you'll notice in 2020 it was 77.5 as we talked about the other night part of the reason that it's lower has to do with the fact that our long-term res return assumption was changed from 7% down to 6.75 so now it takes more funding to make sure you meet that obligation that second line I I showed it for illustrative purposes it is in the cafer that the town puts out but that's the

007funding of the teachers State Pension Plan it's not an obligation of the town it's an obligation of the state but you'll see that the percent of of obligation that's funded we don't have the 2020 3 number but for 2022 it was 49.2% same in 2020 um excuse me same in 2021 and in 2020 was 52% so you'll see that the state's Pension Plan their obligation has quite a ways to go to be fully funded um there is a long period of time that's considered it's basically looking at can the pension plan meet all its future obligations until the participants are no longer in the plan meaning that they're no longer on this Earth so that's the way that that funding and those are the allocated percentages um and again I know this is really hard

008to read but um the third question we had on the pension plan is how many active employees versus retired employees so this is 2014 there were um 188 retirees and there were 200 66 active employees contributing and then as you look forward in 2022 we had um 129 active employees contributing and we had 266 so more retirees and less active employees contributing to the plan so those are the the answers that I owed is any questions on those okay so now we're going to move into the first topic for tonight which is instructional expense instructional expense you'll see here over on the right it includes special education tuition and what we mean by that is students that we cannot provide services for in the district we outplay and pay a tuition to a a third-party

009provider and Miss Carrie will talk about that in her presentation the second category that you see there is special education pupil Services those are generally consulting services or individuals that need to be hired to provide services you know for our students in District so the total of those two um make up about 66% of the total instructional expense uh lines that we have in our budget and then you'll see instructional Supply that accounts for about 9% um textbook software curriculum is about 9% and then the other categories are a smaller percentage of this total budget instructional expense for next year we're requesting um 5,181 927 so that's 5.7% of the requested budget and this year it's 5.3% of the budget if we look a little deeper and look at each of the lines I'll I'll

010give you a little bit of Insight so and every time I move away from the mic I feel like maybe you can't hear me so I'm gonna try and stay a little closer to the mic so staff training we're requesting an increase of $25,000 one of the reasons that's driving that is the expiration of ressor funding which we've been using to fund professional development you know we don't have any funding for our bestor after this year um so we we'd like to make sure that we can continue to provide you know training and professional development for our staff pupil services and tuition out placement you'll see that that is the biggest driver of this year's budget request for this category and the big one is the tuition outplacement number increasing by 500,000 you'll see in

011a in a couple of slides actually the next Slide the tuition outplacement costs have been very stable the last several years but miss Carrie is anticipating that next year we will see an increase based on students that either are in the system or she expects to come into the system that we cannot provide services for those students the rest of the line items instructional Supply we in the last couple of budget years we've really flatlined that that budget line um because of you know budget restrictions that we had so we we'd like to increase that and Miss Solano will be talking a little bit about instructional um expense after Miss Carrie speaks actually and the other line items are just being um adjusted in small increments based on expected needs so moving along what this

012chart shows is our special education costs from 1920 this this is the current year and this is what's being requested for next year now when we look at special education costs this includes all costs teacher salaries par professional salaries benefits for that staff um any items that are purchased the outplaced tuition line You'll see here at the 2.5 million um and as well as Transportation which is relatively large line item fa special education because we do provide essentially one-o-one transportation for those students in according with their individualized uh education plans along the bottom here you'll see some statistics of the growth of the number of special education students and you know not surprisingly in line with enrollment growth we're seeing growth in the special education student population um this is an important budget um in

013total because it represents about 25% of the total budget for the district so um I think without further Ado I'm gonna turn it over to Robin Anne and I'm just going to make sure we get you set up here forward back forward back is there a is there a point there middle the top one got [Music] it okay uh good evening everyone um I told myself I was going to be very concise but before I start I did have a few words um I just wanted to say that it was reflecting today and about our department and the things things that we've been able to do and I recall a memory of when I first interviewed for an administrative position I was asked why I was choosing to enter special ed Administration and I responded

014by telling them because it's challenging at this time I didn't realize that those words were going to come back to me on a daily basis um special education and education itself is challenging but every day I'm so impressed with the work of our students our staff our parents and our administr Traders and I'm excited to share with you our work in special education and I wanted to give a shout out to my two supervisors Marie Broadway and Christina Sherwood and for all their hard work their dedication and their teamwork so we'll start all right um in special education we continue to align the district goals of complex syncing and social emotional learning a professional development has been provided in the area of of executive function we've had a huge focus on that for the past

015couple years for all special education staff and including the par Educators our Focus has been on developing a clear understanding of executive function skill areas assessment of these skills writing goals and objectives in the area strategies using strategies identifying accommodations and how deficits in these areas impact our students in the classroom this year we had identified another area of focus that supports our district goals and that's specially designed instruction specially designed instruction requires special Educators to adapt the content the methodology and the delivery of instruction so we've kind of done a bit of a reset we've been so very very um involved in being inclusive that we want to kind of look back at what is so special about special education so when we talk about adapting the Conta one example of that would be

016to provide alternative text and looking at methodology that might be an intensive phonemic awareness instruction or a multimodality um strategy used in our instruction and the delivery struction might be adjusting the pace or maybe it's that intensive small group that you're pulling together this year we was we were up for our CCC um study and that's our curriculum Council um study so the special education committee got together it was due for its five-year review and the committee looked at our progress on previous goals on our delivery of services and determined our new goals through our research and Gathering of information the CCC special education committee determined the following as the statements that were most important and helping us to determine our goals and that was that the General Ed teachers are the holders of the

017curriculum they are the experts in that area special education students are first and foremost general education students benefits that come along with heterogeneous grouping where students can learn from each other and each student brings their strength and their areas of deficit and they work together Universal supports that we identify supports for special education students that help break down those bar barers of uh of uh accessing the curriculum are helpful for all students question we we asked ourselves is are we closing the gap or are we creating a bigger Gap and special education students get much of their instruction at this point in time from the least trained personnel as we dove into the book by Ann Benninghoff specially designed instruction this was a a uh one quote we pulled that really resonated with the committee

018you can't teach a child to swim by taking them out of the pool the committee felt that this quote by Ann Benninghoff really captures what we believe in the district a majority of our students with special needs are of average to above average cognitive abilities and if we look at the definition of idea which is the special education law the federal law it states that students should only be removed from general education environment when the nature and the severity of the disability is such that education in the regular classes with the use of supplementary AIDS and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily so the CCC Group then developed their goals based of off of many of those ideas and in looking at IEP development that was one of of the first areas that we we looked

019at um we really felt it was important that we need to look at increasing increase our students participation and access in general education and that it's important for us to identify those barriers so that we can put in those accommodations or those supplementary aids to help um reduce those barriers it's important for us to really look at our targeted specially designed instruction that's the piece that needs to take place that the student is not going to get in the general Edge setting so we want to really Target those deficits we want to increase our time with non-disabled peers we want to we want a very prescriptive individualized service hours in the least restrictive setting and we want to look at more non-personnel Reliant accommodations of course we're going to need professional development to support these

020areas and then we also talked a lot about our instructional strategies and develop goals for that we want to Target those barriers and those L lagging skills with a laser-like focus on specially designed instruction we want to increase our students Independence through direct instruction of those executive function skills and through technology we want to make sure we're applying and using that technology to support our students when appropriate the other piece the last piece was assessment and looking at assessment we want really want to make sure that when we're that we're diving deeper into assessment to really get to the heart of what is causing the student to have difficulty identify those lagging skills and then develop the plan on how we're going to Target them so it's really important to dive deeper and then to

021look and analyze at those evaluations when determining our plans or developing our plans okay so just to highlight a few things that are happening around in the district under special ed these are the many different things that our students are participating in and in many times they're do participating them with our um gendered students I try to capture some highlights of the good work that's happening in the district that not only involves our students with special needs but also Al our general education students um and I I want to you know if you take a look at the list we have things like our life skill businesses there was a new dog biscuit uh business that started off a personal shopping um lots of times you've heard about a coffee cart we have a book

022cart that's happening now too we just picked up our um some additional business Partnerships uh with elen Park um we've been working with rereads Goodwell and old Bishop Farms for a while now we have lots of unified um sports that's happening at all different levels and at the high school we have the unified academic courses that are happening uh we've been able to um provide our students at the secondary level a very inclusive field trip that involved our students in the in our life skills program as well as um their General Ed peers um this year was the first year that our community Life program was located at the humiston building and humiston also houses our Alternative High School and what what we've really see come out of that and it puts a smile on

023my face is our students that are in our humiston alternative education program have really taken to our community life students and they have engaged in uh a couple different fundraisers where they've work together to um collect um supplies and food and blankets for our um for the the um the Humane Society uh the dog pound um they've um also work together on celebrations they had a nice Valentine celebration together so it's been really nice to see how our students at the alternative education program have really um supported our community life students we had the start of our new Aspire program at the high school and um and for those of you that might not know um there is a special education parent PTA that has started this year and is um really working hard to

024get that up and running get parents involved and um and staff as well so with all this hard work that we're doing we are seeing some good outcomes so this um when the results came out for the the 2223 grade 3 to8 espa scores our state score our state testing uh our students ranked third highest in durby they ranked 11th highest in the state for the elll portion 15th highest in the state for the math portion this is for students with high needs and they ranked 14th overall in the state which is really very impressive and we're all very proud of okay I sometimes get questions about the grant so I wanted to include some information about that so our Ida Grant you can see here 90% of the grant goes towards staff salaries the

025remaining 10% over the course of the past couple years have has been put towards evaluations and consultation uh sometimes it's been transition Services tutoring sometimes tuition it's been a supplement to tuition equipment and instruction materials but really the point is that 90% of it does go towards um staff salaries the we did uh receive a mental health um mental health provider Grant from the state in that Grant we were able to hire one full-time school counselor for doitt with the growing numbers there it was really necessary to add that position um you can see how the grant is funded in year one year two and then there's a drop off in year three so that's something we want to keep in mind as we move forward and plan for that so that we can retain

026that person some of you may be wondering what happened with all the Esser funds and the AR funds that we received well the guidance that was provided from the state in our thinking was to use these funds towards things that would have long-term impact and so we uh put that money towards helping our staff with updating all of our um evaluation assessment kits those kits can run anywhere from like $700 to $1,200 for an assessment kit that our school psychologists and our special education teachers our OT our PT all use our speech and language Pathologists so that every school has the same assessments and um they all have their own battery of Assessments they don't need to borrow those kits from different schools we did put it the money towards professional development and training for

027our staff and our par Educators we purchased materials uh equipment specialized instructional kits such as those programs that are necessary when working with students with dyslexia and they need a more systematic reading approach such as Wilson or Spire uh we've used the money towards transition field trips sensory and calming um Corners short-term Staffing it's been very difficult to fill our positions and so sometimes we've had to reach out to agencies and we've had to uh contract for short-term Staffing um and many other things that you see listed there we did use some of the funding to conduct a par educator study we were finding that it was becoming very very difficult to fil fill our par educator positions that were open and sometimes we were filling them and then people were leaving so we really

028felt we need to kind of look at this and um see what we could do better so in the par educator study it was conducted by Sonia kungl um I met Sonia several many years ago actually uh she's worked for C she's worked for several districts um she's been a special administrator herself she's an author she provides professional development across the United States um I I consider her a a well informed and um expert in the area of inclusion um so we called Sonia in and she conducted our study by interviewing general education teachers special education teachers administrators and Paris she conducted observations and surveys she met with our administrative team she reviewed IEPs she took a look at our special education manual and our hiring procedures our par contract um and working with the

029committee of Educators after pulling all of those resources and all that information together we took a look at everything that we gathered and then we identified areas that we need to look deeper into and help to develop an action plan plan for those areas that we felt were important to begin looking at were our practices policies and procedures for appropriately determined par educator need um we find that we don't want the first our first line of thinking When developing special education plans and services for students to be that we're going to pull um a par educator in to provide those services we really want those Direct Services coming from the the certified staff person the special education teacher and we want to make very clear what the role those par Educators um provide and what

030supports they provide um so we wanted to take a look at that we also feel it's important that we look at the supervision of par Educators sometimes the feeling is is that a par educator belongs to the special education teacher when in fact this they can take direction from our general Ed just as much as our special ed um staff members we want to help them to support our students in building Independence and then fading that support couple years ago we were mandated to do 18 hours of um professional development for our par Educators so we really are have been working on developing a very comprehensive um professional development plan that targets areas like executive function like building Independence and um and how to support our students in the General Ed setting we provided them

031with professional development um we looked at professional development for our staff how we're going to evaluate our special educa uh our par Educators and then the retention of Staff because we are finding that we're not um we're we're filling positions as fast as we're losing positions you fill one and the next day you find out someone's gone so we really want to look at what is it we can do to to retain that staff so as Vinnie mentioned in his um presentation you can see the growth that we're seeing across time in our um in our population of students with IEPs and it is does really mirror the growth that we're seeing in the district as far as general students are going so at this point in time when I started putting in the presentation

032together we were at 645 students but that fluctuates as students exit and as students come in or identified um for special education and here's our outof district placements um you know we last in 2223 we are as low as 18 this year we're have gone up to 21 um and we have seen an increase this year you know while at the end of last year we had some students who aged out um and then the new law came in in July and we ended up uh we are now providing another year for one of our outer District um placed students that we weren't expecting and then we've had several students that required an outof District placement this fall so that's why you see that increase and that's where as our as we grow It's Not

033Unusual to see that our out of District placements are going to grow um when you compare our out of District numbers to other districts we remain as one of the lowest and I think that is attributed to all of our programs that we have in District to support our students with these intense needs um I included an outof District program the average cost of an out of District program for one student is $113,000 uh that's just for tuition and then you when you add Transportation which averages about $36,000 a year that's where we're coming up with that number you saw Vinnie present uh in terms of transportation we are utilizing a shared transportation service that's provided through Aces when at all possible that does help us to reduce those costs we pay very close attention

034uh to the prevalence over time our numbers so this this data is showing the prevalence of disabilities in our district not surprisingly students with learning disabilities make up our highest percentage that's the yellow at the top there are 13 categories most recently the classification of emotional disturbance was changed to emotional dis disabilities most students with disabilities are provided short periods of instruction in the resource room setting or general education setting case managers can have larger case loads then you would find for students who provide I'm sorry who teachers who provide instruction for students with more significant needs such as those in our intensive education programs and our life skill programs many of the students in these programs are identified under the classification of autism intellectual disabilities emotional disabilities and multiple disabilities so if you take

035a look you can see here this is the line that shows our growth in or our prevalent our prevalence in autism and we do see a a slight increase in that that includes students that are not only serviced in our self-contained intensive Ed programs but it would also include students that are high functioning autism that may be serviced through a resource room so in 2223 we had 88 students in the district identified under the classification of autism as of just a couple weeks ago when I pulled it up in our data we're at 109 so that's almost 20 more students that are identified in autism and we're seeing that in our self-contained programs we're seeing more students come in with that classification with intensive needs in 2023 are let's see where is it there we

036are right here are students are identified as intellectually disabled those are those students can also sometimes require a self-contained intensive education program last year we had 26 students in the district identified under this classification this year we're at 29 so it's a slight increase so in looking at that we have to be very careful about our self-contained programs because these students typically require intensive supports and more resources and services ideally we like to keep the size to no more than eight why is eight the magic number well eight is the magic number because once you add students Paris teachers work is equipment and there is very little physical room in the classroom and more importantly the case manager that is providing the appropriate program for those students has far more um it it's much more

037demanding um work in planning and programming for those students last year we added an intensive education classroom at Norton due to our growing numbers students who attend the Norton program are in K are in grades K through two and they mostly live in the ditt Norton neighborhoods so when we opened that classroom on that side of town we really wanted the students to be closer to their homeschool neighborhoods so there were some students who needed to transition from the Highland program over to the dittle program and then any incoming kindergarteners or incoming uh first graders because this program was housed at Darcy at one time was now um coming into Norton if we look at our projections you can see that we're looking next year at 12 students in grades K through three that would

038be slated to go to the Norton intensive Ed program and I don't know where we would put them if they were all in that classroom with their equipment and everything so giving that earlier Vinnie went over the individual line increases due to our growing population in special education in addition we're requesting an additional intensive education classroom at Norton school to include one teacher and one parah in time the two classrooms will provide services for students they'll split it up K to3 and then the other classroom will be four to six those two classrooms will will then move to the new Norton school and are already planned in the development of that um layout um that concludes my presentation are there any questions do we have a do we have a classroom at Norton right now

039that's available for that yes we do okay I've been talking Jody and I have been talking and and we're we feel that we'll be able to put that classroom in very close proximity right next door to the current classroom so that those two teachers will be able to collaborate and then when it comes time to transition once a student has reached the top age or the grade three and needs to transition to the next classroom it'll be able to do that very smoothly okay so just so you're talking about having two CL two classrooms two spaces next year starting I didn't think we were going to need that but we saw a lot of students come into the district this year that needed and required that program so in our classrooms are we typically pick

040up a couple students over the summer and what we've been seeing as a trend is we are also picking up students during the school year that require this type of programming how long has that Trend been ongoing because I'm thinking it's been two years that we've seen the midyear increase in students is it following that Trend or is it well Trend I don't remember the exact year what year were you hired Christina all right so in 2015 we added the third classroom at Highland because of the numbers last year we at we added a kindergarten program at uh Darcy we took that kindergarten program and moved to Norton this year because being housed at Darcy they could only provide services for students in kindergarten we were busting out of the seams at Highland by moving

041the program from Darcy to Norton we were now able to include first and second graders in there so that's why we had some students transition from Highland over to make room at Highland and um and then the students that were were transitioning from Darcy that would have gone to Highland that are in the Norton or ditt area went to Norton my questions are about the par Educators um because you're describing and I've heard uh lots of talk about this before you're describing a really precarious situation with being able to hire and retain the par Educators that we need for special ed maybe all around but special ed specifically um I'm wondering why that is do we need to pay more for our par Educators do we need to do something because if it's saving money

042doesn't happen when you're constantly hiring and having that much turnover so I'm just wondering yeah what what your ideas might be for why this is happening what are some things that we could do so okay so what I've seen over time is the people that are applying for our positions as par educators are um oftentimes people with very little experience in that area so I think what's in order for us to help retain them we have to really look at how we're training them and how we're supporting them in that role previous years we often got mothers who are you know want wanted a schedule that worked with their students school schedule their children's schedule and many times they had an associates degree or a bachelor's degree or they were teachers who maybe left the

043profession to raise their children and now wanted to be back in schools but didn't necessarily want want the um responsibilities of being a teacher um not seeing that so much now I mean we do occasionally get to hire someone who's maybe fresh out of college earned their bachelor's degree in education maybe seeking a master's degree in special ed or some other area um and so we are fortunate enough to get them on board um and then many times they earn their degree and then they go into the profession um but we value the short time we have with them because they bring so much to the table you know the skill level that they have um you know it's also a a bigger picture too that we're looking at because you know we feel it's

044really important to build the independence in our students and so we're looking at what is it that we want that par educator to support and how they're going to support because we don't want to take that Independence away from students we don't want to hinder their ability to be social with their peers so we also want to provide them with the correct um or with the appropriate training to understand what their role is and what they're going to do to support that many times we make the recommendation for a par educator for students uh is because there is a physical need maybe it's a child who is has a mobility issue um difficulties in a wheelchair a walker um they may need some help with the daily living skills the other reason why we recommend

045par Educators is for safety we may have students who become disregulated and they have uh and there is a usually a behavior plan and a whole Behavior strategies that are necessary to help support them and so our par educators are often needed to help support those plans and support those students um so I go back again to we're not getting people applying for these positions who come with that rich background in that area so out of our our study we recognize that we need to have kind of a whole onboarding piece that takes place um prior to putting them out there into the classroom because um as much as in some cases you want to get the PA in place as soon as possible you're really it's far better to put them in there with

046the tools that they're going to need than to put them in there and have them learn on the Fly we don't want that to happen so so I think it's not just one answer it's not just about the money I think it's about a lot of different things that going to it thank you Robin and thank you for this presentation um I'm going to be pushing this a little bit further but I think some of my questions are out of your realm and more to the bigger budget um discussion so I will be um talking about that more but it's my understanding that um area school districts around us our neighbors um uh perhaps hiring par Educators and offering a better salary and I'm I'm really wondering if it would help our solve our problems

047if we upped the um the salary the salaries of our par Educators so that's where my thinking is going and I hope to hear more about it as this budget process proceeds thank you but thank you very much and Rob I have one comment more than question I just want to thank you for your very thorough presentation this evening um particularly within the challenges that we all know special education special ed Educators um face but more so I was very impressed with your decision on the use of the eser uh funds really strategically planning um because you know it they're expiring and so what do you do with staff so thank you for that um and also your planning around um our students with disabilities to be located near or in their home school I

048think it's very important to our families um and siblings and the and to the child um and also very glad to hear your attention um on the retention your attention to the retention of Staff that's a a districtwide Statewide Nationwide um Challenge and also your emphasis on mental health so thank you for the work of your department thank you um yeah I just had a couple of questions on um in years past we've also had statistics on uh General mental health uh drug use student violence um you know that sort of thing suicidal ideation um do we have any updates on any of that is are are every is everything okay I mean there we had a few years ago where we were we needed more uh School psychologists and you know we supplied um

049you know that need and it doesn't seem like seems like you're well staffed in that area now or is is everything okay I mean you know how how are things going in the I I could P entire population I could pull that data for from for you um one of the things that I am tracking is I started to uh pull um you know when students um are brought up uh around suicide ideation threat assessment self injury we do go through we have a process in place to address that the staff is well trained and what they need to do to help support the student and the family and um and then we uh I do receive paperwork on that and I started to track more so of looking at the individual students because I

050wanted to see you know is there a p a um a history or is there a pattern is there something that is there a student that we need to kind of maybe pull into one of our student study teams and to look at more closely because they are struggling so that's one of the things um that I am tracking data for um my just off the top of my head my impression is is that we are not seeing the level of um reports coming through my office that I was seeing right after covid it seems my impression is that it has dropped um and I think that uh yeah I think our staff is doing a great job I think that they have identified lots of different resources we have the new um Clinic that

051just opened recently in Waterberry where we've been able ble to refer students um we've heard a lot of good um referrals are coming out when parents are going there and getting the help and the support as opposed to taking them down to an emergency room um are feeling much more supported through that clinic um so so I do think that we are looking at things are um are have gotten have um improved because of Staffing because of resources because of the different strategies that we've been applying um I think the where we're seeing that is you know we're also looking at Chronic absenteeism because oftentimes I find that students that are absent a lot may also it may be um attributed to mental illness or School phobia or something you know along those lines so

052we do often um when we have students that are not coming to school we um I have a a committee that we sit down and we talk and we strategize about you know whether uh what are some what are some things that we can do to help that student we just participated in another training for leap which is a uh program designed to address chronic absenteeism so so I think that we're doing a lot of good things there's a lot of good things that are happening and I think that um but I will pull that data and uh I but I think we'll see that it has dropped that be good see um if I may um as far as out placement goes um the chart that you supply us here um let's see where

053it was it there it is I put it up there oh thank you yeah so we had a peak in 1819 uh where our uh special education I don't I guess that's the right term special education population uh was low lower by at least 100 students um but we had peaked out at you know at least what it looks like 10 more outplacement cases at that point where then we sort of dropped off was there um did we improve our capabilities over that time or we able to handle more students or was it just a matter of I guess the type of student where we were um the like the type of student that was being outplaced in 1819 we no longer had those students for a while and now we're seeing an uptick in

054that kind of student where we need to out place or is it a matter of capability so I guess what I'm asking is are we facing a new exposure because we now have it uh at least looked like a 100 more students from 1819 to now and that's probably going to get higher so are we going to be facing an exposure there where the outplacement is going to get higher well I I think that you know anytime you see a growth in general education population you're going to see a growth in special education and you're going to see that growth in out of District placements I think it's just um it's just you know if you're growing in population you're getting more and more students the likelihood that you're going to get students that might

055need that out of District placement is higher so going back to your question about the 1819 it at least in my recollection is that you see that drop in the out of District placements because we added programs into the district and those students that were outplaced we now had programs in districts that could meet their needs so we had the addition of another life skills program at the high at the high school we had the introduction of the bridges program which servic our students with emotional disabilities at um dittle and then we added them at uh added it at uh DOD and then we also added um we did have new rise and new start which was also addressing the needs of of many of our students that have emotional and um behavioral needs and

056we we ended up changing those two programs into our new Aspire program which uh Services those students so I think the reason why you see that dropping out of District placements from 1819 to present day is because we have built more in District programs to Ser as our students keeping them closer to home keeping them closer to non-disabled peers and opportunities um to be with the General Ed peers when they're ready and they're demonstrating that they have the skills to be successful um in keeping them in the community we also added I'm sorry we also added the Community Life program and I don't remember what year qu came into place but the transition program at Q do you remember Jeff about 10 okay so then that the uh the increase from 18 to 21 you

057had mentioned is that is that because of the the carryover and the change in the new law that we have students that are um extending their stay with us or is it is there a new case mix in there you know because you said there was some unexpected yeah there were four students that that impacted so three of them are in our community Life program uh which is in District so those students instead of Aging out sometime mid year um they are with us through June uh we had one student in an out of District placement he would have aged out in July uh the law came in just in time and we got to keep he we kept our student and he remained in his out of District placement where he's been very successful

058okay thank you so yep maybe clarifying questions so we have 645 students with ipps but I can't seem to tell what the breakdown is because your prevalence chart really just shows the problems but not a kind of delineation of those various um sped or disabilities if you will so if there's something consent afterwards out of 45 how many fall within those disability categories I guess is my first question okay so want to break down in numbers like how many students are in the autism classification how many students okay and then regarding outplacement is this considered um full day or half or is it encompassing both full day or half day programs in out of District programs they're all full day they're all full day day they're off all day got it and in in one

059case uh we do have some students that require an extended day because of the intensity of their disability so we don't have any students leaving half day to go to a specialized program at all no and my other question was [Music] um if and you had it up there uh with regards to the Intensive education classroom for those watching can you just give us an idea of what that looks like um and is there any mainstreaming involved with students who are part of the Intensive program okay okay so if I was to describe an intensive education program a self-contained program so um the students require very intense instruction one to in many cases it's one to one they're impacted often times by multiple things um there might be deficits in language many of our students

060can be non-verbal in those programs um there's cognitive deficits sometimes there's physical disabilities um there's they also in some cases may be impacted by some visual concerns or some hearing concerns so um they really do require a very specialized program unique program to meet their needs and also to work in uh help them build their skills and daily living skills sometimes toileting is involved in their programming social skills OT PT um how else would I describe it um we do look as much as possible to be able to have them spend time in um with our general Ed peers oftentimes it the goal in that is more around behavior and social skills um for for them because you know at some point they're going to be they will be part of our community and will

061and will be um integrated into our community and so as much exposure as they can have to General Ed peers you sometimes get very nice surprises on what they pick up on and uh what they um what they learn I find that our students that are in our intent Ed programs tend to be some of the most popular students in the district everybody knows them they know them by name um but they they really do pro need a lot of services provided by a lot of different Specialists that all work very closely together and collaborate um to really make a comprehensive program that's going to help them to Pro to make progress more selfcontained and every so often they're mainstream for certain activities then it depends on where they're at okay and what the goal

062of that is for them so you like get in our selfcontained classrooms at the elementary level many times they will go into specials they'll go into a morning meeting they'll be part of if there's something planned they are part of The Home Room classroom and so if there's parties or there's something that's going on and it's appropriate for them to to participate um and they comfortable in doing that um it's not going to upset them it's not too noisy for them then they will go and participate in that and be part of that um because we're always looking at um increasing skills in those area and then as you move up in the grades um you see oftentimes our students in our life skills programs are continue to participate in some of our specials with

063jened Pierce um and also through the various um programs that we showed up here earlier um Unified sports the unified academics the best buddies program so those are all all opportunities for our students to be with non-disabled peers thank you I'm gonna follow up on uh something that Sam reminded me of um I really love this idea that you've focused on or you and your team have come to a conclusion focused on um that these special ed students are first and foremost General ed students and in so far as we can have them working with their um General Ed peers we should do more of that um every people should know that Robin uh presented to us in curriculum committee meeting and we had a lengthy discussion not only about how much they pick up

064and the really different ways that they pick up some learning from their general education peers but also what their general education peers receive from the special ed students having them in their classrooms having them in their lives seeing how they're how they learn getting the learning from from a perspective from um from another from another student who's experiencing learning in a very different way so I just wanted to bring that up and thank you for um including that in your presentation toight yeah yeah what an's talking about is I got to attend Marie Broadway and I attended the um DOD unified soccer term that they had uh it was one of the best days in my career and every time I talk about it I get goosebumps but watching our students with special needs being

065supported by three or I think it was three uh boys from DOD who who just did a phenomenal job of supporting those students on the field um you know making sure that the ball was passed to the students that they were able to you know you're coming up on the goal they're not taking a shot they're passing it to our student with um with special needs so he can hit the goal and there was a one student that really it really touched me the way he was pushing a student around in a wheelchair and as the ball trickled across the front of the goal he was running as fast and as hard as he could to push that wheelchair so the ball would Ricochet off the chair and go into the goal now it didn't

066happen but I'll tell you the look on the face of that student in the wheelchair he was over the moon uh with excitement because he almost scored a goal so it was was one of the best days is there reason why ditt doesn't have any programs at all D little does have our bridges program project um I didn't in I didn't include um uh the the reason why I didn't include the bridges program which is at dittle and there's also the bridges program um at the middle school and then we have a Spire at the high school that's our specialized programs for students who need more behavioral support um and the reason why I didn't focus on those was because in looking at the prevalence the growth that we were really seeing was around our

067students that would qualify for more of these intensive programs and that that's where we were being really impacted I mean historically I've always known Highland to have the majority yeah yep I I mean our goal is um you know when the new schools open Highland will still have the Intensive Ed program but we will now have a full intensive Ed program over at the new Norton right so students depending on what side of town you're from we want to keep you as close to your your home school as possible thank you welcome anything else okay you're [Applause] welcome thank you Robin and I'm gonna just switch back all right can I address um Miss aran's question about pay for a moment so I'd like to just add a little bit of of on that additional

068color the current agreement the bargaining unit agreement with the par Educators was um negotiated and and they're in the second year of a three-year contract and clearly one of the items in the in the negotiations we had with with them for the current contract was pay it was pointed out that some districts do have a higher starting pay and it's absolutely true but what we found in those districts is that even though their starting pay is there are services and they stay at that level we have a career path here in the chesher public schools and that is if you become an ABA DTI certified power professional and we do provide the training in housee for that the pay is substantially higher so we're looking at $17 an hour versus $24 per hour a lot

069of districts do not have that we also offer certain stiens to the par educators that other districts include in their base pay when we negotiated that was you know one piece of the puzzle that was important to them what was also important to them though was their medical benefits they were paying a much larger percentage than our other employees for their medical benefits and they were interested in reducing that which we agreed to and and obviously the board approved that when we presented the recommendation um the reason that medical benefits just as a general statement you know are higher they pay a higher co-share is because the employees that are in this group are working between 28 and 32 and a half hours they're not 35-hour employees so you know the the cost structure that's

070built in for the Paras and what was negotiated in the current contract was negotiated the first year we did bump up the wages by 7% some of that had to do with the fact that the minimum wage had grown over the time that the the expiring contract was in place um but there's no doubt we're competing you know at entry level dollars for pars with companies like Amazon that are paying $20 per hour completely different job requires you know perhaps nights weekends and holidays and I think the other thing you know going Beyond wages as as Miss Carrie touched on is that I think people that look at this job and enter the job don't necessarily understand the components of the job it's really not for everybody so we we are seeing High turnover and

071higher than we have pre pandemic it's actually gotten better this year you know we're down to about a dozen positions open the thing that's interesting is we've been able to fill positions but we're seeing this sort of Rapid turnover of individuals not all of it is for pay you know some of it is just job dissatisfaction didn't understand what the job was um we've seen people get hired and then not even start because they found a job with higher pay we are negotiating with them for a new contract starting um you know next next February because their contract is a expiring and I'm sure that we're going to go through you know a lot of discussions back and forth as I had mentioned on Tuesday evening I I do expect that the next contracts that

072we negotiate you know the the wage increases are going to be higher that's just what's happening in the marketplace so I just wanted to give you a little bit of color on the fact that we do have um a different pay structure because we pay much more for the ABA DTI certified ifed powers and we need them yeah then thank you for that explanation it makes a a lot of sense to me um one of the reasons I I've been grappling with all of this is because we have in our budget another PA of professional position but if we're not filling the positions that we have already then sort of what's the need for that added position I mean we keep working at it just don't understand budgets that well just remember districts that are

073paying higher than we're paying are also having difficulty fing position sheets you know we're not the only ones that have openings that position at Norton school will be an ABA DTI position it's one of the higher paid positions those I think we're doing fairly well we are not having trouble filling those yeah because it's a path for growth yeah for people that are par Educators in our system ex so we always fill those positions which is great and you know we we've contemplated it points if we continue to sustain open positions is there a point where it's uh better for our students and staff to consolidate any of those par educator positions and higher a uh fulltime or whatever General special educator you know Robin talked about our intensive intensive uh effort to shift from

074Intervention through uh par Educators to intervention from people who have deeper training in addition we're trying to train par Educators to gain that skill set and we're looking at that role is more of a career path um and that's why there are opportunities for promotion within that and there's a lot of professional development that's afforded to that team now yeah the 18 hours is a lot it's a lot of time yeah that they didn't have yeah thank you and it's it's it makes me feel good that you're all this is all in your focus because things like that worry me so thank you and I guess the last thing I'll add is that to the extent we have open par uh professional positions we do use Kelly to provide substitute services for Paris the fill

075rate isn't as high as we'd like to see there either uh and also using temp agencies or consulting services to make sure that the students are getting the attention that they need so it's not an easy problem to solve but we're you know doing everything we think we reasonably should be doing good you're welcome okay we're back on instructional expense and at this time I'd like to introduce marleene salano our assistant superintendent who's going to talk to you about some of the uh important things that are planned in this budget for next year on the instruction side good evening everyone I've been asked to speak on the instructional expense portion of the budget and this is a much smaller percentage than other areas you have heard about tonight and last week and so my comments

076will be commensurate with the request so the first thing that I'd like to um highlight is the portion uh that is being requested for instructional materials and resources and this money is put towards updates Replacements one of the things that you've heard me talk about are the Math consumable workbooks and materials that we need for Eureka Math that is our math program in K5 whenever possible we do all that we can to bundle those and cut costs in some years we've had those printed by Office Max through a an agreement with the company that was not as um Flawless as we had hoped so we've gone with using the company to do that um one of the other times we did a three-year bundle and were able to purchase things together so next year we

077it's time for us to renew again other things on the docket include an algebra 1 textbook and we're in the midst of excuse me putting together a committee to um to analyze some different texts and then we also will be having an AP macroeconomics textbook come before you before the spring um that's another purchase for next year now we get into professional development and over the past couple of years um we well I'm requesting an increase in this area because over the past couple of years we've used a lot of the Esser funds to help um pay for training pay for coaching services and pay for a lot of the PD that we've done through the use of some Consultants who've come in to help us and so one of the um one of the

078things we've done is to really train our people and grow our people so that we can be better and we've done that around um our multilingual Learners we've had such an increase in multilingual Learners that we've made sure that we have coaching through an Aces consultant some of that money comes from our title three Grant but it also comes out of out of this area as well you've heard us talk about Mike Anderson who's a national consultant um he has written a number of books and has worked with ASC for years he's been working with us to help our teachers embed social emotional learning into academics um you were part of the Board of Education showcase at the elementary level where you saw some new strategies that were implemented about making thinking visible and so

079we've gone to a lot of workshops and had a lot of training about ways in which we can carry that out in the classroom these are not things that happen in one training session and then people are trained and are ready to go this really takes a lot of time it takes a lot of digging in takes a lot of practice so you might see a couple of these things come up over years because it's a it's a multi-year process um towards the bottom of the slide you can see some information on play based learning you may recall that that was also something that was in the new legislation and so we did contract this year with econ to work with our kindergarten teachers to do some professional development about um about play based learning

080and also regarding uh coaching for them as well we've had two days of the of the um PD so far and a four days of coaching and we've got more to come this year something that we look to continue in a different capacity next year and then in the in the realm of um really deepening our understanding on making thinking visible we've been using that book that many of you have been aware of building thinking classroom so goes towards purchasing those books for our administrators our staff Etc the other is about our curriculum writing so I know you've all heard about our curriculum writing Institute in the summer in the past we've used a significant amount of Esser funds to help offset that cost and um we will be looking to continue the curriculum writing

081Institute because it was so well received by our teachers and because the product that we're getting out of that is really a really high quality product of revision of units that has been in all areas including science and social studies and Ela and across all of our grade levels K through 12 so that's working on our alignment to the standards our alignment to the vision of The Graduate and again the idea of complex thinking um we continue to look at our curriculum Council Focus next year that will be art Library math music and our multilingual learner program will be up for presentation this is their evaluation year year and then as a continuation our next Generation science standards the ngss we continue to work on that area that's been a bit of a more tedious

082process um especially because we're shifting from teaching just content alone to teaching skills and that requires a lot of support and a lot of practice lastly we have a um we have new science I'm sorry new social studies standards they were national standards which have now been adopted in Connecticut that are specific to Connecticut which are aligned with the national standards and so we need to do some more work in that area so those are some Focus areas that we'll be looking at and that's what I have for you so if you have any questions happy to answer those Adam um Marlene what's the difference between um science content and science skills Ah that's a really great question what grades are we talking about so in that area we're talking about kindergarten through grade 12

083and we're talking about using the content of what would be taught in biology to teach kids how to solve problems on how to think deeply rather than being able to just talk to you about an algorithm we're talking about what goes into that algorithm how would you figure that out um we're talking about looking at data tables and rather than just taking that at face value looking at that data table compared to one from another um from another group or another provider or looking at multiple and synthesizing all of that information to come up with your conclusions we're really talking about um students doing the thinking rather than just spewing back the content of a course so there's so bit more application instead of just regurgitation is that kind of that's a good way to

084put it yeah thank you any other questions an I have a quick question uh because you mentioned Mike Anderson we've used him in the past for professional development is is that around the seal it is it is so um Mike Anderson was Consulting with DOD and they wereing at some collegial coaching really looking at how to motivate students particularly after the pandemic looking at how to provide choice for students and not just choices and what do I want to do but how can I make a choice in my learning that will push me into that zone of proximal development where I have to work a little harder so not working for a grade but working for the sake of learning and getting better at something and mastering it looking at how to um embed those

085executive function skills to break projects down into manageable chunks looking at um social emotional skills meaning working with others on diverse problems so that I have to listen to you you have to listen to me and how can we solve this together so the state came out with um social emotional learning habits social emotional and intellectual learning habits for students K through 12 they exist did K through three and last March they came out for 4 through 12 so we did a significant amount of work with those standards over the summer at our administrative Retreat and since then the principles have been unrolling that to their staff and so having someone like a consultant like Mike really bring that um really bring that practice into the classroom and to show people to demonstrate that and

086to show how you can teach those things within the classroom has been very helpful so we've worked with Mike Mike has come and worked with our administrators he's worked at DOD for a couple of years on embedding those skills he um has come in this year and he's done a couple of days at our elementary schools and the past two summers he has offered sessions that we've provided here for our teachers in which they were able to either come for a day or two of his one-on-one um work inperson workshops or they could through this process take an online course with him that's self-paced or they could read his books and we've had book clubs around the district to learn more thank you so we've used him for probably the past three four years I

087would say three years and then um we because you mentioned his name I'm just assuming that he's one of the one of the something in the budget for the professional development coming into the the next budget Year yes we want to continue to use the servic we do want to continue okay thank you he's not a forever thing we're going to take those skills and he's going to work himself out of us needing him well we've talked but the curriculum writing Institute yeah I've seen the presentation in the past I think it's fantastic that we've been able to offer it you mentioned that it was funded with yeser funds some in part so a couple of questions that's going away at some point is the idea to continue this on yes with regular board budget

088dollar yes and that's part of the reason why we're requesting an increase okay yeah um How does the the curriculum writing Institute I'm thinking about it in terms of basically well first of all what was the dollar figure for say last year just ballpark it's about $100,000 okay and I'm thinking of breaking that down into two pieces there's the cost for the service provider and then paying staff it falls outside the contract basically or it's part of the contract it's out of the normal regular Academic Year right right it is and they get approximately $40 per hour which is the going curric the um curriculum writing rate for contracted hourly rate outside this the contract so how does that how does that 100,000 breakdown between the service provider and staff getting so um we work

089with a woman her name is Linda Van wagenen she is uh really in my she was an assistant well she wasn't assistant was she assistant superintendent she held a curriculum role in planville she sits on the neas evaluation team she's really well well regarded and um she's been able to work with us to do that so some of it is our planning sessions with her this will be the last summer that we work with her Kevin and I have um collaborated with her sometimes messages are better received from someone out of town and um and sometimes um I think what she's able to provide in helping us to review all of that curriculum that gets written has also been helpful this summer we're we're releasing from some of that she will be present and she

090to some of that curriculum review with us and Kevin and I will be taking over more of that role so this will be her last this coming summer will be the last summer that she's on site with us thank you how does it how do you expect it to break down this year what was the number last year what do you expected to break down this year in those two categories so I think it's going to be about the same I think we pay Linda like $55,000 for her iners and her um her planning I think she might get around $5,000 for the back and forth feedback that she is sharing with Kevin and I and the teachers who have written it and then the other portion is really we've we have run about 80

091teachers for the week um so whatever that breaks down to at ad teachers for the five days okay thank you sure just give you a sense of the value sorry need to startle you there to give you a sense I mean I pulled the data I didn't have the 23 uh survey responses from the curriculum writing Institute I'm sure they're very similar to 22 where we asked would you recommend curriculum writing Institute for a colleague 84 attendees uh 84 yes Zer no zero maybe would you want to attend again next year 78 yes 0 no 6 maybe I think that you know it's hard to get 84 people in any profession to agree on anything but you know 84 people to attest to the value is speaks volumes um to the investment that was made

092yeah no I I the presentation that I saw was at the high school yeah for no we did one at Highland in November uh did all three elementary middle and high school all three levels was the curriculum rating Institute I was just thinking building thinking classrooms from this year but yeah all three levels had a curriculum writing Institute presentation yeah I think I yeah I recall seeing more than one no I I think it's a I think it's a great idea but I'm I was just curious about the numbers too because yeah sure that's the question in front of us thank you yeah you know the question about how much it costs is obviously good question and I just wanted to try and put some Roi to that you know yeah appreciate that but but

093also as as I see it we're investing in our own staff we're investing in our own teachers our own professionals we've been that's been our strategy since Co to really try and utilize as much money as possible through the rser and you know obviously the budget increase that we're asking for $25,000 on this line it is not close to what our bestor provided but uh it is something and unfortunately this has been a line that's been flat funded for many years uh in part because we had the our bester money uh in part because prior to co we had some more difficult budget years where town Revenue wasn't growing and those resources weren't there so you know I think as I'll talk about a little later I think we're asking for reasonable investment here along

094that line one one other follow up on that so was 80 teachers participated last year yes was it 60 or something the year before I think we had it was 84 and 22 yeah I'm I always have to turn people away oh you do we can only fit 80 comfortably to do the work in that room okay that's what's manageable for us I was okay yeah got it thank you sure this is actually probably a superintendent question um I'm just wondering since you did make a request for the stem robot that engineering why it wasn't put into the fold of instruct because I'm sure it's going to impact PD as well as instructional supplies pretty much so the that request wasn't included in the budget the robotics piece and I'm going to talk a little

095bit about that uh in closing as well as you know before we start to to really kind of deliberate where things stand next week I'll talk a little bit about that in closing okay yes Adam um so I'm I'm just trying to reconcile the increase um for uh for staff training so the ARP Esser funds was that was that a 7525 Grant where we had the kick in 25% usually no no our F was um just 100% it was 1.8 million that we received from the government over the course of basically a three-year window that money is expiring at the conclusion of this year upfront obviously 20120 cleaning supplies uh you know uh some technology and a boatload of tents and things like that a lot of the money was spent in terms of you

096know limiting exposure and mitigating you know covid and then um as we shifted away from that some of the money was spent a lot of the money was spent on professional development over the course of those three years some of the items that Marlene just talked about and then some of the money was spent on secondary math interventionist coaches um which I've asked to be you know continued forward in this plan and an assistant principal split between two buildings at the elementary school also be carried forward given the you know explosion in our Elementary School enrollment um and then there's one teaching position which is at Highland uh where we've gone from about 700 students to about 900 students in the last couple of years and that's for reading and math interventionist math specialist and

097on the smaller end we were able to pay for coaching training we were able to pay for profession development by bringing some folks in last year's PD day on March 17th we were able to get really amazing offerings because we had money to pay people to come in and and do those trainings which was well received right so um so I I guess what what I'm what I'm asking is so you you were able to train or you you brought in um 84 teachers and administrators for the session last is it was only one session for the year um for the curriculum writing Institute we've done it three years three years this will be our four after school it was oh was one week oh I'm sorry I thought it was one day no okay

098now all right on week right so right full week 84 so is your intention to still do uh have 84 people or is it smaller I can fit 80 so we'll we'll take a look at that and it would be nice to do 80 again yeah so that's your intention so is um so the primary expense really is to have the teachers there the actual um collab collaborators or um well I want to say Proctor but not Consultants right so the the primary expense is not really the Consultants it's just to have it's the teachers there because obviously you know I'm sure they would love the volunteer a week with their time for this but they're compensated for that yes and the fact that there's a waiting list I mean the it's like running a

099marathon for a teacher and then saying all right great job we've enrolled you in this 5K um you know right after you finished it because that's really what it is they roll out of completing the the Academic Year and you know what to have 80 plus people step forward and say I want to engage in this professional development for a week right after school gets out um really speaks volumes about the commitment of our team is of teachers and and it also speaks to the quality of the the program itself um because you know when 84 people say oh yeah I'd love to this was valuable or I want to come back um you know that's that's a real testimony to to the quality of the program so I so I just wanted to te

100this tease this out a little more if I if I may um so the the line item um it says in 2223 that 286,000 was expended um but the budget that you're asking for this year is 211,000 um which is up from 20 let's see 23 24 of 186,000 so are you sacrificing something else to be able to only increase by 25,000 so like obviously you're you're compensating with our right with our funding but is there something else that is falling by the wayside to only increase by 25,000 so we're all I wouldn't say that anything's Falling by the wayside and I would I would say that everything we do is always a priorities priorities priorities right and we're and we're leveraging where we're going to get the most bang for our buck but I

101the salary part of this is not necessarily all coming from um this line item some of that comes through salaries some of that I offset by our um title four Grant so I kind of pull it from a lot of places in order to cover it if that makes sense yes okay yeah I had I figured that it was either something was cut or okay thank you thank you so much [Applause] okay I'm realized and I'm sure it's not lost on anybody that the fact that the teachers are participating in writing the curriculum that then then going to deliver as an inherent benefit they they've bought in because they wrote it so that is very very helpful last slide on instructional expense is what has happened over time with instructional expense and as you could

102see from the chart it's it's basically been flatlined as a percentage of the budget it's not that it has an increase it's as a percentage of the budget uh for next year it's going to be around 5.75% of the total budget that concludes instructional expense we're going to move right into support services and as of now we completed salaries benefits and instructional and really the next two sections are more about the things that we have to do on the back end to provide for our students and our staff so support services and then our building facilities uh and maintenance is in the last section so Support Services about 8.6% of next year's budget it's about eight and a half percent of this year's budget you'll see that the total increase request is 6.95% very quickly

103the categories and the largest category here 58% of this line item is just for transportation which includes not only the contract cost we pay Deco but also Fuel and insurance the next largest category which is about 12% of this line item is other Professional Services that includes quite a few items but the largest portion are technology you know one of the the Professional Service we pay for we do not have an in-house Chief technology officer that is a shared service that we purchase Apex technology has been doing it for about a decade they do a very good job we pay them and it's a shared service with the town so they serve as essentially the network engineer and also the the maintainer of the network that serves the town and the school district um we

104also pay out of this line item cost of things like power school and parent Square which are applications that are used you know to provide um for our students the next largest line item is legal costs which um we we know that we're doing some negotiations next year so we increased it a bit also the um cost of the annual audit that we pay uh to our audit team CLA is the is the auditor for this year and next as well and then the next largest section of this budget is the energy performance contract you know this is a a recurring payment that we have for 15 years for the infrastructure improvements that were made across the district about uh nine years ago now that included as an example uh upgrading Highlands electric heat to

105Natural Gas uh increasing or adding LED lighting in all our classrooms and all our hallways across the district so if I take this give you a little bit more insight into some of these line items you'll see that um the largest increase is right here you know of the $500,000 requested 323,000 is for Pupil Transportation sure the board remembers is that we just approved deo's new contract even though we were averaging 1.6% increases the last five years in the new contract we're going to be at about 4.2% overall and the first year increases 6% um so that explains why that most of that 8.68% the other reason this line item is increasing beyond the 6% is because we do anticipate that um we will have additional costs just to provide um special ed u and

106possibly general education School runs because of increasing enrollment so that's the largest um item and then related to that here Transportation Supply that is Diesel and gasoline you know for our large buses and smaller smaller Vehicles just work on um unlet gasoline um the U this line item for other services that that includes among other things our student accident Insurance um and we know that that's going to be increasing was UN under budgeted this year and and so we had to get that budget line item in order if I take a little bit of a deeper dive into Transportation just quickly to show you you know what what costs what within Transportation the General Ed public school routes most of them done with large buses is about 52% of the transportation line item special ed

107runs which are typically one to one for most of the students that um receive special education services that's 23% and then you can see the next largest category there is fuel equipment and repairs for the buses the Student Activity uh that's for extracurricular activities and including running buses for athletic events music events private school routs 113,000 we are required under state law to provide um transportation for the students that attend St Bridgets in town and you'll see there's another 194,000 for students that go to vag Willcox or other programs that we don't offer a district um this slide just summarizes the dco contract that we we just approved um that the board approved um 6% increase in year one then 34s and at 3% in that contract we have an option to extend for five

108more years provided Deco provides one or more electric buses and they're replacing 50% of the buses in the first year of the new contract we continue um to look at how do we reduce cost or become more efficient with Transportation it is a large line large line item um it's the largest line item after salaries if you look at it as just one large line item so we look to consolidate you know to the extent we can our bus runs reasonable bus stop distances more students that we could get to a bus stop means that the buses can get through quicker and get the the students to school and back home much more quickly but it also reduces Fuel and other costs with summer school which we do run we've reduced the number of facilities

109that have summer school and we've also staggered the start times and that becomes important because we can use the same vehicles um to do the the runs that we need as opposed to having more Vehicles which cost more money so staggering start times is something that's helped reduce the cost of summer school um as Miss Cary mentioned to the extent we can we use Aces where we can double up um special Edge students and we do work with other districts to uh even do some of the general education runs to boag and other schools and then we did this year complete an upgrade to the um software that's used to provide route planning you know we do our own route planning we don't Outsource that to dco we we think that gives us a lot

110more control um and so that that's helped improve our our routing you know moving right along here technology these are some of the items that I wanted to just mention quickly first of all um as the board knows we have been in the process of upgrading the old smart boards to Smart interactive flat panels you know as of today we have completed all the work that needs to be done at Darcy the elementary schools and at DOD um at at Darcy Norton and Chapman and we know those schools are going offline after um 2025 26 we are just replacing the boards that fail we're not aggressively rep replacing everything like we have at the other schools so we only have about 50 more smart boards to replace at the high school and we do anticipate

111completing that by the end of this budget year that we're talking about um we are not asking for additional funding for that we're able to use the same amount of funding that we had last year in our budget for technology upgrades um our PC Fleet is in good shape um the um Chromebooks 4100 Chromebooks that we provide to students also that Fleet is in pretty good shape we'll continue you know to service and we do repair those inhouse we um continue to work with Apex in the town you know to try and mitigate our risk of a cyber event and related to that that last next to last line Sentinel one you know was new software that was installed that provides you know endpoint security I'm not the technical person but it is AI driven

112software to protect us from any type of a cyber you know attack and then we're working with mutual link to um actually this is a school sec Improvement project that project just got underway you know Mr Woods who's here is is spearheading that for us and it'll enable us to um use all the communication tools that we have inhouse integrated with police and fire so in the event you know of of an emergency we're able to communicate better support services as a percentage of the budget you kind of see it's up and down but back in 056 it was about 8.2% of the budget and this budget request it'll be about 88.6% so it's trended up just a bit and that concludes support services so a pause for a breather before we go to the

113home stretch which is maintenance and operations thank you thank [Music] you thanks for this thanks for the presentation Ben [Music] I'm going back to [Music] your first or second slide not the header slide but or the cover slide um it's got the full $7 million in there it's a pie chart list on there this one hold on yeah right there so you've got other Professional Services $900,000 Tech legal Medical Board of audit um I mean I think I already kind of know the answer to this but I would like a recap and for other people to do do we put these out to bid in a routine fashion maybe not all of them most of them are there any that we don't put out to bid well and and does the town do it who

114owns that process so I'll I'll talk a little like the Apex technology contract that's um right now we're I believe in a three-year agreement that is we have not put that out to bid just because of the nature of the services that we receive there is a technology study group that includes members of the Town Council the board and some former members of the Town Council like Steve Carrol so they review that contract uh with Apex I I do not on the committee but I serve as a liaison to that committee so and that in it's total is about a $240,000 per year contract you know other components of this yes some of it we do put out to bid power school though as an example which the total cost of power school is probably

115around 880,000 per year and that's a ballpark you know that is our integrated student management system we bought it several years ago you know we replaced something that we had we renew that contract um and there are other smaller contracts that either we put out the bid or buy on state contract like technology Services a lot of the you know not necessarily just the hardware but the software if we don't put it out to bid we can buy it from a state contract which has already been pre-bid okay yeah I just want to make sure we're getting a good service and spending our money wisely that's all it's a mixed bag who did I'm who owns our who owns the legal uh relationship is that the board or the town or is it a mutual

116or it's more complicated our attor I mean I think Floyd comes up or is it Jeff to know for we contract we contract directly with them vir Moses for our employment and education stuff and that's the Lion Share of of the the work that you the support services uh for us yes I mean we we pretty much exclusively deal with Bertram and Moses for loss you know anything regarding employment like contracts and things like that and then special education as well but when we engage with school modernization that's a a town entity their attorney is Jeff arreo we don't pay for that is he bur Moses he is not okay so that is a different legal firm but that's Town controlled correct good got it okay um and the town did go out to bid

117to find New Town Council probably about four years ago now okay and just again to pick up on your point another service we split with the town is the audit service and that does go out to bid you know we're um I think we're in year three with CLA the T the town owns that process and then they just outs they just say go do the part with the board right yeah I get involved I you know again I help with that I do don't sit on the audit committee but a on on the board of ed side yeah no no I understand but that is definitely the town owns yeah the council makes that decision on who the auditor that's HED okay um thank you uh with with regard to well Transportation Supply so

118this is question yeah so I'm looking at the the budget number for I don't want to get this to be too complicated so if you have a concise answer but in short the budget number is going up this year relative to last year and that doesn't make sense on the surface because the price of gas has gone down so I'm just curious if there's a simple answer to it including it it's a gut call as to what's going to happen with fuel prices next year okay okay no that's fine that's all it is all right thank you um and with regard to Capital Equipment I don't know if you would mention it or not if I missed it does that include buses and and let me just recap for people at home yeah our bus

119fleet I'm thinking it's 50 buses including about 35 of the big yellow buses and another 15 or so of the smaller Vehicles type tools or Vans that's correct okay do any of those so we own the smaller ones we own yes deo's got its own Fleet of large small and vans okay large and small buses and vans we also have couple of type two buses which are the smaller buses as well as a fleet of vans that Capital Equipment is really two things one is the energy performance contract which is 669 th000 okay and the balance I think is 285,000 000 that is the that is the capital equipment is just the PC and Chromebook purchase account so not the buses so Vehicles go through the capital budget they're not in that line item when

120we buy they're somewhere else okay that when we buy a vehicle we just are buying it out of the transportation account we essentially baying cash for it we're not financing it got it what's the transportation account then I'm just curious well the transportation account is it under Support Services yes so I'm just going to click over so if you look and that this is in the back of the budget book but you know Pupil Transportation this account series 510 if you look that got it so that's not just the datco contract that includes some other stuff too okay okay if you look in the back of the budget book you see there's a whole series of accounts under 510 and you could see the detail regular special it special Student Activities Etc okay do you

121expect to be buying any any buses this year or any vans we haven't budgeted to buy new vehicles have not okay thank you you're welcome real quick uh there's I saw that the dco contract guarantees at least one electric bus do you know if they're planning on more than one the goal would be to get more than one the reason reason we have one in the contract is because state law was passed that says if you have one electric bus in operation the contract can go up to 10 years we don't want to write a 10-year contract from day one we have an option I'm sorry if we add an electric bus and I doubt we would do just one when we do it clarify the um Chromebook fee that the pay where does that

122go to so the the 20 the there's a a Chromebook protection fee that we ask parents to pay $25 and that provides protection if the Chromebook breaks and also the replacement of a charger that's collected um into the Student Activity funds at the high school and at the middle school and then those funds that are collect CED are used to make purchases of parts so that our you know we have five technology assistants in the district they repair the Chromebook so we have an inventory of screens and keyboards and other parts that are you know prone to breakage so we buy the parts from that Student Activity account and also if there's sufficient funds we'll actually purchase new Chromebooks from that account so the I know that's a long answer but it goes to Student

123Activity and it comes out of Student Activity actually the board passed a procedure probably about seven or eight years ago that outlines what that money is collected for and what it could be used for thank you no questions all right thank you can move on we are in the home stretch here so maintenance and operations quick overview I know the board members know know that you know our our buildings are aging um right now humiston is 112 years and the newest School currently Highlands at 53 years of age the most important point that I want to make is that not only are school buildings used as schools but they are also community centers we have a lot of Afterschool activities and you could see the number at cheser high school it's kind of an eye

124popping number at 2500 you know that includes some student programs certainly that occur during the school day and school week but it also includes a lot of night and weekend activities so our our buildings get used quite a bit you know the high school you know Highland also has and and do that that number always looks low to me but you get the point that these are not just maintained for schools but they're maintained for the community um this slide just shows you in in 2026 we'll have a new Norton and a new North End I know the board and everyone here knows that we're working in Earnest to get those new schools designed and then built and then we'll be taking three of the oldest buildings offline when those new schools come online so

125maintenance and operations is 5.4% of the budget uh is the request it's 5.1% of the budget currently it includes these categories so the 4.84 million requested um it's not just repairs of the buildings you'll see that 40% of that budget just goes to utilities and heating you know the primary utility cost is for electricity maintenance and repair is 1.5 million cleaning Serv Services is about $839,000 and then maintenance supply and equipment maintenance and repair is about a half a million dollars combined um I wanted to dig a little bit deeper and show you of the utility and heating which is 40% of the maintenance budget most of that is electricity um followed by heating which is either oil and and and two buildings remaining um we've decreased the number of buildings that use oil natural

126gas and propane at Darcy is about 579,000 and then you'll see the rest of these we're calling them utilities But it includes garbage and recycling as well as the uh gas and propane we use to cook at the schools that that have that so that's 40% of the maintenance budget the remaining 60% is cleaning services you see it's 29% of that 2.9 Million this is our building repair and Improvement budget it's about 89,000 we are requesting an increase in that line uh Grounds Maintenance 247,000 that includes snow clearing Services I that budget for next year is about 160,000 is the request then maintenance services are outside contractors that we hire and then equipment replace I'm sorry the snow p is here but we separated that apologize for that error um and then we pay for

127school um security monitoring Services um as part of this budget the line item increases you'll see we're looking um you know this is a lower increase than we had you know last year we're we're still anticipating that we may pay more for utilities overall you know I hope we don't get there uh Mr White but that is we did budget it up just a bit um we are looking for a large increase in maintenance and repair you know I do want to acknowledge that Mr clette our director of Facility Services I think the board members know Mr clette you know is here and um you know he and his staff do a terrific job you know with the upkeep of our buildings you know the request we have here will go to make additional improvements

128to the building that are needed and in a moment I'll I'll explain the capital budget but this is just for the repairs that we need um as well as some preventative maintenance to keep our buildings in good order um and then you know maintenance supply and heat and energy cost you could see round out the the request largest line item is maintenance and repair um as far as our buildings go just to recap we've got you know eight main school buildings we've got other facilities that we have to maintain our portable classrooms at Norton and Highland a maintenance garage we do maintain the bus depot as well some storage trailers and some other structures we have 300 learning spaces in the district 760,000 square feet of buildings lot of Roof Systems plenty of sidewalks and

129and parking lots and then Acres of outside grounds that we maintain through our staff um our operating budget level for maintenance they have increased but really in line with inflation and our Capital Appropriations from the capital budget which are for larger improvements um those have not kept up to the level that we think certainly gotten better the last few years and I'll talk is that we need to continue to alert so I need to plug in if you just speed okay capital budget there's there's nothing here that's new so I'm going to skip over this um the planning committee that's responsible to make determinations and then ultimately recommend to the Board of Education what the capital request should be did meet uh two weeks ago to begin the capital request project this does not have

130any dollars as you see on the slide I just showed some general categories where the capital requests uh were presented no decisions have been made but you'll see that there are all things that we need just to keep our buildings running HVAC window replacements sidewalks Roofing um some cafeteria improvements There's No Frills these are things that are needed to continue to to run out buildings over the next five years so this is broken down by category this is broken down by school building I do want to note that we are not requesting any funds in this capital budget as we discussed with the planning committee for Chapman Norton and Darcy which we know will be closed um if there are capital needs we certainly wouldn't be shy about asking but we think those buildings will

131be able to continue to run for the next two school years after this one uh before we close them and central office in humiston we don't have any Capital requests in for those uh for that building right now but you know the planning committee will be looking at what the long-term use of of central office and that humiston building will be very quickly this was the capital funding approval from two years ago you see it was $2.5 million and most of that was for fire alarm system replacement here at DOD some HVAC lighting and electrical improvements and then in the current year that we're in you'll see that it went from two million to $3.8 million that that's very important it just shows that the funds that we need to be allocated to continue to

132keep our buildings properly maintained on on a long-term basis are there so you'll see that we've got a million 50,000 in hbac improvements 600 of 600,000 of that is for the dod boilers that um just went out to bid um that Mr cette um opened up those bids and it looks like the bids came in in a way that we'll be able to meet that budget and get that work done window replacements um some Roofing and and sidewalk and Paving so the money that's been allocated this is all work that's presently underway being bid out so that we can get you know as much of it done over the school year and then a lot of that work as you know gets done over the summer recap of the money that's been requested over the

133last 10 years we've requested 24 million we've gotten 21 million approved by the Town Council you know and I do want to know the last couple of years requests have been fulfilled we think that you know we need to be investing between three and five million a year to keep the remaining buildings um and improving them to the extent they need to be improved so the earlier years on this slide were not strong enough we do have some catch-up work that that we need to continue to request funds for so that we can um keep the buildings running I always like to give the board a recap we do have a a safety net for maintenance if we have you know a complete failure and we don't have enough budget funds to do a building

134repair we have 233,000 in this building maintenance CNR fund it's also known as emergency fund we can go to the Town Council and request use um but we haven't had to use it since 2019 so we hope that that continues um so kind of at the recap here so you know maintenance needs are constant you know here in the district so I know that's kind of hard to figure out what that might be but what do you think that is Rich I know you know so it could you know it it is sort of is it it's a colonoscopy of one of the pipes at cheser high school so you could see this 1374 feet that's how far the plumber had a um what do you call that thing was that a snake oh that

135was a water jet sorry so you see this is the pipe that's the end of the pipe what do you think those things are that wound up in chesher high school's sewer line use your imagination beer cans beer cans okay that could be a good guess does that help you vape pens um a lot of them so we've been having some trouble and this is just an example of some of the maintenance things that uh that we need to deal with so we were having some backups at chesha high school and and this is what you know our maintenance staff and our contractor pull out this is a a recurring event I know that our high school administrators are always trying to deal with the problem but this is part of where our our building

136repair funds have to go um when we look at the cost of Maintenance versus Capital when we make investments in capital you have to look at it as an investment it's not just money that you're you're spending out of your operating budget you're really investing so this is chure high school last year you really can't this picture doesn't really do it justice because it looks better than it actually was it was still kind of daylight here but these are all the single pain windows that um have been there for many years they're not energy efficient the storefront um it's was well past its prime um and the lighting you could see that there's a lot of Shadows in this lighting um it was incandescent very poor lighting and so the Improvement that was made made

137it much better um you'll see that these are all new windows new storefront very secure the windows are all double pane low eass so we've improved that building envelope we'll keep the heat in longer and keep to the extent there's cooling keep the the building at that end this is the South ENT interest um you know much cooler LED lighting it's more energy efficient and you'll see that the lighting is very very even across the building so it's a much more inviting building to go to at night the average person may not notice it but these are significant improvements and these are the types of things that you know we need to continue to do and are doing across the district if we look at maintenance and operations over time you'll see that it's basically

138been the same percentage of the budget in 0506 it was 5.45% it's 5.4% in this budget request again we've we've spent more money but in line with inflation and because our buildings are aging more we need to continue to make those Investments and the next section are the conclusions so before I turn it over to Dr Solen are there any questions um Vin um and if this is if this analysis has been done through the Next Generation school committee then I'll if you maybe you could point it point to me point it to me um electricity use or electricity cost we're going to be bringing online two School two new schools that potentially are using hybrid electric climbing systems uh was has there any analysis been done if the cost of those new schools will

139be like a one to one you know with the improved efficiency and so forth um with their like you know the current natural gas or I guess oil use at Norton um and is Chapman also that might be natural gas because it's close to the Chapman is natural gas so I'll just say fossil fuel use um the cost of that versus the cost of Now using electricity which is like the what third highest in the nation is there uh with the including efficiencies is the cost going to like when we see that pie chart in a few years is it going to be roughly the same it's just going to be in electricity or how how do we have an Outlook there well I'll answer it this way the most important thing that we get

140out of the two new buildings is they're going to be very tight building envelopes no leaky Windows no leaky doors right so you'll have improvements in in efficiency of whatever you're doing heating or cooling because you've got a brand new tight properly insulated building um we're adding Cooling in those two new buildings that we don't currently have so I don't expect our electricity cost to go down because we've got cooling added no yeah I wouldn't expect that piece of the pie to remain the same I'm just want yeah but I mean the heating you know the heating versus you know mostly the heating part I guess it isn't all electric building so we won't have any natural gas or o oil cost they'll it'll all be focused on Heating and I see Mr White is

141going to help us with this but like I said in the interest of time uh if this analysis has been done elsewhere that's fine I was just wondering you know the exercise has been done elsewhere and teasing that out is in my expectation it's probably going to be difficult because one of the things that will happen with a new building my guess is people will gravitate toward it they're going to want to use and I'm not talking about the kids I'm talking about all the other act nighttime or outside school activities they will be using it and teasing that out makes it a little bit um difficult uh as well as the air conditioning which you could look at like a six-month basis instead of a 12 month but that's been the experience with new

142buildings in the past 10 or 20 years have gone down this path what I've seen looked at personally that's what happens and it's you can't it's I've never seen anybody tease it out the difference between matching up the usage from prior building to new building let alone the energy consumption related to it because the usage of the building will go up I will add one more point and I can't believe you didn't hit it yet and I'm sure you would get there but the buildings are being built uh and wired so that we can add solar and if we add solar obviously some of the the power for the building will be coming off the solar panels so you'll see the utility bill go down I mean there's a cost to install the solar depending

143on how we do it but that will be helpful and I think that's an important component of the building that's you know being constructed yeah one of the things that goes through my mind is last year the budget that we were given there were three price free cost drivers one of which was Global energy costs and I'm looking at it here Vin's got it going up 7% for electricity this year the planning committee has been having an ongoing discussion about basically you know 20e solar contracts same thing that we have at the dog park right now where you can lock in the rate with no escalator and we eliminate those price increases and Frankly Speaking I think that we probably could get a I think it's entirely possible we could get are rates lowered from

144what we're paying right now I'm not certain we haven't done any bidding or anything like that but I do think that's a a real possibility thank you don't go yet van okay I just want one clarification item yeah when we talk some planning for the potential of the [Music] um the two I just want to make sure that it's not incorporated into this with the main maintenance factor of um the Portables are you asking for an increase considering that the potential Portables will be purchased therefore the need for maintaining that has to increase here does that make sense yes okay I'm sorry for creating confusion but these are last year's slides I'm not looking for more portable money no but we potentially might be purchasing Portables which then impacts our maintenance um line or does

145it not well you just because we are adding square footage you'll have some more cleaning to do but it's it's they relatively new um so it's not going to be a substantive operational impact there'll be some cost but not substantive okay thank you that's it yep all right it's my pleasure to introduce Dr Solen school superintendent yes thank you sir as much as I harass him about um the depth of the presentation sometimes you know I I just want to acknowledge all of our people um and Vin sets that tone with respect to uh his depth of understanding uh the time commitment he puts into this and um all of our people have put into making sure that our budget uh reflects our our needs and fiscal priorities I'll talk a little bit about that

146but before I do I want to acknowledge all of our administrators and um staff who are here tonight it's uh it's hard to run frenetically in their shoes all all week and then roll here uh for Two Plus hours to hear a lot of information they've already heard um and I I credit them for that uh I also want to thank our volunteer members of the Board of Education who commit their time and energy to improve our community um you've spent five plus hours uh and that's just in meetings uh plus the other time I know you spend outside of meetings reviewing this information and um it at the end of the day it means a great deal for our community so just want acknowledge that the um basically you know at the end of

147the day here the treasure public schools and the treasure Community are growing and they're growing significantly uh just driving past the new North End development today and seeing some of the work that's being done there uh guys standing on the roof cranking away on new residences um and our budget is basically dedic dedicated to maintaining that level of service even with the growth and what we've provided over the last few years um and I think you know I bring up all the growth and development I've been superintendent I think this is my eth budget presentation or something eight or nine and uh in each of those previous presentations I think there was a pretty clear understanding of where the community was going and fiscally what was going on never in my experience can I remember

148where uh the community Finance question has been so far up in the air and the good news is that that question is about prosperity and about how much development has occurred um what Grand lless growth we're going to see and the impact of that and so you know that's that's an important context you know at the end of the day what what is it going to look like when when we go across the street and I want to provide further context within dur B um pulling the presentations that have already been provided within durby the average budget increase of the nine towns that have gone before us is 5.94% so we're right in that wheelhouse um with the lowest being uh 4.81 and the highest being 7.29 so we're we're in that wheelhouse contextually um

149and so you know my responsibility I talked about the commitment that our team makes and this is how I kind of started our budget presentation this year uh is to create what I consider to be a fiscally responsible budget that fulfills our statutory obligations and advances our goals sometimes there are things like our our increase million dollar increase in um the medical benefits costs or substantial shift in transportation again I believe we have a great deal before us I think you know that but it's still a significant increase on that line over years past because we've had such an a ridiculous deal over the last several years um and so these things have been flow but at the end of the day our team is still providing the best best we've ever done on on

150an objective basis when you look at our our district performance index across Connecticut to be number ninth in Connecticut and our per pupil expenditure is about 112 I think um I I I think that what we've done is really focus on how to make the most of the resources we've had we have and this budget goes to do that Does it include everything no it doesn't you know this is we talked about a robotics Elementary stem program Robotics and uh pre-eng engineering skills and environmental science areas that uh research says not that we just think research says will be ultra high demand by the time ours kids graduate I was talking to a parent yesterday who said you know the last child will be out 2034 you know it's like wow it's like forever away

151um but it's not it's really not and and these are the skills our kids will need but is Marlene said we we have to look at priorities and we've prioritized those things you know I still think this is a priority that I would love to to see included as we deliberate that doesn't mean that you know other things may not be reduced to accommodate some things but I think we've produced a very uh fiscally responsible budget uh and at the same time have a tremendous track record of of top-notch results and and so I guess that takes me to the board member responsibility piece um that you know your role is to provide adequate instructional books supplies materials equipment Staffing facilities and Technology Equitable allocation of resources among schools proper maintenance of facilities in a

152safe School setting um I mean that that's certainly the goal The Bare Bones um and it's not to provide it at the provide a a school uh program at the lowest possible or the highest possible we're trying to find that sweet spot and I think I want to commend the community uh over the last several years in particular I think we've done a tremendous job of of finding that sweet spot and um and I want to commend everybody who works in the Treasure public school system because I think they've taken those resources and made the absolute best of them and I hope you've seen that over the course of the last five and a half six hours whatever it's been so you know we're getting to the close of kind of one phase of this

153process uh the presentation of all the information and uh Tuesday we'll begin the next phase of this process where Del you know real deliberation will occur about what what will it look like what things do we have to include not include whatever and I know that my God you've had to process so much information over the last multiple weeks unfortunately due to weather and everything and I would encourage you if you have questions considerations please shoot them to me vin Marlene and we can try and process that and get you information um hopefully maybe in advance of Tuesday if if possible uh and really I'm looking forward to engaging in a a productive discussion on Tuesday about you know what the plans are and with that you know I'll certainly answer any questions you might

154have I know you guys have had the opportunity to ask at different sections along the way so all right thank you appreciate it uh I would EO Dr s's words that do appreciate the staff for coming out here um and the presentations Robin Marlene Vinnie as always and the the responsiveness to all of our questions prior to the meetings too so that we can digest as much of the information as possible and take a deeper dive so um definitely we'll send you some requests before Tuesday um I do want to see that worst case scenario um breakout that you typically give to us in the event um so if that could be provided for Tuesday as well too any other thoughts last minute comments Mr White and then Mr gripple yeah so I apologize for

155getting here late tonight um did we get any update on right to read is there any not to get into a big discussion about it but you were just asking about the budget overall I'm just curious any news I've been accused of turning into the Incredible Hulk when that yes comes up and uh so we are very much working on uh coming to some sort of solution for right to read with the State Department of Education I've said uh before that I fully believe the intent of the legislation and the intent of sde was to support all Learners particularly the the moral imperative that lies in front of us in Connecticut of closing the achievement cap um I just I I feel like uh there's different ways to go about it and I'd love feedback

156about where SD felt our curriculum was not reflecting the the science of reading and we have a meeting scheduled with them on February 5th and I hope that you know we can take steps to come closer together at that meeting one just when does the legislative session when does the legislative session open do you have it's around February 5th right some sometime right around that time okay I don't know the definitive date but it's it it's early February okay thank you I will add that today the um state had a forum to discuss this it is recorded in I believe um on file on CTN their Network so if you have a moment to I too have a very visceral response to some of this so I'm going to leave it to the superintendent but

157I will be present um at that meeting on February 5th as well too because I believe this is the first time that they're inviting at least a board member to the table with these discussions right yeah I think I think the initial intent of that as it was communicated to me directly through SD was to uh convey to board members like the idea that all right well you didn't um attain the waiver but it's not like the superintendent's fault is basically to to be able to tell the the board chair don't worry the superintendent's not terrible it's just you didn't get the waiver um and I don't think I'm not sure how that helped us but okay so um I think the participation of our elected officials in the process is is uh important and

158valuable and I'm glad that um you know that Sam will be able to attend Mr grible um as always I'll stay consistent I support open Rebellion um uh just a question of process um so uh next Tuesday is it the board's intention or the finance committee's intention to adopt a motion and then perhaps the board to approve it next Tuesday I'm going to leave that to the finance chair's decision to make the finance chair says I would love for that to happen but the reality is um we'll need to see how much progress we can make on next Tuesday night okay if if if we can get to the point where we are ready to vote then we will do sure okay I I would second that Adam I I believe I mean if we

159have enough information or um answers to the questions ahead of Tuesday and we can like Dr Solen said have a productive discussion to finalize all this I'd love to stick within the timelines sure any other thoughts comments questions no um I will entertain a motion to adjourn Mr White and Mr eki second all in favor of adjournment it is unanimous we are adjourned thank you everybody have a