001here present here here here here here thank you ma'am can everybody please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for stands one nation indivisible andice great our um next item are is if there are any and thank you for this audience if there are any audience members who would like to speak now is your opportunity seeing no movement to the mic I think we can say nobody wants to speak tonight all right and the next line item is the presentation of the budget first I'd like to say good evening thank you for being here happy New Year here I hope everybody enjoyed their holiday break um and I'm I'm really excited because in the next few minutes our superintendent of schools Dr
002Solen will present the board of education budget and like all of you I am looking forward to hearing what it will take to support students staff and the community as a whole so first off I'd like to thank Dr Solen and the team in advance for their efforts in preparing the budget and working through the rigorous and comprehensive approval process that will follow and I hope that we keep all students all students at the Forefront of this process as they are the reason we are here doing the work I know the treasure Community is growing and thriving and why we should be proud and celebrate that it also presents us with challenges one of which is the challenge to maintain our worldclass status um maintaining and improving upon the Excellence we as a community have
003come to expect and demand requires sustained investment and Community Support so we get get the privilege of making choices that will that will make the make that will deliver on our promises our vision and our mission and values we ask and thank our parents and families in advance to join us by being a part of the process the Board of Education encourages citizen participation in this critical decision-making process so without further Ado Dr Solen please to the podium to present the 24 25 school year budget proposal evening I know that uh there weren't any audience comments everybody was on the edge of their seat just an eager anticipation um and I you know Echo uh chair rosenberg's comments about thanking you for being here this evening um and I want to thank everybody who played
004a a role in this process the budget process starts with our teaching staff and support staff uh with at the building level um I analyzing the things that we're doing and doing well and things that we need to improve upon uh collaborating with one another to identify things uh points that'll leverage uh our our work and enhance the experience for our students our staff and our community and um goes through the the principal process up to central office and we spend a lot of time uh with the administrative team and with each other evaluating those various proposals um beyond that that work uh there's also the logistical work of putting all this together uh Mr massana and his team spend countless hours putting together budget books and resources uh before we leave this evening each
005member of the board will receive a thick binder that is is uh an incredible reference that not only outlines item by item but also provides a lot of supplemental information um and for members of the public that will be available on our website tomorrow as will this presentation each uh evening throughout this process will meet you know many Tuesdays and Thursdays for the rest of the month and the following day the presentation if there is one from the night prior will be available on on our website if people want to follow along um just to kind of kick things off here uh our board member responsibilities are codified in statute that the board shall provide an appropriate learning environment for all its students which includes adequate instructional books supplies materials equipment Staffing facilities and Technology
006two Equitable allocation of resources among its schools and three proper maintenance of facility facilities and of course a safe School setting the superintendent responsibilities uh are kind of the things that I've already articulated uh with an eye toward you know making sure that we have appropriate and balanced uh Equitable I should say rather than than balanced uh resources between schools uh to sustain that safe and clean learning environment of course maintaining our statutory obligations and our uh goals meeting the the district goals and i' like to remind folks of what we provide uh there was probably a day long ago where schools were exclusively responsible for Reading Writing arithmetic as they would say the three hours um and you know I think everybody recognizes in uh 2024 our responsibilities are are far broader than that
007to include all sorts of uh um needs for our students and opportunities for our students and our our community but this is really at the end of the day why we P provide this um Miss Rosenberg talked about you know the the students um and and this is uh you know as we start to debate numbers and things like that I think it's always good to remind ourselves of why we're here in the first place and why what the decisions we make are so important so our budget filter uh are really the district focal points uh complex thinking and social emotional learning that really the decisions that we try and uh make really difficult decisions about what's included in the budget what's not included in the budget and this is the lens that we look
008through to try and help us uh and and guide strong decisions uh since we have focused on these things I don't think it's coincidental uh or accidental that our our performance has really improved um it it's causal uh social emotional learning just to kind of elaborate a little bit on those two areas of focus for us um the power of social emotional learning uh is not just for personal fulfillment but it also has a positive infl influence on behavior on academics on personal success and it's an essential part of what we do additionally complex thinking is a tremendous life skill that our kids just like social emotional learning will have to carry forward to provide them the best opportunities for success in life I love that quote from Justin Trudeau the pace of change has
009never been this fast yet it will never be this slow again there's constant acceleration and so you know this our work is a little bit of a moving Target that the students who began the school year um is is kindergarteners I think they'll graduate in 2037 or something and so that's what we're trying to prepare students for and what the world will look like 13 years from now um is is tough to Envision and so we are trying to to meet those evolving needs um on a much much smaller level closer to the present uh this budget process is also an evolving um you know Beast that we'll start here we'll go through this process just so everybody knows the we'll spend the next month as a board of education and Community identifying what our
010goals are uh how we're going to fund those goals um ultimately that'll move before the Town Council in April and at that point the Town Council will uh add modify to whatever that number is that the board has identified as a community and then we'll come back together probably in June uh late May to so solve as a a board where we want that money that's been allocated by the town to fall so the budget environment uh is influenced by some internal and external factors internally within the chesher public schools we know that our enrollment continues to climb uh that we you know have contractual increases year-over-year not just uh within those that we employ but also our vendors special education continues to evolve uh our facilities haven't gotten any younger uh we're really excited
011about the prospect of adding two new buildings and taking three older ones offline in a couple of years but we're not quite there yet so we have to be conscious of how we maintain what we have till we get there and then uh you know unfortunately I think we're all aware that uh medical benefits costs continue to escalate outpacing inflation external factors State of the State uh you know I've stood here and some of the worst Financial Times and gratefully I stand here today um where the state has a a much brighter budget forecast than they have in in some years past um state and federal revenue is certainly a factor for us uh I'm sure you know that ARP uh American Rescue plan and eser funding is expiring this year so that's a consideration
012that influences this budget state and federal mandates I'll hit on some of the more uh recent State mandates that uh are impacting us and uh Vin when he presents next week he'll certainly elaborate on that much further I just want to take this moment to thank Vin again not only for putting the budget process all the the resources together but uh doing so when he was he's been under the weather so we're sitting him in the naughty Corner in the back for now um and he's he doesn't he's not uh no longer sick but he's just making sure that we don't get sick either so thank you Benin um and then obviously Treasure's continued growth and development uh Miss Rosenberg talked about you know our community thriving and uh treasure being a Vibrant Community you
013only have to drive around town to see new construction and a lot of um a lot of growth that's happening in our community uh I'm sharing this slide because we tend to reference ourselves against similar communities and um about 25 years ago uh the Connecticut State Department of Education created uh what they ultimately called District reference groups the district reference groups uh are exclusively devised based on economic criteria in the community it has nothing to do with student achievement or anything like that it's all about um economics and rough size of the community and um that data was run again just this past year in 2023 uh to revamp the district reference groups uh chesher remains in what's called District reference group b District reference group a is basically Fairfield County and now Madison has
014been included in District reference group a um you see District reference group B on the left and on the right we've included um some folks that were new to dur b or were in dur B and have now entered other durs uh just as a point of reference and again this is on will be on our website uh for people to take a closer look at if they wish so a lot of the data that I'm going to share almost all of it when I reference District reference group b this is the collection of towns that I'm talking about now kind of moved on from the old um 25y old District reference groups so per pupil expenditure uh this is a little bit of a history of the chesher public schools per pupil expenditure uh
015dating back to 1819 um and we have uh historically spent less per pupil uh than the state average um the current 2223 data from last year uh outlines you know that we had spent 19,1 189 and that number is basically it's it's Apples to Apples across Connecticut the districts are required to submit the the uh financial data in a certain form so that it is Apples to Apples comparisons and it's a simple total of our our our number our financial uh our budget divided by the number of students in the district to come up with a per pupil expenditure cost um so I think you know I share this because we uh are definitely fiscally um responsive and were resourceful and that you know our budget would have to increase by $10 million per year
016to meet the state average just within durg B our budget increase would be five a half million per year if we spent what that that group of towns that I just showed you spent per pupil on average our budget would increase by $5.5 million so I talked about the administrative team putting forth uh budget requests and items in the in the budget and things that we consider so that initial budget request uh was 7.88% uh representing a $6.7 million increase over our current budget of of 429 so again my responsibility is you know to advance our goals um and I do that with fiscal responsibility in mind um I know that you know our community certainly prioritizes education and um has made substantial Financial commitments not only through our operating budget but through our capital
017budget with the uh construction of new schools so trying to strike that balance in terms of a proposal that is certainly uh could be modified uh we identified a total increase of 6.05% um meaning that the overall budget increases 5,138 836 uh and I call out independently their medical benefit increase because as I said the escalating cost of medical benefits is a challenge for all Connecticut residents all national residents really but um just for us the the increase to medical benefits is about 20% uh of our overall budget increase the driving factors as I talked about some of those internal external factors increasement increased enrollment uh the way that that gets translated in this budget proposal is in the addition of regular and special education Staffing and I'm going to get into a lot more
018detail on this um higher special education cost uh teacher and administrator positions that were being funded through arser uh since 2021 um that has been basically folded into this current budget um higher wages is outlined there it was $10 an hour in 2019 and the minimum wage is now $569 an hour uh that 50% increase plus is you know born into this budget as well and then you know medical benefits facility operating costs those are really the Marquee drivers so I like to try and um frame our expenditures in a few different areas maintenance um you know when I look at what is is this budget is constructed what is being spent how we maintaining our budget so it's been um whenever we engage the public about financial priorities class size is always uh a
019really important item for our families when we talk to them um it also happens to be an important um you know criteria when we talk to our staff special education service this this budget maintains our class sizes our special education uh the quality of service we provide there our medical benefits um some of you may be familiar with the fact that you know we'll get a quote for medical benefit costs for the year and that there because we're self-insured there's this is operated through something called the medical benefits trust fund and it's wise to have a few months uh balance in the account to make sure that if unexpected claims come in higher we don't have to turn to the town and make sure that um you know they can fund us to keep us
020uh functional and so in years past that that uh rainy day fund if you will had run down and we'd have to fund our operating budget by the amount of money that we're expecting in claims over the year plus maybe several hundred thousand dollar to you know kind of give us a cushion this does not do that and I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a moment the other thing it does is maintain Elementary supervision and and support uh that had been in place through our ARP eser plan um when our enrollment at the element schools were 300 students lower than it is today um and it also includes secondary math support folded in postco in terms of restoration um I use that term for a budget line that perhaps had been
021frozen or went under previous years uh in an effort to try and balance our budget uh we try and restate uh that budget line and there is a moderate increase to maintenance to address building and Equipment issues and then advancement um those are things that maybe weren't in the prior budgets um but something that we're moving forward uh it's a short list um but important to those who participate so the bounce forward transition uh the bounce forward plan if you weren't familiar was when the federal government through the state provided uh significant funding to navigate the pandemic a lot of our money uh of the 1.8 roughly that we received was spent on uh circus tents for outside dining and uh fun stuff like that a lot of cleaning uh uh PPE that VIN is
022modeling this evening things like that we spent a lot of that money there and now uh we spent uh a lot of money as well that you don't necessarily see here on uh professional development our belief was that you know if we spent all of the money that was not dedicated to PPE and to um you know really addressing the the virus itself on positions those positions could help students for a very limited amount of time and a limited number of of students if you hire three social workers each year maybe they're reporting 100 students if you're fortunate and in three years the money's gone uh you either have to spend all that money um and you lose the benefit for the 300 students by but by providing professional development in the manner in which
023we have across the district we in increase the capacity of the 400 plus certified and several hundred non-certified people who work in the Chester public schools in perpetuity they influence the daily experience for however many thousands of kids that we have for the rest of the days that they work in our school system so we dedicated a lot of money into professional development and we've think that's been really uh beneficial and rewarding um the positions that we added are outlined here uh we had assistant principal support at Norton and Chapman to uh provide some assistant principal support who would um really oversee intervention supports and evaluations of Staff um that we in this uh proposed budget we're requesting that we maintain a full-time Elementary reading in math specialist at Highland um we have somebody there
024uh but again as the um enrollment grows swells to 900 students in that building uh we think it's important just on a ratio basis like I said maintaining class sizes to maintain that support uh moving forward and then we've employed two uh math support teachers one at DOD and one at the high school uh that has proven to through our our data to be beneficial for those students to be honest with you uh when I was at Dodd Middle School as a principal and chesher high school as a principal those are that's a resource that we really tried to advocate for and were never able to make happen in our budget and um I I don't want to say I told you so but at this point you know when we look at the benefit
025that it's had for our students uh was what we had proposed uh back in at that time and so you know we think it's important to retain that um and maintain that service for our students so in terms of advancement I mentioned it was um you know relatively small uh in a $90 million budget uh and I know you heard uh on the board from members of the community looking to adopt a fencing program this would be the cost uh of that program additionally uh I've worked with um Mr parisino and others to try and draft a policy because chesher and then as we found out pretty much nobody had a policy articulating how a club would become of our city Sport and so I think that's something we'll work through in the policy committee
026but um I just wanted you to be aware as we were planning this is what the cost of that would be when it says less Revenue there's a participation fee for students in a in sports of $125 uh per sport except hockey is is more expensive but um this kind of outlines what the revenue would be to offset that net budget impact uh so another element you know it's this could be any uh Thursday on the chesher herald that you see you know some something new coming to town and this was just literally this past Thursday I was like I have to take a picture of that um because it really it's illustrative of what we've been experiencing so October 20 October 1 2023 this past October as in a few months ago uh our
027enrollment is what you see on the top line but yesterday the enrollment is below that and in a typical school year usually it's like it Nets itself out we have some students move in we have some students move out but between the months of October and January that's not high Market traffic for housing um and the numbers are usually pretty stagnant uh but you know this is you know like I said illustrative of what's happening in the in the community that our enrollment has grown by 34 students and predominantly is one would expect in the prek 6 grade range um and then maybe they have older siblings in the in the middle school and occasionally the high school but um this does not include our 44 open Choice students which are predominantly uh they're about
02850% at the high school level um because if you recall when we and we'll have to do this again soon uh when we take a look at open Choice seating frankly we're running out of seat so I mean we love to diversify our U community and involve open Choice students from New Haven but at the k6 level we really don't have space to do that and so we've taken advantage of the opportunities that we have at the high school level um and that's where you'll find like I said about roughly half of uh not a little bit more than half of our open Choice students so the projected enrollment through NASDAQ which is grounded in birth rate of chesher residents uh for next year is 4,224 students and um as I indicate in the notes
029below we're pretty close to that now my guess is by June we will have eclipsed that um and over the summer is when we tend to see most of our students coming in so uh the growing enrollment is something that we're really conscious of as we build this budget uh as I said we've grown about 300 students since 2021 the pandemic at the K through6 level um at the same time our enrollment has declined uh by a couple hundred kids at the high school level and that we knew and um we did not change our staffing at the high school level because consciously through the last contract negotiation most Connecticut high schools if not it's almost uh entirely every Connecticut High School does not have their teacher teaching six classes on an eight period schedule
030they have them teaching five and we were an anomaly to that and if we wanted to retain that it would be really expensive and frankly it's not better for kids it's not you know to provide teachers collaborative opportunities the way other districts do is beneficial so we didn't reduce our staffing and so I think when you look at how does that relate to the rest of dur B like right our enrollments declined but our staffing hasn't it puts a square in the middle of dur Bay um and I think it's really powerful to realize that it to be at the top of durby we'd have to add 18 general education teachers to our staff which you know it would be 800,000 on a straight budget line if if it were 20 teachers um no excuse
031me that would be um 10 teachers so 20 teachers would be 1.6 million so um it kind of gives you a sense of you know where we are our our ratio of students to staff is solid um at chesher high school we're in a good place um but I I don't want people to think because we' seen declining enrollment that oh we should be cutting Folks at the high school that's really not what the data says so net certified Staffing changes in this budget uh we are actually just the way that the the class sizes are shaking out uh we are down a teacher next year at Chapman based on the number of kids that are gradu moving being promoted and uh versus the ones that we have in doitt and Highland will add a
032general education classroom teacher Norton in terms of general education teachers Remains the Same except um we did include an intensive education classroom there U and that's been very successful for us and this will allow us more flexibility in terms of you know uh alleviating a little bit of pressure at Highland and accommodating the students that we have in the community uh by adding a position at Norton uh I mentioned the middle and high school math coach positions and the reading and math specialist at Highland Darcy as well um so you know the this plus it's plus five in terms of the uh certified positions then this uh these are teaching positions and then there's a a one point know Administrative Assistant Principal the non-certified changes uh again these are U impacted by enrollment uh with
033one maybe minor exception that I'll explain so the Intensive education program at Norton would require a an U par par educat per professional over the course of this year to accommodate special education needs is students move in and situations change we've had to hire an additional 6.8 pair professionals that we will um have to carry over into our budget next year so that's included in this budget uh given the substantial number of kids at Highland uh for safety and and management we're adding two cafeteria AIDS there um I'll get to DOD with a funny story in a second but and we need an additional bus driver and um again given the volume of students and the special ed needs at Highland we're uh looking to bring somebody in part-time to support special education services there
034um and as it relates to DOD uh the if you recall the in one of the more recent legislative sessions the lunch period was shifted to 30 minutes by Statute used to be 25 minute lunch and we added 5 minutes and um as a recovering Middle School assistant principal to be in the cafeteria with 250 13 year olds um who've already eaten and are full of energy it it can be challenging my good friend Don wonus used to say to me if I only had one day to live I'd want to spend it on calf Duty because it'd feel like forever forever and uh that I I don't F it's just developmentally part of what happens for 13 and 14 year olds in the cafeteria and I I really applaud uh Kelly and Ryan the
035the leadership team there for thinking outside the box and saying what can we do to make this better for our kids and more productive um so that there are positive outlets and they're suggesting you know if we could get some kids out of that space for 10 minutes to do something positive and I'm like that you know we thought that was a brilliant idea for our kids and worth the investment there so um that's included in this budget uh obviously I mentioned medical benefits the current Reserve is 1.64 months of claims that was as of uh November 30th as you see uh we try and keep it at two months or better um but this budget doesn't look to close this the deficit between 1.64 and two um because there's a lot of lot of
036Road left to Ho here and the other thing is that this is a um a projection as of the Fall about what our medical claims will look like I think by the time we get to April we we might have a better sense of not only uh the projection for next year but how have our claims looked over the course of the next several months the next you know because we got like roughly four more months of reporting before we get to that place so uh we wouldn't recommend a change but an 8% increase uh is beyond the pace of inflation and the medical benefit increases have been beyond the pace of inflation for for several years now um but it's uh it's a necessary evil unfortunately for us and and Vin will go into
037much greater detail on this when we start to talk about medical benefits um the overall budget increase as you know is a little more than $5 million this pie chart breaks out God bless you this pie chart breaks out where the increases lie so in enrollment related salaries uh takes up a substantial chunk at 16% uh medical benefits is north of 20% teachers salaries is 15% and I want to be clear that you know our teachers are not getting a 15 15% raise that we have 400 teachers um their last couple of raises have been um like two and a quarter two and a half 275 this is um next year is the last year of their contract at 3.02 is the the total amount all in so it's just that's a that's a volume
038issue um a relatively um nominal raise for a large number of people is uh $766,000 outplacement in special education pupil Services costs about 11% and then you can see the other items there non-certified salaries same thing it's not a 10% raise we have uh a large number of folks who work in uh our uh par Educators unions our our secretaries our building maintainers who really do so much behind this the scenes to make us successful and that's a negotiated contract I think the board's aware of the the adjustment that we have in our transportation contract which is still ultra competitive um under the circumstances and then everything else lumped in is about 10% we'll go through these line by line as we move through so what isn't in the budget that uh I know I've
039been asked you know in years past you know if you could articulate some of what's not there that maybe you know we'd love to see I think we as an organization as a school system could do a lot better at um providing our younger students pre-engineering skills uh environmental science skills when you look at uh where job demands are as I was talking about you know in 37 the the jobs are there for engineers and people with technical skills today they'll continue to be there is is we move into the next decade and to be frank you know we don't most of the teachers that we hire that's not really a natural inclination for them um and not that they don't have the capacity a lot of them you know if our teachers could teach
040anything I'm convinced but the it's just not been their background and um one of the things that we were considering is the addition of a special in grades four and five to provide exposure to robotics to provide exposure to environmental science to leverage the new Greenhouse that we have um and provide students those scientific experiences and and I think that'd be you know something that would help thrust us forward and then feed the the broader opportunities that our kids have at the middle and high school level once they've been uh provided these these opportunities at the Elementary grades another reality for chesher public schools is uh central office support uh you know we're we're really quite lean um this is the the rankings of the 167 districts uh Cheshire public schools in terms of the
041number of students per central office administrators is last that 4.7 um represents me Marlene Vin Robin and this is last year's data so it was part of Ryan Murphy when he was um split between Adult Ed and and this position so even if uh that moves to 5.7 uh the ratio still puts us well under tremble um and you know the I've been asked before like what what does students per central office administrator have to do well you know administrators at the building level navigate challenges and then they turn to central office administrators to support those challenges and um when there's less of us to go around it's uh you know it's it's taxing and um beyond that I think it limits our growth uh and particularly you know we are um I wouldn't say
042fortunate because it's not lucky that we've hired people like Marlene and now um Kevin to serve as our K8 curriculum person but um additional support at the secondary level would be really welcome um so it's something that's on the outside looking in in terms of this year's budget so this is uh a real painful and frustrating topic for me the right to read this is one of the mandates um if forced so a very quick overview uh in the implementor bill uh there was a push and justifiably so to ensure literacy by the end of third grade for all students in Connecticut the state department of Ed has mandated that that be achieved through one of a handful of programs that they've identified um in the legislation it indicates that districts uh alternatively May file
043for a waiver and demonstrate that their performance uh or their uh excuse me their curriculum is grounded in scientifically research based uh strategies which we strongly believe that ours is unfortunately the waiver wasn't judged against that the waiver was judged against whether or not we had one of the pre-approved programs and we've subsequently been told well you know you get a program that's how you get approved and for a district our size a program would cost us $650,000 and uh there are a number of uh in incredibly well- achieving districts like chesher that are in that same boat that have expressed uh a lot of frustration over the way that the legislation was interpreted and so I've spent a lot of time lately uh trying to educate people about that and uh work to to
044change that and so that's not the $650,000 is not in here it would be incredibly painful to have to turn around and I don't you know I don't want to say this in a budget meeting but I don't care about the money even if this was free the we have incredibly talented Educators that have worked very hard to be knowledgeable about the science of reading in our school system for me to I I couldn't turn around and say to them without being sick to my stomach that hey you know all that great work you've been doing now we're going to train you in a program that hasn't demonstrated uh better success than the success that you've already had so we're going to spend your time doing that from now on and by the way your
045kids may not have the same successful results they have now that is heresy it's it's insanity and so we've been spending a lot of time trying to address that and I appreciate the the time that Marlene and Kevin and Pat Castle are our reading Guru have led to uh lent to that process so our recommended budget as we kind of start to cruise to the end here uh this illustrates you know where our overall budget breaks out the 90 million uh how that's allocated budget increases by by category how much each line went up and if pie charts aren't your thing the the budget book will certainly help you to see line by line and I I see I know you see these broad sweeping titles right because I can't put all of the detail
046that uh are you outlines what each element uh encompasses but when you look in the budget book there is incredible detail and it'll give you a lot of a lot of information there uh our class sizes I talked about how important that is for the people in our community um it's 18.7 is the actual average class size for k6 in the Treasure Public Schools this year next year it goes to 18.8 so a tenth of a student increase on the average at the Middle School uh the the actually the upper half illustrates some of the average class sizes uh for next year but the middle school is down on the bottom half of the page uh projected class size average of 24 and grade seven 22 and a half roughly in grade eight this uh
047line graph uh shows you and what the history looks like here for those grade levels and we're roughly within you know the the tolerance of the last you know since 2017 I've already shared you know but I think it's worth repeating the high school uh students per Jen ed teacher right in the middle of dur be there as well and our projected Revenue so this is not money that comes to the chesher public schools all of our Revenue goes to the town of chesher this in essence offsets the cost of our operating budget uh the ECS I think is up I want to say like $29,000 or something over last year which you know we'll take it but um not a substantial increase EC s has been uh essentially flat for like 25 years um
048special education excess cost Grant uh we're hopeful that that uh sees some movement uh we've been advocating that in this for this in in the legislative session birth to three Revenue to offset as well as the pre Smart Start are um costs for for those programs um adult education we still receive some Revenue uh we do pay wng for to facilitate that program for us as you're aware and then building use is roughly $10,000 that the what we charge people to rent our facilities I know you're aware that the treasure public schools are the facilities for the community um and so that's a lot of Youth groups in town and things like that we we've stayed relatively flat on those fees as well for a long time our performance relative to durby I already kind
049of shared the um durby spending but this gives you a visual about what districts are spending not not surprisingly uh Fairfield County leads the way there um but you know you can see the other communities in durby and how we compare our district performance index uh this is a a combination of like 20 factors that the state looks at to rate the health of the school system and the success of the school system uh we performed exceptionally well there third in dorby ninth in the state and you know as I indicated I think we provide an excellent value our achievement in the top 10 in Connecticut we have multiple Blue Ribbon Schools or schools of Distinction as well um Highland CHS recognized recently um Norton had been recognized and I know Highland was within a
050whisker uh because of student participation they would have been recognized um D Little's one of the top Niche schools in in New Haven County all of our schools are performing I apologize if I left anybody out dad Darcy they're all awesome I mean you don't you don't get there without H having every school be successful um so you know we have we as much as uh academics are important we want well well-rounded students and we we've done a tremendous job they providing opportunities for our kids like the only advancement that we're talking about today in this in this budget is along those lines with fencing um the all our schools and our our kids outside of the academic domain have done amazing things and we're really proud of that I want to remind folks I
051don't think people in this room need reminding but perhaps in the broader community that um in investing in our schools is an investment in our community I have to say it because I've I've coined the phrase as much as I'm worried that it's starting to fade that people don't move here for The Nightlife uh they move here to get a great education for their family but our friend Andrew martelli's given me a run for his money her money with the uh development that he's spurring um home buying we know that people are willing to spend more I think we experienced that through covid the houses in this community uh retained tremendous value I think in large part due to what we do in the cheser public school system I like to remind people obviously of
052uh the filter again that we use to to decide these things um and investing in our our schools is really done three ways the operating budget which we discussed tonight the capital budget which our planning committee discussed earlier this week and we'll continue to advance in school modernization um we're excited about what's happening there and the development that helps offset all of these costs is really important in our thriving community so again key takeaways as I close with the last two slides here um aside from inflation you know this this uh this is a thriving Community people want to live in that's why we have a plus 34 enrollment in the last three months and plus 300 enrollment just at the elementary schools in the last several years uh we're really really leveraging our resources
053to get the the greatest achievement and success that we can for our students and staff uh like I said you know an additional 5.5 million do just to land in the middle of dur B three million is a lot of money that we would take um in addition to this proposal to to you know be there and more competitive within dur B but we are very efficient in what we do and it's a reflection of all of the people who contribute to Our Success the community support that we've had is tremendous our parents are very involved and supportive of their students in our schools and our community uh we have tremendous students and and um I think second to non-educators who make this success possible so uh with that uh I do want to put
054a bow on tonight's presentation I mentioned that we're handing out the budget books um in Vin's words the superintendent ma message is a mustre uh we also encourage you to read the enrollment report from NASDAQ uh each budget line there is extens of detail uh and I'm sure the people that have served on this board for many years will tell you that there is almost nothing you can't find there but that doesn't mean that we don't encourage questions we ask that not only the board members but the community come engage ask questions um and that really helps us as a Administration and board shape the best possible path forward for our students and and a strong budget for for our success so with that I guess I'll entertain any questions from the board go ahead
055Tim hot there yeah you mentioned the Chester enrollment growing yeah did I don't think you mention it could you give a brief comparison if you know how we compare to the state um I do know that for the first time in a long time state population increased recently um I can and and this happens a lot through the budget process when we get asked a question that I don't know off the top of my head we'll we'll come back and get you that information um the NASDAQ report has some of that Connecticut has declined by six and a half% since 21 uh that's the projected change from 21 to 2030 is to decline 6 and a half% um but I could get you more population or student enrollment that's is that population no that's pre1
05612 uh enrollment and that's a projection but I can get you you know our enrollment relative to other districts and things like that yeah just just something that a reason reasonably good comparison of sure where we stand yeah I think when you look at our overall enrollment change it's uh really interesting because we've had when I first started in Treasure in 2005 we had 5,500 students we really uh hit the trough about 4,000 students and now we're increasing and what you're seeing is that the prek 6 grades are growing significantly with these small grades small smaller grades at the top end uh with those folks move so it's almost stagnant because these big numbers are you know are competing with the smaller numbers up at the top um and as we continue our our you
057look at the SLR report that was done a few years ago our enrollment is is on an upward trajectory but I'll get you some better data you were talking about uh Staffing changes numbers you're talking about teachers I I think you said you were going to add you were proposing to add five new teachers right it's not it's interesting because it's not a a net five change over the people that we've employed it's a net five change uh over our budget because uh a few of those positions three of them were already in our budget last year but paid for through resser um got it and so you know when we talk about fiscal cliffs and you hear you know communities facing $3 million fiscal cliffs this is $240,000 when you add in the administrator
058less than $500,000 fiscal cliff okay $400,000 fiscal cliff it's funding for five teachers but it's only an addition of two new teachers is that what you just said okay another question I was actually wondering about more specifically is is the prek to kindergarten prek is that Net Zero it's a good question right now uh yes we have a waiting list for a second section you know we we fill the first section we have a second section section that we're starting to populate um and we're assuming if we fill that then yeah it would be Net Zero if not we may have to make a reduction there I I don't know you know I think by the end of the month uh I'll have a better sense of exactly where we are with that sure thank
059you and the last point just a comment about the right to read sure said it before I'll say it again we are achieving our students K through3 are achieving at the top of the state so it seems to me if we make this change it's more likely to hurt than to benefit so I just encourage everyone particularly parents with y kids to be aware and try to engage on this because forget about the cost and I think asking teachers to do this is a ridiculous exercise but the actual achievement of our kids I think stands at risk just just defies can I get an amen here we go thank you any other questions from the board Mr perini just late yeah like add invest we haven't as big a St glad to see you have
060St but given the $460,000 ,000 I would and I appreciate all the great work this know I'm sure that oral got that was the more reasonable number challes the district hand excep well but I I say that price yeah that like 6.2% right I know it sounds a big number for US yeah it's a percentage basis it's it's really Nots glad we've met with vendors we've I've had conversations with CF it's not a flip uh recommendation uh it is something that we've contemplated and and you know certainly appreciate the board given that full consideration in this process I am yeah graduat we start thank you for thank you appreciate that support any else there will be many opportunities for questions though in and participation again I want to thank uh all the members of our
061administrative team for coming tonight and and all the work they did in preparing this so thank you very much pass it back to you m Rosenberg as far as process for MERS board what to expect next and then for those at home sure you know have to get involved yeah I I would encourage first of all any um members of the board you know again not you don't have to wait till Tuesday if there's a question it it is helpful if Vin Marlene and I are aware of that question if you send it to the three of us and that same you know uh ask goes for the community as well if there's something that you want to hear us talk about email uh the three of us um or any of the three of
062us and we'll try and incorporate that into a future presentation we try and carve out a little bit of time at each of the upcoming meetings to hit on um questions um January 11th uh that's today this presentation Tuesday uh there is the public budget review so Vin is going to go into more detail uh special education has um grown and uh taken a more significant part of our our budget which is really critical and so I've asked uh Robin an Cary our PPS director if you've seen her present before she does a great job kind of articulating where that where that money goes and how it impacts our students um so we have Tuesday next week Thursday is a business meeting which will be held here uh the following Tuesday we're back at DOD
063middle school again at 7 pm another public information session at DOD that Thursday at 7M the uh special board meeting to adopt the budget is 7:30 at DOD middle school on Thursday January 30th ultimately as as I mentioned before it's it'll go to the Town Council I send a man uh memo to the town manager um and we'll start talking about this in March and April and hopefully final finalize our budget by the end of of June so but please I encourage again members of the board or the community with questions to either come to these meetings or shoot us an email and we can address the the questions there just with that you can send us the electronic copy of this so we can an yeah it'll it'll definitely be on the website unfortunately
064this file is too big to email so it'll be available on our website in PDF or uh Forum if you need a different format let me know I can give you a flash drive or something go ahead make sure you change January 30 Tuesday yeah I think you're right there thanks Doc well thank you Dr Solen I'm I personally am trying to digest this before we take a deep dive and those other dates um and we'll write some questions down and I encourage my colleagues to do the same so if there are not any other questions can I get a motion to to we are ajour thank you everybody oh vot excuse me all those in favor of a German a quick unanimous