001I will substitute for Miss jaczynski thank you this is a finance committee of the host not with the finance committee members Mr grippo here Ms ham here Ms Rosenberg and the remaining board members Mr peragini Mr Martelli here Ms Harrigan and Mr White you do have a quorum uh I'll rise for the pledge one nation under God good evening everyone um for the agenda we uh will open the floor for public comment on the uh our budget revisions seeing none we'll uh move on to the discussion regarding reductions to the 23-24 board of education budget thank you Mr grippo um just to refresh people's memories uh because we are going back a ways um the board had approved a public school budget of just it's about 85 000 85 million 250 000 roughly that uh
002occurred back at the end of January and went before the Town Council and a series of budget workshops in which you know Mr maciano and I had the opportunity to present and and answer questions they uh the Town Council evaluated the various departments uh before ultimately making a difficult decision to reduce the board of education budget by 364 692. uh given that reduction uh Mr maciano Miss Solano uh miss Robin and carrier PPS director and myself got together uh really evaluated each of the lines and tried to identify areas where specific lines where information had changed since January sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse additional information had been become available to us for instance you'll see as we walk through the lines that you know we now have retirements that we can factor
003into this budget we also as you are aware had the shift in our adult education programming so this budget reflects that adjustment as well ultimately it was a revamped or recommendations here are being made that will reduce the original approved budget by the Town Council reduction of 364 692 to have a balanced budget of 84 million 993 429 so I'm going to ask Mr maciano if you wouldn't mind to just kind of Hit the highlights walking through the lines and the adjustments and certainly there'll be plenty of opportunity for us to engage in question and answer conversation Etc uh Ben thank you Dr Solomon I will just start on page three very quickly so you could see at the bottom of page three the final approved budget from the council is the 84 million 993
004so the adjusted increase over this year's budget is 4 million three twenty nine zero zero nine so our final approved budget is 5.37 okay so a little perspective there if we go back to page one I'll I'll walk you through and I I will explain that some of the adjustments that you see here are just to move salaries into the correct buckets with the adult education um shift effective July one so just starting at the top we have principles and assistant principles that one's increasing that line item is increasing seventy six thousand five fifty and there's a partial offset down about five lines below to the adult ed of minus 108 530. so that entire budget line is being collapsed down to zero and salaries need to be reallocated the largest decrease in any budget
005line is under teachers minus 275 000 the way we arrived at that number is we have eight retirements in hand at thirty thousand each that's two hundred forty thousand and then there was a part-time a 0.5 speech pathologist that's being moved from the operating budget to the idea Grant that's 35 000 that we can reduce from our operating budget which is absorbed at the grant level Mr Massey and if I could just chime in really quickly on that one the the thirty thousand dollars per retirement is the the Delta if you will between teachers that we pay at the top step on salary that have many years of experience and our goal is to as we hire talented people that maybe have less experience and have that difference in pay and so on average it
006would be about thirty thousand per candidate now that has become infinitely more difficult over the last several years is colleges crank out fewer and fewer candidates um you know I think I I mentioned maybe a policy that we typically have about 20 interns that work for us in a given year new teaching interns um we have eight next year and it's not for lack effort the the number of candidates coming out of college has dwindled dramatically so I have to give um Marlene a lot of credit in our elementary principles for getting out ahead in in interviewing very early for openings that we knew we were going to have so we know that we're going to have several Elementary teaching positions open in um Marlene the crew have been interviewing you know starting weeks ago
007to try and hire the most talented people as early as possible and um it's you know we have good news to share in that we we are pulling in some great people uh at a lower price point rather than you know having to wait and only you know looking at people that are maybe jumping other districts at a much more expensive cost so you know we have we're hiring great talent at a great price point and that's why this is uh certainly becoming more more and more possible through those efforts so just wanted to point that out this question is there are there is it eight total retirements or is that what we know of now that's what we know of okay could be more um you know some people I remember my first year
008and it died a gentleman walking in on the teacher work day after the teacher or the student graduation and just didn't want any Fanfare whatsoever just said he was retiring walked out that was it so it can come really late in the game but we have eight now sorry my question is around so always when we're hiring we're not only looking for the least expensive way to get people no we're looking for really talented Educators with great attitude um that have you know contemporary mindset about how to support students um sometimes you know the the prep programs uh deliver that sometimes they don't and sometimes we have to hire people that have been employed in other districts it's very common for us to hire people that have many years experience and not everybody that we're
009hiring wouldn't give you the impression that they're all first-year people right out of college it's a it's a mix but um by go engaging in the process so early we find a very talented pool out there and that includes the best of the graduates in that process my other point is don't or question don't we have a couple of um counselor positions open we do we do so we need to get people with in specialized areas as well right I think the more specialized God bless you the more specialized the area uh the harder it is to find those people um you know I might have better luck hiring Elvis than a Latin teacher for example um and so you know counseling is a more specialized position but um I'm still pretty confident that that
010we'll be able to secure somebody now you know it's it's a different pool so the opportunities uh are a little bit different but we will certainly aggressively and we're not going to hire somebody just to fill a role if there's a can if there's not a candidate that we feel who meets our standard then we wouldn't hire and we'd wait and try and figure it out either filling it with a retiree or some other strategy before we were to hire somebody that does not meet our standard thank you and I I really appreciate getting out ahead on this hiring because I think that is going to make a huge difference so thank you to everyone involved in that do you guys want our questions by section or do you want them all at once what
011I only interjected there because of the it's the biggest number on the board and I wanted to make that point that we are I don't know that we could do that every year to say eight retirees that we're going to be able to net out 30 000 per um and I think it'll become exceedingly more difficult given the number of people in Ed prep programs today to meet that number so I just wanted to make that specialized point it might be easier to go through the rest and address other things later on but yeah I'm going to hold off okay okay the next line we're we're increasing substitutes by fifty thousand dollars we just after you know quite careful review a couple of meetings you know we are engaged in trying to find ways to
012you know work the substitute number down as best we can but we think it's prudent to increase that budget line by fifty thousand so that takes us the other way but there are other offsets the homebound tutoring program we're reducing that 25 000 because we see that this year the you know the tutoring costs have come down and Robin Ann Carey who's responsible for that portion of Education believes that that's sustainable into next year and then the last item under certified salaries is the adult ed elimination so certified salaries is being reduced 281 980. so I could pause if there are questions on certified or keep moving if there are not um so with the principal and assistant principals how is that going to be spent is that spread over or do we are they
013allocated for one or two positions specific positions it's actually two positions um one has to do with you know Brian Murphy who was the adult ed director and it had other roles a portion of his salary was charged against the adult ed budget and a portion was not so moving him out of adult ed into the principle assistant principle line is part of the allocation and the remaining part of the allocation is him becoming an assistant principal raises his salary over where he was so and what's do you know what his salary is now total around 109. okay and it's going to range that's the starting rate for a system principal Middle School okay and then the balance goes to from an adult ed yeah yeah so if you look at the next section under
014secretaries 21 629 that was a portion of as secretary's salary that was charged to a Delta ad that is now moving into the operating budget okay okay and then there is a third component while we're on the topic which is on page three at the top other Professional Services we're increasing that line 55 000 because that's the fee we'll be paying to Wallingford Wallingford for the adult ed program all right and then um um now with the uh promotion for Miss Grillo is that um in here also or is that part of the 76 yeah that's a good point I'm confident that it is okay and it's around six thousand dollars okay all right and then um uh just a point of quiet uh uh procedure when new hires come in even if they're experienced
015do they come in at the bait at the first step good question so when we hire people we uh pay them based on their years of experience in public Ed so if you've been a teacher in another system for nine years you would be hired in Cheshire public schools on step 10. uh for the subsequent year if you've worked in private schools we don't necessarily count that toward public ed Service however you know we have latitude to negotiate with those individuals you know if you've been a private school teacher for 10 years um I might not hire you at Step 11 but I'm not going to hire you at step one either and so we have conversations the candidate and I to identify an appropriate place to start that person okay just two more okay
016so um thank you for that and then the uh moving the speech pathologist to an idea Grant is this going to be on budget next year on in our operating budget and not funded by Grant is that where we're going to be looking at so you mean the following yeah you're after that yeah likely it shouldn't be because the Ida Grant is a repetitive annual Grant and unlike an Essa Grant which goes away okay right so okay it shouldn't come back to the operating budget all right and last but not least didn't we have 11 or 13 retirements last year because I recall it's like it was a large number last year 11. yeah and now we've got eight are you concerned that we are losing teachers pretty quickly um I think historically and correct
017me if you think I'm wrong Carol we lose about eight a year yeah um that that's kind of the natural attrition rate I think last year was higher post covid um you know and our faculty in the Cheshire Public Schools tends to stay for an extended period of time so you know they tend to once you enter it's Hotel California I guess you never leave and so you know unless you're getting promoted is rare to have our teachers leave and find other teaching jobs so when you're here you tend to retire from here and so we do have about you know about eight to ten retirees a year okay we need a playlist yeah right thanks good continuing on the next the sir on the certified salaries there were three adjustments one is the consolidation
018of five power positions and actually what we're doing is we're eliminating five positions that we haven't been able to fill this year that was Miss Kerry has made that recommendation so that reduces this budget line 125 000. I already talked about the secretaries and then under our support line we need to make we needed to make some adjustments post when we prepared the original budget for some positions in the support line of 25 000 so net net that section we're reducing a total of seventy eight thousand three seventy one okay music consolidate so that's those are five positions that we have budgeted now that you're not you haven't been able to fill so it's we're eliminating elimination and what Miss Carrie is doing is is consolidating responsibilities amongst other staff members Zach and I'm being
019we're gonna be able to do that she thinks so and I I think there's consensus so these are part-time 25 usually like 28 uh hours a week and you know unfortunately just giving given the the Staffing shortage within that position across the state we've had to operate this year with fewer para Educators um you know some other places like bus drivers um cafeteria support those places we've felt it as well um because of the sheer volume of para Educators we've had it's it it's more impressive looking there the number of openings that we have um and we've had to you know go through this year making it work it's it's not an optimal situation um but the forecast doesn't look great to be able to fill the number anyway so how many do we have
020do you have any Educators total one yeah yeah well that's 200 people in that Union but they're not yeah they're not fair Educators um not to be confused with teachers aides that's a little policy policy subcommittee okay okay so para Educators we have 147 full-time equivalents and those are for special education and we have 24 para Educators that provide classroom services for General ads so it's about 170. okay so I'm losing five that we're not able to fill is not a huge yeah it's I mean the percentage basis is not substantial you know we don't like to do it but under the circumstances it fiscally it makes sense at this point okay next section benefits we're just reducing one line there the unemployment compensation line we're reducing at fifteen thousand um I think that gets
021us back to pre-covered expected level of claims I believe will be absolutely fine with that reduction you know based on the fact that since November we've had you know another six months of experience in Billing from the state so that one's pretty easy the next section is instructional expense and you know we we did try and go kind of easy on any line items that would take us below this year's budget um the first one there is pupil Services a fifteen thousand dollar reduction and that's directly due to the elimination of one of the programs that Quinnipiac University due to low enrollment so miss Carrie thinks that is a pickup that we can do very easily and then you'll see we just reduce textbooks 12 691 library periodicals and testing supplies five thousand each and
022Adult Ed supplies 16650 because that program is being moved so those instructional expense reductions are 54 341. and then on to the last page we already talked about the first one of an increase in other Professional Services for the adult ed fee we can reduce the communications line ten thousand dollars transportation we need to increase that twenty thousand dollars just based on the price of fuel we did do a fuel locks for next year you know fortunately we're below um to 90 a gallon on both Diesel and gasoline for next year but that was a line that was kind of reduced all at once in the original board's reduction so I need twenty thousand more to make that line work next year and so that's an actual increase of 65 000 in that line but
023it the adult ad is offset by reduction in certified salaries we made no changes to the maintenance lines so all of that pluses and minuses gets us to the 364 692 reduction that was needed and that concludes my explanation to this point anyway thank you Mr maciano um are there any uh additional questions this is Roseburg I just have like impact questions what's the communications gonna impact though so so go ahead well I was going to say the communications line we had increased that in the Years leading into the school modernization efforts to do additional mailings we also use some of that to make some improvements you know are the communication strategies including the website but you know we we don't think we need that going forward and um quite a bit of the communication
024on the new school project that's coming through the budget that we have for our Architects so we can safely pull that out I don't know if Jeff if there was anything else that's exactly what I was going to say yeah and then going back to actually page one just the consolidation won't because we didn't fill it I'm just trying to little foresight what happens now if we do require our kids need the pair especially in the special ed area that's something that happens naturally in the course of our year anyway that programmatic and individual student needs ebb and flow a student moves in a student moves out uh needs shift for the student who stays with us so we're used to making those adjustments in real time through the year we've certainly had years I
025mean where you see this even more pronounced is in outplacement costs so outplacing a couple more students than anticipated can really have a significant budget impact given the high cost and we just move things around throughout the year in order to be able to cover the bills and just also if I don't know if we've ever received is there a seniority list where the teachers just to get a sense of what our future holds then I think I'm sure we could get one okay thank you I don't have one available I don't think tonight but we don't have that in the budget book either that'd be something fun to add to the budget book not big enough I mean because it can be a little bit misleading just the seniority if you're looking at retirements
026yeah um so you know we received the retirement letter from somebody who worked for us for 20 years they've reached retirement age but they're somebody that we hired not right out of college and they had worked other place before they came here so you can see Senora it'll give you an idea but it's it's not like a pure um there are other way variables you have to consider like age and stuff but yeah we could we could pull that together thank you so how many um how many of those eight retirements did we have back in January when we first put our money in January I don't think we had any but we budgeted for some um not not in January that wasn't part of our budget no I think we when we were yeah
027you know what when we when we initially wrote our budget we did not when you had the 800 and when we had that 850 000 reduction from the board I think we factored like three or four retirements in there Ben this is what I recall but you know better no you have better memory for them and we talked about it but we didn't reduce that line item okay that's part of the budget um reductions initially and when we prepare the operating budget we don't factor in retirements because we know the process is gonna catch up to where we are with retirement well that's what that's what I was getting at so this is actually more realistic look at our operating budget for next year because we have more information by this point correct in the
028calendar okay thank you um I have a couple questions firstly I'm assuming that a if we if you were to produce a seniority list that would be anonymized right yeah it would be an accident yeah because when that put a kind of a Target on people yeah we see it yeah you're thinking about retiring yeah yeah that uh we yeah we can produce an anonymized list um and then medical benefits figure might as well ask um now to work closer to the end of the year are we just sort of do you feel we're just kind of on target for what we've budgeted um for next year or maybe we'll see a little Improvement or some run any movement there the last few months including April have been quite favorable on the same side um
029and so we just look at a high level next year's budget for claims is 1.1 million per month on average that's where we're running this year but that includes some really high months earlier and we're trending lower than that now so I think the budget is good for next year happy to hear that um any other questions um okay um so from a procedural point of view I'm guessing this has to move out of committee so that we can vote on it again at our business meeting in a little while um so so I guess I can it's sort of a debt there's no I don't have a motion for any so I guess I could adapt this motion here so let me try this um move that the uh uh Cheshire Board of Education
030finance committee approve and operating budget for the fiscal year 2324 of 84 million 993 429 as appropriated by the Town Council representing a reduction of 364 692 from the board of education's recommended budget of 85 million three hundred fifty eight thousand one hundred twenty one dollars is there a second Faith seconds um discussion on the motion seeing none um all in favor um yeah well I'll solve the whole right so yeah yeah we'll just have to do it again all right uh it is uh unanimous of those present fantastic um seeing there's no other items on this agenda oh it's attain a motion to adjourn summer Sam seconds all in favor all right we are adjourned thank you foreign