Board of Education Budget 1-26-23

001here I guess we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America considering public for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all good evening and welcome to tonight's finance committee meeting as a whole where we hope to wrap up the budget presentation and respond to some questions so welcome again thank you for sticking out with us this past couple weeks so I think Vincent you're up to finish the presentation support services and operations maintenance the fun stuff I'm ready been waiting for this all day thank you good evening everyone and welcome back so tonight is our third Workshop session and I believe we'll be able to wrap up at least the workshop portion of the presentations this evening the

002agenda that we have as uh Mr peregina just mentioned we'll go through Support Services maintenance and operations and then uh superintendent so and we'll just wrap up with the conclusion and then it's back to the finance committee so under Support Services the um as you can see here the request is 7.33 million dollars it's a 4.61 percent increase for this particular budget category this represents about budget request and I will point out that the vast majority of Support Services is student transportation and that is 57 or about 4.1 million of this budget category includes our contract with dacco our bus Provider Plus the cost of fuel and then the board does operate about 10 00 drivers so that's the vast majority of this particular other Professional Services which includes typically services that we buy whether

003it's legal or technology Services which we packs is and now sorry that's the second largest category at about 12 and then this green sliver is the payment we have to make for our energy performance contract we did the work about nine years ago the various infrastructure of our school replacing the electric at Highland um replacing all the lighting across the district with LED that's computer controlled that was about a total 10 million dollar project for the town and we carried about that and so there's a 15-year payment on that energy performance contract so that's what that 649 thousand dollars represents and then there are you know generally smaller categories and I'll just show you a quick line by the dollar amounts or the larger dollar amounts of this particular request um first of all Pupil

004Transportation at um it's a 2.89 increase it's a hundred four thousand that's predominantly the built-in contract cost with Deco we have a five Echo we're currently um will be going into our excuse me we're in our fourth year we're going into our fifth year with this budget so there's a two percent is pretty low and we're kind of lucky we started um a five-year contract we had a zero in the first year and then two percent increases each of the next four years thankful that we didn't have to negotiate a new contract during covet but we will be negotiating a new contract with dacco at the end of 23-24 which this budget covers so between that hundred four thousand and then another forty eight thousand uh for Transportation Supply this is the expected increase in

005the cost of fuel for next year over last years of the current Year's budget you know I think everyone's well aware that fuel prices have skyrocketed they have come down a bit but we expect them to be higher next year than they were in the current budget year so that represents about a hundred fifty thousand of the three hundred twenty two thousand dollar increase this Capital Equipment line that thirty eight thousand one sixty two that is the increase for the energy performance contract it's prescribed in the contract so that is um you know at this point it's not controllable it's a contractual question the other piece of Capital Equipment I'll mention quickly this this line item consists of two things you know one is the energy performance contract which is a little over 600 000

006and then the balance is the computer Capital Equipment that's where we buy our technology from that request this year is 264 000. in Prior years just historically it's been 350 000. so we've reduced the computer Capital line in recent years in line with the budgets but also because we did get a very large Grant of over six hundred thousand dollars uh last year where we were able to replace more of our most of our Chromebook Fleet for students which is about four thousand devices um so that that budget line is those two items and then the last one that I'll highlight here is other Professional Services is going up 66 000. you know we are increasing the dollars we need for Legal Services by twenty five thousand dollars this year we also have a small

007increase in our technology contract with Apex you know which is still at a very good price for us for the services they provide as the chief technology officer for the schools and the town and then we upgraded our munis platform or I should say we we switch from newness being hosted on our servers to being in the cloud and so we have a higher annual fee that we pay Tyler but we no longer have the hardware replacement costs um or some of the risk associated with that Hardware on site so that's really the bulk of the explanation as to why this particular category is going up 4.6 I'm going to just take you through a little bit of a deeper dive on a couple of the large line items starting with transportation and so here

008what you see is the total transportation budget is broken out into several major categories the public school routes which is about 53 percent of this budget category those are the the routes that we run every day across the district for our general education students um 982 000 or 23 those are specialized runs for special education students that in their individualized education plans I know we talked a lot about that on Tuesday we are required to provide individualized transportation to you know and from their home to whatever their designated uh learning site is it could be in District but as the board knows we also transport students to out of district schools when they're placed in those schools um fuel equipment and repairs is about 10 of the budget for transportation Student Activity just think of

009sports band anything that we do after hours we do a budget for that private school routes were required by uh state law to provide transportation for in this case St Bridget students and so that's that three percent we also provide transportation for students who elect instead of going to the high school to go to a boag school or Technical High School such as Wilcox and then we have a small slice of the budget for transportation insurance so that that covers the transportation costs I'm just going to hit you with a couple of highlights about Transportation one I already met our contract increases two percent per year including this year and when we negotiated that contract in June for July of 2019 we did get an upgrade to our Fleet so that we have GPS and

010cameras in all our buses plus we added the new bus depot facility as part of that contract some of the things that we do that are you know in the ordinary course of trying to make sure that we're effective and and also trying to save as much money as we can you know we have over the years done a lot of consolidation of of our bus routes we do have students you know walking to the bus stop within you know well within the parameters set forth in the board of Ed's policies so that you know students in kindergarten can't walk more than a half a mile to school on that bus stop it's a mile at the elementary level Beyond kindergarten and a mile and a half to middle school and high school so you

011know we use that as our guideline we are below that you know in all cases but we do work to minimize the number of stops every year we look at where our students are going to be and we adjust the bus stop so that we are running in a very efficient um number of bus routes we did budget just by the way this budget year we budgeted our transportation flat because we had some route consolidation that we knew we were doing we can't do that into next year because we've already started with a lower cost this year um and we do you know where to the extent we can if we could share transportation for our special ed or technical school students with Aces or other districts we we do take advantage of that we

012also this year installed some software upgrades in fact we replaced the routing software that we use with a new one and it makes it easier and better for our transportation staff to plan the routes but I did want to mention two things one it does provide the capability I want to emphasize this the capability to allow for parent tracking so they know when to expect about home so that is a feature that we can enable when the software is ready and it should be next year also it does provide for turn by turn capability for our drivers it's very specific on the state law we cannot just use a standard GPS and let the driver follow that route because it distracts them from their you know primary duty of you know driving the bus but

013you know this particular software will allow us to incorporate that in line with state state allowances and then the last bullet on this slide you know the board is aware and the planning committee of the board is has already started looking at what is it we need to do to our bus fleet so that by 2040 we will meet the state's requirement to have a zero emission bus fleet which means all electric buses it's a long way out but we certainly want to incorporate in the next service contract with whatever bus provider it is whether it's a dacco provider Deco or another company but we want to start moving in in the direction of alternate fuel vehicles which could include propane but eventually they have to be all electric a pause there because this kind

014of ends transportation for now is any questions yes thanks Vincent uh regarding our buses are we still incorporating uh the cameras on the bus on some of the buses for you know safety purposes this is kind of curious you know what experience has been over the past year or two in terms of there are cameras and and all the school buses um we and the experience has been generally positive in that if there is an incident on the bus you know we can go back and view the video um I will tell you that it it's not used a lot but when it is used it it does come in pretty handy and you know most of the requests for viewing come from an incident through the School principles yeah thank you for that I

015wasn't asking that but I'm glad oh sorry I was talking about the uh the cameras for oh the cars you know the stop arm yeah those are still we still have two vehicles equipped with the stop arm cameras you know there are violations that are issued um and to the extent that we have a bus pass where the stop arm equipment isn't on that particular bus the drivers do have the ability to report as long as they collect a license plate to the police and we do that and it's since we've installed those um stop arm cameras you know again this is to to monitor if anyone is passing a stop School Bus you know we do believe the incident of those passes has decreased I think it's a combination of not only ticketing but

016greater public awareness of the need to stop for a school bus okay that was it thank you okay so that's a couple questions one of them is so I assume the public school routes is where or the line item the public transportation line item is where at what point my question is at what point does our increasing enrollment have an effect on on that category increasing that category there's got to be a point at which well important has it already no it hasn't yet and even though but we know the enrollment is across all the grades but there are some offsets it's you know it's it's kind of flat for next year at the middle school it's down for the high school and it's up at elementary so as we as I was saying as

017we plan the bus routes if there's a new development that has a substantial number of students it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to have to add a bus for the last several years our buses have been running because of covet we've tried to keep the bus count below 60 and the typical bus has a capacity of 72. so we have some room we didn't budget in for a significant increase in transportation costs related to Route increases and if we have to add a route you know we'll we'll do it obviously we have to transport the students safely and we can't exceed the capacity of the bus but we're not there yet we don't expect that next year is going to push us based on the enrollment projection to a substantial increase in cost over time

018it will happen though great so we're not there yet not there yet the other variable we have is in three years we'll be redistricting anyway which should support uh people closer to their building great um my second question goes with that um Student Activity portion and I know that it's not the biggest portion but my question would be is is that increase due to not having those activities Transportation costs over the past couple of years we're having a lot the cost hasn't changed substantially six percent is six percent of the total it's it's I I know you understand that what we've been struggling with frankly on Student Activity the last couple of years is the shortage of bus drivers hasn't affected our daily routes but we've had to go to outside providers to find routes

019that can be run for Student Activities but that should subside and you know we haven't seen a significant shift in the number of Student Activity bus runs that we need so we're you know that's been fairly stable you know other than the contractual increase I don't see that changing much well I was thinking during covet certainly for one year we weren't doing as much we had not yeah but that's not the reflected part that's not reflected in this but correct okay thank you you're welcome um so could you I we go through this every year students don't want to write a ride the bus what is the opt-out how does that work and Eric do we get savings and what is what are the trends that you've seen so there's a couple of things we

020do if if you know the the easiest one to explain is if a high school student is granted a parking pass as part of the parking pass application process it states right on the form that they're opting out of um a bus route so you know that that's a given that's Incorporated I think it's well understood but it doesn't work in every case because some students don't have access to a car every day so there's a little bit of give and take there but we make a concerted effort you know through that Forum when they get the parking pass that they're opting out of Transportation the second way that we have students opt out is the bus drivers you know do observe if they if they've got to stop and no student is boarding at

021that particular stop you know for a couple of weeks they do report that to our transportation manager and staff and our staff does follow up to say we notice that your child hasn't been getting on the bus you know is there a reason if the reason is because the child is getting a ride to school from a parent we let the parent know that they can opt out and we ask them to opt out and we promised that within 48 hours if the student wants to ride the bus again we will get them on on that particular bus so it's incorporated into what we do I can't point to any specific savings certainly not in this budget year you know we we have been doing this for a number of years so it's kind of

022built in to what our transportation routes are there's that certain opt-out percentage and it is a little bit of a struggle for parents because they don't want to commit to opting out on a permanent basis even though we say we will quickly opt the student back in but there is a reluctance to do that okay and then um drivers salaries or drivers pay um you there has been a shortage of drivers I assume they're paid minimum and are you seeing um price or wage pressures and who's responsible for that if are we will we have to eat some of this if we find that we have to really bump up the pay to get those drivers and you're talking about tacos drivers yeah dacco because of by the the nature of our contract which was

023executed before the minimum wage requirements kicked in you know Deco is really eating has had to eat that increased cost I do expect in our next contract when we go out to bid that will result in an increase in prices I mean what that is you know it that price increase that we see when we negotiate the next contract will incorporate wages and benefits and whatever's changed over the last five years that wasn't built in to these two percent increases so you know I do expect that next contract will bump up but we'll try and to minimize the impact of that as we we get those bids and can I ask some non-busting questions yeah okay so the other services um are there any Regional purchasing Arrangements we're in with any of these other Support

024Services I was I was going to cover that when we get to the tail end but yes so what on the procurement side you know we to the extent that there's any type of a regional estate or a federal contract you know we do work to take advantage of that um you know good a good example is the school supplies that we buy the WB Mason and school specialty have the bid Awards the state bids that those two vendors won the state bid award for most items and we make most of our purchases there but the school staff and the departmental staff know that they need to shop so just because as a state contract price for paper for example W.B Mason has the state award this year for copy paper which is used to

025be about 25 a case for years it went up to 48 dollars a case and so you know through the course of you know our shopping and this is actually central office Heather Santi our operations supervisor found that Amazon and we have a special relationship with Amazon we could buy the copy paper at 38 per case instead of the 48 from WB Mason so even though we've got a state contract price we're buying copy paper you know this year from Amazon and it's Prime so there's no delivery cost um if it's a larger expenditure if it's over 15 000 you know we do put that out to bid if it makes sense to do so you know the reason I say if it makes sense to do so sometimes there are State bid awards for

026those items so you know Steph is really diligent about trying to find the best price you know even when it comes down to you know buying small quantities of of supplies collaborative right and that's you know especially for special education we do some of the ride sharing to and these are for out of District Place students and they do an annual bid and those are the ones that you know come to mind I know that you know we do a lot to try and um save every penny we can and sometimes you know the offset is we get you know a state mandate that is very expensive you know but at least we're doing everything we can to save our pennies and you know kind of buck the trend increases to the extent we cap

027and then when most of these uh are fixed to their contracts correct so there's very little wiggle room for well it depends on on which item that we're talking about I mean Pupil Transportation that is fixed you know the rentals leases some of those I mean those are that's an interesting mix of of different items in there some are fixed like the the multi-function printers that we have deployed across the district so that not only copiers but they also serve as our printers at a much lower cost those are on a municipal lease contract so those are fixed pool rental is part of that line item that's a Cheshire pool hockey rental ski golf rental that's all in that line item so those aren't contractual we try and negotiate them every year so it depends

028on the line item okay thanks okay I apologize for getting here late I'm guessing you didn't go over this but thanks Andrew with regard to telephone all right have you been looking at you know the newer technology that what is it the VoIP or I mean do people still I find myself at work using my cell phone for everything rather than I'm just curious like if you've thought about that do you have a telephone you have a telephone consultant who's like helpful with any of that we do and our phone system has been Voiceover IP for a long time I know Tony was part of that selection process it's probably 10 years ago we moved to a mitel system it's you know voice over IP um so yeah we're not paying traditional phone bills it's

029all done over the internet you know once the the equipment is placed and you know we do have a service contract with um Windstream I believe it is right now so but is is your question can we replace I'm just sure system with cell phones yeah I'm just curious like the hardware I mean do people even I'm sure it wouldn't be 100 but I mean in general do most people even want to have a landline I guess this would be principles because you need to have the hard the hard wired telephone lines to the classroom I mean from uh from a communication point of view you know they're there is an important need to have a hard line or landline type phone in your classroom and that is if you have to make a 9-1-1

030call so there is you know even though it's it's internet based there is e911 capability so if you pick up you know the phone in classroom 82 at the high school you know the 911 operator knows exactly where that call is coming from you know it also serves an intercom function yep um and you know naturally we do have parents that call in you know to the schools and we call parents so um but our phone costs are pretty modest at this point you know if when it comes time to replace this system you know you can buy you know telephone as a service I'm not sure what the pricing of that would be instead of having to make that whole Hardware investment up front like we did and the hardware investment is primarily for

031the handsets yeah they're working fine so I it's not in the near future that I expect to be replacing the font system and when we did do it by the way we did have a school security Grant out pay for the hardware thank you okay ready all right so now we're going to hit um just a couple of things on technology again this is all under support services and that is and I know Mr grippo had a question about this but the we've been replacing our aged and failing interactive smart boards that run with the projector with smart flat panel TVs essentially what they are they're still interactive so we've the good news is we've done um and completed 60 percent district-wide of those Replacements we are doing it through that computer Capital Equipment account

032that I mentioned that we have 264 000 budgeted in this budget year that's being requested so we've replaced 194 pieces of equipment we have about 120 to go and we'll continue to do those replacement as the budget permits we do you know obviously we take care of any failed equipment first um and over time there's there's a couple of um advantages of going with these flat panels besides they're easy to use one they use less electricity and less energy you don't have to replace the bulbs which are the most expensive component um and the second most expensive incident that we have is the the interactive whiteboards do delaminate over time and so they they wind up being trash so we don't have that that particular issue and it there's also less repairs involved so that

033our Tech staff you know over time won't be dispatched to do as many repairs to the smart boards once we get to full interactive panels so does that address the question you had Mr grippo I was just wondering what the status was on the upgrade path you know yeah so yeah we're moving it along at a pretty good pace so you know we hope to continue that and finish that up uh no we we do um first of all our internal staff maintains or Services them on it on a daily basis um but if we need help outside of that we use r b Communications you know they're doing all the installs and they've they have a state contract for the purchase of that equipment but for the most part if it's a if there's

034a repair need in we do it right in District with our you know for technology assistance and uh uh one question so um how old is the oldest panel and what is the expected life of a panel you know we've gotten rid of the the oldest oldest ones which I you know I got here 13 years ago and they were already installed so probably 15 years old but those first generation those are long gone oh what's the life yeah so we've been installing them for it's probably two years and it's the life expectancy of a TV which but I would expect I would I would guess about 10 years and when are you expecting to have everything upgraded how many years I mean I have to do three three thousand times 120 so that's three

035hundred sixty thousand dollars so it'll take us a couple years to get there all right so we won't be in a Perpetual upgrade cycle there will be at least a few years where you think maybe we'll enjoy operational fully operational panels in all of our classes yes two years into it sixty percent done yeah so also we get six years on that yeah hopefully yeah but it's not not including what's going into the new schools that'll be part of that budget right well there's going to be an offset there right when the new schools will get all new equipment so um you know this is a challenge we have we're still gonna we still have three years to go with Chapman and with the current Norton and with Darcy although Darcy doesn't have a lot

036of of classrooms so you know we'll we'll manage that and we'll prioritize the buildings that are not coming offline and those are mobile right so those could be moved to New classrooms or to be shifted to the other Schools they're not mobile but we can Dismount so that's a it's a permanent installation they're not on carts or something like that that's basically you know what you would install in your home you know you attach it to the wall and you hang the TV on the back okay so it can be moved it could be pretty easily thank you okay and then just a couple of other quick things um you know our PCS kind of along the same line of thinking as you could see in this next bullet actually yeah you can see it

037there most of our PCS are relatively new 75 is under four years old so you know those again we upgrade those as we need to over time and we try not to let the technology get too old otherwise it's a it's a large expenditure all at once and then we are maintaining the fleet of Chromebooks again in-house what we do is we have parts inventory our staff is trained so if a screen cracks if a keyboard isn't working if there's some other you know problem with the device we're repairing those in-house and that saves us quite a bit of money when a student has a defective or a broken device we give them we swap them a loaner right away so there's no down time for the student is our goal and we've been able

038to meet that goal we did upgrade all all the radios across the school district so you know this is this was actually covered you know by Town appropriation Capital appropriation and our radios do allow us to communicate on an emergency basis with our emergency responders you know including the 9-1-1 Dispatch Center so that was an important upgrade and right now we're working with Apex to um come up with a more full-fledged Disaster Recovery plan if we were to have a Cyber attack on the school district so we're prepared but we're really looking to come up with a more in-depth plan part of this you know as an insurance requirement these days so that is you know in development and we're working with Town Board of Ed staff and led by Apex our chief technology officer

039we're we work on those Chromebook Replacements in-house who exactly is that that for technology assistants that we have you know so they're they're our traditional break fix team so how big is that team four people okay um and it's Dan we used to have six but over time as we've you know increased even though we've increased the amount of Technology we have a lot less brake fix because it's it's newer so yeah that staff has been you know paired down and you know we don't want to pair it down too much because we want the response to be quick for our students and staff so we're in a good place with that group and they've you know they've been trained so that they could do you know Technologies chains and they're prepared to deal with

040that technology change so just a refresher on the Chromebooks start in grade seven well we have Chromebooks no I mean for students but take home for take home seven yeah but they're used in and they're using them through grade 12. but lower grades do get them in a Chromebook uh I want to say two through six there's a cart in each classroom in first grade it's a Chromebook of sorts of sort of a middle step and then in third through sixth their Chromebooks just like the ones in seven through twelve and again those are carts that are available in the classroom for if you spend students when the teacher use it appropriate but we don't necessarily send those home at the elementary group thanks okay and then just because it it kind of falls under

041some of the support services we provide I did update the board last year that we've spent a lot more energy on providing professional development for our non-certified staff so for our secretaries our technology assistants you know our drivers our maintenance staff you know we have a pretty full-fledged catalog of course offerings for them I think this came up maybe at the last board meeting but you know we've expanded the Narcan training so there's more staff that's been trained to administer narcam in an emergency so that's beyond the School nurses and then we've been you know continuing to train on Alice which is the violent Intruder protocol it I explained last year that that training is video based now so new employees you know within 30 days of employment have to complete mandated training which does

042include Alice so they understand the Alice Basics as soon as they're hired and then we have done two training events this year these are the Alice drills that we do we just did our last one at the high school earlier this month and it went well the employees you know respond well and they really understand how Alice Works after they go through these drills and at this point our staff is is pretty much fully trained and we are beginning to work on a curriculum so to speak for our students to train the students on Alice so right and you know administrators are responsible for all but we want and they're Alice trained but we want the students you know on an age-appropriate basis to go through the Alice training as well and Ms Solano and

043and her staff is is directly involved in that training development um so this is just a wrap up here Support Services you could see you know the trend is is up a bit as a percentage of budget um but it is down over the last couple of years as part of this budget request that's it for support services so before I move to maintenance and operations are we good okay so maintenance and operations the school buildings um here in Cheshire we've got eight running right now and in a minute I'll talk about what what we look like in 2026 but you know these are the building ages we know that our buildings are used not only for schools but buildings serve as community centers and you know we've got over 4 000 after school type

044events most at the high school and you can see Norton Highland and Dodd Doolittle have a substantial number of events and so it's always important to remember as as we make any kind of improvements or have maintenance to do at these schools it's because they're schools but they're also our community centers foreign now the good news is that we do have approval for a new Norton school and a new Norton Elementary which is excellent for us when these schools are built and what a little over three years away at this point we will have seven school buildings so these three buildings will come offline Norton Elementary that we know that that will be demolished Darcy and Chapman that is to be decided you know what the what the fate of those buildings would and that

045property will be and that really isn't a topic for discussion tonight but we will be moving towards having seven buildings and so we still have this responsibility and this need to maintain and make investments in these buildings that we know that they're going to continue to age you know starting with humiston in in 2026 will have reached the age of 114 years and Highland will turn 55 years in 2026. so as we look at maintenance and operations and I'll kind of come back to this as as we get to the capital budget portion but as we look at maintenance and Ops always remember that that core of buildings that we're going to keep we still need to maintain and make Capital investments in um before I forgot um if uh any of those properties that

046you highlighted were sold who's the beneficiary of the proceeds not the schools well it's the town I mean technically the buildings are Town property so they would go back to the you know any proceeds from the sale would go back to the test so we have we have control of the property but we do not own the property they're the landlord and we're the tenant although when as a tenant we fully manage and operate those buildings thank you I'm going to piggyback on that I know we're gonna I know we're probably three years out but uh this but so when the new schools come online and the other two schools become preschools become vacant um at that time will the board be handing those schools back over to the town because they won't be in

047use or we're just not there yet that's my plan okay thank you no I mean the point so anyway I know we're in Mr clivett has already ordered a set of keys [Laughter] no just because I I only ask because I know if folks are watching I hope they are yeah um I'm sure they have questions about you know how's this you know this budget you know it's this year but we're looking forward and I know they're thinking hey when new school's coming online are some of these things those anyway uh thank you Vincent yeah no see we'll have seven buildings in 2026 not nine well because we know I mean the one building that we know Norton will be demolished as part of that project got it okay so maintenance and operations um and

048I do want to recognize Mr Richard Corvette is our director of Facility Services I believe the board members know Mr clivette thank you I never get Applause by the way so that's something rich um so the maintenance budget request for this year is 4.5 million dollars we are requesting a 12.8 percent increase and that's mostly driven by electricity and heating costs which I'll I'll talk about in a minute but this budget is about 5.3 percent of the total District's budget you'll see that 40 percent of the budget is utilities and heating so that's just to turn on the lights and and keep the buildings operational 1.4 million about 32 percent of the budget is for maintenance and repairs you'll see that 19 of this budget is the cleaning services that we provide in those buildings

049on a daily basis when students are in and then smaller amounts maintenance supply equipment maintenance and repairs you know those two combined are about nine percent of the budget request I'm going to drill in a little bit deeper to talk about um utilities and heating so of the total maintenance budget 1.8 million dollars is specifically for utilities and heating electricity being the largest component here and for next year we are budgeting up to 879 thousand dollars with budgeting an increase of 14 for electricity um heating oil natural gas and propane those are the fuels that you know we are currently using to provide heat to the buildings is 524 000 that that is also going up in its budget request which you'll see in the next couple of slides we also pay for garbage removal

050and recycling um we pay water bills gas and propane is primarily for the cafeterias that's non-heat gas and propane and we do pay sewer use fees to the town of Cheshire of about 51 000 per year so that's 39 and a half percent of the budget which means that the other 60.5 percent of the budget is for maintenance and repairs of which 32 percent is for the cleaning services we do use an outside contractor to provide those cleaning services um building repairs and improvements is about 732 000 per year um and then I combined that with this line uh excuse me maintenance services so these are outside contractors we use where our building staff can't provide certain repairs you know we'll go out to a plumber an electrician HVAC contractor so it's really about a

051million dollars in total that is provided in this budget for the the repairs and general smaller improvements in our buildings we have another hundred and ninety one thousand for maintenance of grounds so that's anything outside of the building and I add the hundred thirty thousand budgeted for snow plowing as as part of that maintenance and then we do have monitoring service for the um for the buildings when they're not in use so that's the 60.5 percent of the maintenance budget if we look at this just on a line by line basis and um you'll see that our public utilities are going up uh 14 again that's primarily the expected increase in electricity electricity excuse me electricity costs for next year um another 130 through 3 000 we're anticipating for heat and energy cost increases although

052the market is looking a little bit better for um fuel I'm not so sure about electricity just yet but the natural gas supply is pretty good because it's been a warm January and so hopefully that does help bring our electricity costs down um and we are actually working without our consultant right now to try and find us some electricity pricing for next year at the board meeting I did update the board that we are locked in from February through November at you know on the supply side at about 12.8 cents but we're looking to go beyond that if we can if the Market's favorable so we're looking right now and then we are looking to increase the actual repair line by about 9.7 because we need it and again we need to you know continue

053to maintain our buildings and we have three more years with the existing building so these costs can come down we need to budget appropriately I'll pause on this line if there's any questions otherwise I'll keep moving I'm just wondering uh if there's what the reason behind having things like snow plowing and grounds maintenance separate in our budget from the towns snow plowing and is it just to keep track or because it seems like there could be savings to be had by having it all come under one but I'm probably wrong about that well you know one reason why it's budgeted separately is we have direct control and responsibility for you know let's use snow plowing as an example we do get help from the town the sound the town salts our Lots after our contractor

054is done with the plowing we recently went out to bid actually for this season and we hired two new contractors to replace the contractor that we had last year um so we went to bid we got some decent beds we haven't had any significant snow to speak of so you know we haven't put those contractors to the test right Mr clivette um you know so by going out to bid it you know it kind of ensures that we you know are doing our due diligence to try and get the you know not only the right pricing you know with snow removal it's so important that we have a contractor that's reliable that's going to show up that's going to communicate and they're not going to make any damage to our you know lots and our

055driveways so the town you know they plow roads and they have a whole crew that can not only plow the roads but also plow their Lots but if they were to take over they would have to add staff to do so so you know when we have talked about doing that in the past but it just doesn't seem um like it's it's really gonna add significant cost savings and there's always a concern about losing control and losing priority you know the schools need to be you know plowed and ready for you know early start the high school they have to be ready to go by 6 A.M so it's not something that we haven't considered and it's not something we won't you know continue to look at where it makes sense but for now you

056know we are doing everything we can to keep the cost in check and give us the control we need to be sure that we're ready for school and ready for staff when we do have a snow event we do co-op we do you know cooperate with the town on you know the maintenance of the fields you know the town uses the fields as well as the schools use the fields we've you know had a couple of issues over the last couple of years I think we've resolved those you know pretty well so there is you know cooperation that that does take place and you know the other resource that we have we share a resource with the town as project manager for our Capital items that's that's Dan bombero you know he works closely with

057Rich on any of the larger items that are improvements that we'll talk about as part of the capital budget thanks Ben I appreciate that we continue to look at that when we can I mean if it's not causing this not producing efficiencies cost efficiencies then I understand but continuing to look at it is always a good idea yep thank you you're welcome yeah so mine was had to do with no plan too and I was wondering if we even spent a dime yet but I don't think so maybe yesterday we spent more than a dime but we had one that was at one snow event that we had to do some cleanup rich so um so it's not zero it's not zero okay so we spent a quarter no but okay um I was going

058to ask you about the building use and I don't know if this is the appropriate time or because you were just really moving along and that held the audience but in a good way right if I could go back so how many um groups that use our facilities since we don't have a community center our schools or community centers so private groups we've had this discussion before that use it do we gain lose or break even with those would you say we break even is is you know my response it's not a money maker for us and you know the bigger the biggest cost you know really is custodian and if a user has a custodian they're paying for the cost of that custodian you know they do pay a building use fee you know

059which would cover any overhead electricity lighting now we haven't upgraded or updated our fees in several years we can look at that but um it's a break even and you know a large portion of users um you know I will add are park and rec so we don't charge them a building use fee but they bring their own staff you know to supervise the building like here at Todd they have basketball a few nights a week so they're bringing their own at what point would we do a review of fees to see anytime we want to okay I've been I just I've you know it's wear and tear on the building um and I you know I don't know I just um I think it's just something we should always be assessing um you know

060we do provide a service and they would you know they'd have to I'm not I'm not looking to make a big buck on this but at the same time um I I will I'll add a couple of things you know one is there was a lot of demand for use of the buildings especially the gyms there's just not enough gyms in the area and so you know we do our best the best we can to make those gyms available when they're not being used the high school has the two biggest gyms but not the only gyms Highlanders used you know Doolittle is is a well used gym um you know so the availability you know of our facilities is I think important to the community last time we looked at our fees they were in

061line with the market and don't forget we had a couple years of covid here and you know one year we didn't even allow use so you know we are due for a review so I can add that to the to the list of things we need to get to but um you know I think you could leave here tonight understanding that it's not costing us money it's not making us money foreign thanks uh yeah the date our electric bill Cuts over this month is it February February 22nd February 22nd yeah so we're we're out to market for our rates for another month so I'm going to give you an update because I told you I would reach out to our consultant and get an update on where we are so in and I I think

062I reported already in December we were paying 15 cents per kilowatt hour Supply that's just Supply okay this is just Supply you know again we're coming off an eight Cent contract yep we went to 15. and we were on a basically a daily price yep Market based yeah and we're scary we've engaged with actual energy for January it came down actually and January is not over but we're at about 12 and a half cents now eversource January 1 went to 24 cents so we're doing better for residential well and Commercial as well they're 23 24 25 I mean you know those commercial rates vary depending on usage but you know so we're doing better than had we moved to eversource which was a recommendation from the consultant but we are at risk through that February

06322nd Okay so you know again if it stays warm then I think that's what we're looking at if it gets a little colder I'm not expecting a significant increase maybe we'll be back at that 15 cent per kilowatt rate and I hope I'm right but I'm sure if I'm not you'll let me know could you just could you just ask them how many days it would take to switch over 30. I already did so really yeah it's going to take 30 days to go back so oh okay we're good 12 and a half cents in January we're doing good I just hope it doesn't get extremely cold because well again because it's warm that natural gas supply is pretty strong so and we you know roughly half of I mean I think it's roughly half

064of Connecticut's electricity Supply does come from natural gas yep the thing is is the price of electricity is the price of energy is inelastic so it skyrockets with just like slight tweaks and temperature I mean if it drops down you know 10 degrees or something like that the price will go up significantly If drop 20 degrees it listen it's a calculator we're locked in right now we didn't have a choice um you know either go to 24 cents till we get you know we're locked in at the 12.87 starting February 22nd or we take the calculated risk so we're locked into February 22nd so as of February 22nd we lock in to the 12.8 cents with constellation we're in the open market until then yes okay um less than 30 days that's right good um

065the have you with regard to the snow plowing and everything else thank you for that I mean I I think I I think I recall those conversations in the past not just the labor but the equipment you have a bottleneck you might have to tell might have to buy more equipment more plows that would be like significant impact because our you know our lots and driveways have to be plowed within a short period of time yeah you know on one of those large snow events where we we are able to open school so yeah you're right in addition to you know adding staff they might have to add equipment the peak usage is the concern because it's got to be at that moment in time when you can do it um separate apart from that

066I have this Insider over here who mentioned that the Public Works director is now hired so just thinking sometime in the next few oh in the in the in the next few months um have a conversation just circle back with them about you know are parks the fields I mean and stuff like that for opportunities for cost savings okay will do um so just that piggyback on what Tim was saying as far as energy goes can we are we controlling what we can control as far as costs like do we have contracts where they're a lot you know we are locked into wherever we can't lock in and we're locked and we exposed somewhere well we're only the only exposure we have is electricity because we've locked heating oil gas diesel fuel natural gas we

067have not had a price lock in at least three years it might this might be our fourth year just because the market has not been conducive to that and it still isn't so it's really they're not willing to lock or you haven't found it the prices to lock is too high we're better off staying we've been better off and it served us well just staying with the you know eversource supplies natural gas now so we were better off staying with with eversource and that's who we're still with for that natural gas supply um let's see my next question was on looking at the cleaning services number um as we're no longer doing that day Porter and any of the uh additional cleaning services that we were doing a few years ago right now so we're

068just on the standard you know nighttime crew you know tidying up during the day or you know however we were doing it let's say in 2019 yeah we have a crew that comes into each school at night after the school day you know sanitizes the bathroom you know does all the you know cleaning of the floors emptying of the waste basket um they'll do the and there's special services that we do at each of the breaks and then over the summer so it's we're back to standard contract there's no covert related intraday cleaning that all was suspended okay um that's all for now thank you thanks Adam with regard to natural gas and electricity they're kind of similar and that you know if it gets cold the prices can Skyrocket the gas is used to

069generate the electricity but I'm just taking a guess with regard to the gas do we use an interruptible splatinum so we're just solid on gas all the time okay do we have do we have oil at our schools as backup s oh so you don't but you don't even have dual fuel boilers anymore okay is sure okay okay it's just it's Doolittle and Norton because there's no gas lines there anyway yeah okay thank you and Darcy was converted to propane so there's no natural gas there either but the conversion to propane you know took place two years ago oh thank you does gas have to run by Darcy do you know on the street yeah okay oh sure sure okay thank you okay two um the board's familiar with this slide so we do have

070eight school buildings and a lot of square footage and a lot of learning spaces but the two points I want to make here is one that the operating budgets for maintenance you know have been essentially flat to inflation the last several years even though our buildings are getting older and so you know it's important that we look at the capital Appropriations and the operating budgets to make sure we're able to keep up with our buildings I think the board knows that but even though we have two new buildings coming online we still have a significant amount of work that needs to continue to happen at the existing buildings what we've done even with the capital budget the last couple of years because we didn't know are we going to build new elementary schools is it

071going to be approved are we going to build a middle school is that going to be approved we have put items not on hold but we've pushed them out into future years of our capital budget well now that we know that we will have two new elementary schools built in three years now we know what the fate of the rest of the buildings are so this is going to be a bit of a challenge and a dilemma for the planning committee of the board and then the Board of Education to consider the Investments we have to make so again the operating budget funds you know maintenance and repairs and the capital budget which we're going to talk about kind of quickly here funds those long-term improvements that we need to make to our schools capital

072in in Cheshire is defined as anything over a hundred ten thousand dollars goes through the capital budget anything over five hundred thousand dollars has to go to voter referendum now we've met with the planning committee we have a follow-up meeting scheduled for February 8th and so we are working on the five-year capital budget request starting 23 24 through 27-28 you'll see that there's no dollar numbers no dollars associated with these yet because the planning committee is is not prepared and hasn't made a recommendation yet but I think it's important just to highlight the general categories where we know Investments are needed I'm going to start with window replacements because you know the shell of the building right all the components that keep heat in and out you know the windows are an important component of

073that so we want to make sure that we are continuing to make investments to keep the building show solid as possible and that does include Roof Systems so these two categories you know Roofing is part of this category those are important to maintain you know the you know not so much the structural Integrity of the building but the actual heat and cooling capability of that building and then we're going to talk about HVAC improvements across the schools um you know we know that do little as an elementary school is not will be the only Elementary School that doesn't have full air conditioning after the new schools are built so that's one consideration that the planning committee and the board will be looking at same thing for Dodd and then the high school as well so

074HVAC improvements we do anticipate that being a larger portion of the capital budget for the next few years what we are hoping with the HVAC improvements is the board knows is the there were there were HVAC grants that were made available that we applied actually for nine different grants on December 2nd we're hoping that the legislator makes HVAC grants permanent and at a 50 reimbursement rate that'll help defray the cost of these improvements that we need to make and the state is keenly aware you know after the pandemic in particular that many of the age school buildings don't have you know updated or any mechanical air systems at all and so these hopefully will get supported you know by a legislator and and pass but we don't know that yet um we still have several

075cafeterias that need improvements the largest one being Cheshire high school and that one is that's a good example of a project that we had a known cost we get pushing it out and pushing it out because we just didn't know what the fate of the school Improvement plan would be so now we know we'll have to deal with that and then the rest of these not that they're not important but you know in the interest of time we'll just move through it because the planning committee you know will make a recommendation in the next few weeks to the board and the ball would consider whatever the recommendations are and then this is the same idea except breaking it out by school so you know the high school is probably going to have the largest piece

076of the overall cost just because it's the largest building you know followed by the middle school Doolittle Highland and then district-wide projects would include things like replacing ceiling tiles and you know improvements to the sidewalks and those types of things you'll see that I just noted up here because there's no slice of the pie Chapman Norton Darcy those buildings are coming offline so you know we will certainly make investments in capital to the extent we have to to get us through three years but you know we're going to try and avoid making Capital Investments on buildings we're no longer going to have and then central office and humiston and this you know particular example we haven't you know contemplated making any Capital Investments there but that's something again that still will get discussed and then

077just for informational purposes the town the board recommended and the Town Council approved 2 million five hundred ten thousand dollars for improvements those were approved those are in the works right now Mr clivette is spearheading that we've got about at least 10 bids that are outstanding right now for improvements on these particular projects and then just kind of wrapping up capital budget so this has been our Board of Ed requests and this has been the Town Council approval rate on the one-year capital expenditure so you know the the rate of approval you could see has increased which is a good thing so we need to fund those Capital Improvements you know at the Town Council level I do think this 2.5 million is a little bit light we do need to step it up now

078that we know what buildings we're keeping online so that again will be the challenge as we talk about the capital budget this year also wanted to point out that we have the this emergency fund we call it if there's ever a building you know catastrophic building issue that we don't have enough operating budget to cover we do have this building maintenance CNR fund it has a 233 000 balance I do want to point out that we haven't made any requests to tap that since June of 2019 I don't want to jinx myself but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that you know Mr clebet and his staff are doing much more preventative maintenance you know when they see things that are not going to last for much longer you

079know they repair or replace them so we do have this safety net you know and we'll continue our efforts to try and you know do everything we can with the dollars we have to keep our buildings in good repair safe and secure you know for our students and the if we do need to use this fund it does require time Council approval which the board members are aware of so the wrap up here is you know we've got maintenance needs from our operating budget those are a constant I just put in some recent pictures of well graffiti that's does happen this is a light pole at the bus depot that nobody noticed was was pretty rotted a bus tapped it it went over didn't damage anything including the fence but that's in the process of

080being repaired that's a trapped raccoon apparently raccoons are looking for warmth and food at this time of year and they're they found it in our buses so this was captured and released and that's uh one of the dog boilers that had a leak and this is actually over at Cheshire High School the greenhouse structurally that's failing and I we I believe we talked about this we are going to have to just tear that thing down we talked about it in our capital budget meeting so we take care of the maintenance as it comes up but you know the capital budget this is where we make our our bigger improvements and some improvements are really visible like the that's a picture of the East gym that was just refinished I mean it looks brand new was

081was refinished and the contractor did a great job but you know most most people will never see the you know replaced group up at Dodd that you know will get us through the next 25 years and I I believe that's is the warranty 25 on that or 20. I think it's 20. um that's the Doolittle you know parking lot repaving so the things that we do we really have to look at the capital Appropriations as a long-term investment to keep our buildings in good repair and so that rounds out maintenance and operations you could see on the operating budget side it's been flat as a percentage of our total budget it's not that it hasn't gone up but it's been you know flat as a percentage of budget so I'll pause there because that ends

082maintenance and Ops um I'm going to ask a weird line of questioning and the chair can let me know if it's too strange or out of place for this meeting um yeah I don't know I'm not quite sure all right have a nice hat um how much a year do we spend um uh uh replacing damage for the bathrooms in the high school approximately ten thousand all right give me a number since then uh they've stepped up with you know security so the numbers come way down aside from graffiti I think the physical damage is much of anything okay so it's yeah okay because I I don't know if um I don't know if it was another presenter had mentioned something about an idea and popped in my head about um was the students did

083present oh yes yes right yes our student Representatives um say he was talking about you know preventing uh damage and graffiti and that sort of thing in the bathrooms and I was wondering uh if we have any a key card access systems in the school and how much it would cost because I was a thought of like what do you say key card you're talking about access to the buildings themselves or inside the buildings thinking specifically bathrooms though you know who comes and goes and you know you you just you know you chime in and then you know you can cut off access so you can allow whoever you want because you know for years now it's been you have to kids are running across the across the school they use a bathroom and I

084can only imagine how inconvenient that is considering you have an unlimited amount of time to go to classes and would it be a worthy or at least a time to look into the investment of having some kind of access like that because then if something were to happen you know who was in there at that time and potentially you can at least narrow the the suspects of who it might have been or installed I don't know if we have video cameras if that's even legal they have a video camera code who's coming in and out you know I don't know what would be uh video cameras outside the bathroom and um Adam I think you raised a number of really good points things that you know dating back to my day is principal when when

085cigarettes were an issue you know that's that's evolved over time and um it's frustrating for us to have to limit bathroom access I mean bathroom access should be a right of every student and staff member in the building um and I think our students as you heard from Michael last Thursday are really trying to take ownership of supporting each other to make better decisions I mean on one hand you hate to limit bathroom access on the other sixty thousand dollars in repairs of bathrooms in the course of a year that's astronomical um and so it is a very difficult balance point but our students as Michael said are really working on constructive Solutions and we look forward to hearing from them you know we'll make sure that Michael provides an update as they evolve and

086continue to report things now in contemporary high schools that are being built there aren't doors on the bathrooms it's more hygienic better from a security perspective uh to you know if you can hear something going on in the bathroom do you say there are no doors no doors so it's like the airport you know like like a sports Stadium yeah yeah exactly so you have a privacy panel yeah and there are definitely bathrooms at CHS where we could do that tomorrow um actually and just leave the door open that you can't see into the bathroom um but the door is open which provides better supervision if somebody is vaping or I mean and that's full honesty I mean some kids do vape in the bathroom it's very hard to catch um it's very frustrating I

087never thought I'd you know yearn for the days of cigarettes where it was easier to catch kids like that um but it is I mean it can be odorless smokeless you know it's it's tough and nobody should have to deal with that in the bathroom either so having doors open when there's an odor that's beneficial and there's often a noise that's emitted with even a vape pen that you can pick up if the door is open you can't pick it up if the doors closed so we're looking at a variety of solutions and our students are kind of leading that process and we'll definitely be updating that but you can see kind of where our conundrum is where it's sixty thousand dollars worth of damage vandalism is is light compared to that obviously but it's

088still problematic and our kids think it is too and they're working on it quick question I just uh I know it's tough um finding you know the culprits but have has a school district ever again I and I'll ask this question without um sounding odd but the point is that in the cases where it was known cause damage was the bill ever sent back home to the parents to pay yeah when we catch people to do that the there's accountability on that and whether it be Financial or otherwise but uh it's it is difficult to catch people when you stuff things into the toilet and it could have been there three hours later and you know 13 1400 people passed through the building it's hard to tell you know definitively so yeah so what I

089was getting at was would there be a is there a cost offset to installing an access system like that versus incurring the uh vandalism cost every year would it be a break even or is there a net positive or or anything like that I just wasn't sure if if that kind of system had been looked into since probably the the physical transformation of like the open doors or whatever would probably be a significant cost as well and maybe just having because I know then every student would have to have a keypad and then you have missing key missing Keys all the time you know just like at work you know you lose them or whatever right and so you know that that could be in you know a problem too but I don't know it's

090just a thought where you know that you have an individual it's you know it's an individual uh access for every student and then you open up all the bathrooms again and then you kind of back to I don't I don't even know when when all the bathrooms are accessible I don't know what year that was but it seems like it's been a long time so all the bathrooms the high school now are open but those are locked so the yeah when we obviously we try and keep as many open as we can the fact that we have to pay an adult to sit outside and record who goes in and out it's also kind of ridiculous right so so now whether you have staff yeah paid staff now so yeah so again so is it

091you know Is it feasible then to look into it yeah the short answer is all options are on the table we would consider anything because there's not just the cost of vandalism I mean that's the easy one to quantify but the other cost is are students not being able to use the restaurant like that that's a real issue that's a i they hate it we hate it and if there were I would much rather spend another 50 Grand to ensure that all of our kids can use the bathroom in peace then spend 60 Grand to replace vandalism so all options are definitely on the tape well because not only and I know that as far as I know there haven't been a lot of instances of violence I don't think in their bathrooms you know

092that may be back in the day that was the case but um you know now at least you know use Co who's coming going you have logs all the time I just you know it might be just something that sounds like some planning yeah perhaps something to put on the planning agenda take a look of something did because we're willing to pretty much try anything and so we had some Vape detectors installed as a test and the way it worked is that if it detected a vape the person the administrators would get a text message so they you know how big the high school is you know you'd have to run across the whole high school and hope that you make it into the bathroom in time to catch the kid vaping so it didn't

093work out right for us so we we did it as a pilot technology wasn't quite there my last year as principal I was complaining to Jack kasner about this yeah and I was eight years ago now nine years ago and Jack brought me defunct smoke detectors with a label maker uh Vape detection and we just hung him up in the bathroom he was kind of as a deterrent and it didn't work all that well but you know maybe a few kids but we would do anything right it's the way to to give that freedom back without having staff camped out when they can be used in another capacity um you know so I just you know thinking maybe it's a Worthy investigation if it hadn't been done already that's all that's why I wanted to

094bring that up that's not one we've done really never um yeah you know kids share fobs and you use the fob and you open the door for six other people or whatever there's there are ways to skin the cat and it yes but it's still worth still worth um examining but that's you know so then you have a name and then again you're still exactly that's you're making that Circle a lot smaller right yeah anything we can do yeah so you suggesting that the money be added to the opponent to budgets or something next year I say that an investigation should be uh conducted to see if there's a net positive right or a net a net even you know sure so yeah messed up yeah just wondering about the uh dollars involved here we

095had home monitors we have had home monitors for years what happened with these homeowners did they just get repositioned just like yeah so there was no there was no real changing cost with regard to that she just said all right you're gonna sit next to the okay thank you good all right well that's maintenance and operations so the last piece of tonight from a presentation point of view is to go through a couple of quick updates Dr solon's gonna address the updates and questions from the prior meetings I'm going to do the first one this is a follow-up um to miss Ham's question she asked about new and equipment um new and replacement equipment at our last meeting and I did explain generally what it was for but I thought it would be helpful to

096provide a little bit more detail of what we used our replacement our new equipment budget and our replacement equipment budget for and this is 2122 so on the replacement equipment aside you could you could see you know right off the bat music was um about 60 percent of our expenditure we needed to make a pretty significant investment especially at our elementary schools to replace some of the musical instruments we were either repairing them constantly because they were dated or we couldn't use them which that makes no sense so you know that was a significant portion of that spend in 2122 we also had to do quite a bit of upgrades you know for our art you know at the high school as well as our elementary schools um and then we we did spend some

097of our replacement equipment for technology Athletics classrooms that category means that we've either bought you know some furniture some replacement rugs things of that nature and then office another is just that you know the school offices um and then on the new equipment side that year you could see that we spent quite a bit on classroom furniture we added a couple of kindergarten classrooms because of of growth in kindergarten so that was not only Furniture but all the supplies that are very specific to kindergarten classrooms that had to be purchased cafeteria tables again Athletics office furniture and a lot less spent out of our new equipment budget for music and then along the bottom and I know the board members have a copy of the slide I just gave you some examples of the types

098of purchases that you know were made across these categories so it's things like gym mats and vaulting boards science lab tables and student desks project Adventure ropes project Adventure is at the high school it's part of the physical education um class says basketballs white boards um basketball backboard and we had to replace a defibrillator over at Doolittle which we have in each school so those are the types of items to give you a little bit more clarity around what comes out of the newer replacement equipment accounts and with that I would like to introduce Dr Solon a superintendent of schools who will take you through the next couple of slides and then conclude thank you Ben um is Mr mecciana mentioned we're going to kind of revisit some of the questions that have come up

099over the last couple of weeks and kind of put a bow on things I do want to remind people that if you do have a question that you want to submit to the board I'm assuming that given the later nature of tonight's meeting and that we're likely to meet again on Tuesday or if you want to email now you could do Cheshire Board of Ed contact at cheshire.k12.ct.us if there's a question about that you can go on to our website and look at the meeting agenda for tonight's meeting or any of our meetings and that email address is located at the top of the page not just for tonight's meeting but for any questions you may have um last or this past Tuesday Rob and Ann was presenting our a special education budget and a

100portion of that as well as some really good information around updates and we had talked about uh and Tim asked specifically about the 66 new enrollments around special education when we evaluated that that's true but 26 of those students came through the Darcy program so we did have an exceptionally High number of new students that enrolled over the course of the year 262. that's a really big number of students to come into the district over the course of one year moving from out of town or joining us from St Bridget's or you know potentially but most of those were move-ins from out of town 40 of those students had individualized education plans when they arrived that's 15 percent roughly our prevalence rate is 13 so it's a little bit higher but it's not um demonstrably

101higher it's not something that's like really reshaping the game for us per se but like I said you know the 262 students is a dramatic increase in enrollment for one year for us the future Staffing question is something that Andrew asked early on I think maybe my initial presentation and I'm looking at the projected enrollment data for next year if we were to sustain a current 18 18.8 18.1 students per teacher at grades K through six that's our average we would need to hire two additional teachers for that level Middle School would really kind of they remain on this threshold where the enrollment is on the highest end of our average for the last decade or so um higher end but um you know we'd really have to monitor that it's too early for me

102to predict it based on current enrollment we know we wouldn't necessarily the current projection we wouldn't necessarily be adding but if things fluctuate it could happen um and then the high school would remain status quo and I want to again I know we've talked about this a couple of times but for anybody maybe who's watching for the first time at the high school level several years ago we shifted uh at the negotiation of the past contract from six periods taught per teacher to five and that is aligned we couldn't identify another high school in the state where they were teaching six periods um and so that was a what we would consider a contract negotiation liability that we negotiated into the contract and there is an adjustment there so we knew we did this in

103a way and because we knew enrollment was declining it would have been astronomically expensive to do this to either pay a lot more money or to hire a lot more teachers as we dropped when the enrollment was higher so it was a strategic move by the board at that point it makes sense and that's the status quo but that um influences this next slide that Adam mentioned the other day in that um the teacher Staffing Trend over time um and I think you know there there had been historically this uh you know misperception or misconception that uh we hired teachers and they never go we just the number of teachers keep going up and so I started sharing this slide through the board and and um uh Town Council meetings several years ago and it

104really illustrates that when our enrollment declines are total teacher count declines and when our enrollment increases our teacher count generally increases the last two years are an anomaly because of that six to five where is our enrollment dropping the high school however we are not eliminating teachers because we've reduced them down to five sections in a phase-in process that made a good fiscal sense so you know once we get through that process it'll be back on Trend prior to the last two years are we would reduce one on average one teacher for every 30 students we lost as our our enrollment declined um and you know we you can see at the beginning there the for 2014 through 18 we reduced a number of teachers over that period as our enrollment declined as our enrollment

105started to increase again um again we were also at that time adding special education in the house programs offset by the tremendous cost of outplacement so um I think you know I just wanted to highlight that for people and help people understand that Faith had asked the question last or this past Tuesday about special education versus general education per pupil expenditures that's Illustrated up here on the screen our net current expenditures per student for all students is 18 809 for general education students 16 298 special education and students it's thirty four thousand 301. that number has increased also over the last several years again because we've returned students that were outplaced to our school programs and when you do so that obviously increases the cost not just for um well I guess on the average

106student that's in-house increases the cost outplacement costs actually I'm wrong because our placement's embedded in here is an event yeah okay so thirty four thousand 301 it has increased it does underscore what we talked about in our legislative meeting around the cost of excess cost reimbursement so when a student has needs that exceed four and a half times the 18809 that difference between four and a half times eighteen eight oh nine and whatever the cost is gets tabulated for each student where that's the case the state initially you know was intending to reimburse districts 100 of that cost uh what has happened instead is there's a a block grant that's proportionally divided up among the districts for whatever money is out there and so we don't end up seeing uh a hundred percent of that

107by a long shot so um that's an issue for us is is the cost of special education continues to escalate that concludes some of the the questions I I hope that I captured the questions that you had asked over the last several meetings um and I want to just try and put a bow on this before we wrap up and get to any other questions I apologize that I sound like froggy from our gang but um I'll try and get through this as quickly as possible um you know if you recall the theme of our presentation was prosperity and like our our community as a whole the Cheshire public schools are growing and I think that's a testament to the job that you do that our administrators do that the destination that our community is

108and our budget is dedicated to maintaining that level of service that existed you know before our our enrollment increased the ratios almost miraculously are identical in k-6 18.1 students per teacher other factors though I mean this this budget is not a direct translation to tax all right when you see 6.46 doesn't mean our taxes go up 6.46 there are a myriad of other factors that um are folded into the equation like our grand list growth which has been substantial um the town budget obviously is a significant portion of this as well as well as our capital budget so ultimately there's a long road to hoe before we get to determining the actual impact I would encourage and and ask the you know you consider supporting the full budget toward that end some of the Marquee

109budget drivers here as we talked about previously and and you know much discussed enrollment is certainly a key part of this medical benefits being probably the second most significant piece Global energy and as I mentioned uh mill rate offsets by a lot of the development that has occurred over the course of the the last couple of years in town um I talked about this being a budget that maintains the level of service that we've provided um and then shared this slide with you and I think it you know is illustrative of that point that you know 95.2 percent of our budget is basically fixed cost increases uh whether they be um you know energy based or um you know are Insurance based or our contracts with teachers and things like that um it's really driven

110by that there you um I'm sure have heard there aren't new programs we're adding into this or add-ons anything flowery per se it's it's sustaining the the programming that we currently provide and we've you know as as Robin has talked about as well we've adjusted you know where in an effort to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible that um you know we make adjustments we move staff around to make sure that we're getting the most efficient and most the best support for our students at the best and most reasonable cost um tonight a number of questions were raised by the board about uh considerations on how to save money and we appreciate that our administrative team I think they're really smart people and I think that we're very conscientious about how we

111spend the resources that we have I don't think you find cheshire's level of success and the fact that we spend four million dollars Less on average per year than our peers without pushing ourselves you as the board and us administratively and all of us collectively to try and do the best we can to be efficient I mean again I think it's worth consideration one thousand dollars per student every year we spend less than 10 pounds similar to Cheshire dirkby um and um that in no way is meant to be any sort of Shame the same way I would say that's not meant to be some sort of uh badge of honor either I think what it says is that we are all of us the members of the board and the administrative team very conscientious

112about how can we be as efficient as we possibly can be and this budget I think stays true to that mission um and again I I ask that you consider that and as you deliberate and and make tough decisions and of course at the end of the day we're going to do the best we can um you know as a team to to make the best outcomes for our kids so um this is our budget calendar this concludes our January 26th pub public uh budget review and and thank you for your administrative review of accounts and uh I guess at this point I want to pass it back to Mr grippo and certainly if there are any questions all of us are happy to answer them or if there's anything else certainly um go ahead

113um so before I start asking a couple questions I I just goes without saying but I do want to thank you Dr Solon Vincent the entire team Marlene our staff our administrators for putting a lot of work into this it's uh I'm not surprised I've been through a number of these and the details is always there so thank you so much we do look at it as you hopefully have seen last few meetings by the questions being asked we appreciate this it helps make our decisions a little easier um one question I had was regards to the three additional elementary teachers and and I think it was a great job covering the enrollment and why the teachers are needed and why it's important to maintain the you know 18.8 ratio per student or 18.1 uh

114but before I ask all those three questions you know you you probably could slide about the certified you know staff tally is you know they don't increase infinitely you know we you do adjust I should say CPS has adjusted within you know reason to the enrollments and every year you know I I again that's the same question that you answer is you know what do we have to teach on coming or you know eliminate teachers well we don't really want to limit teachers want to keep them and keep what we need to have so that that happens I appreciate that slide one thing I want to say is for anybody that might be watching um you know children that went to school you know two three or decades ago um maybe what I went through

115which I want to say how long ago that was um yeah I saw large class sizes and this is a private parochial school and I was you know 30 kids in a class one teacher but it worked because you know they just had a focus on what which is no small task you know the basics right the basic Mastery skills fast forward to today in addition to mastering English English math stem we have behavioral assessments we have social emotional learning we have things that come into the classroom that are not um really related to the classroom that our teaching staff have to be aware of and assess and educate so there's and you know we talk about the mandates um and so there's a lot more going on even though the classes are 18 students

116in my opinion I think that it still is a lot for our teachers to handle um and knowing that you know that some folks are level one to one student teacher relationship that's going to be feasible but nonetheless I I appreciate and I understand the reason for three online three teachers uh because our growth is continuing and I do feel you know class size is getting too a little bigger than that posted some challenges uh it affects everybody in that classroom so so that being said I had a really just a question general question we probably can't answer but if um let's say we weren't doing new schools I'm glad we are um and we're stuck with what we have as far as facilities if there was an option to even redistrict today at the

117elementary level and if we did that do you think there will still be a need for additional staff for through for enrollment or do you think if you had the flexibility to move children around base where there's room if there is any would that have helped the situation I know it's a hypothetical but sure um and I'll do the best I can to respond to that with you know the support of the people in this room I think there there could be the potential to perhaps um it's harder to if you redistrict the entire town um if I was able to redistrict some students that were in a specific grade the answer would be definitely um if you're redistricting the entire Community the answer would be possibly the other you know potential impacts there are

118transportation and you know special services and things like that so um I don't know that the the budget would look significantly different than it does the other issue there is you're creating a lot of community pain yes for students who have been through this you know I've gone to the school for the last five years and now I'm going to transfer in sixth grade without giving much advance notice I'm not I know you're not suggesting but hypothetically you know yeah if there's money to be saved and you know I don't know that that money is significant until when we build new buildings and the capacity of those buildings dramatically expand now I know we have more kids sure uh we project obviously more kids in 2026 when those buildings open but when we redistrict there

119I think you know the savings isn't going to be dramatic but you do gain efficiency No Doubt I just relaying a thought so much sure so thank you thank you thanks huh thank you Adam yeah just following on that uh as a Norton dad I don't really want to go down this path but I'm wearing a different hat right now so I just look at it um Norton's gonna happen yeah Fawn Boris Silver Mill Farm Meadow I live right on Higgins I'm just thinking the kids who are moving in we had a record number it sounds like right number of kids who just moved into the past year at least in my experience yeah okay in recent history just having those conversations when they come to enroll yeah do you want to do this I

120mean some of them may be very well just within the walking distance of where the bus lines go right now now would be on the other side of the road so there's some complexity to it but it seems to me that you could end up well I don't know you'd have to look at the numbers and see yeah I think that would be a kindergarten enrollment you know issue because if you're in grades you know four through six it's not going to matter you'll be gone you'll be in the middle school so um yeah the earlier grades yeah when those students enroll particularly kindergarten as you're saying we do have a map on our website and let me Backtrack on that we will have a map if we don't already I know we did for

121months on end that showed the redistricting here morning here um but we'll put that back up again and I'll talk to our elementary leadership team about making sure that people are aware of that that's fair Realtors may also be we should probably get together with the Realtors over the summer to make sure they're aware too yeah where new lines are so that's a good suggestion um so switching now uh thank you for the information the update on the special ed you mentioned the 26 of the students were coming from Darcy is that a high number or a normal number I'd like Kim and and Robin kind of weigh in on that I'm not looking for an exact I just wanting to the 26 transition students some what do you think okay is that something that

122you expect to continue with covid hopefully dying out or is it increased awareness of the program now so it'll stay Flatline yeah no and that's the thing that that's the thing that was going through my mind before when you use the word reshaping the system and I'm thinking we're just adding new space and there are certain situations I think where it's one student in one classroom at least for a set amount of time and that just that would be really rare but okay yeah you were saying eight to nine subscribe this this could just balloons space uh concerns really quickly but when you said it's 15 that's the same as the 13 right um yeah in terms of yeah so thank you for that sure um sure yeah no and I think that's a great

123thing it's just like sort of a reality check like if all of a sudden it wasn't 15 and like UH 60 or 80 of the people moving here and I'm wondering wait a second what's gonna happen with space but it's kind of built in I think you know I I agree that people move here because of special education services the data tells you though they move here for all services if they if the percentage of IEP students who moved in was 40 of our new enrollment I would say absolutely they're just here for the special ed it's 15 percent which is a big number and I'm proud of the fact that so many people have chosen Cheshire public schools and chosen Cheshire as a community um and I'm proud of the services that special education

124offers but to say it's I it's it's because of that I think for some people I absolutely agree certainly for the people Kim hears from because that's a lot of the population she works with um and exclusively basically the population Robin works with so yes absolutely people move here for special education services in the job they do but clearly they move here for all services the night ride 200 Yeah well yeah exactly without due respect to Mr Martell he's working on it he's working on it that's why the grand list is growing Mr martelli's um okay yeah that's it for me thank you I just well I'm gonna like shout outs um I just there was a report that came out there to show at the Town Council last week so we have 549 approved

125multi-family housing units on the books right now that haven't even come online yet yeah so I think when we're thinking about adding teaching staff I think that that's an important number to know so that's 549 units that are approved some of which are not multiple bedrooms but it's still a large number of housing units and then that doesn't include 140 two to four bedroom units that were approved down the North End and then another at least 40 housing units so that's about 700 housing units across the town so all right you should probably make sure people are buckled in before you say that well it's just it's all public records yeah I know but you know um but I the AED is in the lobby for those of you who are wondering but the um

126the um other thing I I know Vin and Andrew you may know better than I do when slam came back and did the revised enrollment estimate I know some of that was considered and they worked with I don't remember if it was Dan or Mike Glidden um to to review that but I I don't know all I don't doesn't sound like all of that was considered it's your point A lot of it was but you know since then at least I would say 70 units were not included in that so the line so then all the North End units were included as well as the Hazel AI which is the larger Apartments towards Waterbury side of town so you point to impacts what Tim asked earlier about boundaries in terms of uh where each Elementary

127School would service that part of the community and that I mean what we had drafted could shift I mean based on what you're sharing here if if we get substantially more enrollment on the North End as we're constructing these schools I mean things could shift within a few blocks they're not gonna I don't think dramatically shift but a caveat that I think we need to share with the community I'll put that on the website too that as things evolve they could shift this is not static don't buy your house based on them thank you I just want to say uh yeah Andrew next time give us a warning because I just heads up just just I was getting so just I was getting settled because I was getting set into like we said 500 plus

128I started coming down I need my 700 and so but thank you good work what's wrong with the seven it would be 700 before we meet next week right so which is it's a nice problem that's a good opportunity a good problem to have I just want to say if I mentioned earlier Dr Sullen that um for those that would not be aware um the board actually started budget planning talks uh more than a few months ago with you I appreciate the proactivism back then I clearly you heard some of our ideas of concerns so thank you for that I do want to say though that the 6.64 percent was not what you originally started working with if I remember um and I think I did we did talk one day and you kind of

129pitched a number in the process and I almost slipped off my chair but it was more than 5.2 million so yeah do you want to talk about what initially that number looked like before you came down or came to Europe sure that was in my initial presentation I don't know if your number right in front of the event but um it was in my I want to say the number was closer to eight percent yeah does that sound right man which would be what roughly another three um 81.6 2.4 million yeah so you were closer for an additional three percent on the eight million so I I only mentioned that because uh that gets a little bit lost and in all this great detail so for folks I've been watching this thank you this was

130a higher number that was worked down um and you know working out now but I want to thank you for that um there's one last thing I I every year I don't know why I forget I wrote it down this time so next year you had mentioned the cost saving efforts that the the district does is we all appreciate that we know that there goes a lot goes into that and uh unfortunately public is not always aware maybe for next year I would consider having to slide in there talks about and we had this yeah I think we did I think we should but some of the some of the some of the activities that the district did that did save dollars on o m would often don't talk about that and I feel that

131um as a board we're a little closer to it um but the public is not and it's not something you do for this process but it's a shame not to talk about it because there's a lot of good work happening it's another great suggestion because I think you're right um in the past like the um the proportion of teachers to students slide that had been in some of our and and this year's not fully behind us yet I'm not that you want to see it on on Tuesday but um certainly it's something when we go before the council in a couple of months that it would make sense to be inclusive of because um there's a reason that we spend a thousand dollars less per student and those reasons can be enumerated to a degree

132and should be like you're pointing out and uh I think we need to share that so thank you for that suggestion I think I just want to acknowledge that foreign so one of the reasons why I'm not a lawyer is because I wasn't that great at word problems as I've gotten older I've gotten better um and so this word problem stuck out to me and so I have a bunch of questions about it to see if I understand it correctly and that goes back to your future Staffing forecast sort of word problem there um to maintain that 18.1 ratio going forward um so I wanted to ask so so you're saying that firstly in order to maintain that 18.1 does that assume that we approve all positions that you ask for in the budget this

133year and does that include all the special education positions as well um really good question and the answer is yes that it would be provided that this year's positions are included for General classes um that we would need to get to the number we're proposing in this year's budget to only add to next year um in terms of the special education it's not fully inclusive of that um I mean that that's a little bit of a wild card you know based on students who moved in students who moved out um you know that that's something that is Robin did a nice job illustrating the other day we try and manage very carefully so for example we had a reduction in a specific service at the transition program we had an increased demand at CHS we

134didn't you know add a teacher at CHS we reallocated so we would continue to do that special ed is a little harder to forecast um does that also assume that um that our population you you assume that our population will increase another 262 students over the average next year and kind of going up to that our Peak all I did was take nasdaq's projection for k-6 for next year that's in your budget book if you want to take a look at that the net difference um there is that uh I just want to get back to that slide there was two teachers so they're forecasting 36 more kids I guess is it's a little more than that but when you average out all of the students all of the teachers to get to 18.1 and

135that's what where we are to to additional positions okay um right now a caseload of 18. right we don't add that position and we allocated one of the other positions that they will surpass the General Life classroom teachers face or right yeah student load that's a fair come yeah thank you yeah that certainly adds uh you know perspective and um you know an intention around that that addition um so uh so 262 if I recall our normal like sort of like a Kindergarten class it used to be like 200. right like a few years ago am I am I it's like I'm trying to figure out like is 262 really high like was our average always like 198 and now all the students moving in yeah oh no not students moving in but just in

136general like to to try and figure out you know what are incoming classes are looking like in terms of the whole grade level Staffing sure so so 260 is a pretty small number um of for a grade level in the Cheshire public school system um this is generally in the threes the NASDAQ page Vin is at under enrollment tab I would imagine right there's a page under enrollment it's produced by the New England School Development Council and we include this in the binder because it's in anybody watching at home or our administrators who are really excited to check it out on their phones can go to our website it's there um it has the historic and projected enrollments by grade um like I said historically going back probably 15 years I think and moving forward

137I think it only goes forward 12 years because it's based on birth rate um so that will show you you know what is a historical 15 years ago I started here 18 years ago what did a class average look like it was High threes force that number has dwindled to the point where we do have some High twos but it's returning right back not quite over four but close so so I'm just trying to tell the the just so so I look at you know we expected uh let's see yeah sorry it's such a big chart that you almost need a magnifying glass uh cell phones help when you so we were expecting uh if I'm reading this right 20 we're we're expecting to have a total of 2469 students for 2022 for K through

138six according to this so are you saying that we were expecting 24.69 but we actually had 26 or 2700 students in k-6 for 2022 is that what you're saying is that what that is that what that means um not necessarily because of two reasons one the 262 and the uh 66 it was 262 Beyond expected or is that absolutely and it was that include that was K to 12. okay to 12. right okay so full District right the other thing is if you look only against that chart there it it updates based on the actual enrollment every year too so it doesn't show you what they projected for last year it shows you the actual so the projections for last year were lower and we had a lot of students move in they projected some

139students moving in so it's not exactly 262 the difference but it's certainly higher than based on the 262 that's a big number of kids to move it like Tim said in my tenure I could never remember a year like that I know our elementary people will vouch for it Scott used to call me every three days it's not quite as bad anymore but it's still busy over there not that Scott calling is a bad thing but you know what I you know what I mean my wife knew his voice on the phone not for nothing between covet and enrollment so then so then you were we were really sort of expecting maybe I don't even know you can't figure it out from that chart because it doesn't have the projected data we would have to

140look at last year's chart right you know we can't send you that to add to elementary school teachers You're Expecting 60 additional students in the elementary so for next year we're expecting um 36 more students oh I see yeah so 18 18 times okay yeah 18 times two I'm thinking the reduction was 30 every 30 reduction is 30 addition is 18. yeah so every 30 students and the reason is because they don't all leave out of the same building in the same grade right if they all left in the same building it might be you know one and a half if you lose 30. right right yeah but when they're distributed across 13 grades pre-k through it just seems right right now all the new students were sort of in that Highland area right because

141that's where yeah so we're getting hit really hard over in that area uh with new enrollments right I mean that that building is as big as it's been been a long time based on the new and that's why you know planning committees looking at uh trailers and things like that and um uh Miss Kerry had mentioned in her presentation that the positions that she was seeking were formally Grant funded um all right well some yeah um how many Grant funded positions do we have left and if I recall doesn't that funding expire after next year depends on the grant so the grant funding that Ms Kerry is talking about is title grant money with title grant money that's an annual federal allocation that goes to the state and is then passed through to local school

142systems I'll let Robin tell you how many I don't know how many stat I mean it's pretty good the rescue grants yeah position one of like nine certified positions that are done with the IDK and then including also the IPA Grant is probably about eight or nine pair of educated positions so the majority of the IDPA program I was you know you know is towards and understanding positions it's a very little portion of the life is used for other other things um yeah I was speaking I was specifically asking about yeah the Esser grant funding but the the grant funding that you were referring to was the I I you said Ida Grant and so the funding for the the positions that you were asking for that that grant funding was expiring or it just

143was there to maintain our positions that we have through this year let's say [Music] there's no chance for a an additional application next year or anything or you're not aware of one currently ones that are currently in the idea every year is um those salaries are going up those positions so it's a fixed the fixed amount and then so you can only do so much with it so we need so you're asking for us to absorb the cost of that 1.4 okay or PCI bcba and the 0.5 pathologists speech pathologies Elementary education especially teaching are highly vaccine and musician that's not coming out of anything okay and I know the the acronyms can get really jargonistic and board certified behavior analyst and that's really critical for intensive special education needs and behaviors which which of

144course you know is Kim mentioned and you guys have mentioned that you know that's kind of a byproduct not just a treasure by product but nationally of cobit all right so now that we've got that cleared so then going back to the Esser funding how many positions are still being funded by Esser that are going to come off next year coming into our operating budget this year Ben nothing right so yeah yeah I'm just talking in the context of you know we're adding we oh okay that's still two Elementary School teachers good point I did not I did not consider that so we were talking about um administrative we have administrative support I think that's 1.4 Marlene is that 1.4 Elementary administrator support which again is our elementary enrollment skyrockets that becomes more of a

145necessity than luxury like it was pre-pre-coded um we also have um reading and math specialist is at 1.0 Marlene I think in the Esser budget and then we have um a math intervention support at middle and high school so I don't know that we would recommend that full complement um it would be something we would evaluate for next year I could tell you the elementary supports are probably the greatest necessity of the five I mean they're all certainly very beneficial we wouldn't have Incorporated that into our bounce forward plan if we didn't believe that to be the case but um critical is really the elementary level right now um and and lastly um do you have any idea on retirements not yet I we're we're lucky to have that come um April when we're presenting

146to the Town Council I think you know I'm sure that some teachers are contemplating it I don't think it's going to be a number like we saw last year though um last year we saw a pretty substantial retirement uh post covid I think you know you you simply look at the media today and you um hear the the challenges that our teachers face and I think it's been a tough adjustment post covid for a lot of us you know that work in education but um you know I think our our team does everything they can to be resilient and supportive of each other and continue to move forward but we did see many more retirements last year than we typically see um I know that that's directly related to the rigors of Education post pandemic

147um you know I I can't predict this year where we are and when we can start to solicit that but until people come forward and tell us we don't know thank you sure one last question on the grants and I apologize from if I'm being dense I know it's uh been a long day for everyone I think I'm caught up with everything but so in our grant uh tab in our budget books uh it lists all three specific grants the Erp ones specifically the Arps or ARP idea 611 and 619. Robin or 6 11 6 19 the ones you're talking about the expiring only because there's nothing estimated in here for 22 23 or 23 24. for then you want to look at Revenue yeah I'm sorry the Grant and revenue attempt I was just

148curious uh page one of the detail or Assessment program specific Grant Revenue what's broken up by calendar year last two columns are estimated requested I'm looking at the Erp ones down below Ida 11 6 11 6 19. so not the Ida Part B or anything yeah I'm talking about the ones down below right and I guess my question is were our positions being request or used were they being paid in part from those clients got it that thank you that's it I'm good yeah I just wanted to make sure I heard correctly so I'll be caught that so these grants were paying for speech Specialists right they're gone right um are there any additional questions currently yeah I don't have a question I just want to thank Dr Solon and Mr maciano Miss Carey and

149everyone else who took part in putting this budget together um and thank you for answering all my questions I do it because I want to really make sure that I know where I'm coming from when I go out and support what the superintendent is proposing here today so thank you everyone sure thank you I do want to I do want to apologize if you do have audience members want to speak I missed number 20 agenda as far as any audience comments or if anyone in the audience has any public questions or anything I I know majority folks here not that Peter isn't important but our our staff but uh I'm sure Peter has a lot of questions after but uh so for those watching please as Dr someone mentioned you can send your questions to

150Cheshire Board of Ed contact at cheshirek12 at ct.us and the email address is on our CPS website and the agenda just from a logistics point of view usually the Third budget Workshop meeting the the finance committee itself can um take action and make a recommendation to the full board but speaking in Mr grippo or tonight I think um because not just the finance committee members but also all board members have uh a lot more to digest so what we want to do is uh use Tuesday night as our special meeting and follow protocol where a finance committee is ready Tuesday night to vote on a budget to present to the full board and that evening the full board can have liberations on the budget proposal if you're okay with that um yeah you have options

151yeah I think um the finance committee is comfortable doing that especially since um Mrs Rosenberg is in attendance tonight and I if uh if I recall uh she may have several other questions before she's ready to vote as well um so I think it'd be uh prudent that we uh not uh move anything forward tonight and wait until Tuesday so Tuesday night is a special Board of Education meeting at 7 30 p.m it will be here at dot Middle School Eureka yeah no I was just yeah Thursday listed as the next so I'm just Switching gears that's fine it is Tuesday that we have let me check what's listed but it is Tuesday that we have it seven o'clock here seven or something I have seven January 31st at seven o'clock there's an error on

152the slide oh okay okay yeah all right let's make sure perfect January 31st is next Tuesday so I have a question the slide our next meeting is February 2nd so I apologize if I said next Tuesday I'm getting on myself I have it for Tuesday in my calendar too I think I think no my calendar has February 2 which is a Thursday yeah so is mine yeah yeah that's what I had on my account if I could make a special request to actually have it on Tuesday because I also have next gen meeting meeting on Thursday um uh my friend if people are available I mean this is something I guess we could we're okay with moving into the 31st if maybe we're not committed to the second right and then the board um yeah

153that you do that right 7 15 so yeah you do that of the whole thing is uh yes well in that instance it's the finance committee moving the uh you know budget or you know Mary just texted me that we have um 8th grade curriculum night on Tuesday the 31st at the CHS too for the foreign any participation um certainly invite people to weigh in I think I'm flexible next week uh I think I could do Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday I don't know my calendar with it but I certainly am how about we do this I was like I know you have the and it's not just it's also Vincent and others uh the next gen speaking Thursday night can we uh leave it as this for every second and then just do a quick

154pull of the Board of Ed yeah tomorrow yeah I'll send something out and if we can then we'll advertise the heck out of it yeah yeah it sounds like if we could do a Wednesday okay and 7 30 a better time during the on Wednesday yeah and again yes Wednesday works for me Thursday works for me yeah I'll love I'll reach out to Sam too and confirm okay okay we'll uh I'll ask about it I will do Tuesdays so we will uh so let's get the results tomorrow and we'll publish yes absolutely and agenda we'll have it on Facebook for us but uh for board members I know over the next few days we'll continue processing the details any questions for Dr Solon and his team you know what to do email them so they

155come Wednesday night or Thursday night we can you know you have the answers ready and and move forward and I'll I'll ask Sam the same and messaging for members are public hopefully hopefully someone's watching this uh I I thought there was a great reporting today on the budget process Peter so thank you a lot of great detail so I hope folks are picking up that there's some you know importances being made that being said um I asked for a motion to adjourn that's made by Faith seconded by Adam all in favor it is unanimous the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone