Board of Education 1-12-23

001as well you've probably seen Dr Solomon more you want this since the year but we haven't seen you just a joke yeah welcome on this uh rather warm evening sort of uh before we proceed Mr Speaker roll call for corn here thank you Mr sunski I asked that we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance good evening uh it's that time of the year again uh but before we actually get into the superintendent's budget presentation uh we ask that if there are any members of the audience that wish to address the Board of Education you're welcome to do so at this time you don't have to seen as there are none we're going to move on to the much anticipated 2023 2024 budget proposal and I know Dr so I'm anxious to share it as well

002as against Messianic so it's all yours thank you chairman perogenia when you say much anticipated I think Mr grippo is the only person I know who has a cross off the day calendar today but um the entire uh budget subcommittee is waiting so um I want to invite members of the board if you want to come down front we're going to pull down the screen I'll go through the presentation thank you I'm gonna stick down here and I think I can't see the look of horror on their Facebook yeah yeah that's a trick and um yeah I wasn't planning it it's not my first one but I'm setting it in now thanks a lot Mike um just to you know before we kick off here I I told our health director Maura Esposito that I'm

003not quite sure how I'm supposed to take it that on the evening that I'm providing the budget speech she's handing out to all of our uh board members a pulse oximeter uh like is it that bad uh this presentation but anyway I'm sure that we will survive and get through this I want to thank uh initially our chief operating officer Mr Vincent maciano who spends countless hours uh in many late nights and weekends to support this process refine and be able to allow us to present what we have for you here this evening after the presentation you'll each receive a pretty robust budget book that gives you not only everything outline that I'm I'm outlining today but also the history of our budget Beyond Mr maciano I want to thank his uh assistant Heather Santi

004our finance director Greg Gibbons certainly all of our administrators who are in attendance tonight many people have worked on this presentation in order to provide a budget that meets our fiscal responsibility but also delivers a tremendous program for our students and in our community so what are our budget priorities we have to provide instruction obviously to 4 200 students which is the obvious thing that comes to mind when we think about our school budget but Mental Health Nutrition Medical Care all of these things are important so our students can access instruction specialized Services required for students to meet their potential diverse opportunity communities for athletics and music and other extracurricular Pursuits in the arts for example transportation to and from schools and general opportunities for growth there's a lot behind our our budget the responsibilities

005are outlined here yours are dictated like we were just talking about by state law and they're pretty straightforward to provide adequate materials including professional development to make sure that excuse me the allocation resources as Equitable proper maintenance of facilities and of course a safe School setting I take my responsibility very seriously as do you to provide a fiscally responsible budget that addresses those four goals that you have and allows us to achieve the goals that we've outlined as a school system as a community um the goals we've outlined uh are complex thinking and supporting our students to become strong social emotional Learners it's what we have used as our filter to make decisions about what's important and how to help us continue to evolve as a school system for the last six years that's been

006that was reaffirmed earlier this fall and I think that they've been a strong guidepost for us I I know that um I've shown the crossroads street sign of complex thinking and social emotional learning as nauseam and I am sorry to disappoint anybody for not including it on this slide tonight because I know you look forward to it but it's um um as a Sean Kimball and I were having the conversation the other day that's when you know the the message is there and and I think our community uh fully Embraces and is aware of what our goals are um this is a history of our budget increases from 1984 to 2023 so over the last 40 years you can see some pretty significant variability certainly um from 84 to roughly 91 92. um you know

007you could see an average budget in the in that rough decade of about 12 percent um and then you know it's gone anywhere from just north of six percent to uh as low as in our leanest point I think that was 0.94 at one point what are the Marquee budget drivers in the 23 2024 budget it's no secret that we've seen substantial enrollment growth uh over the last two years in particular but um it's also forecast for next year and into the coming future medical benefits is a significant increase we have this conversation annually and sometimes we're fortunate enough to see a surplus sometimes we're we're not in in the last several years I think we've as a community kind of codified around this idea that we're going to fund medical benefits at the Actuarial

008rate and um I know the town is invested in that and that's our budget is built around that um you'll be hearing more from Tom our medical benefits specialists in the the coming weeks about what that number is how he came to that number and we'll certainly have the opportunity to get into a richer discussion with him about that uh Global energy is I'm sure you're aware has been um you know it it spiked uh certainly uh toward the end of the summer and we've seen it come back to um closer to pre-pandemic but certainly um not quite there yet uh by a by a long shot and so that is influenced in here the other thing I think it's important to be cognizant of is mill rate offsets we spend a lot of time

009talking about uh the prosperity in our community the growth in our community uh the number of people who want to invest in the Cheshire community um you know another token line uh I don't want to say token's not even accurate but a line that has been repeated Ad nauseam is that people don't move here for The Nightlife uh the Board of Education the uh teachers in this community certainly our administrative team and others have worked very hard to make Cheshire an attractive destination for families from an education perspective and I think you know we've been able to reap the benefits of that and with that certainly you know there's increased enrollment but there's also increased growth in our grand list and we'll talk a little bit about that later in the presentation so per pupil

010expenditure we often look at this as a comparative how how are we spending our dollars in Cheshire relative to peers across the state uh you can kind of see where we are here um in 2122 the the difference uh was 2600 per student so you're seeing a growing Gap um and this is not meant in any way to complain but I think it really speaks to the efforts that have taken place over the last several years to operate as efficiently as possible in the advancement of our goals um you know a budget of 10.8 million dollars higher on an annual basis if we spent the state average on education is eye-popping uh 10.8 million dollars excuse me so um I think you know you're familiar with the narrative here because it's been part of the

011conversation for a few years now about the trend in enrollment we hit the trough and we are heading back up as it relates to our enrollment our October 1 enrollment from this current school year is listed across the top followed by the projection for 2324 just for a point of clarification um we have not used the slam projections just to sustain our continuity year over year we continue to use the New England's uh School Development Council nestec projections that we pay for and are provided on an annual basis so they're not wildly different to be honest but um nuanced difference but what we are seeing is I think you know we've articulated in the past is is that trough ages out through our school system you see the high school enrollment declining but you see

012a significant growth most notably in pre-k through six and that Trend will continue in the coming years um I learned just yesterday we I guess Cheshire Pro approved more housing 50 unit accessible housing in Cheshire so you know again these numbers will continue to climb as some of the housing that's under construction or even in the planning phase comes online so internally we work with uh our administrative team and we we don't just tack on a percentage to last year we um start basically from scratch zero-based budgeting and take a look at how many staff members are we what's our enrollment and we work through the process we evaluate program requests and Staffing requests and initially the budget came in at 9.22 percent increase I guess I I appreciate that that's still three million dollars

013less than the average state but if we just spent the average PPE but it's still a pretty jarring increase and again I you know I'm certainly cognizant of my responsibility to maintain a fiscally responsible budget and recognize that you know that's a nine percent budget increase doesn't work so you know I kind of frame our budget process from three different perspectives three different considerations maintenance budget we want to at the very least I think is a community sustain the level of service that we currently provide um and a restorative budget uh that I think was a place that we were at a few years ago when we had made substantial reductions in order to you know address economic pressures and we had to had to reinvest in some places so the the places where that

014is um necessary today are certainly much fewer than in the past uh and then advancement budget if we if we said to ourselves you know we think it'd be really beneficial as a community to add World Language K to six uh K to five and we already have it in grade six but if we wanted to add that I mean that we consider that an advancement so what if you know if we did decide to go to that nine percent um certainly happy to share some of those things but I think among the priorities on that what is if if we were to go there are the items that we have uh already adopted through grant funding and that's our bounce forward plan that we adopted several years ago and I I certainly distinctly remember

015being asked at the time is this is this what we're going to have you know three years ago is this this is going to be our budget in 20 I guess 24 25 when the grant money runs out and I you know at that time no a lot has changed since then in terms of our enrollment um we've seen really steep incline a lot has changed in the fact that we are um currently as as we literally as we speak right now downstairs they're having a school building committee meeting um for the construction of two new buildings so things are fluid um but these would be the priorities if we were to say uh engage and quote an advancement budget but it's not necessary given the fact that it is covered so um what we've

016done here uh and and 6.46 in my uh tenure as a superintendent I I don't know that I've ever um requested 6.46 uh that is a a large number by my historical perspective in in this position but I want to walk you through how um we came to that number uh relative to the nine percent and relative to where we are certainly in 2223 so you know with this um without any uh equivocation is a maintenance budget uh that we seek to sustain class size ratios uh we know that that is um incredibly important to our families and the school system uh that this budget addresses medical benefits at the Actuarial level now I say that as I sit here in mid-January that number um hasn't been nailed down yet but the first pass is

017where we're budgeting on now uh it's my hope you know maybe uh although I'm not really optimistic that we have updated numbers by the end of our initial process but certainly I think it's fair to think that by March April when we're engaging in the same process with the Town Council that we'll have updated numbers hopefully for better that we want to maintain the same level of special education services uh you heard me speak earlier to the legislators about you know what what that looks like and the cost of special education today the discretionary accounts remain largely unchanged and I'll talk a little bit about what those accounts are and and how it really it's a small fraction of our budget discretionary accounts in 2324 this uh illustrates what percentage of our budget is dedicated

018to each uh line there so you know salaries both certified and non-represent 61.5 percent of the budget benefits um now equate for to 19.2 percent of the budget you know support services and instructional expense maintenance and operation I mean you can read there I don't have to articulate it but I want to give you a moment to digest the the different elements and the percentage of the budget that they command so um what budget items are coming in at a change of more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars the teacher line item the teacher line item the increase there is driven by two things one we have a net teacher increase that is at the elementary schools in order to sustain our current class size of 18.8 we had to add four teachers there

019alone just to add to maintain 18.8 given the enrollment growth the other area that's impacted there is just the contractual increase which I want to say is 2.79 all in so given the number of staff that we have we are is as we've had this conversation before very uh Personnel okay so our budget is very heavy in Personnel that's what we do as an education system it's it's a people business medical benefits you see a pretty substantial increase in the cost of medical benefits 30 percent of that's a we're not getting more people for that 30 percent like we are in the first line that's just the cost of benefits going up and I know that's something that our board you know faith has certainly brought that up on multiple occasions and we're sensitive to

020that again we'll have the opportunity to discuss that with Tom soon so those two items alone uh account for 71 percent of the budget increase certainly the Lion's Share of of where our budget is increasing para educator support has increased the vast majority of that is para Educators that have been hired through the course of this year that would carry over into next year's budget Support Services line things like a board certified behavior analyst for special education building maintenance repair bin and I'll certainly be speaking more to that next Tuesday with along with public utilities which I don't think is a surprise to anybody so where is our budget increase allocated this is just a different visual highlighting uh the last piece of what we had discussed and um you know the bulk of the

021increase there is with salaries and benefits so I was curious personally my first year as superintendent was 2016-17 and where did our allocation lie then uh relative to now you can see salaries are pretty much identical to where it was what has shifted is employee benefits takes up two more percent of our budget than it had in the past um so you know that's a good chunk of change about 1.6 million dollars is the shift right there so Support Services you know that money has to come from some place right the the that percentage if it's if it's increasing in employee benefits it has to be taken from someplace else and you're seeing it in the instructional expense and support service accounts so I I alluded to the net Staffing changes earlier uh Chapman do

022little uh Highland All-Seeing teacher Staffing increases next year the way that the projected enrollment shakes out Norton would see a reduction in one position I'll get into more detail on that momentarily and then of course there's special education support that comes along with this and then the school nursing position the demand is such with the Intensive needs that we address and for coverage when nurses are out we don't really don't want to have a building without a nurse in it and so particularly at the Elementary grades but at any grade really and so there's the inclusion of 0.7 is our enrollment grows to cover that position one thing I know that certainly our planning committee is is well aware of and sensitive to the with the elementary growth uh particularly at Highland and Doolittle we're

023running out of space the planning committee allocated money uh Vin and the the team and the the principals met Tuesday I think that was to start to take a look at what space might be available how do we leverage that in those two buildings and then you know our trailer trailers potentially necessary something we want to try and avoid to the greatest extent possible but still you know provide a a quality experience for our kids so um the uh slide before you illustrates some of the information that I've I've already shared but in Greater detail around the number of sections in each grade so the top half of the chart shows the current school year and we currently have 116 teachers when you factor that into our student population total of 2182 students in grades

024K through six 18.8 is the average and it's almost shocking that the enrollment growth is such when you add four it's exactly 18.8 teachers per class next year uh budgeted into our our operating budget proposal um here you can see the same thing in a different format that is more District driven without the individual sections and you see the 18.8 and how that is reflected in our our budget um I think this is valuable because you can see how does 18.8 compare to our history is that historically high or low you can see it's um it's higher than typical uh the previous the only other year that we had as many as 18.8 in a class beside last year was 17 18. so it's kind of crept up a little bit as our enrollment has

025increased but we're trying to keep it at that that Threshold at the 18.8 um in the seventh and eighth grade you can see the the red box outlining 2020 223 where we had 26.4 students per class in seventh grade again 26.4 that's a historical high for us um both of those years and then the class size average in eighth grade this year 21.8 23.1 next year which is um within the realm of our historical ratios this uh illustrates that same information in a uh just a graphic format um rather than the chart the Elementary grades historical enrollment are the blue the green is eighth grade red is seventh grade so you can kind of see historically dating back to 2014 how does our enrollment look again um seventh grade at the high end of our

026enrollment history it's there are unique challenges there to bring that down as it relates to certification and teaming um so you can't necessarily add a teacher to bring that down you'd had have to add multiple teachers who who are dual certified and as I said in the last meeting it may be easier to hire Sasquatch uh the high school enrollment uh the class size ratios uh the highest number of students per General Ed teacher in a derby High School is off to your left that's Hall High School in West Hartford the smallest ratio is a Fairfield Ward the bottom right followed by Daniel Hand and Madison um around 12 and a half students Cheshire rests squarely in the middle of durg b as it relates to the number of General ed students per General Ed

027teacher the other thing I want to make note of is that I know most people on the board are familiar or all people on the board are familiar but perhaps not some people watching at home that several years ago Cheshire high school was one of the few districts in Connecticut frankly I'm not aware of another but I I can't say that with 100 certainty that the teachers taught uh six periods um we only taught we taught six where others all taught five almost universally across Connecticut that was going to be a substantial cost impact to us if we wanted to sustain that and beyond that point um not sustaining it provided more collaborative time to support quality planning quality instruction so at that time the board and I certainly advised and favor this as well

028to make the adjustment to five classes um so that that does impact things um and we did that uh strategically knowing that enrollment was on the decline so that that's already been a balance Factor applied to the high school level and I just want to you know reiterate that point the um 23 24 projected Revenue this is money that goes to the town and um you can see the source uh I mentioned in the last meeting as well about educational cost share being roughly 10 million for almost forever and the excess cost share from special education a lot of this money is it's projected as it says on the top of the slide but it's you know an estimate the revenue that the town would gain as a result of of school operations this money

029does not come to us uh as I indicated but the town is considerate of it of the this Revenue as they offset our operating costs uh again I want to reiterate the bounce forward uh grant money this we have a pretty comprehensive plan to support our student growth and their um support around covid and how to bounce back from that and we didn't want to bounce back we wanted to become better organizationally and so what's not necessarily listed in here is the extensive professional development and coaching that you have seen uh the benefit of is whether it relates to the curriculum writing Institute or some of the other uh presentations that have been provided through the curriculum committee around coaching and so we've really leveraged our federal money so that when that money runs out

030organizationally we're better than we were rather than just hiring a handful of people who wants the money runs out if we don't bring them on we've got a limited benefit a limited impact so we're still excited about the grant funding and what it's been able to provide for us this is a little bit of a history lesson in the sense that the funds available through sr1 expanded did June 21 a lot of this if your call was us bringing the circus to Town the tents all over the place to have kids outside and dining outside and the mitigation strategies that we employed and Vin and his team did so uh incredibly during the the height of the pandemic where we are today is on that last column the our bests are funding American Rescue plan

031we had a grant initially of about nine hundred thousand dollars and we're still working through that and that's what's funding those bounce forward positions I showed you moments ago again I want to talk about the context that this budget uh is couched that um we see growth we see prosperity it's an exciting thing it's easy to look at our growth and take pause at a six percent budget increases I as I did myself um but uh the important to recognize the grand list growth whether it be commercial professional residential uh we you can't drive through Cheshire without acknowledging that there's substantial growth happening and this is where I half jokingly said to Andrew Martelli this is where I pause and give him the opportunity to take a standing ovation because the work that the economic

032development team has done under his leadership has really been remarkable uh and well that may mean some increased enrollment I think we can agree that you know there's also quality of life benefits that have come with that and uh substantial grandless growth and that's the beginning uh what's coming soon is uh this North End development um I talked about the 50 units um that was approved yesterday there's another uh large very large uh unit multi-unit off of Marion Drive that's under construction so there's a lot of growth a lot of grandless growth that will ultimately I don't want to say entirely offset the growth that we're seeing here but take a substantial bite out of that the increased costs that we're facing at a time that you know we could certainly benefit from that given

033rate of inflation is seven percent our budget is coming in at six and change uh the rate of inflation was seven percent for each of the last two years and we're coming in at six and a half so again you know groundless growth it mitigates the impact of uh the growth in our budget like I said not exclusively but um in conversations with Sean and I know that you know we are seeing growth that will ultimately even um adjust next year when reevaluation kicks in more so so you know all of that the financial talk aside there are a lot of markers of success within the Cheshire public schools that that we have to be proud of I apologize that these slides are kind of cut off this is a different format that I I

034had used historically um we still represent uh as I said it's a we're a tremendous value I think for our school system due to the work the diligence of the board our administrators and certainly our teachers and all staff that work in the Cheshire Public Schools we were 10 million per year less than the state average and District reference group b we're still 4 million less than uh than our peers on average we're one of the lowest spending districts in durgby per student all things being equal Apples to Apples we delivered great results at a better value uh I think it's a a huge indicator of our success that every single voting district in Cheshire approved new schools last November I think that's uh a real positive sign about the uh value and the commitment

035that uh people see in the Cheshire Public School System I'm really proud of that fact as I think everybody in the room should be this year we were ranked number 345 in the best districts in America by niche.com that's the highest rating we've ever had uh I don't think that that is the gold standard for district success but it is something that many people take a look at and so we're one of the the top ranked school systems in America and certainly in Connecticut our overall performance on the S back continues to be exceptional and I've shared this slide with you before I think we uh believe and I think what we're seeing today is the this coming to fruition is the investment in our schools is an investment in Cheshire and I think uh

036I don't think I I know from conversations with Andrew the success of our school system does make it easier to sell our school system I know to families and to businesses as a destination in Connecticut um again you know the the value of our schools certainly impacts median home prices uh people this is a destination so investing in the schools looks a lot of different ways tonight we're discussing the operational budget School modernization we've already put a lot of time into that conversation and we're very excited to to be able to move that forward Vin will be sharing capital budget with you later this uh maybe early next month as we work through the the capital budget process about facility needs and so the key takeaways for from this evening are you know climbing enrollment

037and medical benefits are significant drivers in this year's budget uh is I said you know the overall teacher line and medical benefits 71 of the budget increases tied there um that includes not just the new teachers we've added obviously but uh the cost of salary increases uh for teachers which I don't think uh 2.79 all in uh that that means includes step uh our most of our teachers don't get a 2.79 raise um is really reasonable within the market but uh collectively has a significant impact impact uh you know we continue to recommend I want to reiterate that the budgets the the insurance is funded at the actual Actuarial projected rate uh because we've been bit in the past right from from trying to navigate around that and I don't mean we just the board

038of education but as a Cheshire Community uh it's it can be tricky it can be attractive to to play with that but um it can also put you in Peril financially so um the budget's grounded and uh preserving our current service levels uh that we continue to represent an outstanding value to this community and that uh increasing enrollment will likely in the future uh mean that we're looking to adopt some of those bounds forward what-if things that we talked about in the middle of the presentation that um we've seen good success from those resources and as the number of students climb they become less of a a benefit uh and more of a necessity in closing I really need to thank everybody who's involved in this process uh I strongly believe that our school system

039is a reflection of a greater community and uh certainly our Educators lead that that charge in the classrooms with our our students every day and our administrators with the work that they do in the buildings but we have very involved parents who support our children's I love spending time with our they they really they are the heart and obviously support in this year couldn't be any more evident with us passing uh a pretty substantial referendum so um with that I just want to cover the timeline um tonight is our you know the initial presentation and we'll adjourn uh to come back on Tuesday and get into more detail around these items uh I want to encourage members of the board to forward um Mr grippo Mr peregini myself any questions that you may have any

040thoughts suggestions as we uh continue to navigate this process over the next month or so um and hopefully we can answer questions that you have and continue our history of engaging in productive dialogue to to benefit our kids ultimately uh we are required to forward our budget to the town manager by February 15th and they will the Town Council will adopt a budget before April 30th we'll come back together as we do and make any refinements that are necessary at the end of the school year so with that again I want to thank our members of the board for their time attention and dedication not just this evening but in the coming month to to this very long and arduous process at that point at this point I'll certainly take any questions if Mike's ready

041to raise the the projector screen I hope the use of an pulsometer was not necessary uh I just want to say uh Dr song and and to your team and to everyone out there folks that can't see that might be watching we have various administrators teachers uh who put a lot of time and effort into this I know this is not an easy task to put the budget together because there's so much to do um thank you um and thank you for all the time you're about to spend uh this this month and helping us get through and moving something forward to the town manager to consider so I that being said I was just quipping a few seconds ago I think by Design you like dividend lights when you hit us with that number

042because now we're kind of relaxed it was dark I contemplated seat belts still processing the you know that the number which is a great job explaining it um so that being said I'm going to turn over to any Boardman has a question 10 there you go yeah yeah uh two two questions first of all I just want to recap what I thought I saw which is you're requesting eight new positions including four new teachers and then uh they might all be teachers but for classroom teachers and then four other people did I catch that correctly yeah let me show you here the the positions the oh Jesus all right so there are uh net for Elementary classroom positions okay the um Highland is one special ed physician and there's district-wide board certified behavioral analysts that

043uh are used to support um special education uh that's 1.1.4 positions net school nurse um that's 0.7 not on the teacher uh salary scale and then there's a speech and language pathologist halftime which is on the teacher salary schedule so in essence 7.1 teacher positions FTE excuse me 6.9 yes 6.9 thank you um yeah just in general something that I I know I had mentioned I'm just going to say it mention again here which is the school's past redistricting is gonna happen and so when you're looking at moving those pieces around just have that in mind you know these kids are on the border would it make sense to just start them at Norton rather than moving them a year later um where you have a reasonably good expectation that the lines will be moved

044sure yeah um and then uh the last question that I know we touched on before but just want to um hear it again uh energy you mentioned are we doing any sort of energy hedging if any yeah I think Vin will get into okay the energy piece on Tuesday okay um when we cover yeah broader part of the budget okay thank you sure okay so I'll reserve a lot of my questions for the four or five other budget sessions but we'll really get into the details of each line but I just I think that one of the questions that's going to come up um during the discussions now the new schools have passed is there going to be any talk about what the implications are going to be to the district I know it's not

045going to be another two years until a lot of those costs are going to come I think that if we're gonna start talking about a six percent increase this year and then the next year and the next year like what those costs are going to be I know there's going to be you know new buildings but we're losing buildings but there's going to be new um you know front office staff janitorial stuff there's gonna be a lot of new positions that are going to be have to have to be added has there been any thought into looking at that because I think when this budget Comes To Town Council knowing that it's coming online they're going to want to start knowing what that you know what it's going to look like sure I think in

046this this is a short-term question that looks dramatically different in 2026 when we close and consolidate buildings in 2026 there's actually an efficiency that's uh derivative of of reduction in the number of buildings we have um if you look at uh Chapman for example the the class sizes there can vary pretty wildly because it's such a small building you can't really you don't have the same efficiency where you look at our largest Elementary School like Highland and all the class sizes all the sections look roughly the same size and they're they're all like closer to the the district average um whereas you don't necessarily see that in a place like Chapman so we're we would be planning that out from now till 26. when the buildings open in Fall of 26th then it's a whole

047nother set of planning um you know we will try and project out what sort of growth is necessary from here to get us to 26. obviously I want to try and keep that it is low as we possibly can the same way I want to try and keep it low here too inflation hasn't helped us in this process on the flip side of this grandless growth you know I I can't sit here today and say your tax bill is going to go up six and a half percent I really don't believe it will because grandless growth mitigates the impact of some of this not certainly not all of it by a long shot but um there's a balance that's where we're seeing significant growth at the same time our costs are going up uh thank

048God that we're seeing the significant growth we are because it's really going to mitigate a lot of that impact but we'll take a look at the next couple of years in terms of the enrollment projections because people are what drives our budget generally speaking I mean insurance has done so more so than it ever has as I Illustrated but we'll take a look at that to try and project out the next couple years and what would we be looking at not an exercise we've done yet all right I'll keep going on the groundless for you yeah thank you welcome appreciate that um really my only one question is um seeing that the uh medical benefit ask for next year is significantly higher than this year as it was the year before that um are we

049expecting to have to cover any kind of deficit uh before we get to the end of the year this year yeah um I I think we'll probably be looking at next Thursday we should we're hoping to have some new numbers in for uh December uh which should you know we could take a look at that for next Thursday's board meeting when we go through the Where Do We Stand today uh to have a conversation on that we should have updated numbers for you and uh just to piggyback on on Andrew's comments that's one of the things that we're we're trying to Grapple with um on the finance committee is what future staffing needs are going to look like over the next uh what is it three or four years right going up to the opening

050of the new schools and what what that sort of cost is going to look like and uh trying to maybe even that out over the next four years or at least know what we're looking at so you know we're definitely trying to plan for yeah we we have a three-year window until we open new schools this is the first this budget here is the first of those three years then you want to elaborate on medical benefits I just wanted to clarify that the budget request for medical benefits this year is lower than it was last year it's it's about a 13 increase last year was higher than that what this year we're asking for about 1.5 million last year we needed 2.2 million to catch up because we were underfunding the Run rate as far

051as where we are with our Reserve balance and what we get through this year without without having to fund additional you know we're in roughly in the 800 000 range what our Reserve fund we had very high claims in November I haven't seen December yet I think we will make it through the year without having to add or ask for additional funding um because in January claims do go down because the new HSA plan year starts but by the same token with next year's budget request unless claims are lower than are actuarily projected we won't be building on that Reserve so that's going to be discuss further I'm sure next week and then actually maintenance and energy we'll be discussing two weeks from Tuesday because next Tuesday we have the workshop then the Board of

052Ed business meeting Thursday then the following Tuesday we get into the maintenance and our operations section thank you Justin yeah um I don't recall if the planning committee had discussed it or response with regard to Portables are we looking at that as a two-year thing right now or a longer term or we don't know at this point well we've engaged antonazia so they're going to be getting back to us on recommendations and they'll give us recommendations you know whether we'll need to have recommendations implemented for next school year and my mind is probably not the case but in two years I I think we certainly will need to do something but we should have um proposals by April I would say if if there are Portables that happen do we have an expectation right now

053what what budget pays for them and I'm thinking operating budget capital budget or the school modernization budget do we know what bucket would cover that or we don't know yet it wouldn't be the school modernization budget okay um that's that well the only thing that we can pull out of that bucket is what has been submitted to the state in terms of our Ed specs and and our plan um but Capital are operating I would think would be the so it'd be an open question and you're saying there's nothing in the operating budget this year for Portables in the 2324 no yeah okay great thank you I mean there is the potential to look at any sort of available money at the end of 22-23 um that's probably a little harder to come by knowing

054where our benefits stand today and knowing the cost of Public Utilities gas Etc has gone up dramatically at the start of this year it wasn't really budgeted far back last April um but it's certainly a consideration yeah no I was just trying to jog my memory I remember now it was antonizing we left it got them and evolved thank you I was uh trying to get Ann's attention was I I know she usually asked this question every year in budget time but uh the what ifs right you you put that up there and you did a great job talking about you know we have to spend 10.8 million dollars more to meet the state average and I I wonder um during this process will you cover some of the what-ifs that would happen if we

055did that extra if it was impossible 11 million dollars and would that even bring us to the advancement level so I'm kind of curious sure I don't like to use the word missed opportunities but you know I'm sure a lot of folks that we watch and say hey what you made the point of maintaining is we're trying to maintain the quality we have and and I think folks will see is that what we're just maintaining we're not advancing what does advancing look like just uh I'm sure you have something to cover I know I I also appreciate that clarification Tony because I I think I would argue that we've invested substantially through the bounce forward plan on advancement that the whole bounce forward almost all of the bounce forward plan was dedicated to supporting the

056uh professional capacity of our organization and I think you know uh Marlene has done a tremendous job leading that work with Kevin our administrators and Ryan's Edition as an administrator that we have really focused on how do we become better organizationally that's where the advancements happened so we've kind of been LED off the hook through that Federal money or or we've planned wisely with that Federal money to advance the organization which means that it allows us to go to a maintenance budget while we're but I'll certainly add show you some of the areas that I would recommend investing in if we were to ever close the 10 million dollar Gap or even 4 million within the durg thanks yes sorry Tony I wasn't going there with the 6.5 increase um any other questions or comments

057on the board stands at none thank you so much team uh Jeff the entire team for putting us together so how much to talk about in the coming weeks for general public um got the song I'm pretty sure we want to use the Cheshire Boe contact email address and I assume this presentation will be posted soon on the CPS website uh so for those watching or let me start reading about this please contact us with any questions we have on the budget via that email address Source directly uh the next meeting is gonna be January 17th at The Dodd Middle School at 7 p.m we'll be starring uh one of a few uh or more uh deep Dives on various parts of the budget but we do go through the entire budget those presentations are

058led by the finance committee as a whole and uh certainly is there's a dialogue and there's opportunity for members of the public to ask specific questions and gain Clarity we hope to see you there if you can't be there please send your questions these will be um on-site meetings and televised so uh that being said uh thank you everyone for coming this evening we'll let you get home uh reasonably early uh so can I entertain a motion to adjourn uh faith has a motion is there a second all those in favor is unanimous thank you this meeting is now a journey