001guess uh i'll call this finance subcommittee meeting of the board of education to order at 7 02 pm um mrs jaczynski uh please call the roll sure mr crippo here miss rosenberg here miss ham here you have a quorum great um please rise for the national anthem the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay uh first up is uh public comment uh dr sullin or mr masiana are there any uh uh comment before we begin no sir okay um then i guess we will go into the first agenda item which is federal grants okay at this point if it's okay mr grippo i do have a presentation
002and i could jump into that sure go ahead and i will share my screen can everybody see that yes yes yes okay okay so this is the finance committee meeting um what i have put in front of everyone and is that big enough because i can if i put this in slideshow mode it might be a little bit better for you to see everyone yeah that's a little better okay um but i can't see you at this point so if jeff if there's questions just let me know this is the um essa grant funding update you know through yesterday's close of business and so i did share this same spreadsheet with the board at a finance meeting in june and over on the left side you see the various grants that we have available sr1
003coronavirus relief versus two professor and arp idea and the sum total of those grants is 2 million 496 655 as of 9 20 22 so if you're looking at the fourth column esser1 coronavirus relief those those were fully expended as of june of 2021 esther ii which is the grant that we were relying on primarily last year you'll see that we've expended 419 547 so we still have 20 000 12 remaining in that grant it's good through september of 2023 uh we will expend the rest of that over the next few months so that will conclude the funding available under sr2 um the largest grant that we receive though is our besser which is the next one down that grant was 898 thousand 778. you could see through september of 2022 we've expended 187 000.
004so that leaves us 700 108.665. it's good through september of 2024 we i would expect that certainly we'll be able to use that grant you know this school year and and we won't exhaust the grant so we will be able to carry over at least i'm assuming half of that remaining 710 into the following school year and again that grant is being used to address any student learning loss needs that we have which includes hiring coaching support staff you know which are which have been and continue to be in place at dot at the high school at the elementary schools where we're providing some tutoring support as well as outside sources that we're using to provide consulting services arp ida that's specifically targeted for student learning loss for our special education students and you could
005see that grant was 353 thousand we've expended 76 750 so that leaves us 276 349 it's good through september of and we will continue to take advantage of that grant as well um through this school year and i believe we'll be able to do some into the next school year as well so that's the update on the essa grant funding which was the uh you know primarily the target of this particular agenda item on federal grants so i will pause and stop sharing the screen for a moment here so i can see what's going on okay i think uh faith you have the hand up first so go ahead the race to the hand yeah um okay so we are using the funds primarily for um learning loss and then you're saying that we're um
006bringing in consultants which you know i assume they're on a contract a finite contract which we should be able to retire when the funding retires um of the support staff how many will we be able to carry these on our budget do we need to carry these on our budget post-24 is this something we need to be looking at um what will assuming they're on staff what's our obligation going to be so we've been working on fusing them you know looking at we can where can we manage this into our operating budget where appropriate we evaluate i mean it's pretty limited staff in terms of the math uh intervention positions which have been or coaching positions which have been you know on the fringe of the budget for many years but we're um looking to
007see if you how do we manage that into the operating budget so that um you know when the money runs out we can retain those positions but that's still we have time to evaluate that because we've been managing the the grant in such a way that we could kind of hopefully take it in either direction we could certainly carry it on uh through 24 based off of the grant resources that we have available but a couple of those positions we may want to retain we're going to talk later in the meeting about uh potential [Music] ads because we we kind of designed this when we first talked about it to take a look in in this time of year in the early fall well what might be an impact come operating budget so we're going
008to talk about some of those things but we're right now designing this to be able to carry through the uh grant money at least through 24 and evaluating the necessity to embed and operating at that time okay and just to follow up do you have an estimate of um what the impact on operating could be it'd be about you know 160. okay okay thanks two positions at budgeting around 80 000 a piece roughly thanks it's not an exact dollar amount but it's in the neighborhood all right great thanks sure sam go ahead are they positions that are um they're that are in the union or are there non-union positions union so wouldn't that cause when we when we move when we um the way we did this basically was moving an english position into an
009assistant principal position that we kind of shuffled the existing staff who had the understanding that you know this could be grant sensitive so then when the domino effect would be a reduction in force based on next year's probably not because of the increase in enrollment it would mean we just wouldn't hire a new teacher if you know in the event that we have the increase in enrollment is projected got it thank you sure so um does that mean that the the no firstly where are the are is a coaching position in an interventionalist the same thing well we we have been using the coaches to provide instructional support for math but also doing intervention for more intensive needs so there's a continuum of need that runs from tier one which is classroom intervention so what
010we've been focused on is i think you've probably heard marlene talk about acceleration so if we're um you know we can't go back and re-teach any everything that was lost over the course of a year and a half of kind of craziness um everybody be perpetually a year and a half behind right so we evaluate students based on what's coming up what are the requisite skills needed to be able to do this next component in the curriculum and if there are gaps there depending on the need we'll provide that intervention during classroom conferencing or small groups that's tier one intervention if the needs are more substantial if it extends beyond that we'll provide you know a more intensive typically out of the classroom sometimes push in intervention support to supplement what's going on in the
011room and that's tier two intervention it's done over a prescribed period of time and we gauge what sort of growth does the child make over that period if they make significant growth to to meet reach our targets we go back to tier one or no intervention at all if they don't we'll look at tier three intervention which is more time more intensity it could be different strategies as well if that's not effective and we we're seeing perhaps uh learning strategies getting in the way then it may be a referral for special education um it may be a placement issue uh so we evaluate that through what's called our scientifically based research interventions process that's prescribed so the math inter coaches that we hire they do provide some intervention for tier 2 because they have a
012specified skill set that supports that and these are you know we had some limited interventions previously and that's why you know historically from the time i was at dodd as a as an administrator like we've kind of looked for this resource and never really been able to fund it uh the federal aid has supported that and we're looking at our data now um and over the next year or at least to determine you know the the viability and necessity of that support um so where are the because maybe i missed this part the the two positions we're talking about are not god and that's the is one one at each school yeah okay so it's just to bolster each one yeah okay um and so at the cost level so then what you were saying
013was is that although although you're calling them coaches that that's actually a teacher's salary right yeah yeah a teacher a starting salary or whatever um it would depend i mean it would only it's not going to be a starting salary because we're not going to hire a first-year teacher to coach other teachers so they're usually more expensive but when we budget it we take the uh experienced teacher over here move them into that role the new so the new position that we're hiring is that first year teacher you know what i mean right and that's my budget ad is that first year second year teacher so to speak and there are some teachers that are willing to to take on that role instead of are they are they um yeah not willing classroom work interested
014i'm sorry all right so are they are they so they wouldn't so in in that scenario are these uh teachers are willing to give up classroom time are they totally giving up classroom time for this more specialized work is that yes it's a it's a change in yeah change in assignment and do you find that they volunteer or is this more of a they're being uh compelled no no no oh i can think of what i hear compelled is the exorcism and thankfully we don't need to buy an intervention to convince people to take these roles these are positions that are um a change in pace and a professional you know growth opportunity that our our staff is interested in so we have to make decisions about who's most appropriate okay great um are there
015any other questions on this particular topic okay um vin i guess wait i do oh um can we come i i hope we have more of these meetings because they're quite fun but um is it can we come back and revisit this periodically i just want to as we get closer to that deadline um like to get an idea of how what what trends we're seeing with the intervention is it doing what it's supposed to be doing and then next um what are we looking at in terms of making these positions permanent and how we're going to fund it just so we're not caught shot cut short in january of 2024 25 yeah whatever okay that's awesome absolutely just one thing that i'd like to add that i should have explained is so the the
016funds available through you know the two remaining large grants are september of 2024 we're expecting clarification though that we would have to essentially encumber the funds by september of 2024 but we could continue to use them beyond that period and there's also talk at the federal and state level of actually extending the deadline on the grant which would be helpful because we will try and stretch out the use of the grant you know as far into the future as we possibly can so if we see that the learning interventions you know are having a good result and we can reduce the number of hours in a particular position or reduce the consulting dollars we need that means that we can continue to run that grant out you know beyond september of 2024 so that's kind
017of breaking news we haven't gotten anything in writing yet but it is not supposed to be released relatively soon well that would be good news that to allow you to encumber an expense like that um that's quite a change for the feds so i i hope that's that's something they'll let you do right you know i i don't think they're doing it because of cheshire where you know our dollars are relatively like but some of the other you know larger school districts that have you know multi you know tens of millions of dollars to expand they're you know having trouble uh coming up with a plan to expend it by september of 2024 so you know that's really the rationale behind the extension yeah i i would appreciate it adam because we're having difficulty in
018our district hiring people so that's the use of things right there that's not that's supposed to be used but can't be used you know because we can't hire well no i and i wasn't commenting on the an extension i was commenting on the encumbrance part because usually you have to expend before you have to actually expand before the end of the grant that that's a quite a change if you know if they allow the encumbrance part the extension yeah though sometimes they'll let you do that but um that's always helpful like you said if you have millions uh still hanging out there to get to get another year to spend it it's always nice um okay um uh next so uh is there anything else on the grant um presentation either uh additional information or
019questions okay i guess um we will move on to considerations for the 2023 operating budget okay you should see my screen again the slide that's um budget prep is our budget prep is is well underway in fact we released last week the budget worksheets to all the schools and all the department heads so just very quickly the target dates that we have here on this particular slide the initial budget requests have to be submitted back you know to my office and school district operations by october 7th the request for new programs um as well as any you know maintenance items outside of day-to-day maintenance those are due back by october 14th then between october 14th and november 4th there's you know various reviews that take place on the budget and the new program request forms
020those new program request forms you know would include things like request to add additional staffing or add a particular program in a specific school which can include not only staff costs but also cost related to new programs whether it's some instructional supplies or or books so this is pretty much following our standard process and then you know the target date that we have here in school district operations is to complete the superintendent's budget recommendation and then start preparing the budget book so that's just before the thanksgiving holiday is our goal and if it slips a little bit that certainly does give us time to be able to complete the preparation of the budget and then we start working on the actual development of the presentation of the budget and the recommendation to the board of
021education um what i what i don't have listed here are the dates for when the board of education would start doing their review of the budget but you know we expect those dates to be released relatively soon and we'll start the second week of january and generally finished by the end of january or the first week in february okay so budgets on the way these are some of the uh assumptions and factors that we're we're dealing with and i'll run through these kind of quickly first of all it is a uh you know an election year i know everybody knows that but in particular the governor is up for re-election um and if the governor is not re-elected that's you know could have an impact on the completion of the biennial budget which needs to
022be developed and the biennial budget is a is important because this would be the first year of a two-year budget it's also a long legislative session and when we're in the biennial budget year plus the governor's election year it tends to create a level of uncertainty delays the actual approval of the state budget um and there's always talk around you know what the grants will be especially ecs which is our largest grant of about nine million dollars and the reason i just wanted to put this out there is because it certainly won't have an impact on the development of the superintendent's recommended budget but it would have impact by the time the budget is being reviewed by the board of ed members and then at the town council level as well so we're in for
023you know one of those extended budget cycles i believe um the other thing that we know is happening is that higher energy prices which are going to push up our cost of electricity heating transportation fuel will certainly include you know a budget request that's got to be more robust to accommodate the higher energy prices we expect in 23 24. inflation you know we'll we'll take that into account as well in our purchase of supply and materials lines um our cleaning contract with the current vendor is in its fifth year and so that contract ends june 30th of 2023. so we'll be going out to bid probably in february um whether or not we the incumbent wins the bid or not um doesn't necessarily mean that our assumptions will change but i do believe that we
024are going to see a higher contract price so we'll take that into consideration when we prepare the budget um our bus contract um we're in the fourth year of a five-year agreement so we know the contractual increase is two percent you know i do want to remind the board that in the current budget when it was approved we did budget flat because we expected that the number of bus runs you know would be reduced and we managed to do that but i don't think we're going to be able to do that next year so we will not be budgeting our bus contract flat for 23 24. there's some new mandates that take effect in um that we're evaluating you know if there's going to be any meaningful budget impact so as we go through the
025process of developing the budget we'll include that wage increases for teachers admin para as you can see on the screen they're all in the 2.7 range if you average that out you know so those those we know and we'll be able to budget accordingly what we don't know though is our secretaries and building maintainers those two contracts expire uh june of 2023 so we'll start negotiating those contracts come january february so we'll use an assumption for what those increases will be when we prepare the budget um any new program requests as i mentioned a minute ago those are due by um october 14th but we do have a few things that um you know will be reviewed with the superintendent you know one is you know we have some uh retirements that we're expecting in
026school district operations that we will you know need to account for so that we have a sufficient overlap of individuals so that they can be trained when the person that's retiring leaves and and some of the people that are on the list have been here for a long time so we want to make sure that we account for that now budget um you know there was a planning committee meeting where we talked about the current student enrollment growth rate and what some of those impacts might be we we are going to issue an rfp based on the planning committee's agreement to hire a design professional to look at our schools and give us some options including you know where we could locate portable classrooms also known as trailers on our school sites highland might be
027the first so whether or not school modernization passes we may have a budget impact related to you know adding portable classrooms or you know actually um having other options because we probably will run out of space at highland even if school monetization is approved before the three year is out at the current run rate so we'll see and then um you know looking at the staffing based on enrollment projections you know that will be evaluated we don't have the enrollment projections for next year yet you know we don't receive those until late october for the elementary grades and when we receive that we'll be able to estimate and include any staffing related to that including the hiring of new teachers based on the expected enrollment so i'm going to pause there because that concludes at
028least the initial presentation around next year's budget um so i'm back to back to no screen on on display so i don't have any questions or if dr sullin if you wanted to add anything to what i covered i i would just add one real quick point before i know faith is patiently waiting that um you know if indeed school modernization is passed i think we would probably you know trailer is a last resort we would be doubling things up as much as possible because it's just such a poor investment if if it's not passed you know i don't think it makes sense to make people suffer through that uh with no you know light at the end of the tunnel so just a consideration in terms of that expenditure um faith go ahead um
029okay that was one of my questions thanks jeff and then um then what are the mandates that we're looking at that is that especially will impact the budget the biggest one's probably training for ias right yeah there's a requirement that paraprofessionals need to have 18 hours of professional development you know right now the way that it works they get in the neighborhood of six hours of professional development and the power group is it's about 125 employees you know how we would you know first of all work that into the schedule and then you know how the pay would work is is something that we'll be looking at and evaluating so as dr sullin said that is probably the biggest one there were also some required curriculum additions i'm not sure that they would add any
030real cost but you know those are the certainly two that come to mind so you know i assume we we train our paris adequately and the mandate was probably targeting districts that don't um is there any opportunity for a waiver or something from this this is ridiculous three times the training i get i mean i want to trade i do want to train mara i don't want to be on record as saying i'm not for trained paris but i just find you know we're doing our jobs we've got great barras i don't understand why we're being slammed but but there's no i mean the legislation is pretty clear and it it actually takes effect this year so you know with dealing we're going to have to deal with it this year as well as budget
031for it next year and yeah to your point we do quite a bit of of training for our paraprofessionals but it's the legislation's kind of specific along the lines of what it needs to be and i we're not doing 18 hours worth of professional development for all the paras right now so there is going to be an impact that you know we have to you know deal with not only cost wise but you know actually develop the training and schedule which is always a challenge okay and then um well um all those people up in hartford that know how to train um but anyway um so school district offer uh retirements can you reveal who's going or is that too early well i mean the one that is is going to go is going to
032be our payroll supervisor um she actually um had given her retirement notice and then changed her mind which is good so you know we've got another year um and some of these may not come to fruition so she's one on we also have a retirement for one of our accounts payable um secretaries even though it's like it goes under the label of secretary she's really an accounts payable specialist she's retiring um at the end of this year so that's going to have some budget impact you know this year you know not next year necessarily and then there's a couple of other people that are right on on the bubble you know the director of uh finance you know greg gibbons um some point i'm going to be on that list so i want to make
033sure that you know the succession planning as i was suggesting is really important especially for people who've been here a long time you know it's not a two-week training window i just want to make sure that all our departments are covered and and you know we acquire all that institutional knowledge and in the background i'm already working on some cross training to make sure that if somebody you know decides that they want to retire quickly um that we can accommodate that and now payroll supervisor you know we we do have two backups currently for that position which that one's always very sensitive not only in our school district but every school district okay thank you you're welcome yeah and i guess kind of to add to the point you know we're kind of thinly staffed
034in terms of our positions you know we have one payroll supervisor and the benefits specialists assist with payroll you know we have one director of finance and two account payable clerks so we don't have a lot of depth in in the organization that we could say all right well we've got an assistant director in all our positions we went up staffed that way it's not a complaint it's just makes the succession planning that much more important um well vin uh firstly i can i commend you and your staff to actually giving thought to succession planning because there's uh a lot of let's say uh agencies and organizations that uh uh kick that can down the road and all of a sudden find that half their you know a quarter of their staff went up and
035retired you know and yeah there's not a lot to be done after that all that knowledge loss uh just goes right out the door so um i'm glad that you're really thinking about that um as far as um the the trailers go um is so when when jeff you said when you say it's a a bad investment um would we have to physically purchase and take ownership of them or is there at least a lease opportunity there let's say let's say um uh the referendum passes um and but we still have like at the planning meeting you referenced that the highland is is nearing or at the capacity and certainly going through those next three years we would have challenges there um is is there an opportunity to to lease these types of things or
036there would be other options at that point the short answer is yes um we met with a local uh sales representative who uh talked about a couple of different options the installation of them is a substantial investment just to begin with because you need to have them you know basically have access to water electricity footing yeah footing things like that you you know it's not as simple as just backing one up and dropping it um so you know to maintain code and everything like that so we can potentially you know let's say it doesn't pass and we need a more permanent structure that would likely be a purchase uh or extended lease if things really got hairy and we felt like you know given the projections that we can't put enough people on carts and
037make it all still work uh and this is going to be a short-term thing we might be able to lease and or uh one of the options that she the salesperson had proposed to us uh was like they had one at what was it hampden hall it was in here they they had used it and it was going to go back and we could kind of get one short term on a deal sort of thing so i mean we want to do this is economically prudently as possible because we you know it it's going to be a short-term thing you know we're going to try and gut it out the best we can if it's going to be a longer term thing um it's not you know not worth it at that point and we
038would probably make that investment so there's going to be a lot to be determined on you know on the swing of that election okay yeah and i know you were at the planning committee adam you know and you heard the conversation so you know getting ahead of this makes sense you know so we'll get some cost estimates as we work you know with the design professional so that we're ready if you know if we have to do something as early as next year at least you know as as a board and an administrative team we're ready to do that and then we'll understand better lead times what the opportunities are you know you know if you can lease something you you have to be able to get it you know so there's an inventory question
039that is is always going to be suspect you know especially now with the pandemic but um hopefully that's that's more behind us than ahead of us and we'll be able to plan effectively um so uh so if i was hearing you correctly so even if we were able to let's say lease um call them buildings or whatever trailers um we would still have to make an investment in the the uh infrastructure park right the base the you know like we would still be responsible for that cost well we were responsible for the entire cost but you know as far as a a permanent uh or semi-permanent uh investment we still have to improve the the infrastructure on the on the site okay that's going to be part of the cost structure for sure right um
040okay um so all right so also in in part of that so the other option would be to increase increase class size right that's sort of like the other option right and is is there a cap to how far we can go with that it does depending on how fast the population increased if it increased faster than we're even predicting yeah there's not a um you know contractual cap or anything like that um you know i know rumor and i know you were part of these meetings when we did the personalized learning task force and we solicit all this you know community feedback the one that was absolutely off the charts for our community was maintaining class size and so i think the only pressure we would feel there is community pressure to try and
041sustain our historical ratios and i know we talked about that through budget season a lot but um that would there's no uh like you know the question cap anywhere not by statute or contract okay one of the implications if the class sizes you know do get larger is that we may need to invest in some additional class resources you know to assist the teacher so you know once you get to a class side and a class size and i don't know what you know what the ratio dr solon would suggest is but i know we've done that in the past where when you know we had to have a grade or two that was above the tolerance level for class size let's call it you know 25 students then you know we enlist the assistance
042of an aide in the classroom you know just to make sure that student you know don't don't have a decline in their educational benefits so that does become a cost but it's it's necessary to maintain the educational value that we deliver right frankly the biggest problem with that today is the body like finding a qualified person that we would want to support and supplement instruction in the classroom um let's see uh my next thought um i didn't see uh any mention of our uh perpetual wish list um that was kind of one of the reasons why we were holding these uh meetings in the first place was to examine uh the potential of uh any additions on that side or if things are just gonna be so tight that we'll have to put that off
043another year i you know thank you first of all for asking the question um i think that the priority on what we would hope to see integrated is certainly the math positions um and then i think you know to your point that uh we're between things like fuel costs i mean that the the quote wish list um or you know next steps in evolving and and providing a more robust educational experience to our kids will be there but um we also are appreciative of the fact that you know things go as we hope on november 8th that the town will be addressing that fiscal commitment on top of you know the increase in natural resources likely to have additional staff given the enrollment increases so you know balancing fiscal prudence with you know how we
044want to evolve is always our job right so that that'll definitely come out um we'll share you know what we believe are next steps in evolution but you know balanced against what are the actuals uh that we're seeing for absolutely must have right now can't turn off the heat right so we'll we'll send some of that information out um either me you know we can all meet in november again you know mid-november or something in advance of that january or early december or we can just send something to you but as faith mentioned i'm happy to get together and you know talk this out again in early december or something yeah and where those would come out is those new program requests that i mentioned that you know are due october 14th that's where we
045would see the things that we you know have on our wish list that we haven't delivered on or have even new ones that we haven't requested in the past so you know my point is that you know we'll receive those by october 14th you know dr and miss selena will review those you know especially those around the educational related requests you know so we'll have those ready by the end of october early november if we do want to have a meeting to go through those separately so you know that as a board you could see what the what the list looks like yeah i think that would be a a good idea to have you know just one more you know less formal uh meeting before we get into the budget season i think that'll
046be good to sort of that way we can sort of uh um think about these types of things and you know wonder you know how much of a sort of like the picture you painted jeff was off a sort of a semi survival mode almost you know for a good and bad right because if if uh if a referendum passes that means there's going to be an additional burden on the town and on the taxpayers as it is without us asking for even more resources but i guess you know we just have to balance it all i suppose so or keep your fingers closed for 12 grand list growth go mr martelly yeah we'll see he's always very positive about those things we're going in the right direction yeah absolutely absolutely a new headline every
047week it seems like um are there any additional questions um on this topic no okay let me see what i have here oh oh boy okay this should be this should be interesting uh food services update let's uh let's uh let's hear about it all right so i'm gonna share my share my screen again so just give me a moment to explain what you're looking at because i know there's a lot of numbers on this page um so the funding that we got from the state in order to continue to make free meals available to all students is the 687 thousand seven seventy two i'm assuming you could see the my cursor pointing at the yellow number here yes yes okay so that's the that's the pool of money that we have to work with
048if you look at this first section here which says august 30th of 22 that's when the school year started through january 5th of 23 that's the period of time which we are estimating these smart funds will cover free meals for all students so it's 78 days um this is how we calculated it it's you know two days in august 19 in september all the way down 78 days for each day that we're serving student meals the cost of those student meals including the purchase of food as well as labor and related costs is this number that's down at the bottom is eight thousand eight hundred eleven dollars per meal day so what this is doing is it's just dividing it out and showing that our smart funds beginning balance and august was eighty 687 thousand
049cost of providing student meals was seventeen thousand so we ended august with six hundred seventy thousand so we run this all the way down we should be able to get three student serving days out of january using these assumptions okay so at the you know at the first week in january assuming that our assumptions are correct we went out of smart funding and so beginning january 6 of 23 running through june 13th of 23 which right now is this last scheduled day of school that's 102 remaining school days where we would be serving meals and students would be either paying for their meals or to the extent that students are eligible for free and reduced meals obviously they wouldn't be paying but we would still be getting the reimbursement uh from those for those students
050through the usda program that's established so what this lower portion of the screen is showing you is essentially what the cost of providing student meals is month over month and the total you'll see is eight hundred ninety eight thousand six eighty five what i'm not showing you here is the revenue that students either would be paying or that we would be generating because the the question i was asked at our two board meetings ago is you know what would be the cost if the board wanted to assume the responsibility for absorbing the cost of meals for all students and so the bottom line answer is 898 000 for the period from january through june so this is not reality because we would be collecting revenue here assuming that we were allowing students to pay so
051i'm going to pause for a minute there i'm going to stop sharing the screen so i can answer any questions and then we can continue discussion the one thing while i stop sharing that i'm going to explain is as as of right now because all student meals are being covered by smart funding you know there's there's no issue that we need to deal with today meaning that the board approved last year an increase in meal prices by 25 per meal effective october one and what i'm explaining here is that our funding will run through you know at least the end of december so there's no decision that the finance committee needs to make or you know make a motion to the board at this time because the meals will continue free does that make sense
052yes so i i think my first question would be how much did we budget for for the what was the number that we budgeted for for the entire year because i'm assuming we set a number before we knew there would be funding so it's the it's the food service budget so as far as the board's operating budget we haven't budgeted anything for covering student meals right because the food service program is independent you know it generates its own revenue whether students are paying for it or whether we're receiving smart funding or you know to the extent that students eligible for free and reduced that revenue comes in either from students or from the usda we don't budget anything on the board side because it's a food service budget well until we have to there was
053that one time yeah yeah well but we don't expect that this year right assuming that you know smart smart funding let's assume that it runs out as predicted you know after the third serving day in january then students start paying for their meals we got reimbursed from the usda for free reduced and other meals as well so you know the only question for the food service budget will be is the revenue that they're receiving sufficient to cover their operating costs and the pressure that food services budget is having is that the cost of food has increased you know we're probably up in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 percent over prior pre-pandemic times food service does have a reserve that they can use if they aren't making enough revenue to cover their costs they can
054try and reduce their cost by cutting labor if they can or they can use their reserve to cover their budget deficit if they have one so i don't envision that the board will be having to write a check to cover for food service losses assuming that revenue starts flowing at this you know point in january okay right so so just uh so what you just said was assuming that we be that we begin to charge lunches at the rate that we approved for october one yeah that our lunch services our food services should be in decent shape that's right that's what you just said okay and if they're not they have enough reserve to cover so that there's not going to be a request for the board to cover their operating losses right but would
055it be realistic to expect um that if we if we um absorbed the cost to the student for the remainder of the year that that would put food services in a bad position for next year oh yeah yeah yeah and you know it's not so i'm not recommending that that we do that right no but we're that's we're kind of examining right what's the what's the feasibility of that right yeah yeah i mean that that creates a whole host of issues if we do that but you know that's certainly you know something that the board does want to discuss it's it's been suggested at the board meeting so you know this is the information that we have so far i will add as far as our assumptions are concerned you know this is this is
056the assumption that we're using on the cost of those meals is essentially that somewhere around 60 percent of our students are participating in our school lunch program right now we're running a little bit below that and if it continues to run below the participation rate if it continues to run below this threshold that we assumed then that money actually lasts longer so it could take us you know maybe into or through the month of january and the second thing that is a possibility is the amount of smart funding that we're receiving it could increase and that would happen if school districts that are eligible for smart funding don't take it or don't need it and when i say don't need it here's how that could happen if a school district uh goes on a different
057usda program the cep is one of them then they don't need smart funding because their student meals are being paid through another program and that makes smart funding available and there's a total of 30 million in smart funding that was distributed across the state so that would increase the allocation that we get okay so it's more like then maybe uh it's what month we're in september so maybe in november we check back with you know a participation rate and see kind of where we are i guess right yeah what i'll do is you know i'll take this update and i'll i'll just add it to our our monthly finance report okay this way we can keep looking at it as the year progresses kind of the same way that we're looking at esser and that
058grant funding so i'll just add this to the finance report so that you know everyone could see it and stay updated on where it stands because i guess the good news is as of right now it looks like uh every student would get a free um a breakfast and lunch through the end of december at least correct right okay so there's at least there's that that's good news carries through that okay uh are there any additional questions about that no okay um i guess uh let's see that's that's all we have on the agenda um i guess um i think what we discussed before though i um perhaps we'll schedule another meeting in let's say you want to call it early december right after we come out of thanksgiving break perhaps um does that sound
059good to everyone see faith you have a thumbs up uh sam uh is that a yeah we wanna thumb in the middle [Laughter] do we wanna try and pick a date now or wait yeah yeah we can just pinpoint a date let's see i'm sorry if we can try to pinpoint a date that would be great because we're it's going to be busy season so yeah i'd say that five fifth sixth or seventh um yeah yeah right now better than seven you know i said i like six the sixth better than the seventh because wednesday night is cheshire public schools bowling night so that's important it is i mean we have you know 30 public school employees that participate and really enjoy it so i don't like running out so if tuesday works i would
060rather do that but i can make wednesday work the seventh if everybody's okay with tuesday i'll plug it in yeah i'm good with that um tuesday's good unless vinnie's you know recruiting bowlers we'll join you around do we want to do 6 30 or 7. i like who was that you both said something there i didn't hear we went in opposite directions but seven is fine seven is just fine that's fine go with security faith no that's okay sam we'll do seven that's good let's do it yeah we can do 645. what the difference huh no seven seven is fine seven is fine no there's seven to five [Music] you know on time which is important yep okay we're virtual right adam or do you want them in person uh yeah that yeah virtual is
061fine yeah okay that's perfect okay i've sent everybody a uh an invite including mike salamini yeah i got a mic there um okay so that being said um can i get a uh a motion to adjourn hey is there a second sam second all right all in favor okay all right we are interested in everybody thank you very much adam you run a tight meeting it