001good evening call to order of this finance committee meeting on uh may 3rd at 6 00 31 pm um miss jaczynski roll call please here miss ham here ms rosenberg mr chairman thank you i'm all right i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thanks for coming this evening oh yeah guys great to see you in person the pledge sounds so much better that way yeah doesn't it um okay so going to the agenda here um since this was a publicly noticed meeting was there any public comment that was sent beforehand no okay great um all right next up is the stock grant application okay so um just to provide you a
002little bit of overview on this this is something that i know adam has had the benefit of meeting uh tom bibia who's a local cheshire resident i first met tom um i want to say like 2013 when i was chester high school principal and he was working for the fbi at the time and we coordinated a large training exercise for local law enforcement uh regional law enforcement around like amber alert response and so since that time we've done a lot more work together he's been serving as a consultant for us around school security issues and tom and i share a philosophy around trying to stop significant school violence before it becomes an issue before it gets to fruition right a lot of what you see around school violence though is is uh intuitive as it
003sounds to try and intervene beforehand a lot of time money and energy is spent on hardening school facilities as opposed to a more comprehensive approach that includes that but also includes how do we intervene before things become significant because that's the best outcome for everyone obviously so in that process we looked at something called the stop grant um it's i'm going to pass out to you um did you have a copy did i give you earlier i didn't bring it up so the stock grant i think is brought on by the bureau of justice and they issued through federal funds 43 million dollars to state excuse me local groups every year and it's for money to be used over the course of three years and uh there's no match requirement so you have the you
004know the grant for that three years but you do have to have a sustainability plan for when the money runs out what is your plan for after the money runs out so typically you know with respect to you know a grant like this i wouldn't necessarily bring into the board if i felt like we could enhance our programming or something like that given the fact that there's a sustainability requirement i felt like it required a conversation and um what we're looking at in this grant are a few different things that we would want to potentially move forward so you'll see um i apologize the pages aren't numbered but it's the um if you flip to the it's the third page technically it's the the second page midway down says behavioral threat assessment teams um so
005any time that students make threats uh or that there's a perceived threat so it could come actually we've had it from adults in the community as well we organize a team at the building level with district representation about how to process that threat i know this is a conversation adam we had in greater detail with policy but there is training required to to have a process that's implemented with fidelity across the school system as a matter of fact we're already kind of planning that for this summer um as a review because we did some before uh kovid but feel like you know we need to revisit this sort of work so we have plans for august july and august actually for different groups of mental health professionals across the district and our administrators to go
006through that training so we are doing stuff like this already but we would be able to use money to do this to do teen and youth mental health first aid um alice some of the things that we're already doing could be paid for for three years and then our plan would be to to basically just reintegrate that you know through our budget um the other thing that isn't part of the current plan but was part of previous work that we had done is the potential to use uh to have a district-wide security facilitator that was something that adam i think you remember was that like three or four years ago then i want to say it was 18 19. that was approved in the budget we had gone out to hire somebody and then that
007that position didn't work out uh the person that we were looking to hire and then shortly thereafter things you know got crazy i forget what it was but we didn't end up pursuing that we had to kind of shift gears um and it's kind of been on the boards back burner it's it's an it's an item we'd like to move forward with but just haven't been able to get that going yet this would be a way to build that in over three years and have a runway to know that in three years we'd be phasing this in um so those are just some thoughts i had that i wanted to put out there this i don't have a formal plan to give you today it was just more of an explanation um that i would
008ultimately hope to bring to the board before we submit an application but um i think as much as because of the fact there's a sustainability component to this um i think you know i'd want the board to review this uh in closer detail and this is just putting it on the radar this evening just like right uh so how much does each year each of the three years would we be looking at well it can't exceed a million dollars over the course of the three years um so it couldn't exceed more than 333 i mean if you leveled it out um we're not going to come close to that right you know this i mean the the position of school security director uh the district security manager position that was 95 000 um before benefits
009and everything else so you know there you're talking about 120 uh maybe uh that would be again you know four years out from now because this would cover you know three years of budget time so would we have to maintain that level of funding or let's just say we chose not necessarily but i i you know it would be the recommendation i think you would have to review it at that time but i think when we write the grant we would have to say you know what's our intention here and even if the intention is to dial it back a little bit you know as more of a consultant role after full three years of full time then the board could always i would suggest that we do that and then the board could always
010elevate that full-time if we needed to um but i wouldn't want to say we're going to go full time and then try and cut it and then have somebody come back to us going yeah you said it was going to be full-time yeah that was one of my questions actually instead of hiring a physician um you could hire a security consultant for three years because that way you're not getting entangled in permanent employment and or the person you know if you if you're using a i don't know if it's a service or you know whoever would you would hire for yeah i think we would have a singular person do it yeah um it's a little bit like technology uh in the sense that when you have different people jumping in and out there's the
011coordination of services can really start to deteriorate right we've seen that you know at the town level um and i think when you're dealing with something like security and you're talking about you know monitoring uh these situations over time and making sure that everything is okay we'd be better off with one singular individual and granted i mean at full-time employment if the position is cut i mean just any position then that you know would be a position that's that's cut right there wouldn't be any sort of entitlement to another position or probably can you um when you hire a person like that can you make it a durational position you could do um you know at least for now like interim contract you can convert it afterwards perhaps at year four you know i don't
012know if you would have to have a you know whatever the important i'd probably talk to floyd about yeah the merits of any sort of i mean when we post interim positions we go into that like a one year position so yeah i know a teacher is going to be out this year for maternity leave i go into that hoping that i'll get the highest caliber or candidate but the highest caliber candidate if the option is available is going to want a permanent job right so you know there's trade-offs in that i think what i hear you saying is if after three years and the money runs out i just want to uh have the option of a clean exit yeah right and not have it held because i mean i still think like when
013you put the budget together you put a line line item in there because it does you know when you put the budget together it could be 150 000 for that position per year right but it's depending on where you put it right it says either it's the contractual line or it's a personnel line well actually i guess you'd have to decide that ahead of time yeah i think we you know we would talk because we had that position i think in the managers and directors portion of our budget right previously a few years ago and i think we would probably keep it there uh that's folks that's those folks are not at least that carries carries us out three years it kind of gets us into whatever we're going to get into and by the
014way i mean we could review when when we go to put together a more formal yeah we can review what that role is um just so you have a better sense of that i mean it goes back to what we were doing a few years ago we're required statutorily to do certain things like a district facility assessment right now we contract that out right our intention would be to hire somebody that can actually conduct that on their own right so there's an offset there somebody who coordinates all that we have to do a super comprehensive all hazards plan for the state per building so it's everything from hurricanes and and tornadoes to school uh violence issues is the binder is this thick and vin has to spend a lot of time coordinating that on an
015annual basis i mean there's there's something gained there oh yeah yeah yeah not to mention you know all the buildings that are every building is required to do a monthly drill whether it be you know fire lockdown whatever the case may be um you know having somebody to coordinate that for us is a pickup so this person would be a liaison with the fire and police department you know it so we'll go through that and we can take a look at the value what i hear you saying is let's be conscious about having options in year four right yes and i think we're conscious of that so for example teen and youth mental health first aid i had spoken to liz linehan about this a while ago when we were first examining this the cost
016of the training in my mind is exorbitant is very expensive uh and so i know you know in legislation this year they were looking to uh have the state develop a kind of a something commensurate with this sort of training that could be offered at a much more reasonable price if we four years from now assuming that that's developed we could evaluate that and consider that as an option out also you know over the course of the next three years there's enough runway that we might be able to design a program commensurate to this program that would be a potential uh this this money is designed to give us uh the wherewithal and capacity to do things that we don't already do with the intention that year four we're in a better position to do
017it more independently or with some support um and then so that's kind of the plan but you don't have a plan you just have an idea right now so it's i'm not asking for a yay or nay but just planting the seed so that when we do come back with a more comprehensive plan and this good early feedback for me on that year four idea how do we exit this cleanly that we can put something together i can give it to you guys in a few weeks and you could say yeah yeah this makes sense let's let's pursue this yeah cause i think it won't matter on how strict the language is uh the um what uh what was what was the sustainability the sustainability piece right um and also it sounded like we had
018we had like we said gotten behind in our alice training yeah to have uh funding right kind of pick that up again um you know those those items i think would be right and then also it says here bta must be done in conjunction with a research partner or evaluator who can track data pertaining to the use of the bta does that require what does that require us we would do that internally i mean is that is that extra software is that extra tech is it hiring it sounds like it would be part of your reporting for the government yeah we you know we would maintain we would we already maintain records when we uh engage in threat assessment um so we would have to just sustain that anything that we do we have to
019report back obviously i mean they don't you know they want to know what are you using the money for and how is it working for you and you have to put that in your proposal yeah right yeah so we will we'll outline that i just wanted to give you kind of a heads up that this is what we were working on on the side and worst cases we draft something up and you know we ultimately decide not to submit and it looks like the application is if you go to this justice grants.us doj that's where you could read the full output or is this the full application or no no what this is these are screen shots okay of a powerpoint presentation that they gave ah right um so this is the highlights yes yeah
020understand right so we can read it there if we want to yeah okay but the the deadline is coming up in the middle of june that's good you know yeah and the money would be issued in all in october so i mean it would allow us to really hit the ground running if we decide this is how we want to proceed and uh we should know pretty quickly which is nice because sometimes you submit these grants and you don't know for you know a year it's nice you're submitting in june and you'll know about the summer because usually you could submit way earlier yeah by the end of the summer right right that's good so it's just a heads up and i appreciate your initial feedback so yeah we can kind of incorporate those thoughts
021when we do it can i mention just just one thing on the alice training because i think it's important that what we did this year is we did subscribe to alice training videos online and we did it through our video training platform so all staff and all new staff that's hired does get alice trained by watching the video what we've put on hold which we actually just took off of home last week is the live demonstration which is an important component um and we did have a training session last week we have another one we're scheduling for when school begins um but everyone that's on staff and any new hires will get this video based you know alice training and it is by alice the company so it is does meet the requirements so you
022know it's actually better that we're able to do this video because you know new employees they would ordinarily when we were not doing the videos had to wait until we held a session now within the first 30 days of employment they can watch the video and at least understand you know what alice stands for and the basic components so kind of have advanced the ball even though covet prevented us from doing the live training to the extent we would have liked okay all right faith you have any other questions okay we'll set you up yes okay and then we'll move on to the um the reductions or proposed reductions proposed reductions i'll take this one dr sullin yep okay so the town council did pass the town's overall budget and they reduced the board of
023education's budget from what the board had approved uh by 450 000 so what we've prepared for this evening is a potential list of reductions by line item which the committee members have a copy of and i'll just start from page one which actually on the bottom is labeled page two but it's page one so uh of the four hundred fifty thousand we recommend a reduction to the teacher line of three hundred 000 which is because we expect seven teacher retirements jeff do we have six in hand at this point i i saw an individual who would be number six in the building telling me but i haven't seen the letter they were in the building this afternoon um so i'm assuming we have six and a half there is a seventh on the horizon we
024believe and then um you know there's the strong potential that we have a half year retirement in the next year so we're pretty comfortable in the seven retirements coming to fruition we would save forty thousand dollars each because the teachers that are retiring our top step you know we would hire somebody you know probably in the range of a step three so that would save us 40 000 in salary per person and then we also have have a resignation of a teacher that's near top step so that would save an additional 20 000. so that 300 000 is very solid as a reduction that's it's based on where we believe we will be no recommendation for the classified staff in terms of reductions if you flip now to the second page up near the top
025we have a reduction of sixty six thousand four hundred and nine dollars over what was originally budgeted in the pension retirement account because the actuaries did give us an update and they reduced the amount that we need to fund by the sixty six how long is that good for well it's for this i know what your question is so it's it's for this year for now because next year could be 300 000 increases um well it generally hasn't been working like that i'm i'm hoping more this is the beginning of a reduction i'm and i know are we starting to see this we have to speak about it delicately but i mean is the pension obligation beginning so i i i'm hoping the answer is that because um you know when this valuation was done
026you know the market conditions had improved and that we started catching up on the changes we made to the plan remember what we did that really drove us to have to increase the amount that we needed to fund is we lowered the return assumption and so it takes several years to catch up i'm hoping that this is a sign actually that we are starting to catch up and at a minimum we don't continue to see increases this is the first year we've decreased in since i don't know 2010 or so so it's hopefully a good sign but there's no way of knowing for sure well we'll take it for this year yes definitely okay um okay so those are really the biggest reductions and then um the next one beyond that is for pupil services
027um we had budgeted an increase of sixteen thousand one sixty six we're recommending we just reduced that by five thousand dollars you know we are running below budget on that line item for this year so i'm comfortable with that that reduction one more time what does that cover people services are consulting services that we provide for special education students and it could be every anything from speech assessment pt and ot physical therapy occupational therapy assessment any kind of consulting services that are very specialized for a child that comes out of that line item okay on to the last page so the other professional services line which is also running pretty well this year we are recommending reducing that ten thousand dollars and that incl that particular account encompasses a number of items including including tech
028services and the legal fees that we pay for services that we need so that's a small reduction and we still have an increase over the current year's budget even with the 10 000 reduction the next one rentals leases that's very specific that line item rentals leases included includes equipment leases for the multi-function printers across the district but also hockey rental pool rental this 1890 though that would be specifically coming out of our multi-function printer leases it's our copiers but because they do more than copy we send all our print jobs from you know workstations directly to these it's just much more efficient and cheaper than prison printing to a local laser printer so we've got several machines that are still in use that they're leasing but we have a dollar buyout on the lease so
029we get to keep the machine as long as it's functional so we have a couple of machines that we're going to be buying at a dollar no more lease payment but we can continue to use the machine and we pay a per print cost for that so that's a real that's a true pickup that um we'll have in that line from when we had developed a budget the next line is communications we're recommending reducing that by eleven thousand one ninety one so we we have budgeted this up the last couple of years anticipating that we would do more communications particularly around school modernization um but we looked at that number and think that the 50 000 is sufficient you know for next year including any communications we have to do around school modernization and you
030could see the in the prior year you know the the communications line was 23 000 so and this year we're running about that same level i think was safe there just can i does this cover the um the website any work we're doing on the website it does that will come out of that line as well but the website development is near done yeah the 23 000 that we've expended today will increase significantly by the end of the year we will meet that number between the website and mailings that we have planned for the spring round school modernization after the may 10th vote but that it's not a recurring expense we won't have that same experience shouldn't occur again once it's subsequent years yeah okay um and then we took a little bit out of
031the other services line 2500. you see we had requested an increase of 93.10 and then the probably the largest well the largest on this page is a 36 000 reduction under capital equipment so that's a you can see the budget was 911 490. there's two items in there one is the payment for the energy performance contract which we had done several years ago and that's uh basically we have to make payments for 15 years so that's that's most of the requests um but that account is also where we budget our technology purchases and because we received that 650 000 e-rate grant and were able to purchase 1800 replacement chromebooks we do have room to reduce that by the 36 000. um the impact of that will be that we have been replacing our in-classroom aging
032smart boards with smart flat panels so we'll do five less with the 36 000 removed but we have to pick a place to find the reduction so we think it's reasonable you know to take it from there and so the total of all those is is 450 000 um you can see that you know that number in red and to the right of that that 80 million 664 420 that is the board of ed's approved budget by the town council it's a 2.68 increase over the current year's budget um on the smart screens so was that a particular grade because that could be a grade right five classrooms so the way we've been doing it is we've first of all we target the ones that are in failure mode you know some of the smart
033boards delaminate over time um so we do it on a worse first basis and then you know once we know that we've covered those then we have been trying to do it by school um but not one school at a time because we want to you know make sure everyone has the best available technology so there is five less isn't going to no i mean we can't decrease the quality no and and all the boards are running so that's the one thing that i want to you know make sure that the board understands is that you know there's a board that's that's down it gets replaced very quickly so that we don't leave when you say you're pulling out the projector or replacing the whole thing with the screen yes at that point yeah that's
034the new that's because you're not yet because the projector itself right the bulbs would probably be very expensive exactly higher quality picture and less maintenance with bulbs and things like that sure i mean that should last 10 years right and then they also use less energy yeah than the small boards they don't get as hot as as the small projectors i should say so you know it's a better technology for sure and that's not to say those leds yeah and the price of those have come down pretty dramatically you know to the point where you know they were somewhere around four thousand dollars which was the price of the smaller that's less expensive is there is that well because it is interactive okay so whatever the screen and the camera and all the other stuff
035that goes with it exactly okay it is interesting you can still get a 75-inch screen for not four thousand dollars has all the required connections maybe two it has the connections for a pc and it does run the smart the smart is a name brand the smart software is what's been used in the district for the smart boards and the importance of that is the teachers have a lot of lessons planned right so it is developed it was smart exactly it's all compatible because gesturing is the same and everything like that anything yeah and they can take the lessons plans they've developed and use them and modify them but it's still under the smart platform and that was one of the driving factors i mean this it took a few years to settle on what
036the replacement was going to be even though there were flat panels available they weren't produced by smart the smart ones were much more expensive and the alternatives we looked at would require a complete migration of the smart based lesson plans which was you know certainly something that was a concern for the teaching staff but now that we're able to get these smart interactive displays at a reasonable price you know everybody's happy all around and um if so if these screens are let's say installed in norton um they can be removed and brought to the new school or or reinstalled at you know doolittle or high school or something like that like whatever so i'm not sure what the what the uh what is that term portability no uh the fixtures and furniture ffa but not
037chromebooks and stuff like that okay yeah but like something like that and for the audience i put there's a smart on the wall out there for the millions watching yeah so and just since we're talking about that uh where are we on um um putting in the audio equipment or the uh in the classrooms are we still pursuing the amplified room yeah we didn't continue to pursue more of that there is we'd like to um unfortunately when we have a budget that 25 of our 55 line items are zero or less and then we're asked to reduce more it's it's hard yeah it is a luxury okay but we do you know we'll continue to pursue it we'll find other sources uh because we think it's worthwhile and it's not just that we think it's
038worthwhile there's data to support the value of amplified classrooms so we'll continue you go into a room that's amplified it's wildly different it's great did you install that equipment in now shoes i'm trying to remember there's one lecture hall at dodd right a large lecture hall and there is what one or two with the high school there's yeah three depending on how you're looking was that technology installed on any of those no um so the large lecture hall auditorium at cheshire high school already has it the there are two smaller rooms which don't have it um we focus predominantly on classrooms because during covid where kids were accessing so many remote students were accessing classes it was like they were in the room if they spoke came here for the room and same with the
039kids at home got to hear everything crystal clear that was going on so that's really where our focus was um and we think that there's real value in continuing to do that so how many classrooms do we have oh i don't know the exact thing was that i thought it was something like 60 it was it's a fair number yeah it's a fair number you know we probably a quarter classrooms maybe okay you know of our standard class yeah yeah can we i'm going back to the the pupil services and i look here and it says um you know the account includes fees for special ed like you just said independent evaluations and other support uh psychiatric evaluations occupational therapy speech therapy physical therapy risk assessments and medical advice do we um uh do we
040how do we have the capability in-house to pick up where we might cut or what what because i mean i just look at our people cert i mean our instructional expenses overall just took such a hit you know um and i you know this was one area that got comparatively you know at least on a percentage basis you know a size two percent um sizable increase but there's a couple of things on this this line that are worth mentioning one is if you look at the expended in 2020 21 it was 688 000 uh this year's budget is 790 000. we're running favorable to that number and then the third component there is um special esser funding that we do have for special education services so i don't know yeah it's an area where as
041much as it's lean um we have a fallback a a safety net and i think what we've been trying to avoid in budgeting is like fiscal cliffing ourselves but uh because it's just prudent budgeting to not do that but um i think for you know that small amount of money i think we can be okay there you know when we talked about it okay do we need to need action or um well i think it'd be good to for us to make a motion to recommend right that's the that's the next step yeah you know recommend it for consideration by the full board of approval at their next meeting yeah so we approve this on thursday or do we went to the phone uh you make a motion now to approve it for the business
042move to the full business okay would you like to make a motion um i move that we approve the recommended reductions do i need to do each one or total totaling 450 000 to the full board to the floor i will second that motion okay um all in favor is unanimous of those presents fantastic thanks so much thank you all right thank you so the last item on the agenda was a discussion regarding the 2324 budget and um now we're starting to really push it out there yeah but um i i think you know the stop grant is going to factor into that a little bit esther's going to figure into that a little bit with esser basically you know we've been trying to stretch that money as long as we can for interventions and
043supports and services that this will not shape uh the operating budget 2324 terribly but it will be an influence like esther will be an influence the biggest influence though that we foresee operating out two years from now will be the school modernization plan and enrollment um because like this year where we had to add several teaching positions to cover the increases in enrollment that trend is scheduled to continue and we will therefore need to focus there i think we'll be able to have um better conversations after referendum in the fall about the 23 24 operating budget and beyond because if this passes if the school modernization passes referendum that's one plan of attack that we'll need to take to prepare ourselves for new buildings and the you know new equipment everything if it doesn't pass
044referendum the tact that we're going to have to take ben and i already have a conference call set up with a person that sells portable trailers those leases on those so yeah that's what we'll need right i mean we're gonna have to do you're spending money one way or another it's you know this is what i've been saying when i go to our pto meetings is where do you want to focus that uh or suspect can you come up with a um pro forma just a budget just are you getting that yeah you're talking about for the portables yeah we're working on trying to get that information together and when are we meeting with uh the sales rep lives here in town yeah she just emailed today so i have to just get back to
045her with some available dates there's a person that actually i was at at the school business officials has an annual bender day at the aqua turf and there was a booth and i i knew that the booth was going to be there so i didn't know the person lived in town yeah let's get emails if the referendum were to fail we would need trailers at all four of our elementary schools right it depends more than likely i mean it depends on where the moment growth is yeah the timing of that would be we wouldn't be slowed down and earlier yeah hey we got you guys come hang out in our trailer the um yeah the timing of that we might not need them in every building on the first year right but ultimately yes yeah
046i don't know where we would even put them at highland well that's though that's going to be the complication listen i mean other school districts have dealt with the issue and that's where you're going to have to it's going to be tough though in some schools where do we locate them we know where we had them at chapman right i mean no one would hate to see trailers back at chapman more than may it took you know five years to get rid of the two we had but hopefully we don't have to do that but i i think i think we should you know if we're looking at the next 10 years i mean there's a couple of things that we should be looking at the cost of trailers is one but certainly you know
047what's the impact of enrollment on staffing needs you know kind of what does that look like if we're going to put together kind of a forward-looking picture yeah and that's that's we'll need the staffing regardless of referendum but it'll look different in different buildings because you don't have the value of consolidating buildings the other area that we would really need to focus on is capital improvement because a lot of capital improvement has been deferred for like five years everybody's saying well wait until the school modernization plan but if you know you can only wait so long we were having windows conversations today you removed what like 30 million out of capital right yeah ish um yeah but that was over a 10-year view right right because we we took that five-year capital plan and rolled
048it out over 10 years okay but i mean i have i certainly have all those numbers we can we can revisit those so my recommendation would be if it's all right with you to reconvene like mid-november which will be good for us to take a look at the referendum but the financial implications of that and next year's budget sneak peek before we get into the budget presentation process in january so you know i'm not one for loading up the week with meetings but we had talked about especially after the the whole process of february of maybe meeting more regularly just so and it may be even before november yeah i mean i don't know certainly that's that's great that i know we're going to need to meet anyway next month um because we do well
049no it do do we need to meet again next month for the finance committee probably not we have a we have the meeting of the board june 30th which is the end of the fiscal year meeting but um outside of that i don't i don't know that there's anything specific to finance i mean the other thing that i am working on uh with erica biagetti our food service director is school lunch prices and what do we do what are we looking at for next year sure you know just kind of to see where food services is um because i'm trying to think in june we're going to meet several times in june already um because i think we're i think we envisioned doing it quarterly anyway um so yeah july and the july or something
050anyway yeah like that so if we met in them you know like early august or something yeah and then again you know all i was thinking of for november was we'd have the referendum results because i think that's pretty it's going to shape a lot of our decision making after that yeah if we do in august and november you know is it wasn't there a wisp a whisper of a referendum change there yeah i don't know i think we'll find out more tomorrow we have an executive steering committee meeting but if i like the november timeline in the sense that it gives us ample opportunity to share information with the community if we don't i mean because the blackout period is already taking us to like august 30th right it's september 8th maybe the board
051can't speak to the community as a board they can't sell the the plan if you will after that time i don't know i read through that and it seemed like it was only if money was involved like if there were expenditures involved like if we send mailers out as a board sure you can't you can't do that you put my understanding is like you couldn't um even do like a psa kind of thing right uh it has to be only factual information about the actual plan you can't say we might need a training on it yeah what you can't do yeah jeff dinofrio the town attorney had mentioned this at the town council meeting so certainly i think it'd be beneficial for the town council members and the board members myself and you know to
052be educated on what can and can is this like an sec type violation if it's what is the enforcement on this like i don't know if it's lashes with a wet noodle yeah it's jail time so even a projected budget since it's hypothetical would be taboo a budget is okay to say that the budget like here's what the budget would be is all right you can't my understanding is you can't say things like you know this is necessary this is needed that like influential language like that can't but you could say if um this would be the cost like that's just factual information okay objective versus subjective language is what i think is what they're speaking to but i really think it's important because this isn't my domain uh to have you know jeff the
053offrio top talk to us all about what can can't be done because i know that window starts end of august if they move the referendum data now it's like you know when are we going to be able to really push this to the community and really educate them and as far as trailers go um at least in the past has it been a purchase agreement or is it a lease agreement or i mean in the past we've purchased that we're just and that was way before i would think very little residual value if we had to use them but you know these days there's a lot of different financial arrangements you can rent them you can lease them we could buy them used as the conversation and some are uh some are really nice trailers
054depends on the condition right yeah i will say like you know you can get some trailers that have air conditioning in them which would ironically be an upgrade from chapman you know to go out to an air-conditioned trailer yeah seriously well i know when they were doing uh plat over they had all their portable classrooms they were army air conditioned you know quarters hopefully it's just something we need to get by for a short period of time you know not permanent hopefully we don't need it right yeah the um all right so the plan is we should book something for like maybe early mid august yeah and then again for after the referee okay but and do i just want to confirm so the idea is to have some kind of a projection i mean
055one thing we could start with is if we just took the enrollment projections that we have now from slam and new school no school just looked at what the impact would be to teacher staffing and then related staffing that might be something that you know we could share and and have some good discussion around and then any categories like trailers we can add that by then we'll have you know some information we can work with you know and as we think it through and then discuss it with the committee you know just foster some additional discussion around what the budget's going to look like going forward i think um in conjunction with that we're discussing that earlier was um the special education break point um because you know like you had said i think what
056was in 2015 when uh you had a staff member to make do that analysis where you decided you know when you bring things in house oh yeah beneficial to that yeah in house property and to the school system um but when we're having a now a 25 potential 25 increase in population is there a point where the town can't sustain let's say because like we saw the uh the cost per student it was like 30 or 40 000 i think for a special education student versus the 17 000 trip uh for uh general ed and so and we have you know we're always discussing about you know uh allocation of resources for all of those kids and you know at what point is it not sustainable anymore or if it is sustainable fantastic right because
057i know where as far as the new buildings go if if approved you know we're devoting a lot of resources to to maintaining at least the um you know birth through k yeah program you know yeah out placement drives that number higher the per pupil spending would be higher with more out placements we bring programming in because we can do it better more efficiently it's there are substantial transportation costs for special ed out placement additionally tuition cost is usually quite high and we do it better it's trying to find a enough enough students that have similar need to provide it the trade-off is the space that's the challenge like we you know we brought in a lot of programming that is financially and academically a significant improvement over outplacing but it burns space and that
058there's a bit of a trade-off there but we'll at to adam's point will we get to a point where we just say we we have neither the space nor the resources anymore but the resources you're going to jack up the cost of the resources if you i know i know right it's a big problem and how do we address it how do we find out when we consolidate three elementary schools into two that are larger we are in effect addressing that because they those schools uh alleviate the pressure at places like highland and doolittle where we do have specialized programming being offered so you know this modernization plan helps release valve that pressure on the space in those two buildings um and that will be a substantial benefit uh of the many that i could
059mention of moving forward with this planet school modernization so um you would say then the way we would be reconfiguring our space needs including the new buildings that that would be able to accommodate let's say the current ratio yeah of special ed the general ed at a 25 increase in population you would think that we would not be bursting at the seams at that point with finding using closets and stuff like kind of sometimes what we do now like you would think that with by having these new spaces in the new buildings that we should be able to properly accommodate um these programs without being on carson without correct yeah so the demographers and the the um you know mr hanson the the gentleman who helped us with the uh ed specs they were all
060you know we reviewed the programming in each building um we actually did a lot of work around ed specs if you recall at highland because one of the initial proposals out of the smc group was to take darcy and try and move it there and so dan uh hanson he looked at the programming there we looked at it with mike zuba who's now with slam was with um my loan you know to to look at you know do these programs fit and so yes i think that this is a release of that pressure on the space when we build these two new buildings and draw students out of highland and doolittle to ensure that there's adequate space in those those two places again another one of the the many benefits though the question that i'm
061asking myself is with a 25 increase in enrollment does that create a different cluster of students that we now have enough students with a specific need that we offer this particular program in-house and if so you know what sort of savings does that present it what cost to the space and uh you know you don't know that until the kids are there but um that would is is the opposite of the question being asked but the same sort of value in exploring like for example like at highland you have the um some of our uh most students with with uh needs on the developmental spectrum right yeah that yeah that are i guess would be more autism right so when when students are moved out of highland does that allow for uh adequate space for
062the increased population like there wouldn't be any um uh any need for additional space or that does that provide does that free up additional space to expand the program for you for additional thought so that's that's a good question there's not um the calculations were done that were done didn't include significant expansion of the current space in programming just sustaining the space in progress i mean you would think that yeah right proportionally right it would increase right but um i think that's a good question that i'll go back to christina sherwood and and robin and kerry because i think that's kind of what we're trying to get because it really is that space need is kind of because like you know the question was asked like well our population was i think was it the
063mayor slocum i think maybe asked the question well 2015 we were here and we had all these schools before so what's the difference and right you had you unanswered that question during that yeah the other big one was yeah the 4k yeah right it doubled the number of classrooms we needed for kindergarten right we were one of the last states districts to adopt that across connecticut but it doubled the space that we needed that coupled with the in-house special ed services program um is part of why we're here today right right yeah okay i know we want to get out of here but you just as i think about so we're going to consolidate special ed services in am i we already have but we're going to look to to consolidate them in the new
064school so when we consolidate the three buildings down to two what we're doing is taking general education students and special education students but just not students that are assigned to the program at highland but we're taking other students out of the building and moving them to the new north end school yeah to create more space in those buildings and accommodate the existing enrollment yeah i was just wondering how i and maybe it how that's going to affect districting but you know i mean you're if you we we are redistricting no i know we are and so i guess are we going to have these schools of excellence for special ed maybe i'm misinterpreting this and then that's where our special ed kids will be no never mind not necessarily okay it's still a very fractional
065percentage of our population that receives these very intensive specialty programming uh it's a it's a pretty small percentage of the district uh those students that have those needs they already come from other areas so if you have you know these the you know the intensive support needs that adam was just outlining but you live in doolittle you still go over to highland for that already now so it's not like you know we're creating buildings with their you know like much different than they are today they're pretty much the same as they are today in terms of the complexion of the students in those buildings pretty pretty almost identical just a little smaller uh in highland which we need to be perhaps a little bit smaller it do a little when you think about the number
066of students that are we're adding in um now norton in chapman more than doubles in size and it also folds in darcy so um it's just kind of building new new space that allows us to accommodate the huge numbers that we're seeing move in okay okay um well i think that really starts our conversation um uh yeah i think for next time maybe we'll focus on staffing um i guess maybe it sounds like august we're looking at uh staffing we're also looking at uh you know trailers and things like that right and we're also looking at school lunch yes i think that's that's a full agenda yeah right there okay um we have nothing else on the agenda um i know that we adjourn all in favor okay fantastic we are jeremy thank you thanks
067guys