001the a motion to move the superintendent's proposed budget of 81 million one hundred fourteen thousand twenty dollars uh to the full board for consideration and uh a discussion ensued and we passed the motion that concludes my report thank you mr grip on that case uh is there a motion from finance yes there is um wait all right now i'm confused uh the the second motion is that we're gonna start there okay not not the one that we just did it's okay all right i will make a motion um moved that the board of education submit to the town manager a budget uh for the 2022-2023 fiscal year totaling 81 million one hundred fourteen thousand four hundred twenty dollars which represents an increase of five point three four percent uh or four million one hundred thirteen
002thousand three hundred sixty eight dollars over the 2021 2022 budget thank you is there a second mr martelly seconds discussion that's tim thanks tommy um yeah i'm going to support uh this motion tonight i'm going to take this thing off um so just some thoughts i'm not uh some thoughts for the superintendent with regard to the budget i'm gonna break this down into two pieces facilities and programming with regard to facilities these these are all things that i've said in the past but i'm just gonna reiterate them with regard to facilities i do hope particularly in light of modernization we are looking at sustainable construction and i was just given some word today that that actually might be baked into this by virtue of law by way of law at this point that's that's correct
003that's okay so i think i think that's a big win um also with regard to facilities um our fleet i don't think much is going to happen the next year but just keeping in the back your mind electrification of our of our vehicle fleet with regard to programming something i mentioned to you jeff two years ago when i got on the board and just reiterating it tonight um education i'm a true believer that education is critically important throughout our lives but that does not necessarily mean a formal education is better than an informal education i'm speaking about you know one option other than say college would be the trades becoming an electrician or a plumber i think it's really important for you know parents and kids to have that in mind college could be great
004for a lot of people but not necessarily for everyone there are other options one of our former board chairs went straight to the military jerry brittingham when he graduated i think was hampton high um yeah so uh that's it oh and so just more specifically with regard to the programming just to try to keep it in mind i don't want to say anything about how to do anything but i'm confident that where it's possible you can weave these things into the fabric of the school system um just making that sort of stuff happen over time so that is it and like i said i'm going to support this motion so thank you and the other that yes miss him do what tim did take the thing um okay so i know i just um uh
005approved this to advance it to us but i i i'm gonna confess i i am really conflicted about this um and i i'm not really sure how i'm gonna vote now that we're at the at the board level uh it's not in any way an indictment on jeff and ben and marlene and the whole team um they don't do just a commendable job they do beyond commendable in the two years i've watched clearly they run an incredibly lean administrative office you look around some of these districts and they're falling over themselves in in the administrative office um with layer upon layer and these guys just do it all um and you know they i think they've looked under every cushion of every couch for a grant here and a grant there to keep this they're
006invaluable and to keep our program growing in an age where it's where you can look at some of the line items we're not growing and so they find ways to make things work i spoke to the versatility of our teaching staff really i'm just very very proud of being on this board and being part of this district if i do vote no it's a protest vote because there's something going on and i've said it throughout every meeting and it's chewing up our budget um it's these fixed costs they're and they're all over i mean it it's it's medical benefits it's you know contracts it's this it's that um it's it's mandates but i'm glad we're going to take on have more regular finance committee committee meetings than once a year i think that's vital to
007try to begin to get a hold on this because ultimately my fear is and i said that to sam last week a community needs all demographics to be vital and be vibrant and that includes the elderly and the young and those in their 20s if we i you're just looking at the number in my two years our budget has increased 7.6 million dollars from our first budget to the budget we're now considering um assuming this one goes through that's just such an incredible amount of money and yet our discretionary instructional expenses increased fifty four thousand dollars from four four point five million to four point four point five one million to 4.56 million something's not right and i i don't know what it is i wish i was smart enough to just say you know
008click snap my fingers and it's fixed but um if i say no it's because i we i i just can't i it's a message to um let's figure out how we're going to fix this so our growth is an instruction um and in getting uh for example the curriculum coordinator it's worked so well for k8 i gotta believe it will benefit 9 12. so um anyway that's that's where i am i i do commend all you guys in the job that you do um so that's what i have to say thanks thank you faith any other yes yeah um i will be supporting this budget i think it's important to point out that the uh increase of 5.3 per 4 percent increase over last year's budget is really an artificial number and due to the
0091.5 million that was infused into into the budget for the medical benefits reserve that was given to us by the town council last year so if we took that out the budget increase really is three point something percent increase which is really not not a huge increase um so i just want to point that out and the second thing i would like faith i totally agree with some of what you um just mentioned and i'm wondering if you had an amendment to put forth for the budget because i might be interested in that well that's a tempting offer but no i don't have one and i would just mess up the whole organization of this meeting so we're not gonna go there so you're not giving me an option another option i'm sorry okay let's
010talk earlier so i will be supporting this budget thank you might i just make a question please i just want to clarify the increase on the budget in terms of percentage this year over last year's budget which includes the medical benefits is 5.34 if the benefits increase is backed out it's 2.44 thank you dr song any other board members wish to comment mr um i'm going to attempt to recreate what i said at the finance committee meeting but since i since it was a in my opinion a pretty good riff i don't know if i'll be able to do that um but um i will say i will be supporting the motion as proposed this evening um i think it's a a prudent and uh restrained uh budget request um uh as as i said
011earlier um this uh is you know this gets us through the uh the pandemic it helps us grow a little bit um uh but i i think that um once we uh hopefully put the pandemic behind us that we need to begin to look at prudent investments in our future and hopefully that we'll be able to begin those investigations instead of once a year but hopefully maybe over every quarter we'll have the finance committee kind of meet with the administration and kind of talk about the numbers about the the cost of of what investment looks like so that we're not um surprised by anything uh come next january will it will be something that we have been considering for months and months and months um and that the public will be will know what we're
012also considering which i think is also important and not just to have you know unfortunately um our budget meetings were not well attended uh this year uh uh i think well on foot you know because of you know covet obviously uh the last time our budget meetings were well attended were obviously in 2019 uh but then i don't think there was any public comment at all this year even via email i don't think right mr sullin one oh yes one yes one for mr buster yes yes um so you know hopefully you know uh that will we begin to open up again and hopefully permanently that uh we'll be able to show the public that we're um you know wisely moving forward because we know that investing in our school system is an investment in
013our town and an investment in growth in this town so i'll be supporting this thank you thank you mr grippel yes sam um i mean i'm going to repeat what i said in finance but i think this budget like i said it positions us to stay in the game right but does it eventually prepare us to be ahead of the herd no pun intended when we transition out of this you know pandemic and to mr white's point i do agree with you um i think we should consider in the future offering different pathways especially in careers of need like nursing and teaching right now so in some way embedding that into our programs at the high school somehow the students have an opportunity to have the exposure and kind of job shadow in a sense
014early on prior to going into those different pathways um and um faith i think we we put the mechanism in into having more frequent meetings so that not that we need more oversight on with vin or dr solon but it's just for us to keep abreast more so on these programs and see whether they're effective um going forward so hopefully that mechanism will help to identify some of these areas that are fixed and eventually find a solution for you to get out of it because you know coming from my background i prioritize academia and instruction so hopefully we can again advance our students and accelerate our kiddos going forward thank you really not good thank you tony yeah i just want to um one more comment on this uh one of the reasons that i
015was talking about different pathways it just gets to the debt we have in america a quarter million dollars for a college education and then i imagine there are some students who spend that money and then think that might not have been what i really wanted to do um so i want to try to avoid that uh one of the biggest pieces of our budget the increase here is the health care costs we do in my opinion we do have the ability to control it it's a reduction in head count i don't really want to discuss that right now so but another way of reducing the healthcare costs in the long run we discussed with our healthcare consultants at tom kowalczyk and one of the things that i recall him saying is that we do have
016he he considered us to have some potential for the preventive care spending a little bit more money there to save more money in the long run so just another thing to keep in mind as we move forward thank you all right i'll go last so first of all i want to thank dr stolin mr massiana marlene salano the entire staff almost everyone's here tonight in the back room that's just a testament to dedication to this process and to the students thank you for all the work that went into the budget process as board members say just based on that binder there's a lot of detailing work that goes into getting to this point so that does not it doesn't go lost on us for sure um and i also want to thank the board i
017i thought this year's finance committee discussion was very thorough a lot of great questions asked i'm very happy to see some follow-up actions because it seems like every year we well some of us and i'm part of this too we wait until this night to introduce something new and you roll a new position it's too late so um i say that because our enrollment is growing um you know and in past years you know i would get a lot of criticism you know why is the budget you know rising and from what's going down well you know and why isn't head count reduced well head count was reduced in in those years and dr sullin team has demonstrated that last few years but there's different things that pop up i guess to fate's point is
018you know our special services needs uh you know are in high demand for great reasons it's a great program here in town um mental health is you know the topic last year this year and let's continue to stick with us so you know we're faced with different challenges uh that's not just based on head count so um i don't think that's ever gonna change i hope it it gets better in terms of redirecting more funding to instruction i don't think we're lacking that by any means but to some of the comments tonight you know we're not able to if i have my wish list you know i have a culinary program that's expanded with probably its own facility uh in our school district the paper kids for a culinary world or really build out a
019separate building for um you know for manufacturing machining but um i i feel pretty positive about the budget in terms that it maintains our in my opinion class sizes at a reasonable level because our enrollment is increasing sooner than has been predicted we saw this past year and quite frankly with all the challenges that covet has presented publix cheshire public schools over the last two years in and around the classroom i quite frankly i'm sorry but i think our our educators deserve to keep um the class sizes at a optimal level so that you know they can have a little bit of breathing room i i would be very worried if we were discussing reducing head count especially in this particular time enrollment doesn't make any sense to me so i want to see us
020come out of covid this fall stronger and i don't see how reducing any aspect is budget is going to help with that so i will definitely support this you know the other thing i want to mention is as much as this is a large budget increase just refresh folks mine back in 2020 after we worked through our budget proposal and sent it across to the town manager town council and covett hit we uh we all regrouped again and we reduced another 2 million dollars from that year uh so you know we're still behind you know our investment quite frankly i was expecting a larger budget increase than the four million dollars um and you know again we haven't recovered from that uh and if folks remember from uh that year when we sat down with
021everyone and walked through those areas of reduction but we also made it very clear that there is nowhere else to go um beyond that besides people which uh does not make any sense in this particular budget and i hate to bring another sore topic but four years ago uh you know we we asked you know what would reducing sports i could activities save the district if i remember the math correctly and it's a it's it's just a an insane thought but if you limited everything as far as sports and extracurricular maybe it's a million dollars in the saving and that's kind of a drop in the bucket so the point there is i haven't been this bored as long as i have and um the cost saving measures that the district takes often gets overlooked
022and as much as our budget is going to go up potentially four million dollars since i've been on the board it's been almost 20 million dollars that i've personally voted for this budget so it could have been a lot worse if the school district was not being prudent and cost savings and a lot of that and i know some of it was covered in finance but there's a lot of activities that keeps these costs down uh in addition what's happening now so i i think it's a very pruning budget i i commend the administration and everyone to put together great discussion by the board of ed i'm very happy to see that in this process so i will support this as is i think reducing it from what it is is not going to help
023us get out of covid and come out stronger this fall and quite frankly um i think our community is watching very intently to see if we're gonna do the right things heading in the next year and i think they would expect some kind of increase especially to offset what we gave up two years ago so um i think we can easily explain this uh by no means is it a given you know we're going to work with our town council folks to to what comes next but uh i i support this and i'll leave with that so unless there are any other comments from the board the motion is move the cheshire board of education submit to the town manager a budget for 2022 2023 fiscal year totaling 81 million 114 420 which represents an
024increase of 5.34 or four million one hundred and thirteen thousand three hundred sixty eight dollars over the 2021 2022 budget all those in favor please raise your hand it is six in favor and he opposed one available [Music] it was thank you man uh it was a motion by tim seconded by samantha all those in favor it is unanimous this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone for sticking around good evening