001the upcoming budget before we get into it mr zenski could have a real call for quorum please here thank you carol i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance welcome everyone i i thank our teachers administrators out there for staying late today at work and come out to this very uh invigorating which typically is i'm being not being sarcastic but i know i know we have a missing budget presentation so thank you uh before we actually get the actual presentation if there's anyone from the audience that would like to address the board of ed we're happy to hear from you now okay that being said dr sullin uh the presentation is all yours and the vincent's uh the board can stay up here we can watch from back of the screen something we
002don't like you folks but we have a binder we're going to have a lot of questions so we'll be watching as long as you are so no i just kind of went to sleep for a second okay thank you very much mr paragini i want to echo your sentiments and welcome our friends and administrators who are here this evening especially good looking crowd this evening for our board meeting appreciate you guys coming out i want to also take this opportunity to thank them our administrative team as well as our other central office administrators and teachers and countless others who've been part of this budget preparation process uh i'd be remiss if i didn't single out mr massiana who spends countless hours working through numbers reports and uh then doing it again and again in order
003for us to reach this place tonight uh of course he does that with his team led with by uh executive assistant heather santi our finance director greg gibbons uh i also want to thank my executive assistant carol jaczynski as well as our assistant superintendent marlene solano and pps director robin ann carey who i know you'll look forward to hearing from later in this process for their work it really is a team effort to come up with this budget for the school year it's also a very fluid process right from the outset is we're continually processing new information and considering what the needs of our students are as well as the changes that occur in our budget environment within the state within the district and so this process will remain fluid all the way until you
004ultimately adopt a budget in the late spring for the 22-23 school year so with that understanding in mind i'm excited to kick it off and talk about what we provide through our budget this just kind of gives a perspective for the board and community as to what it is that we do with this budget and why it is so comprehensive uh we're not just providing instruction to our 4200 plus students of course that's a critical component but we do so much more and more responsible for so much more including the mental health nutrition medical care uh the health services athletics and music and arts and activities transportation um so there really is uh this is really a comprehensive process and a rollout because we do so much and we're responsible for so much for our
005students and you know really that's it that's why we provide this work our students are at the heart of what we do and we try and keep them at the center of this process so board member responsibility i you know we only go through this process once a year so i like to try and cover this annually and this is dictated by connecticut general statutes that indicate that board members are responsible of course for providing adequate educational materials but also equitable allocation among schools and proper maintenance of facilities in a safe setting it's pretty generic and pretty um pretty light in terms of the definition and i see my responsibility is to collaborate with our district leaders and design a fiscally responsible budget that ensures equitable and developmentally appropriate educational experiences between our schools of
006course a safe and clean learning environment fulfilling all statutory obligations but ultimately advancing your goals our community goals as a board of education as you know we established complex thinking and social emotional learning those are the crossroads of what we try and do every day in our school system to develop our skills for our student skills for complex thinking and social emotional learning and i don't know that there's ever been a time where that's more critical of course we are reviewing our goals through the course of this year and in looking at making adjustments but reflecting on social emotional learning when you read those bullet points that uh reflect the growth that students make with strong social emotional skills it's really paramount paramount during the course of the pandemic here that students have these skills
007and certainly that exists beyond the pandemic as well i love this quote from justin trudeau i use it regularly that the pace of change has never been this fast yet it will never be this slow again and he said that at the world economic forum back at the turn of of 2018 in january of 2018 and you think about how much change has occurred in the world in the four years subsequent to those remarks and it's it's really mind-boggling and so when we think about developing students as complex thinkers we want to instill in them the creativity the capacity to solve problems synthesize and evaluate information from different sources and again i don't know that there's ever been a time where that's more critical so the budget environment you know we don't do this in
008a vacuum there are a lot of factors that influence the development of our budget internally we have things like student enrollment contractual uh relationships with both our employees and vendors uh of course special education we're well aware of our aging facilities medical benefits are a critical issue externally this year we don't have to be as concerned with the state of the state because we're in the second year of a biennial budget so the numbers that we have are are static it's always much more difficult when we don't know the money that we're going to be getting from the state so at least that's a in a good place but those three items in red are really critical factors in our you know current work and certainly the budget moving forward and we're going to talk
009in greater detail about those a little bit of a retrospective over the last six years our budget uh average increase has been 1.51 per year and you know we've we've done a great job i think as a school system focusing on what's most important which has allowed us to continue to strive and make great gains while um you know managing a rather uh comparative fiscally uh tight budget but i think we we walk that line really well as we should so you know just looking back uh for 2021 which is the most recent data the connecticut per pupil expenditure on average was twenty thousand seven hundred and seven dollars and cheshire's per pupil expenditure as you see is eighteen thousand one fifty six when you multiply that difference twenty five fifty one by our number
010of students our budget would have to increase by 10 million dollars in order to reach the state average at the durgby level our budget would increase by 5 million over the average durgby schools which is communities that are similar demographically to cheshire so i think what this reflects is that we do a tremendous job being focused in how we spend our money and delivering great results for an incredible value over those last six years when we've seen the the 1.5 percent budget increases there were spending management strategies that we employed obviously we want to maintain our focus on social emotional learning and complex thinking but in order to do so we had to find other ways to reduce expenditures and we used some of these things that are redlined which are no longer available to
011us where we have grown is through the use of shared services we hate to go to participation fees which we haven't raised in several years but this year in particular we've we've really worked hard to secure competitive grants of course you know we're going to receive certain grants from the state educational cost sharing for example but this what i'm speaking to here is are going out and seeking out resources in order to improve the quality of experience for our kids and staff in the community and we've done a great job of that and i know vin will elaborate on that as we go on next week and into the future i talked about enrollment being a key driver in this budget and i think this slide really says it all the slide in the upper
012left hand corner illustrates the last 10 years a rather precipitous decline in enrollment the slide in the bottom is the forecast for the next 10 years which is obviously steep growth we've hit the bottom of the trough that trough is behind us we are we are climbing uh and and growing significantly and i'll elaborate on that for you here the top line is our projected enrollment for this current year based on birth rates that we received from new england school development council our pre-k 12 projection for this year was 41.52 on october 1st we were at 41.45 already almost you know 100 more students than were projected for the year the projection for next year is 41.50 well we're almost there already and we know that the birth rates are increasing i don't think it's
013really far-fetched for us to you know exceed that 41.50 by a big stretch not only because of birth rates which we have actual data on but because of significant development that's occurring within our community i saw just another um housing development approved on coleman road today in the newspaper so we recognize that you know as i i've said it numerous times people don't move here for the night life and so when we're building these you know large homes that are multi-bedroom homes we can anticipate that that's certainly going to impact our enrollment so our october 1st enrollment our projected enrollment and again to no surprise our current enrollment absent students who participate in open choice is already in excess of our projected enrollment for next year so obviously is those of us here everyone in
014this room has a hand in the budget process is we plan for that it's something that we need to be aware of sensitive to and recognize that we're going to need to make some adjustments to accommodate this newfound growth this just provides greater detail on the [Music] grade by grade enrollment which i appreciate is nearly impossible to read but it's a great time for me to share that this presentation will be on our website uh tomorrow if not sooner and that those of you who have a packet or a budget book this sort of information is in there which is a little bit easier to read so i talked about really those two key drivers of our budget this year one being enrollment growth the other being medical benefits so within last year's budget process
015as you'll recall the council you know we worked collaboratively that with them reduced our operating budget by 1.5 uh to 1.5 million that is and they infused one and a half million of federal money into that to kind of uh stabilize tax growth well our current reserve sits at 1.73 months of claims is those of you who are who are more seasoned on the board recognize we we like to be at least between one and a half and and three at the least so our budget is it's being presented tonight infuses another 1.5 million dollars basically and covers future claim projections i want it to be clear that that money does not do anything to the reserve so if we matched exactly i mean again this is all forecasted you can't know it for sure
016but if the claims came in exactly as we have them budgeted at the end of next year our reserve would still be 1.73 the the budget here does nothing to bolster that reserve and when i talked about this being a fluid process you know we the 1.73 is based on claims through november and it's not i mean there are many months left before we finalize budget it could be significantly different by the time we get to the spring but that's where we stand right now we are also working with the town to unify a protocol around metal medical benefit management and so i talked about funding that account on par with what the projection for claims will be and then you know perhaps building a pool off of that so um the finance committee of
017the council is taking that item up and so i can anticipate in the near future that we will be closer to finalizing what we will be committing to i i hope as a community i may have said this 17 times already but in case you missed it climbing enrollment and medical benefits are the key drivers in this budget and you'll see momentarily just how much so so we start this process soliciting feedback from you know the various talented educators in our school system and that funnels up to our administrative team who makes recommendations and requests at the end of that process tempering those requests we were at a 7.62 budget increase so i'll go back to what i said earlier about my responsibility to ensure we put forth a financially responsible budget i just didn't
018feel like 7.6 was a financially responsible budget i also uh spent a lot of time reflecting on the the idea that you know we we could do take numerous approaches to this budget um i didn't feel particularly under the circumstances with growing in enrollment and the fact that our students are coming off of two plus years where their lives have really been upended by the pandemic that cutting services would make a lot of sense in that scenario without being substantially detrimental to our community so i'm left with maintain our services as is we could always try and move forward a bit and restore services places perhaps we've cut or flatlined in the past or ultimately advance with new programming um ultimately it felt it was most responsible to maintain our services and within that you
019can see this breakdown that our last year's current this current budget is 77 million roughly the recommendation is to go to 81 million in that 4 million dollar increase 2.2 million of that is exclusively medical benefits all other contractual increases amount to 1.8 million ultimately our budget without mental medical benefits is 2.44 is presented i mean that's a pretty responsible budget the the medical benefit increases is really hitting us and frankly with all other increases that includes a significant number of positions that we have to add to maintain class sizes where they are in terms of ratios so we have to obviously when our enrollment grows to maintain the ratio we have to add staff i when i first started engaging in the budget process many years ago i would always hear not necessarily within
020this room but more broadly that oh you know the it's just superintendent rubber stamps the requests the the board ultimately shoot rubber stamps the superintendent's request and i think this slide is illustrative of the fact that there are certainly places that this body the board has even approved in the past that we just haven't been able to to ultimately finalize and so not certainly not everything uh and in this case this year really nothing gets added in um because again we're trying to sustain a something that's financially responsible so again we're maintaining class size special ed services discretionary accounts are flat uh as you'll see soon in spite of our enrollment increases it's it really just boils down to that medical benefits um there was a minor increase i mean i think moderate is probably
021a little generous uh with respect to maintenance and i'll illustrate that momentarily here this pie chart really says it all contractual and medical benefit increases one hundred and eleven thousand on an 80 million dollar budget uh is dedicated to restoring services with maintenance um so you know there's it's really rather straightforward on my part the recommended budget um where that where those requests come from we are a very labor-intensive business and we have responsible ratios as we work between our students and staff and you know we this is where the money gets spent basically in a school system and we've done a lot over the years to hold lines around you know support services and our other areas that that aren't based in ratios and and directly meeting the needs of kids and so here's
022where we stand the line items of that have changed by a hundred thousand dollars or more are the things that basically i've already talked about the teacher contractual increase next year is 1.23 on a general wage increase and that's that's uh maybe even south to modest and yet our that increase is 26 percent of our overall increase really because we're adding staff to maintain the ratios that we've had our medical benefits uh that's obviously the lion's share 54 of our overall increase so our increase by category you know as i talked about 55 percent dedicated to medical benefits you kind of see where other areas fall instructional supplies one percent support services two percent maintenance four percent these other areas are seeing you know certainly benefits of the most substantial increase over this year that's
023that's right there is driving our budget so our enrollment um and how does this play out in terms of our our students per teacher in our class size uh for next year this is the elementary k through six level if you bear with me for a second because that's uh even to find a font for me to read from here yes i am 18.7 this year and 18.9 next year now i i just wanna indicate on that and thank you vin for being my eyes there eighteen point nine percent next year is predicated on our enrollment projection as you know that's five students beyond what we currently have i wouldn't be shocked to see that in by the end of next month that we've eclipsed that number already and when i say this is a
024fluid process that's part of what i mean you know that come april and we'll even have a better better sense of of where that lies this slide also includes our 7th and 8th grade class sizes i highlighted the 26.3 because with our enrollment and our staffing because we had reduced staff at the middle school about three years ago the 26.3 is the highest grade seven or eight class size average we've had in either grade in seven years it's not wildly different um not wildly beyond where we were but it's relevant and i i i would be remiss if i didn't point that out um again it might be a place of concern as we start next year but we adjust budgets i mean certainly in the past we've hired people going into the school year
025based on changes in enrollment it just means we have to make adjustments in other places as part of managing the finances and why we have vin he's so good at that cps class size trend data this illustrates the seventh eighth in elementary grades as i indicated the uh 26.3 is the highest that we've had in the middle school over the last actually it's the last decade not just the last seven years but at the elementary grade 18.9 is also the highest we've had in a decade so if there's a question about you know is this budget inflated is it too much i you know without going beyond record highs where we already are uh you know there's a hard it's hard pressed to squeeze more out of it to be honest with you treasure high
026school staffing students for gen ed teacher this is the red there to the right of your screen two-thirds of the way in is cheshire high school and this is student per certified teacher it's a little bit of skew because of the fact that you know with counselors other staff that there are people that calculate into this but this is apples to apples against all the other durgby high schools uh and you'll see we're 14th out of 21 in dirk b in terms of students per teacher and this is in a lot of respects intentional for those of you who've been on the board for a bit uh and remember that we negotiated a contract with the teachers union i i if we weren't one of only a couple i mean we may have been one
027of a couple but i think we were the only high school in connecticut that had six teachers teaching six classes and so that was going to be a significant leverage point in negotiations in rather than dramatically increasing salaries you know we ultimately decided it was better for kids and better for our community to adjust that to five classes and we're slowly phasing that in this chair was the first of three years where we're doing that and that was an intentional decision on the part of the you know the leadership in our community because we knew that with enrollment adjusting we could without [Music] and we're successfully doing that but again because we're engaging in that process this isn't a place where i could say all right well let's just maybe we can make reductions there
028so ultimately you know looking at the enrollment factors this is what has been baked into the budget with respect we have to add a teacher at chapman highland and norton to accommodate that in order to deliver our music curriculum when you know marlene and her team evaluated our specials teachers at the elementary level realized that we need to add a half music position at that level in order to address the curricular needs there um you know thankfully creatively places like art and and pe they don't we were able to work through that but music unfortunately we're we're too lean to be able to accommodate the additional number of sections we have at darcy uh we're seeing an uptick in demand there with the increase in in people in our community uh for birth to three
029support the good news is there that uh that expenditure uh we all of that is billable hours so we get reimbursed and so really that should be a flat cost to us and then ultimately uh the last item i have there is a coordinator and evaluator for the transition programs which you know i know a lot of you are familiar with our quinnipiac program and some of our other post-secondary programming this the law the interpretation of the law where we provide services to 21 has recently changed so you know typically a student that's in a transition program might leave cheshire high at 19 and then we provide additional transition services as required by law until they were 21. pushing that now to 22 the interpretational lies change that we have to provide those services to
030the age of their their 22nd birth that's the equivalent of increasing our enrollment in that program by 33 by adding another year so the demand has certainly increased there um and the the need is is significant our projected revenue revenues are um money that flows into the community as a result of education and goes in our the way our community uh system is set up this money goes to the town so the any revenue that is generated through these sources goes to the town they consider this in our budget process to the tune of about 10 and a half million dollars next year is the forecast we have increased our smart start line here as we've seen significant growth there we're in a great place we're doing a great job i'll talk a little bit
031about that later but that's a increased revenue line item for us of course we also have covid grant funding uh esser and sr1 and uh coronavirus release relief fund are items that were expended through the last year and uh as vinid pointed out you know our shift we've really shifted our focus away from just protective measures mitigation measures in those you know first two grants i know you'll recall our bounce forward plan where we really focus on supporting students and addressing learning loss and away from exclusively really health and safety initially to addressing that learning loss the trick in this is that you know the money that we were um this year has been compromised i'm not to think that at the end of the summer i felt like we're turning the corner we're kind
032of we're going to kind of be through this and i i know our administrative team will attest to the fact it's anything but um it's become incredibly more difficult the omicron variant has really been a significant challenge for society and certainly in education as well this year we weren't necessarily intending on it but we budgeted to protect ourselves three hundred thousand dollars this fall in covid mitigation strategies predominantly tents and clean cleaning services so you know as much as we budget these things we really have to be flexible to be able to make changes i mentioned the bounce forward plan these are grant uh funded or grant reimbursed positions and you know so these are things that we have this current year and into next year and so you know just taking a a snapshot
033of derrick b how do we compare to our peers uh i shared earlier that you know on it i'm looking at the per pupil expenditure we'd have to elevate our budget by 5 million dollars to be in the middle of that pack and i think what we do is deliver in our community and a tremendous value and that starts with our board leadership and uh trickles down certainly the the people in the room tonight have an incredible influence on that success and i'm really proud of them and the job that they do record high student achievement sustained over the course of several years now among the best in connecticut which makes us among the best nationally we have multiple elementary schools of distinction including a national blue ribbon school just recently uh we're one of
034the top communities in america for music our students are very invested in their school at cheshire high and 93 plus participating in extracurricular activities that's um and they do it pretty successfully they demonstrate tremendous sportsmanship winning in character we we basically win the ciac michael's cup recognition on an almost annual basis um i look back through the last several years and like i think going back 10 years maybe we didn't win it once and it's not offered to many districts like 15 to 19 of the 166 so kudos to our our high school students in the our athletic department there highland was named the first connecticut elementary school as a special olympics champion school which is really awesome uh one of the top best buddy buddies chapters in the country we have won the national
035award but also the connecticut award and i think that speaks to the well-rounded nature of our focus here in the school system and then the breaking news as of today i know some of the board probably can't see kim's smile through her mask or she's the one levitating off the chair in joy today because our darcy preschool program received the national association for the education of young children accreditation today so congratulations to you and your team kim that's great great stuff and uh shout out to our friend chris santi their graduate last year a little picture so i do want to remind the community i i know that the people in this room certainly embrace and understand this but an investment in our school system is an investment in cheshire i you'll probably hear me
036say that a gazillion times between now and hopefully when we go to referendum on school modernization but our budget is is one facet of that invest investment and that's not me saying it it's not my suggestion it's research based and you know half the home buying population is willing to pay more than their intended budget to get into the right school district and more than half would give up other amenities by providing our community with one of the best educational experiences in connecticut i would argue the nation we're providing home prices so that when you sell your house regardless if you have no kids or 14 kids and you move out of cheshire you're more likely to get top dollar for your home uh under those circumstances so it's not just an investment in our
037kids which is critically important obviously but it's it's an investment in the whole community so you know really there are three elements of that investment as i see it obviously the operational budget as we discuss it tonight capital budget is vin will address later on because if you recall the town has adjusted we used to do the capital budget over the summer we're now doing that as part of this budget process and then as i mentioned school modernization so the key takeaways i promise this will be the last time you hear me say it tonight but have you heard that climbing enrollment and medical benefits are drivers of this uh budget increase you may have heard that we are uh recommending funding at the projected rate as a strategy employed in concert with the town
038when it comes to medical benefits and so you know that's a recommendation um certainly far from a requirement it's something that i think our our town leaders you and the the council will hopefully work through and and make it easier on everybody to at least have a game plan around medical benefits many years we've kind of vacillated on how we're going to tackle that so the remaining 45 percent of the budget increase is really grounded in preserving current service levels and what i mean by that is you know ratios staffing ratios um when you look through our line items and our budget you'll see that where it says you know 2023 increase over 2020 uh 2122 it's zero um really because going back to that fiscal responsibility i really i really couldn't justify increasing those
039lines knowing the demands we have for staffing and the number where the number already was so again we're an outstanding value i think for our community i'm really proud of the job our our kids have done our parents and our certainly our staff to find such success and not having to spend the additional five million dollars to get there uh and then you know uh i i didn't think certainly not on march 19 2020 or march 13 2020 that i'd be talking about kovid today but i didn't think that we'd be talking about kobit today on august 1st 2021 either but the reality is it's still here and it's impacting our kids and our community and our everybody's well-being and and as such i talked about all the services we provide at the outset uh
040we really have to be conscious of that so again you know i talked about the various players that uh lead to our success in the cheshire public school system i just want to take again another opportunity to express our gratitude for our parent involvement uh and the way that they support our staff and our students our community support obviously is is uh tremendous and it'll be called upon not just through this budget process but through school modernization our students are phenomenal and they bring a lot of joy to our lives and we're so incredibly proud of the success that they've had uh through their commitment hard work and and character but you know at the heart of that is also our education team that's our everybody who works in the cheshire public school system plays
041a critical role in in our success and we're so proud of the job and appreciate the job that they do to to get us to where we are today so the much awaited i know you're excited to put these in your calendar and pen uh would not miss this uh excitement um on january 18th and 20th next week actually we have decided to move those meetings to virtual given the influence that uh kovit has had additionally we find that um you know on the broadcast there that the audio is great we've been able to be uh quite successful shout out to mike salamini and his his work there to to help us with those um the subsequent meetings the 25th and thereafter the locations of that will be determined really on a week by week
042basis so with that i think that wraps up my presentation officially and i will certainly pass it off to any questions from the board thank you for your attention through all of that for the record i did ask our administrators to hold their applause so that they don't embarrass me before that's that's why i'm sure you're wondering so thank you for that no oh no please guys so uh before i turn over to the board with some questions dr sullin i you know i know it's i know it's more than just you and everyone in this room uh mr massiana and marlene and his staff and carol thank you for preparing this i know it's not an easy process especially with the evolving experience last few years with both financial and covert hardship uh but
043dr sullin i i i this is my personal opinion i appreciate the fact that you've been uh very financially um responsible in preparing every budget not just this one i am a little not disappointed but i see that you know we're not advancing anything and i understand your rationale i guess what i would look for in the budget workshops is what would advancing look like in a budget for you next fiscal year if it's just one thing or two things or two three items that you know you think the board should look at i'd love to hear that uh because and learning around this past year or two i don't recall ever receiving requests from you or your team saying hey we were looking at doing more languages elementor next year or some other project
044so loving what those things are that if you didn't have a limit next year and something that you feel that your staff could do with appropriate staffing laws etc what is that yeah i i first of all i just want to express how much i appreciate you sharing that and so when i talk about community sport on that one of the second to last slide there this is exactly what i'm talking about that it would be really easy to not ask that question uh but you did and that really is uh at the heart of what i what i reference with community support here that there is a curiosity there is a question and maybe we can creatively make that happen so you know i'll talk to our team about you know you saw a
045bit of a menu up there but um perhaps a more prioritized list for you well those features some of those were positions the board wanted to see in past budgets right that right haven't happened yet but you know i guess it'd be good for the community to know not just the board what advancing would look like right um you know based on some priorities i'm not saying it's going to happen but it's important because we you know always say oh we're not spending enough to advance but advance what i think community should know some of the things that if it can't be done the next fiscal year in coming years she should plan for it so i just want to but i appreciate you raising the question i understand you know look at that online
046number why you do what you did so sure so thank you i know it's not an easy question so that's what i wanted to say i just turn over board members with any comments first of all thank you for that and i i would just like to extend a huge thank you to your administrative staff and and all those who showed up tonight with their masks on we really do appreciate seeing you at the meetings and and we do acknowledge your work in all of this and putting a budget together every year so thank you and uh also jeff i appreciate you um staying on message with the the two driving factors for this budget this year and i just wanted to also say that i agree with tony and in fact i think tony
047just took my words from last budget year about you know as a school district we really do need to always be thinking about how we're going to advance our um educational objectives so i like tony would like to see some of those things and and prioritizing them is is really great as well so sure thank you for tonight's presentation thanks a lot i appreciate that and but i i just want to clarify when i said maybe advance is not the right choice of language because um i know that you know we've made tremendous advances in the last two years during covet um ironically the the jargon that is used for what we are doing is called acceleration and we talk about advancement acceleration um and i think our staff and our uh you know our
048teachers our administrative spent a lot of time working on advancing our school system and i think that's why we were successful last year marlene has her kevin they've worked incredibly hard to advance our school system we've definitely done advancement maybe the right term would be enhancement um because i know that you know we've also used our grant money to enhance and in advance so um i will definitely you know go back with our team and look at a prioritized list but i don't want to leave here with leave the message i know you guys appreciate it because you know the day-to-day but anybody watching i don't want them to think that well geez we haven't done anything to advance in the last couple of years because that really would is far from the case no
049i appreciate that and uh i didn't mean to make it no no i know you're not sure but i you know i know there's a broader audience too but i just want to make sure that that isn't misconstrued thank you uh mr dr solon uh just like to say again uh thank you and your staff for putting together this budget we know it's all incredibly complicated and i look forward to going through this entire thing i guess two questions is um firstly it's frustrating to see that we're still having the medical benefit trust fund problem and i hope that we'll be able to work with the town to be able to to come up with a solution so this um problem can be solved maybe even this year so that we don't have to worry
050about that going into the future because i mean that is a huge huge number for this budget yeah um secondly i know um at least from attending uh several conferences this year that there was a stress on using technology for i believe it's synchronous learning if uh if i recall i was wondering if there was anything built in here to for training for teachers or for um uh purchases of additional technology to kind of uh bolster what we already have um are you aware of anything yeah so first of all i know that some people would say i look forward to going through the budget book as a turn of phrase you you could not be more sincere and i appreciate that about you that you really are looking forward to the budget book but
051anyway um with respect to technology our staff had uh you know thrown into the fire course over the course of at least three months on how to engage in remote learning and then last year the full year engaging in synchronous learning they have those skills they possess those skills we are definitely advancing technology when i reference those competitive grants vin's going to elaborate on some of the really awesome stuff that we're able to provide uh in next year uh we're really looking forward to sharing that with you so absolutely stay tuned just like to say thank you to you and van and everyone here for putting this together i know it's not an easy task um i was just our first time seeing this tonight i do have to say i'm not surprised with the
052uh increase because of the amount of new students that we coming on the heels of the planet committee meeting the other night so look forward going through this line by line not as much as adam but um this is our first of several several sessions so uh i'll save my comments and questions appreciate your honesty yeah absolutely so oh stan um i want to thank everybody all you guys and jeff marlene and then thank you so much for what i know we're very long nights and long weekends and um it's not easy to put together these numbers like adam i am just kind of stumped by the whole medical benefit um number and i guess i'm getting a little angry about it too and i think maybe i'm sorry but we one of the things
053that i would like to go into when we finally get here is why are we still in this position we have been asking for an examination of the formulas and um the methods and and we're still every month coming up short and i'm just going to say it here maybe it's just time to get a little bit more forceful and share the risk a little bit more with our uh underwriters something but this this can't go on because it's taking away from the classroom and it's just not right so um you know that's that's one of my big concerns and um the only one i guess i'm not as enthusiastic either about it is atomos but being on the budget committee we're in so but thanks you guys thank you faith you know i would
054just say with with respect to our medical benefits this year this really was a calculated decision last year to in essence smooth the tax increase but you know with the infusion of that federal money and maybe something like that is available again this year i i don't know that's something that we're going to have to talk to the town about but i fully agree with you and we've been pursuing with the town a more uniform process in management of the medical benefits account because this isn't because of a dramatic increase in our medical claims as much as it is a calculated decision to smooth tax rates last year so we definitely need to have a long-term strategy you know i know vin and myself and jim jascott sean and you know we've been working with
055that the town council should take that or the finance committee of the council will be taking that up let's hope that we have perhaps at least a proposal on the table if not a full resolution by the time that we all have to decide on a board of ed budget because i agree that you know this isn't sustainable adam just you know express the frustration with it i appreciate your frustration we've lived it as well so uh i'm hopeful that we can get there soon i just want to clarify i'm not putting this on those who are making the claims but i i oh no no i just this is um yeah you know i don't know if it's the underwriter who who is where we're missing the boat that's my concern it's more on
056the administrative end is nothing to do right yeah i appreciate that okay so so just turn understand a second just to clarify so i get there's a gimmick so to speak that you know you tap into the medical reserve to offset things in the budget which you know we're not going to do anymore but the other given it too is the grant because in a way that's same thing it's yes we all use it to uh ease into some increases that's going to be gone yeah so it's not just funding the medical reserve but really digging into why our claims went from seven eight hundred thousand a month projected to nine a million a million one a million two and no matter what we do the trust fund the that other part of it and
057i don't know you know if we're working together with the the town and claims experience and with our um underwriter citizen but that's the other part too i'm curious about is the actual claims themselves well i'm happy to share with you then that um our underwriting service usi will have a representative tom qualtric is our representative who works with us and vin already secured him for an upcoming meet is that tuesday or thursday tuesday night yeah so he'll be with us tuesday hopefully that'll provide some greater insight for everybody about you know where we are at least with respect to the claims process i think the finance process is one thing but you said the claims it's multi-headed yeah exactly i actually had similar comments regarding the medical and i'm asking as a rookie right
058now um just to kind of give me the background and i hear what you're saying but i do think i still have that question of why are we still here and what is our long-term strategy um and so if you're saying that he's the representative will come and present to us tuesday great my second um ask is i know you added a lot of positions would we be able to get roles and responsibilities justifying why what those positions would cover and what would they alleviate from existing teachers or staff complements now sure that's pretty straightforward actually the first three positions that were listed were all classroom teacher positions at the elementary school to address enrollment enrollment the fourth one that was listed off memory as a half-time music teacher again connected to the enrollment so
059we have x number of music teachers who deliver the music curriculum across k through 6. the number of you know k-6 students has risen significantly we've had to add we add more sections of of k through six so we need more a little bit more music staff to be able to cover that the next halftime position there is a birth to three uh teacher half time that's because of demand for birth to three services in our community we're one of the few districts maybe even the only only that is a state contracted birth to three service provider we do that because we realize that those students with the most intensive needs in our community could only benefit tremendously by us providing that service we do that and build the state it's all billable hours that
060halftime position is a position that we know based on demand right now real time that we will recoup that money based on the demand and the service that will provide the last position was the position of transition coordinator evaluator given the fact that the state increased the age limit there we have that many more students engaged in that process now rob and anne carey our you know pps director will be giving a presentation about the special ed element of the budget it's a pretty significant portion of our budget so i'm sure she will address that piece for you there but really i mean this is not alleviating responsibilities from anybody else it's it's keeping the class size ratio even though it's the highest in a decade as close as we can to what we currently
061have by adding those positions at the three elementary teachers great i just want as we move along this process um kind of little chunks of clarifying of if robin's going to do that later that's that's wonderful as well too um i thought i saw a 912 but that you're referring the 912 coordinator as to the transitional position i don't have the powerpoint on there's a um yeah there's a list of what if wish wish list basically that wish list but things that we think would enhance the programming and i think that's what tony's asking okay and the others are asking um you know can you elaborate on those needs and then i you know definitely we can we can put that forth later so i think you're asking the same thing with maybe the misconception
062that those were included in our budget they are not none of those things are included those would allow us to accelerate in my opinion okay all right thank you sure tim thanks tony so our budget's around 80 million dollars correct proposed budget that includes about 10 million dollars of ecs funding the education cost sharing formula the money we get from the state with regard to that formula does it incorporate the number of students so the first of all the ecs formula that 10 million dollars is not we're not spending 90 million but getting 10 million from the state sure no i just want to clarify for everybody we're spending 80 million and what we saw in revenue goes back to the town so it's a net of 70 as they calculated the ecs calculation we
063were having this debate earlier today or at least discussion it wasn't really a debate but um the we'll provide you with the ecs formula uh reflects but it's not necessarily a student count driven formula because i was hopeful that you know geez with our increased enrollment is there anywhere where we get more money as a result of that and it's not through the ecs formula that's driven by you know grand list and um you know community wealth and it's not necessarily to our knowledge driven by student but like i said i will get you that for tuesday there will be a myriad of questions that come up over the course of this process that you know we do our best to try and catalog every single one of them and be able to you know
064get that back to you as quickly as possible and i'll definitely get you the ecs formula it doesn't sound logical i'm completely baffled by that i honestly thought the answer was gonna be yes of course it does tim right like you know but um we're gonna explore that a little further and get it back because like i said we were having just like what 5 30 this afternoon that sort of debate we're pretty sure it doesn't but we will look into it yeah sure and and i guess the the key thing what i was thinking would be critical is what's the measurement date i know you measure for a lot of your records you do october first first yeah i mean if that's a rolling target you're already above your what your two your projected
065enrollment we're above that for two years from now if i read this correctly yeah that projected enrollment it was the nasdaq projected enrollment that would throw it out you know ten years but um for next year's projected nasdaq enrollment we're five students short of next year's projection today okay and you know scott jeffrey is like the ticker he tells me every day when when the enrollment comes out we got five new kids today and you know they broke 800 students at highland for the first time in a long time um right after the holiday so you know again i wouldn't be shocked to see us break that projection at the end of this month and so on october 1 next year would be the new state calculation and i understand it the state can't be
066just taking random days from everybody on october 1 what's everybody's enrollment and that's how they decide on a lot of stuff but um yeah we'll get you more information on the ecs grant thank you and just the one other point terms of medical benefits if there's anything that we could get that relates us to other towns i mean there's got to be other towns that are in a similar situation and just curious to see as a benchmark and when i say similar i you know um total population faculty and staff similar ages similar whatever it might be however it's defined by the actuaries i just wonder if it's normal what we're experiencing right here right now the difficulty in doing a comparison is that every every plan is going to be different but tom kwalchek
067represents many towns in addition to cheshire so you know i'll ask kevin yeah i mean i get it there's there's a ton of details that can throw everything off but in a macro picture i'm thinking there's got to be some sort of trends out there where we're either in line with it or not and that's what i'm curious about i mean some of the information that we get from cigna shows that our plans are not running out of norm as a total town and quarterback of mine you know there's two things there's two factors i know we're going to go through a lot of detail sure tonight it's one we've not been funding to the expected claims level right last year we funded 800 000 a month or so we knew our claims expectation was
068900 000 they're coming in above that so part of the gap that is this 2.2 million is because we underfunded last year so if you want to fund up this year you have to make that up plus your expected increase in actual claims so but again a good portion of the presentation tuesday night will be the benefits medical benefits in particular so i'll ask tom if he could bring whatever information he has and i'll pull some of the data from that as well okay yeah and i am interested in that in terms of uh what you were saying about the underfunding over funding anything like that but it's really the not the 800 that we funded with the 900 expectation but our 900 expectation against other towns anyway thank you sorry dr solomon i just
069i i guess what i'm trying to get out of my previous question was your what-if wish list i was hoping to kind of see more of um staff that would impact students meaning you know we have learning loss it our kids haven't all of a sudden caught up they're still learning loss and so going forward you know what are we doing to provide any additional services and support to accelerate our kiddos because the wish list doesn't seem to have those types of staff members that will do that well i will send you our bounce forward plan from last year which really addresses that component of it thank you i think that's it dr song thank you guys thank you appreciate your time and attention so before i move to during the meeting just uh i'm
070not going to be the entire budget meeting schedule but uh next week january 18th at 7 pm is um start a public budget review uh with a review of accounts mystery accounts that's led by the finance committee uh and usually the whole board is there to see uh the detailed presentations and plenty of q a there on january 20th at 7 30 p.m is a boarvat business meeting january 27th we continue the public budget review uh on january 27th we also have some responses to the superintendent's budget from the board depending on how things go and then if necessary in february third uh if everybody's ready we'll have a special meeting in the board of ed to adopt the budget we essentially need a key frame to date but we must move a budget over
071to the town manager is about usually by february 15th yeah so so the meetings may be added on as we go along but we'll see that being said uh they have a motion to adjourn a meeting uh faith seconded by sam all those in favor thank you to meetings adjourn thank you