001good evening everyone call this finance committee finance committee meeting of a whole of the whole to order um mrs jojenski to have a role please mr griffith here is him here is harrigan mr martelly here mr genie here mr wayne this is jeremy [Music] i pledge to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all good um so we're here to discuss um uh potential uh budget adjustments for the money that we have received from the town council um i guess i'll hand it over yeah thank you very much mr grippo um so if you recall i mean we've got to get the wayback machine for this but back in january the board of education approved the
002budget of 78 million 487 that we would request of the town council obviously covid uh dramatically changed the pace and that we went through the budget process as a town as well as federal money and at the end of the day last it was may 27th i believe the town council finalized and adopted a budget for the board of education of 77 million 152 000 and or 1052. excuse me 77 million 1052 that's a reduction of 2.407 126 or 3 percent however there was an addition to our budget uh to offset the reductions are ought to help help offset the medical benefit account line um so what we're going to do tonight you know is to look at the reductions along each line item and adopt hopefully a budget that you know we can set
003for the 21 22 fiscal year check the question so is the reduction in 1.486 million but the net increase is 2.49 correct the numbers all the way to the right on the spreadsheet you have that's the amount of the reduction okay 1.486 million is the total net reduction because um money was added in about about a million dollars to the medical benefits line so in the uh and you see in the handout and also on the board we have initially our certified salaries line in our budget we had reduced that by 280 000 reflective of the seven teacher retirements uh we recently received an eighth and we're going to talk a little bit about how that how do we factor that into our budget in a in a moment but for is as of right
004now we have a 280 000 reduction in the certified salary line the non-certified line including instructional assistance managers etc we are maintaining or recommending the debt area b maintained as was adopted by the board back in january so as we get into medical benefits and this is where things get a little bit trickier in the sense that we're looking at uh a subtraction of the medical benefits line of 1 37 542 the 37 542 was the result of stop loss renewal so the cost that we pay to have insurance that when claims come in after a certain cost we have insurance so that we don't pay the entire claim it caps it at a certain point and we don't have to pay beyond that and there's a cost for that insurance the quote for that
005insurance was 37.5 less than was anticipated so that's where we pick up savings there the town council is making a direct contribution of 1.5 million to the medical reserve fund so it increases our fund basically on a net basis of um half a million dollars over what we started with can we get that right then you do but a million 1.5 million is outside of the operating budget it's going directly to the medical benefits reserve so we do have to reduce this line right by that recommended million dollars and this is where you know it gets a little bit hairy that money is being funded with federal money coming into the town we reduced that line by a million dollars we weren't padding that account to build up our reserve we were just covering the
006benefits so as it stands at the end of this year barring substantial savings like if we get very good luck i mean it might not be an issue if we just basically have claims as planned there will be a bit of a cliff there for the following year but the point is we have budgeted the account to meet the claims up now reserve funds being funded directly so we'll need to carry a million dollars so we're still trying to stay with claims right a different way the point is you're still getting you keep getting those 1.1 million dollar claim once then you know and then reserves getting low we'll have a discussion exactly right yeah yeah um there was uh a pickup in the medical benefits line of 130 0549 based on uh an update
007on the pension and retirement fund bind you on yeah that actually we have to fund more than we originally budgeted to the pension line oh excuse me so that actually works against what we're doing but we're accounting for it so the 130 0549 that's reflected on the sheet we have to add additional funds into the pension retirement line that's based on the actuarial recommendations that we receive when we prepared our budget we used an estimate we got the actuarial recommendation post our preparation of the budget but before the council finalized there um so for the the trust fund itself with the infusion of 1.5 million and if i recall we currently had a balance of about 900 000 or so close to 10 million okay all right um so as of july 1 we will
008have a trust fund balance of two and a half million dollars in there but our contribution rate will be reduced right you were you talked about 825 000 i think in our last finance meeting correct so that's what we're budging for right now we budgeted 900 000. we need 900 000 but this budget allows us to fund 825 so if claims come in as exactly as expected at 900 000 we'll be 75 000 short a month but there will be funds in the medical benefits right as well we'll have a larger trust cool cool yes okay and we what's the last we don't have any updated report for may yeah right now so may and june we still have to ride on and hopefully those are positive months in terms of claims so we could
009be as low as let's say 2.3 2.2 yeah it's um it's a bit of a while i'm sorry our beginning balance on july one could be two could be a lower yeah i mean with good fortune it could be better than anticipated so we still i just wanted to point out we still have those two months of claims that we wouldn't just you know we couldn't guarantee two and a half million right now but uh we'll see you know as soon as those claims come in we'll let you know where they stand right but this represents 825 000 correct yes the original 900 000 correct correct um the unemployment compensation line the we're not expecting claims uh the degree that they were yeah this really what's going on there is that when we budgeted we
010weren't sure if the state was gonna you know provide the essentially reimbursement for unemployment claims which they have been doing so i was able to you know reduce that request from the original hundred thousand dollars down to fifty thousand for the year so that's a pickup for the budget which is right which is good obviously um i mean that's that's the medical benefits stuff and it's a little bit unique in the sense that we are reducing that budget line with the direct infusion so if there are any questions there have been is obviously more than capabilities that you guys haven't where are we usually in july one in that account in the reserve it's very you know depending on the year we started last year um i think close to 3 million a little under
011and obviously we had high claims that's why we're down to about a million dollars right now and before that we've had a robust balance going back a few years so it's in terms overall uh trained it's a lore and recent history we've been as low i mean we've i think the worst year when we started was somewhere around 600 000 since i've been here you know the start of the year but during that budget cycle the board requested in the council proved a significant increase to the contribution for medical benefits so we ended that year much stronger than we started so it vacillates you know depending on what's happening with the contribution rate and claims and i think the point of the matter to be starting you know the year at around two and a
012half million dollars let's say that's where we start the year it puts us in a reasonably good position hopefully claims come in at the 900 000. i know one of the things that the council stated is that you know they're hopeful that claims will come in lower than the 900 000 and so we won't be eroding the two and a half million that will be starting in the medical benefits preserved and if it doesn't i think everybody board a bad town council administration realizes that we may be having this conversation as we prepare for budget next year right so that we'll have to fund up to meet the uh the claim rate and you know again it's on us that this seems to be an annual discussion and how do we navigate this and um
013it's a it's a blessing and a curse to have a inflated account there and you know you want to take from that but should you and so you know ben sean jim and i are still working on you know what might be an adequate move forward proposal for for both sides of the street to handle that account because it's a slippery slope the medical benefits true but the but if and we're gonna have a discussion on this i've already guessed there but somehow policy is passed to that the account it wouldn't matter because his claims are completely going over the budget year over year right it doesn't matter unless you're buying i don't know people should touch that calendar right yeah yeah if you're under budgeting you're in trouble but you know one of the
014reasons i can't get slipped too is because our iranian budget is never fun with what we have support so yeah fair enough guys um so a couple months ago tim mentioned we self-insured honestly tim said what what would the benefit or the uh down the pitfall be of working with a broker or just you know buying the product as opposed to self-insurance i mean are we going to face the same thing just we're just going to get hammered on premiums and that's that's the risk you run when you're when you're fully insured right so instead of being self-insured and having a reserve you're fully insured you get billed for a premium it's guaranteed the issue is though every year of renewal you're subject to the whatever they come up whatever the market is at the
015time so if you're with anthem or cigna you um you will have to accept what that renewal rate is right and you know we were fully insured on our blue cross which is the which was the hmo plan um and when we went self-insured with that you know the savings just on the board of red side was about a half a million dollars a year so you know the nice thing about fully insured is your premiums are set you know what they are for the year and that's what you budget the problem is you're subject to the whim of the of the market and the renewal and sometimes you know 20 to 25 renewal is not that uncommon i i think the the best way to describe where we are even with the increase that
016we haven't put up this year which is a significant increase if you look at the average over the last five years because we reduced our budget for three years even with this large increase our average increase is about three and a half percent per year okay which is a little bit better than the medical inflation rate so it hasn't been bad we've lived off the reserve healthy reserve balance we've had for several years now we just have to adjust but i think we're running overall as an average we've been doing just fine all right but it's a good question i mean it's it's a dilemma that you know a lot of communities you know do face i think we have the tougher year than most communities and hopefully next year because kind of back to
017so in the instructional expense account we made a proposal to reduce staff training by ten thousand dollars that in spite of that reduction um we're still doing better than expended in 1920 we think that's a safe budget number to come in at and you know in that bounce forward proposal a lot of the money federal money we're spending is focused on pd so we felt like that was a safe place to go other items in here are places that you know we felt like we could make reductions and still be all right again you know buoyed in part by federal resources but instructional supply was a recommended reduction of 23 166. the [Music] textbook software account 22 500 but again you know these these uh numbers are coming in okay these are these are shaving
018fractions off of that those accounts um and you know speaking of again the the reductions uh down at near the bottom line 730 replacement equipment that's an area that tends to get hammered uh over the years is like tony was saying when the budget doesn't come in we tend to turn to these places but this still represents an almost a 19 increase in those lines even with those reductions of 6250 out of each of those lines so out of that uh instructional expense account we're reducing 68 000 out of an account that was four and a half million so i think we're still in a solid place to maintain any questions on that the next item is support services the 20 000 reduction at the top out of rentals and leases is for the multi-function
019printers or copy machines that we have we were able to make contract savings there of 20 000 and then the next one the next several lines are areas where we just made subtle reductions in the the budget uh three three thousand basically for the communications and travels and conferences again you know with federal money they do support communications and professional development office supply line forty five hundred dollars the transportation supply seventeen five any any special comment there have been on that or the capital equipment of the 25 000 um yeah i mean with transportation supply that's basically the diesel fuel gasoline for the buses so you know you can see we um you know had some reasonable prices you know back in 1920 and even in 2021 we know a few prices are going up
020and i think you know that we've got enough you know budgeted that that we should be okay even if the price of fuel increases and then capital equipment we purchased quite quite a bit of computer technology this year right um and we made some of the purchases we need for over the summer already so reducing that 25 000 still gives us a budget of about 300 000 for technology purchases which is just adding just one inadequate next year so i was comfortable reducing that one so i mean again out of a seven million dollar rough number support services budget we're making 73 000 reductions there and then maintenance and operations um it's exciting to think that we're not making as substantial reductions as we typically do there we know that uh the needs in maintenance
021and operations are are substantial so we you know are excited to look at our maintenance supply line uh and see that even with the reduction or the 25 increase and that's that's not going to cover years of reductions but it'll help us to ensure that we we have adequate maintenance supplies particularly coming off the pandemic and then maintenance building repair reduction of 93 000 there but it still represents a 90 increase in that line um to kind of get us to where we were in 1920 and then same same ballpark um are there i mean before we i guess closed that uh line of maintenance and operations has a 107 046 reduction the cumulative reduction being the 1.486 million that the town council had reduced so i think even with that 1.486 we're we're really
022well poised with this and the bounce forward plan to be in a good place to support our kids and staff in the 21-22 school year i'm going to throw a wrinkle at you i said tony i hate to do this at the 11th hour i know but i love it so we we have a little bit of a wrinkle in the sense that our beloved uh school community relations uh rock star kelly lens will be retiring and you know the timing of that i mean you don't begrudge kelly but the the timing of that is um interesting from a dif a variety different perspectives i think first and foremost i think about transitioning and hopefully next spring putting forth a referendum and somebody to manage community relations is pretty critical i think for us as
023a school system and community and marlene and vin and i uh put our heads together there there were certain things that kelly did she she has a very niche sort of job she does a little bit from here and a little that [Music] it's not always easy to find somebody that fits the diverse skill sets there so we looked at what kelly was doing we looked at the needs that we feel are evolving for our school system and have a proposal in terms of a position and how we would would cover that oh is it popping up on the other side there might yeah okay that's what the issue is i got it there we go so um i kind of have two things i'm going to throw at you here the first is the
024um family and community engagement coordinator which is a an evolution of kelly's position and what you see here in the green are things that kelly was directly responsible for in order to pay for this we would be using you know kelly's salary to cover these things she was responsible for adult education part of the issue there is she's not a certified administrator and marlene would have to go several nights a year to evaluate teachers in the program so the new person would be responsible for that evaluation process grant the grant management what we've been exploring over the last several years and working with the stadon is more of a collaborative partnership with wallingford who has a larger adult ed population and so we're working on some reciprocity there which helps lower our costs and increase
025service opportunities for people in our community so they'd be responsible for adult adult education including the enrichment program that we offer which is fairly successful they would also oversee student teachers and interns we take on a number of student teachers and interns i'll tell you and you know i know marlene would would testify that as an administrator having an intern is so incredibly valuable in the sense that you have that one person in the building all year and they know your kids they know your staff they and they sub all over the building they do student teach oftentimes for like a 10 week period you lose that but there's a real positive trade off there we pay colleges for interns it's really a wash in terms of substitute costs but again there's such a value
026to having the same person every day committed to your building this person this new position would screen all those people we screen those applicants to us and we hire and assign them to buildings based on you know what we know of them and this this would be an administrative role they coordinate kelly coordinates school business partnership meetings as well as a lot of intern placements things like this so there's that community liaison piece that this person would facilitate as i mentioned you know we looked at what the needs are and how they're evolving for our school system and where we think we can do better one of those is with a liaison to open choice next year we took on more students for open choice for a variety of reasons and to have a contact
027a person on our end responsible so for example if a open choice student needs special education support we can build that back to new haven but it's hard for you know different administrators to be responsible for that to have one contact person we think that'll be way more efficient and helpful not to mention the fact that we want one pivot person if there's an open choice issue to be able to connect with either its new haven or the parent can connect with this person or the principal can connect with this person who knows the 43 students that we have in district k-12 open choice students our ell account english language learner account has evolved since 1617 we had 38 ell students this year it's actually over 80 the october first count was 75 so that
028number has in essence doubled over the course of a few years and it is a growing population we with early intervention you know when when the kids are younger i should say and we have intensive supports in place and these students speak a variety of languages year do mandarin spanish you know you name it and we provide that in intervention and ultimately they test out so the student is no longer identified as an el student however their family didn't learn english necessarily at the same rate you know or still need supports so we're chasing down translators we're supporting those families so that they can engage in our school system as well this person would coordinate that effort for the you know growing number of el students we have we you know would basically reserve the
029right to have this person evaluate other teachers outside of adult ed is necessary based on their background we i'm going to skip one for a second manage summer school would be part of this as well for the 12-month administrative position right now we pay an administrator a summer school management stipend that's existed since before i i came to cheshire they provided summer school special ed summer school and other enrichment programs and credit recovery programs for the high school right now as i said we're paying a stipend we would just make that part of this person's responsibilities [Music] they would serve in some regard as a title ix capacity and i know adam and the you know the policy committee we've talked about title ix and the evolving nature of that for some time you know
030we went through the girls hockey situation somebody to just oversee now obviously that wasn't a violation of title ix you know that question came up but adam would attest to the fact that the title nine under the last president and the trump administration revamped title nine and it became really unwieldy and almost like a court of law for a school system and i you know for us as a little bit bigger school system i think we could probably figure it out in a small system i don't know how you would even begin to think about even learn the lines exactly yeah so that was a gold standard yeah yeah exactly so right now the um office of civil rights is reviewing title ix again and there may be changes to that again so we haven't
031made real significant shifts in policy we have to follow the law but we've kind of waited we're waiting out like where is this going to settle this person would help support that the other thing that we would like this person to do you know again they're dealing with a lot of community connections already school business partnership our el population is integrate as the same program of parent involvement and engagement and so you know marlene and i the principals would still be very involved with the it's not like this person is going to run every pto meeting not at all we'd still be very involved in that process but they'd be seeking different ways for us to connect with parents in the community and i think as i mentioned you know at the outset with our
032efforts towards school modernization that will be really important you know faith and i were having this conversation the other day uh you know we've talked about um you know andrew and i and i think probably at some point to talk to all of you about how do we engage broader community to make sure they understand what work is going on in the school system what the needs of the school system are and that they're they're partners with us so that was the proposal in terms of the position it would be a 12-month administrative position paying on the scale for step one 100 to 000. the elementary ap right now that's the level one and that position um makes 126 now starting so it's slightly below on the scale where our assistant elementary assistant and uh
033special supervisors are um and they would receive 100 of the tsa tax sheltered annuity which is next year 500 men how would we pay for that well we appropriate money from kelly lenz's salary to pay for the majority of it that's 60 000 there we received an eighth teacher retirement um and so there's a forty thousand dollar pickup there the summer school stipend that we're paying right now is eight thousand dollars and we wouldn't do that anymore and so we picked that eight thousand dollars up for a hundred and eight thousand dollars so in essence you know the position is paid for out of our current operating budget as it stands today um and we just feel with kelly leaving the needs not going away all these needs are still here and we're getting what
034kelly was doing and then some and we just feel like you know now is a good time to do that the with kelly the her total compensation is one seventy first excuse me is seventy four thousand dollars but she won't be retiring on july first so we didn't factor the entire 74 000 in next year that won't be forty thousand dollars it'll be closer to thirty five thousand with the step difference from the teacher retirement but you'll pick up the money from kelly's retirement so over time it is sustainable and what i had said to tony you brought up a good question about you know we have math interventionists we've added we've added some administrative positions through the bonds forward money and i think it'll be incumbent upon us two to three years out to
035look at what has been the most high leverage of these interventions that we have these changes what's been really valuable and do we need to make adjustments at that time but you know again i think with kelly and what she provides to us in terms of those community connections rolling into school modernization in addition to all these other things it's pretty important to move in this direction and they wanted to throw it out for discussion um well i'll open with i'll play devil's advocate since uh anne isn't here tonight um playing the role of devil's advocate there is a list of positions um and other things that you wanted to do or a wish list right yeah um so does this position represent the number one need for our district you know i think security
036consultant you know that position is important but not as important as this right now the other positions that i thought and continue to believe are important are things that we funded in our bounds forward plan and how we're using the federal grant money to do that matt supported cheshire high school and god middle school being primary among them so the the long winded answer was what you just said the short answer is yes i think that this is um because i can't overstate the importance of community engagement over the next year beyond in the next couple of years not to mention it's good practice every day but when we're considering the referendum it's i think fairly critical not to mention the doubling of el students the um you know the adult somebody has to do
037that uh summer school i'm already paying for i just roll it in here right you know so yeah i think this is pretty pretty critical it required an additional additional education or additional certification that um uh kelly did not have or this is your you were taking another position that you're molding it into this position yeah so so kelly didn't have she doesn't have a teaching certificate certification let alone uh administrator certification she is teaching active is it active but not being an administrator she can't evaluate staff you need to have an o92 certification to do that so this position would have that to be able to to be able to evaluate those those staff members to teach in adult education additionally based on the background we didn't want to commit to evaluating like a
038certain department or anything like that until we hired somebody and were clearly aware of what their professional background was to determine is there a place where they would potentially evaluate other staff as well andrew i think the salary is great but is it smart to be putting is it better to do like a 70 000 year position a 40 000 year position taking out the community piece and the educational oversight review piece that this person has to do to me it just seems like it's a how is this person going to do all the summer school dealing with all the students teacher reviews and do the community outreach case like is there enough time so yeah i understand that there's compensation is good but isn't the time to do all the work that's not safe
039in my opinion yes because a lot of this is um you know timely to different points in the year there are certain things that are going to be really heavy during parent conference time and when students are registering and coming in there's going to be another time during spring conferences there's going to be throughout the year some of that open choice those those meetings are once a month that you would go to and then it would be sort of coordinating with principles so i i think there's an ebb and flow to it that when you look at it all each and every day it's really by the calendar and the summer school piece will be heavier in the spring and then you know the execution of it during the summer so i i think it's
040well i think it's well balanced i think what we did in in looking at this too was to talk to like rob and carrie who's run the summer school and make sure that she takes a look and sees it and got that feedback talked to kevin knowing when some of the el things happen so my office will continue to run that but this will be the connection is interesting between the adult ed and the el family because a lot of the families who are taking our english as a second language class in adult ed are the parents of our students who are in so that would be a likely person to do both because they're seeing those people at night at the adult ed classes so those natural connections are there those are the things
041that can't really be seen that where the people are and how it happens are really linked so that's that was my my thought on will they have it will there be administrative support kelly currently has some administrative support through uh the um other thing that you know is funny i kind of laughed when you brought up that question because it was the first thing that another one of our administrators asked today looking at that like and then we we you know took a step back and said okay let's take a look at this and we consider what a typical administrator in our district manages it's that wildly diverse and you know you know everything from transportation discipline ppt's uh maintenance and lunch and all these variety of things that you have to know uh something
042about and be able to do well and then oh yeah academics right so uh in this role there are a diversity of skills but we felt like they are definitely as is marlene said paced out well enough that you know it even actually gives you a little bit more of a this is my focus time in the same way as a principal though you know you know spring is pptc you know annual transition you know just that's what we do you know things are kind of scheduled like that in the school life same cycle every year so when you start to explain it though especially next year um spring is going to be crazy because that's when the referendum is so i'm beginning that it kind of almost concerns me more and i'm wondering i
043mean if you're going to do this and i'm with andrew i'm just amazed at the level of work that this person does but then it would i'm just wondering if someone if we like brought the salary down to a lower level and then perhaps i don't know kelly would want to help with under a contract basis or something to at least do the communications to get the get the referee get us through the referendum because that's going to be crazy and i don't good point i think that's a really good point i don't think that this person is going to have soul for it it's still going to be jeff and jeff pointed to me and vinnie running a lot a lot of that with your support this person will not be in isolation doing
044that but running some behind the scenes oh at school business partnership and when i was at the economic development meeting and with those connections yeah the natural referendum process is mainly on the town council so it's not like this person is going to be sending up all that stuff but the potential community engagements between now and next spring next spring or that point where we have to go silent in 60 days yeah so as much as it's april you gotta back it up 60 days to february between you know six-month window when the school starts and pre-referendum um helping us set up the forms that people have been getting you know reaching out different groups that kind of thing but i'm thinking before that so would this person be able to help get our website
045updated finally i don't think so um because that's a little bit of a niche skill you know thankfully carol has that capacity and our tech people have that capacity they're working on that and one reason i asked that is i know carol's morning cable over this past year wasn't home but it's not just the school monetization i worry about communication already i'm hearing from parents about the surf material diversity and inclusion things that we're doing and i think should be clearly important for cps and board make sure parents are educated on what that means for kids so right when you start seeing latino african american studies this fall it's shown to be the price of parents what that is until now no one's really paying attention to curriculum meetings or marlene's presentations on that so
046uh and so i think coordinating some of those discussions on top of all the other communication we're going to get from our monetization um so i like the idea i i i was certainly the more help i can't really quantify it i think you could use more help here i kind of see two people myself in fact everything else but yeah we you know this is a it requires board approval to create a new position and by that it's like it's not hiring another ia which we have is that position exists we don't have this position um so it would require the board approval but that doesn't have to be tonight i think it was important to me to have the conversation tonight and you know i want to make sure that questions are answered
047if we can improve this in a couple of weeks down the road if that's what we want to do but i think it's the dialogue tonight is helpful and productive and i'm certainly not adverse to taking a little bit more time with ben marlene our admin tank team kelly to take another look and you know check the different angles on this and come back to it are there any other districts that have a position like this that we could look at no unfortunately no um it's it's really kind of unique and it's an amalgamation of a few different positions into one and part of our thinking is that you know for um you know we want to make sure that we have somebody who's demonstrated history of professional capacity and education somebody that's highly articulate
048with great people skills that you know it can be very flexible that's well spoken and is a competent writer and that you know we think that somebody with the variety of skills there uh would would command a little bit of a higher price but you know what we're going to go back i want to go back and look at it again and reconsider because we have considered a two two position scenario but i you know i as my gears are turning more and talking to you i want to just i don't want to pull the trigger and potentially regret it so let's let me just double check all right with the team but it's important to get this conversation out there because all those things that we're identifying are holes we need to fill and
049i think you know what we've demonstrated over you know the last number of years is that you know what we can be creative and that we have talent you know we find talented people that fit the great spots for us and it helps us be very successful and you know i consider hiring to probably be one of the most important things that we do right at the very top where people organization i just saying to marlene the other day that you know i happen to notice on food network this guy talked about what we bring in we do the best ingredients but we don't have that you know it's not like it's not easy we're not just going to bring in the best math textbook and we're going to get great results you know we're
050a people driven business and we have to bring in the best people to get the best results and that's where that's where we want to make sure that this is designed that we can get the best person to get the results we need still financial planning all right uh yeah so i got here at 7 30 when the other 60 seconds to recap sure uh what i'm hearing you say is you want a new position communications yeah communications you know family and community engagement okay okay then follow me to me um you want a 12-month duration it's uh 12 months yeah a person is retiring kelly lindsay yeah do you have anyone in-house who you would think about doing this and it could be multiple people i'm not saying that there is somebody who you've
051already decided or anything like that no we haven't decided on anyone is there anyone in house who would be even more than one person who would be probably okay so that's just so you understand me that's critical to me because i think in terms of communication there's a million conversations and when it's a 12 month durational to hit the ground running in that particular situation particularly what tony was talking about with the cert the dei the school modernization these things are going to be happening quickly and it's going to take you need to be up to speed really really quickly if we're talking about like in august or september higher right but it's not to say that someone outside cps would be unable to do it right but it'd be a massive lift and if
052somebody was in-house who had those relationships at least some of them and the knowledge the institutional knowledge that would make a difference to me right i'm not asking anymore just so you understand where i'm coming from no no no it's definitely a helpful perspective it sounds like it you know this position's created they may get someone again depending on your search making someone internally a current loan path right like something they can move into right for that position you know with others or something outside so it's yeah so you know we'll we'll kind of table that part there's one other thing i wanted to talk to you about and that's going to be very difficult for me to grab from the other screen see will be there no there we go you're watching them on
053a little monitor yeah so it's hard to pull off that little monitor i can't see it from here but anyway um aces the area cooperative educational services through which we work with has a program and i may have shared it months ago i know i at least talked to tony about it several months ago [Music] called teacher residency program it's something that is now occurring statewide and the gist of the program is that local communities local school systems identify an individual of color working in their system non-certified and that they aces works with the school system draws that individual into a cohort group so they're having classes at night working with education professors working with each other under the supervision of a mentor in the cheshire public schools to earn their elementary teacher certification after
054that year they then are you know beholden to the district for two additional years it cost sixty five thousand dollars to engage somebody in this program for the year however there's grant money became available which knocked it down to 59 000 and the state legislature is currently examining funding that could knock it down further the worst case is that it's a 59 000 commitment the best case is it's free the the state covers it we have and i think this is why it's critical our staff population is 97 percent white non-hispanic our student demographic is 78 white there is a wild disparity there that we have aggressively for years tried to recruit people of color that certainly has been hampered by the pandemic the last couple of years where you're not having in-person recruiting fairs
055and things like that we publicize carol asks me every like quarter hey you know are we gonna do these same advertisements and yes we do and um sometimes you know they they do bear fruit and you know i know that we've already hired an african-american female for this year it's exciting and we want to continue to hire diverse faces obviously i just mentioned talent is one of the most important things that we do and in this case if we can grow our own talent in you know with a diverse audience that i think is really valuable for our kids in our community so um i mentioned earlier that we brought in more open choice students to cheshire high school i brought in agreed to bring in five additional students we had 16 that number is
056now 21 and that's critical for a few reasons first of all um we are given a stipend for every student we bring in of three thousand dollars that's one piece when you reach like every 10 students that you bring in there's a extra amount of money funded in the grant for those students so there's a an economic significant economic benefit the other thing that i think is more important is that as it stood with 16 students they pick up in new haven the first bus pickup is at 5 30 am can you imagine being 14 years old and getting on the bus at 5 30 am am to go to high school now our kids do that because they really want to go to cheshire high school you must really want to go to cheshire
057high school when you're 14 you get up at five in the morning to get on the bus to go to high school so by adding the additional students aces agreed to be able to provide two buses the first pickup now is 6 15 instead of 5 30 a.m which is a significant benefit for our kids so for all those reasons we thought it was important to add those additional students that also allows us additional grant revenue to be able to pay for a student or a somebody who works in our school system already to be trained as a teacher now first and foremost that person has to be of the caliber of individual that we would want them in front of our kids as a teacher anyway and we believe we have that and part
058of the delay at this is really funding i wasn't sure funding wise how it would work how we would make it work and then it was essential for us to you know be very comfortable that whoever we do put forward is somebody that we would hire and feel really good about and i think we're there in both those cases this person is is serves in the capacity is like an intern as well instead of hiring another intern we dedicate that fifteen thousand dollars here between that the open choice grant money it becomes a wash for us to be able to provide it and we guarantee that we'll have another teacher of color working in our schools next year at least the next two years so for me i you know we spent a lot of
059time looking at this and exploring it we just felt it was powerful we you know for our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion it um we are adding a talented educator and we're doing it you know without additional impact of the operating budget you know so there were all wins for us as far as i was concerned and this isn't a new position it doesn't necessarily require board approval but i thought it was important to discuss with you and you know seek any feedback wasn't the show yeah that uh you know indicate interest but don't commit because i think at the time it was like 150 right now there was it was more expensive at the time and they've reduced costs the grant monies have picked up then it may again may ultimately be free
060can you walk with yourself a second ago i heard you say there's no impact to the operating budget on this but then you also said it cost a thousand dollars or possibly less right but it sounds to me like there might be an impact in the operating budget so when we factored the when we created the operating budget we weren't factoring in additional revenue from open choice grant money which we've since gained i think you said that was that the six thousand dollars out of 65 000 no that was a grant to aces for everybody who participates but we received open additional open choice grant money as a result of taking on five additional students yeah and hitting uh bonus uh money because of the fact that we break 40 as a district we you
061know we have 43 now we also have more than 20 at cheshire high school those come with additional funding so that's six thousand dollars no that's forty five thousand dollars that work so i think what i know where you are so i know so so without this the worst case scenario would have been fifty nine thousand dollars right or budget with the scrap money there is no third one right with the additional money i mean we may be getting this money and the state picks it up and now we have just an additional you know 45 60 000 which would be great right at my price range but all so this is a choice because that open choice grant money even if it's even if it's uh i mean presumably could be spent on anything
062associated with open choice right so there could be some sort of other program that was used so this is directing the money to this correct because we also already have an additional 90 000 plus dedicated to ias and other supports that we do so this is for the 40 or so students yeah right yeah okay so there is a choice being made here it's not like this is necessarily at no cost it's if we applied this grant money correct then it would be no cost right and the recommendation is to apply that great money toward this position correct okay i get that um could you just run me through again so in my mind like theoretically what could happen is you know somebody uh graduated high school do four years of college in theory you
063could come become a teacher at that point do you need the fifth year or six year degree i don't think so because that's part of that right so to enter this program you need to have a college diploma okay so they're on the same footing there and this that person that they're already working in our school system this as a non-certified position but like i'm sorry but the diploma doesn't have to be an education right they don't have an education so they have a four-year degree and they're probably working in the sea in cps right now correct okay and then to turn them into a teacher they would have to get another 30 credits or something it could be college is it is it like a standard aacsb accredited no so what you're doing here
064is it's the same basically the same program that the state of connecticut runs alternate route to certification okay except it's more intensive in school-based full-year because a lot of the alternate routes of certification stuff is classroom based on saturday and hartford kind of thing and then you you do an internship or a student teaching assignment for 10 weeks in school and they you know prank out certified teachers that right in this case it's a full year-long internship in the building [Music] that hopefully you know they will be assigned to host the program so a teacher would normally have a degree in teaching education of some sort and what you're saying is the the kid who graduated you know with their four-year degree in poli sci right whatever it is they come into the alternate route
065to educate so i i mean that idea in general i love i i mean i think it's valuable to go to a formal education for anything we true but i also think the an informal education uh like an apprenticeship i also think that's extremely valuable too so in general this the idea of doing this program i i like it it's kind of both you know i mean this person in order anybody who enters this program has that formal education like you said it could be polycyclin yeah and then they have the benefit of a full-year apprenticeship in our school system which i love because you know without sounding too hokey there's a way we do things in cheshire and the level of expectations we have that you may not get through a different program someplace
066else to the description well i'll facetime that job so when candidate is known as the program will they be able to teach yes so they'll go out and get certification and right so they'll be issued a certification for k through 6. so just so i'm thinking the opposite side because it is so i think this is a great program i'm ecstatic that it can pay for itself concerns me is as far back as i got on the board in 2009 even back then it's always been difficult to find diverse workforce it's not just it's everywhere in the country right you serve on the uh right with southern southern yeah community looking for ways to do that so my concern is it's highly competitive it's becoming a mortgage kind of fight the candidates what happens when
067the candidate goes to this program gets certified and needs cheshire they're required to work for us for two years next question yeah they're locked into us for two years did you familiar with this no you mentioned it oh attention and we guarantee the full-time job when the program is done but right what if the st what if they don't measure what it what if they don't measure up i mean they you come to the end of the year program at the end of the year and you say and it's like if the person fails out yeah or [Music] so the whole thing hinges on them getting certified and you know we have a role to play in approving that process but they could get certified but the the dynamic may be wrong because if we
068if we don't feel that they're you know performing at the level you know required to achieve certification then they wouldn't receive the certification and then you know i can't hire somebody who's not certified so we have a lot of control over the process faith which is what i like i was just saying i like that i mentioned that component specifically you know in terms of certification but you know this is somebody who's going to be trained under our wing with a talented teacher who works in our school system for the course of a year actually longer because the program starts soon i mean this may be a moot point if i can't line up the individual from our district to that summer program i'd really like to do it but if i don't now my
069problem becomes where do i spend the additional money that i have left over i mean so this is a good problem to have right like i don't see us losing in that deal um and the best case scenario is i we just created a teacher of color to join our school system in two years like we've just you know built that that capacity for that person to be successful for us and that's awesome if i could just i think we just created a great teacher and i don't know i get a little i just think we have to our goal is to create absolutely i understand the the disparity there but at the end of the day i just your point is whether we want our map um so in terms of the classroom how
070does this work i mean again so i'm going back to just how i envision this which is uh students are doing a four-year degree and they get there they get a teaching internship so they're in the class on a daily basis there is the classroom teacher uh i have elementary in my mind it is elementary it is strictly elementary right now okay so in the elementary classes you may very well have more than one adult in classroom ias or interviewing assistants so this is one of the people who could be in the classroom a normal student would a normal four-year elementary education uh degree student would be coming in for what a few months usually an internship is for the year and part of that and that ten there's ten weeks of a student teaching
071experience where they're teaching students by themselves yeah during that 10 weeks they're teaching by themselves oh without a classroom okay so the mentorship is provided the instruction is provided in the classroom the mentorship is provided and then you know there's a gradual release of responsibility we would say so you're passing it on so they have to ride the bike without the training wheels for 10 weeks the support is there you know mom or dad's running behind the bike going all right you got you got this yep and then at the end of that you know that you've demonstrated that you can do that on your own so just at a very high level in the general situation here what happens to the classroom teacher for those 10 weeks the classroom teacher will plan with that
072teacher and is is right there is watching observing in the back of the class oh so the classroom teacher's still in the classroom but the student teacher is leading right right okay so this is basically the same concept yeah okay all right so there's no real change to the classroom per se i mean the way every the way instruction is delivered right okay yeah i mean yeah i said see when i got on the board plumbers electrician's apprenticeships i think that they're fantastic yeah i mean i think something like this sounds like it could be good because i'm not convinced that every 18 year old who enters who's fortunate enough to go to college is making decisions that necessarily they're going to agree with four years later right i think this is a good i
073think this is a great alternate route to education based on what you're saying yeah this is a premise at eight o'clock and everybody is over on our fan screen we're supposed to be fine um but venturing into a board of businessmen after so um so as far as this is for tonight uh does the finance committee need to pass a motion for the billboard to consider they do and it's the line items oh what do you know and this is uh this is the sample this isn't in it is it this is what you said this afternoon okay um so seeing that um we did not make any changes to the suggested uh changes that we came into the meeting with um i move that the finance committee recommend to the full board of education
074the following reductions to their proposed 2021-20 2022 budget totaling 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries reduction of 280 000 employee benefits reduction of 956 993 instructional expense production of 68 166 dollars support services reduction seventy three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars i have three ninety five on the motion excel does that sometimes running error so it's uh operations and expense and operations and maintenance 107 446 for a total reduction of 1 million 486 thousand dollars do i have a second do we have any discussion fake hearing none i call for a vote all those in favor is unanimous for those presents thank you finance committee um seeing there is no other items on our agenda a uh call for a motion to adjourn all in favor unanimous available is present we it
075actually should be five now that i'm looking at it because they're on the spreadsheet no i've been gonna find an extra dollar yeah i'm just throwing it out of my pocket did you see that lucy episode where she threw the director's call to meeting the order this would be the board of education special business meeting mr josky we have uh call to order this from oklahoma here helen thank you carol uh since we do have more members we're going to say the pledge class we stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so thank you welcome everyone again and for those of you watching probably wondering
076why we're starting our meeting at 8-10 it's only because the finance committee ran over great discussion there that will be on video we have one really one agenda item uh which is discussion and possible action regarding the 2021 2022 board education budget um one that the finance committee just passed to the full board [Music] uh moved that the uh cheshire board of education approved a budget for the fiscal year 2021-22 of 77 million 1052 as appropriated by the cheshire county council further the board of education reduces its 2021-22 budget recommendation by 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries 280 000 uh non-certified salaries uh no adjustment uh employee benefits nine nine hundred fifty six thousand nine hundred ninety three dollars the structural expense sixty eight thousand one hundred six 166 support services is a
077five or six five seventy three thousand three hundred ninety five dollars operations and maintenance one hundred seven thousand four hundred forty six dollars for a total adjustment of total reduction of one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollars it's very second mr martelly seconds uh discussion [Music] yeah yeah jeff could you run everyone through it yeah we work well whatever you have sorry actually adam i apologize i'm sorry i wasn't sure where we were going i just want i just think the publication here yeah i don't want to get into a vote but while going through the entire last presentation people walk us through yeah that's because i think what folks are going to hear is there's a reduction of 1.46 million wow that's a big reduction but sure that's not really what's happening sure
078i'm gonna actually defer to ben we'll have to have him walk us through this thank you so i i will i'll do this at the at the top line and then if there's a question we can go through it so board of education has six major line items so the one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollars being reduced from the certified salary line it's 280 that's made up of seven teacher retirements that occurred after the board's budget was prepared and approved that um at seven teachers at forty thousand that's two hundred eighty thousand um there is no change to the non-certified salary line under the total employee benefits there's a few changes here that offset each other medical benefits being the largest the recommendation is a million dollar reduction from the medical benefits line
079plus an additional thirty seven thousand five hundred forty two dollars that's savings from the stop loss insurance actual renewal versus what was estimated is an actual increase that's required for the pension retirement line of 130 549. again we prepared our budget on an estimate when we have the actuarial final numbers we need to increase our pension line by 130 nine and then we have a reduction in unemployment compensation we had budgeted a hundred thousand dollars but what happened subsequent to the development of the budget is the state started providing the credits that that they needed to for the unemployment additional benefits that were received so we were able to reduce the hundred thousand down to 50 000 for next year so that total is 956 000 net production and employee benefits under instructional expense we
080you know did a couple of things um first we had a 10 000 reduction in professional development um but because we have essar funding and we'll be able to provide training out of that we feel that that's a reasonable reduction and then we took a five percent line item reduction on instructional supplied textbooks replacement and new equipment all very manageable you know within this the scope of the budget so instructional expense comes down 68 166. support services again primarily here what we did is we took some of our smaller lifeline items reduced them by five percent the two big things in here that i'll mention one is the rentals and leases we were able to save twenty thousand dollars for next year on our multifunction printer contracts so that's a that's a go forward reduction
081we'll keep and then we reduce technology purchases under capital equipment by twenty five thousand dollars we purchased quite a bit of uh technology equipment this year um including some urine purchases that will be prepping over the summer so we feel that's a safe product darkness still will leave us about 300 000 technology purchases for next year which is perfectly adequate and then that totals a 73 396 dollar decrease in support services and the last category maintenance and operations you know we reduced the building repairs and maintenance supply by a total of 107 446 dollars but i will point out that we're still increasing uh building repairs by about nine percent and maintenance supply by 25 000 so we're just reducing the amount of the increase but we feel that we certainly can can make do
082with the funds that are being allocated for operations and maintenance so all told that's how you get to the one million four hundred eighty six thousand dollar reduction we are required to make um vin did you mention the infusion that we're going to be getting i did not thank you so for medical benefits even though we're reducing the the operating budget by a million dollars in the contributions we'll be making to the medical benefit the town council did allocate 1.5 million dollars that doesn't affect the operating budget it's being contributed directly to the medical benefits reserve fund so that to the extent we have claims that exceed the operating budget those will be paid out of the medical benefits preserved we have roughly a million dollars in the reserve now you know assuming the next
083two months claims come in line with budget we'll have 1 million plus the 1.5 million dollars so we'll have roughly 2.5 million in the medical benefits reserved as we start the 21 22 budget year you know which we certainly hope is out of it but it's uh it's certainly a healthy reserve to start the year with the the point i'm sorry the point of going back to the point yeah i made earlier last meeting was there superintendent's original budget proposing that port central to town budgeted uh multiple claims rate of nine hundred thousand dollars okay with the induction of 1.486 million in the fact that 1.5 minutes going directly to reserve fund our monthly contribution drops to 8.25 so if claims are still running above 25 it will be eating against medical defense funds so
084this is shoring it up but it's not it's address pointer is not padding it so we love to see where we are you know next year every year if the fund's coming down a lot or stabilizing but i think this is a great uh great first step but the the point is we're not necessarily looking i love that everybody's getting the numbers and the language down pretty well so when i retire i feel good right over there which is not intentional i'm too young let's see how this one goes so been the seven retirements um at 40 000 for retirement um are we replacing how many of these teachers are we replacing and is that our savings and the difference between the retirement salary and the new higher salary exactly right yeah okay yeah we're
085replacing them all that's just the net savings from top step too all right i just wanna oh yeah so i'm gonna so uh just for the viewing public we got this this afternoon uh i plan to support it i do it one point though and this isn't really for discussion purposes it's just to highlight it the email that we got from jack fester like a week or two ago i'm thinking of it as we're looking at equipment and the data privacy is a real concern for me and i don't know what the answer is it's way bigger than anything that we solve in this room um but it is it is a real concern i am a big believer in privacy and i know technology is changing you know we're going to have the ai
086implanted in us and maybe in a few years i have no idea the world's changing but uh to try to just be mindful of it and to try to minimize it as much as minimize the risk of data theft as much as possible just to have that in mind where we can yeah that's a that reminds me so the town we still have the technology instead of committing yeah well you know damning there in a few years i wonder if it makes maybe 10 months to volunteer next year but they're still taking a border representation it might be nice to have someone else we could use a board member right we didn't mean actually um a couple months back preparing for the operating and capital budget so what is this is the technology study group
087yeah this was back a number of years uh you mean the council or like state community you know uh 12 town council i really established it a long time ago cheshire yeah anyway that group was vinegar a huge part i still are i know that was started to find the cto at the time apex and i know that group this goes back as far back as python harris was on there there's the carol's daughter he's still the chair yeah so you know they look at technology just across the town funding et cetera i no one knowing steve i'm sure he's always got security on top of his mind but with all the recent cyber attacks and it's very sensitive to me because i on the hook at the regional heart authority for all these um
088breaches and so nothing we have anymore it's been in fact just this past week we've gotten us several i won't call executive orders but from binance office to shore certain things to on security uh as a mandate so maybe this kind of focus on here for now that we have a i'm confident we have a protected system but you know maybe that's the group to help us put some emphasis on hey i would like to think i would like to be confident that the truth is it's one way but it was it's just i mean the stories that i've read like in the past week is they don't bother going after banks at this point because they really do have some security so now they're going after the ferry to martha's vineyard just to attack
089it it might be for fun or it might be for you know ransom i i don't know i didn't read all the stories but they're going after what they consider to be low risk my guess is when you're talking about most municipal or county budgets around the country most of them are probably you know tight wasn't it last year like stupid stuff like i you know they sent out an email from me that says you know please click here for the vacation information and it's you know not really from me and people aren't supposed to open it it's not legitimately from my email but you see and the fact that we're moving to more and more um e-textbooks and everything where they have to have codes and it's not even just fishing that i'm wearing
090it's the mining that's going on and i don't know i'm with you but there there has to be someone out there looking at this you know more than duck.go you know in terms of you know protecting the privacy especially of the kids i mean um it and they they're sending ducks almost as they put in their codes and my opinion is uh they're and i'm not gonna be off top this is related beyond i was gonna mention this start a school year but you know maybe through policy in other areas we'll look at data privacy because it's a bigger issue but i think a lot of this especially in the private sector like for example most companies um you know large workforces we'll send out the test email focused on those uh right and most
091some folks do fall for it because they don't know any better but there's also dovetail behind that there's a proactive training program where once a year employee is required to take an online safety date privacy course it's 40 minutes or less and they're gonna take a test if you don't pass you can go through it again so it's reinforcing it and i don't know if there's anything similar for that we can do for students we already do oh we do it for your staff man how about this you caught me there right now i i i but not just for our students but for parents yeah and i think to me there's a way to look at education resources around that um but then again i also go back to the security management position and
092i get something that can help with this in the future too but they're concerned those are things outside of control even if it's not one of our platforms it's you know students i will say our tech director is just sort of random when it comes to this topic and so mike does a great job being ahead of the curve for our industry i would say you know not for banking but you know for education i think we're ahead of the curve with a lot of that stuff but there's always substantial room for improvement and it's always evolving because you close one door and somebody tries to open three others you know can you say you happen to know or then maybe you would know i mean has mike had to like fight back oh yeah
093we have intrusions all the time we get reports on intrusion efforts okay um it happens it was a few years ago yeah i mean so the protection is in all different places and i'm not the expert here but sure you know we get our internet service from the mechanic and education network so they they have stop gap measures to prevent these intrusion attempts from russia and china you get reports there's attempted denial of service attacks those are all blocked at the cnn level at the cem level as information gets into you know into passed out firewall there's protections there so things like email the amount of email that actually comes through is something like two to three percent all the rest of it is just filtered out it's it's garbage oh literally just spam wow
094or or it could be spam or it could actually be the email that is may have some type of a you know virus or malware that's embedded in it so that gets screened out and then you know just to top line at the last layer of defense is the employees you know and or the students although the students you know they're on different network you know so they can't you know students can't access any of the internal systems like pow school or a financial system but you know employee training password changes which we do require those that's the human element you know which is critically important to try and make sure that employees in particular you know know if they receive an email that's got a link on it that doesn't look right you don't
095click it so it's just a combination of factors and that's not even touching you know what you're bringing up which is student data privacy which right you know we are compliant with the state's requirements what's scary about that is to be compliant with state requirements and the state is probably no better off than you know i mean it's government and there's no offense to government but it's going to be behind the curve in terms of the people when google wants to exchange hey we'll give you all these freebies and we'll just make it all happen i have to wonder is that data getting taken and i don't expect you have the answer way bigger than us but i just want to highlight that too it's not just the hacking it's also i don't know if
096people realize but you don't use any google apps for the google devices you're into that traffic so again if you're not using google chrome or uh chromebooks or products you think you're okay but google is still tracking you on the internet but believe it or not yeah and thrice teams and things like that so but that aside you know it's education you know our students are so in some cases younger they already don't understand this but maybe there's a way there's things that control when you're on a network it's the things that we can't control when they're not on our network or at home or devices that are successful to and i just wanted there's a way to create awareness around that for them and parents and guardians because you know that's you know that's
097if you say this but it's like summit we're creating awareness around the program platform and you know how things are protected on the network and people's browsing history or the example that came up there that's stuff that folks didn't realize yeah we do bring in you know special presentations scott driscoll is very popular internet safety speaks to our kids on a regular basis as well as parents and then we do have some basic education around these things but um more formal education is probably helpful i guess you're raising this because you know but the technology of mine did go up not only down 25 000 and that's that's hardware purchases whether it's desktops with chromebooks those types of audio systems in the rooms those are anyway i guess on that no that's a good did
098our chromebooks fare well that as has the analysis been done as do we have enough for replacements for whatever we will the collection is is occurring i guess this week already occurred in a lot of cases yeah so um yeah the chromebooks actually if your question is are they holding up well yeah yeah they actually are holding up well we have some issues with some of the tablet devices for the younger grades for the first graders but um was that is that kids or parents good questions they were bringing them back and forth from home because you never knew if someone was going to need to quarantine or not so they they did a lot of traveling which in a typical year sure i mean as a general statement i think you know the students
099have been very responsible at all great levels because you know when they were bringing their devices home bringing them back so we have a yeah and we have a really good internal group that you know we buy spare parts and we repair the chrome the chromebooks if there's damage to the keyboard or the screen's in-house so saves us quite a bit of money so we're still going to shape that as far as yes yes also for just for safety i don't know i don't know about fourth grade but in first grade the tablets come with like a pretty robust strong rubber case for it so when the three-year-old sibling crafted threat has no idea what they're doing it still works afterwards is that experience uh is that experience oh i don't know if myself on
100the budget i just want to i apologize i'm just not used to seeing a 3.2 3 increase on an operating budget and and uh in dr solin's budget presentation uh the slides i think between 2016 and 2020 the average increase was 1.7 so i while you guys were talking and later talking back to the budget book and since 2009 since i got an award this 3.23 is the third largest increase i've seen and the largest i've seen in the last five years now that's high levels impressive even though one 1.46 million dollars is taken away and i know we're making up for lost ground for mass budget that's a pretty meaningful increase absolutely our needs are greater than ever and thankfully the resources are greater than ever yeah and then and so i know you
101mentioned what they said last meeting jeff that uh you know the statue is going to meet the needs of our kids as well but i just want to call that out because that is a significant number absolutely especially with um some things that came up after the budget was submitted regarding the uh the actuary increase in our entire contributions and retirements that this is very meaningful i think we're feeling great about going into next year yeah i just want to thank the town council and uh i wish hannah and catherine here goes i don't think they've seen it three point two three percent yeah probably never been out here so i do want to thank the town council for um all the work on this i know we're not the only area of the budget
102it's been a difficult year but uh thank you this is very helpful yeah it does any other comments sing some other comment the uh the motion on the table is move that the cheshire board education approve a budget for the fiscal year 2021 22 of 77 million 1052 dollars as appropriate by the cheshire town council further the board education reduces 20 21 22 budget recommendations by 1 million 486 000 as follows certified salaries 208 000.935 salary zero employee benefits 956 thousand nine ninety three construction expense sixty thousand one sixty six support services seventy thousand seventy thousand three ninety six ninety five seventy thousand three ninety five operations and maintenance one hundred and seven thousand four sixty six for a total reduction of one million four hundred and eighty six thousand dollars all those in favor
103please raise your hand it is unanimous by foreign thank you forward thank you everyone for working through this and staying procedure as you move forward there's less meetings if you actually enjoy your summer and only a lot of work to do but thank you for helping us get here we're on to the next stuff so we don't have any other business but i just want to ask if there's any public q a since there is that i'm not surprised it's a nice night tonight um i have no other business so i is there a motion to adjourn okay second andrew's second all favored louisiana's means adjourned thank you