001this is the i believe our third uh board of education finance committee meeting if uh someone please correct me if i'm wrong um we are uh here tonight uh to of course receive public comment uh before we um you know the finance committee considers uh the budget and moves it to the full board um so uh miss jacinsky uh please call the roll sure mr grippo here she was here uh miss ham here miss harrigan here mr martelly here mr paragini here mr white mr chairman you have a quorum thank you um please rise for the pledge as soon as we have a flag somewhere out there it's coming oh here we go perfect i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one
002nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all that always looks great on tv when you're watching it back certainly sit back down all that good stuff um okay so um we have uh audience comment first i'm not sure how we treat that if that's the same as public comment on the budget um jeff do you have thoughts on that um well i could add that you know there were it was a little bit of a hybrid comment question we received a few um that certainly the questions we could address more readily i have a quick review presentation and then you know we you guys had a number of questions as well over the last several days that we thought we should address uh the things that you brought up um the only real
003comment was you know why are we uh posing a five percent budget basically when there's such high unemployment in cheshire um and so you know we can address that through the present day it was more of a comment i guess the question i mean i think we've talked about why the budget is necessary and then you know from a factual perspective cheshire has some of the lowest unemployment connecticut and has for months on end but you know i it's uh i guess it's more of a comment than a question um in an instance like that do we get a name and address uh when someone makes a comment they didn't they submitted a name but no address and okay you know i think you know moving forward we set up a special um email account
004to you know solicit feedback and we only had a couple of emails so and nobody provided an address okay apparently well yeah it's not really in florida i think we'll do a google form where you have to put your address if you know we're in this position again right hope not okay well then um jeff uh why don't we uh move ahead with your uh with your summary and response sure um actually what i'm gonna let me just do something here first actually i don't know that you need to see my face as part of the presentation tonight we've seen enough of my mug in screen time that i think we could just go to the presentation um so folks can see that okay yes yes we can okay you know i i always start
005with our goals only because carol's such a big fan of the the imagery but it i think it's really critical that we continue to drive home this is our focus this is why we're here for our kids every day to provide these things uh critically um our budget environment this year is obviously unlike any other in your path years past student enrollment is uh different for a change that we've seen a precipitous decline over the last 10 years and we're bottoming out and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel where we're going to start to see more people coming in i talked about the jump in enrollment i'm gonna hit some of that um in a little bit aging facilities uh it's constantly an issue that we're we're talking about this
006year though medical benefits really takes the cake uh and some of the external factors we always talk about the state of the state this year um it's you know somewhat shocking to me that connecticut is forecasting a budget surplus of 70 million dollars this year which is good news usually we're kind of wrought with panic at this point about what the state is going to do um but the other good news that we've received more recently is more federal aid in the you know way of grants for covid relief uh and that aid package is supposed to actually far exceed what we expected um so as much as this budget doesn't include our covid components the the things that we have to plan for kovid uh the good news is that there's more money uh
007being funneled in that direction which should help us navigate any uh implications of covid that may may crop up in the fall um we've talked about you know the the last several years being quite lean and we focused on sel class size is our real core indicators there's just not a lot of other places to go to to cut things and of course our per-pupil expenditure um you know it's bittersweet you know i think we're incredibly efficient um and i my goal is that you know some of that money that we've saved through our per-pupil expenditure be reinvested in our facilities to benefit our community and the quality of life and cheshire for our students and staff and broader community um so how have we managed the reductions in the budget over the last several
008years one of the ways is decline in enrollment we've been able to cut teachers uh cut other staff unfortunately this is a unique you know year fortunately i guess the good news is that we're growing again um and this year we've we've actually had to add to teachers to support just the enrollment and i'll talk about that momentarily the other thing obviously we've used the medical benefits fund the reserve that we've had to be able to um address some of the reductions but unfortunately you know do it to a wildly unexpected by anybody uh dip into those uh those funds that were uh were left having to to cover that so my recommended budget continues to be uh 78 million four hundred and eighty seven thousand and fifty two dollars an increase of five point
009two two percent uh again zero percent of that goes to improvements for our school system uh 58 is directed at restoration of areas that have been cut in the past the majority of which is as i mentioned medical benefits and then the other uh 1.6 million is contractual increases to cover things like our staffing increase uh you know contractual staffing increases which were all negotiated um in in you know pretty vigorously so on both sides and then uh we have transportation increases utilities things like that that account for the remainder of that balance our recommended budget where you know you can see where our budget is divided we are and i you know i know vin has said this a number of times i i reiterated often that we are a person heavy business um
010that are most of our costs are driven by the folks who work with our students and support food services and transportation and learning for our students every single day our health staff everybody and that's 80 of our overall budget you can see that ever-shrinking categories of instructional expense support services and maintenance and operations make up only about 20 of our overall budget so increases again by categories you can you kind of follow this along i'm not going to spend a lot of time because again this is a recap just to kind of you know reset everybody for tonight's conversation and questions our projected enrollment again this number here is what you know is impacting us most the uh significant jump and pre-k to six enrollment and i think that's where i kind of need to
011delve into a little bit further uh nasdaq projected for us this year that our enrollment would be 4052 students it's actually currently 42 11. [Music] and you know this i i pulled the number of slides here from a mylona mcgroom powerpoint that was actually never delivered publicly it was sent to school modernization committee members but i thought it'd be beneficial to provide some context for why there's this projection in population growth for us obviously you know if you look at the median age and cheshire increasing there are more folks really ready to sell their home and um you know move on and so when that happens obviously we see increases in enrollment uh birth rates are a huge driver the last five years our birth rate average i think is uh 174 it's not a
012future slide but always a well below 200. and for next year's kindergartners and 26 those born in 2016 it's 205 and then 200 plus in each of the two years after that as well so our birth rates are up significantly our housing we have future housing developments available um there are a number of subdivisions here and i i often say people will move to cheshire for the night life um that many folks and it's a great thing that they come to our community and i know robin talked about this the other night they come here looking for a great education for their family and so when you build 21 large homes off louise road you have to think that a good number of those people will be looking to educate their children in the cheshire
013public school system this is uh something that myelon and mcbroom published called persistency ratios what it means is if you look at each grade level you would think that if we had 200 kids in a grade 200 kids move to the next grade that's a persistency ratio of one that one to one so where did the only places you ever see fall offs in cheshire really are in that eight to nine transition where a lot of our eighth graders have a multitude of options um whether they be a voag program or tech technical trade school or private high schools that's the only place where we see really a consistent ratio below one but i think it's really important to note the birth to uh k persistency level over the last five years for every child
014born in cheshire one and a half children register for the cheshire public schools so when you look at last year's birth at and this 2.66 excuse me 266 students registering for first grade in the this subsequent year the births are up here 205. the enrollment is up here over three well over 300. so this is our our issue that we're seeing more of with our persistency rates increased birth rates people selling homes uh new homes you know being built um our numbers are going up so this year when we had a lengthy history of reducing staff um and still being able to maintain our classroom ratios we're in the reverse boat this year as our elementary enrollment is increasing so we have added two additional teaching positions and our ratio has gone from 17.8 students
015per teacher to 18.3 even after adding two teachers because we're adding so many students across the district so our class size trend data this just shows that the the ratios are pretty static over time and that's something that our our families really hold sacred and i know our board is proud of the high school level you know we're 17th out of 21 dergby districts in terms of number of students per uh teacher it's not um an area where we're we're overstaffed per se so some of the enrollment conclusions are that you know birth rates are higher than they've been in previous years we're averaging 204 births over the next three years of enrollment so people born in 16 17 and 18 in cheshire we're averaging 204 births the five years prior we were only averaging
016176. don't forget you got to multiply that out by 1.5 to see what the real actual enrollment is and now we're back over 300 instead of it 265 adding those you know 40 plus individuals our enrollment particularly at the elementary level right now is poised for substantial growth and i've kind of just gone through the data that uh has had milan and mcbroom who are professional demographers come to this conclusion um and so what we're facing in the near future um next year actually at darcy is that we are over capacity enrollment so i've talked about the fact and i met with the doolittle pto last night that we're gonna have two kindergarten classrooms coming back to do little and what does that mean it means we're you know collapsing classrooms potentially putting people on
017carts the worst case scenario being that we're we're putting up trailers for kids to go to school in which um you can ask norton and anybody else highlander those are not what we want we worked really hard to get rid of them at chapman many years ago because they're unsightly expensive and uncomfortable but you can see again in the next couple years not only will darcy be significantly over but chapman will ultimately be over capacity as will highland and ultimately norton so the biggest driver as i've said in our uh our budget this year is medical benefits and again i think this is the easiest way to just boil it down uh our projected run rate for this year was we budgeted 725 000 thinking our expected claims would be 800 000 a month um
018as i mentioned earlier it's really astonishing that it's 1.1 million a month nothing to do with covid this isn't something the board could have seen coming um nothing that actuaries saw coming um so i i'm not you know i don't think anybody here deserves blame um but there's volatility in this market and so um you know at this point what we need to do is make sure that we can fund at a claims rate that at least keeps our uh pool where it is and i know adam's had some thoughtful comments on that and we'll touch upon some of adam's questions and and uh in a little bit but you know what we've just recommended for this year in order to keep our pool where it is which frankly is low um we would recommend
019a 900 000 uh a month contribution there which is a substantial increase to where our budget is today and that's really at the heart of this you know large budget increase that nobody wants to put forward but i think is um you know educationally and fiscally uh sound as it can be um you know different avenues in which we invest in our school system and our community i just went through a lot of the operational budget school modernization is an arm really unto itself that another um you know committee of 13 people are driving um the other one being capital budget and i know unfortunately i wasn't able to attend the planning committee meeting before this meeting because i was in another meeting but i know that our planning committee met just as a quick
020overall um update you know what we had proposed for next year was a 5.2 million dollar capital budget you see spread across various buildings in uh in our community uh and i'll you know allow certainly time for for vin to elaborate on that a little bit in a moment so key takeaways uh the pandemic is a wild card and it's it's not considered in our operating budget but again we've received you know very good news there that um resources will be more available to cover the things that we hopefully the things that we need like tents and um you know human resources in terms of our cleaning crew and things that we're required to have like a monitor in the building to watch students that have been identified as potential coping positive students um we're
021required to have somebody that does that but it comes at a significant cost and this budget is driven by insurance it's about 50 of our overall increase uh the rest of it is is maintaining current services and again i think we provide an outstanding value for the community so you know what about meeting students needs post covid that's a question that's come up within the board and also within the community we had one email from um burnham uh hitting that point you know uh the way that we're planning right now is you know we could always add more staff i mean in our in our previous budget this group the board has recommended adding staff to support math and other interventions um but you know if we're talking about meeting the academic and the emotional
022needs of students post covid adding an individual or two to each building is not going to be what gets us through this it's really a full-scale commitment by every individual in the building to our sdl uh to that effort to our sel skills and our awareness as well as you know to our effort to accelerate our curriculum and i know marlene's uh done a great job uh with kevin and our academic folks uh presenting on that to the curriculum committee but more importantly getting that down to the classroom level to support our students and making sure that they have what they need to be successful and i feel pretty good about that the standardized testing costs and commitment was a um a request from mr bester and he wanted to know what is it costing
023uh the the town to provide uh s back testing to students and the s.a.t and the ngss the answer there the short answer is nothing the state provides all those testing supplies uh really it's online now so it's basically just online access really for the for the most part for that um our curriculum isn't designed to um you know to just do well on the test our as i said earlier our curriculum is focused on teaching kids to be complex thinkers and we feel like if we do that well our kids will do well on standardized tests or anything else that we put in front of them and i think that's kind of proven to be the case over the last several years but we we don't dedicate you know lines anywhere to to s
024back or to anything like that the cost the medical benefits i think i just uh certainly went through that process i went through why uh you know that that's being recommended and i think the board is actually very well group versed as a group on that that topic we've touched on it quite a bit and a lot of insightful questions um why why these increases in the face of massive unemployment again you know i think cheshire is like eighth lowest unemployment in the state of connecticut and is consistently that way um but i mean that doesn't mean we shouldn't be sensitive to financial increases and this is you know a process that sure this is our third night here but there have been painstaking hours it wasn't easy to request 5.2 percent after having 1.17
025on average over the last five years i certainly very much respect the the difficulty in this decision in this process and um i you know have full faith in the board to make a decision that's best for our community in our school system um to move forward and then you know there were a number of special education questions that came out of the other night so at this point i'm going to stop sharing screen and turn it over to rob and ann to address a myriad of those questions that came up and also um to uh you know again just turn it back to adam uh mr grippo and the board for any questions that that you may have okay so i'll cover some of the questions that were asked from the other night that
026we were looking for some additional information on um so one of the questions that came up was about chronic absenteeism and whether or not we have a large is spent are there a larger number of students that are receiving special education servicing services exhibiting chronic absences compared to general ed students and i was able to pull that number those numbers up when we look at chronic absenteeism we're looking at nine at least nine absences or more so at this point in time as of today from the start of this school year till today we have 82 students that are part of our general ed population that fall into that chronic absenteeism category and we have 51 students that are from our sped are special ed population so those are the numbers when it comes to
027that so far so far this anybody have any questions about chronic absenteeism any further questions about that they want me to answer before i go on to the next question uh robin just for clarification um when you say chronic chronic absenteeism is that excluding if perhaps uh their family member or they or they themselves were coveted positive do you deduct that this is like so some sort of other category that's unrelated to that kind of absenteeism like if they had to quarantine or something right um i did this i did pull the data through powerschool and um i would have to consult with scott conway who does our um does a lot of our data input and in works with powerschool it didn't look to me like it teased it out um but it so
028i'm i it could very well include those days that they're quarantined but i do know that we have a process of identifying those students that are out uh we use a different code for when they're out on quarantine but i'm not sure if the program would have pulled that as an absent because it's just a different kind of absence so that i can i'll have to follow up with scott on sorry about that yeah it does sound like it it is kind of teased out by assuming the codes were being used properly that sounds like we are using codes for coven and um and so i would think that just a regular absence would have been pulled but i would want to check and double check and make sure sure um faith you had a
029question yeah just to confirm so it's 82 students who are chronically absent and are sped students nope it's it's 82 total right general education students 51 total students with ieps and special education services so the total is 133 if i do yeah good job um and then how does that compare to previous years um that i i don't have that data to compare it to right now in front of me i don't have that right right if you could you get that just so if we could see if it is an anomaly for this year um that might also help with um adam's question yeah sure perhaps so okay thank you okay the next question that was asked about special education had to do with we were talking about the new mandate that says that
030requires us that students who qualify for an 18 for those transition years from 18 to 21 now it's through their entire uh 21st year so we are exiting them out at 22 and the question was how many students over the age of 21 are we projected to service next school year so what i was able to look at was this current year we had we have six students that either uh that have already turned or will turn 22 that are in our 18 to 21 or 22 program at this time so there was a total of six students three of those students were students that we exited because they had turned 21 and we then had to bring back so we had to bring them back in back into their programs and continue to provide
031them with a an appropriate program and then they aged out at some point some part of this school year i know we had a street couple students age out in december so there are a total of six this year next year we'll have two students that we will now have to carry through to 22 that will turn 22 in the next school year and those students can age out it could be anywhere from one month into next school year to the very end of that school year it just depends on where their birthday falls and when they would turn 22. so i kind of looked at some other numbers too um next year our qu program is going to have a total of our our life bridge to life program is gonna have six students
032we're projecting six students in there and our community um community program is projected to have four students in there um so in that and within those groups there'll be students that will age out we're looking at two students that will age out next year um just another one thing to look at or consider is right now at our high school students that who potentially um qualify for those transition years right now at the high school we have 22 students that are in a program right now and if they continue with us they will will end up in our qu programs or our community program um in it over the next couple of years five out of those 22 students will become senior our seniors this year and will then enter our transition programs next year
033so it's just to kind of get an understanding of how those numbers work so it's not necessarily the concern is not necessarily that there are an additional two students that we are holding on to it's two students or three students as we progress through the year that we provide another additional year so it's another additional year of costs in the in case of when they're in our programs in our um in our district it may mean that i have we have to hold on to if that student has a one-to-one then we now need to hold on to an additional one-to-one to make sure that student is covered so it's an additional year of of a one to one for that student also that student that adds to our numbers and our therapies so because
034in many cases these are students who require a lot of services a lot of intense services and so they usually require therapies like ogpt and speech so it's it's those although it's a small number it's it becomes an additional cost because of this the staffing and in the supports that they needed you put transportation on that and then put on top of that if it's an out placement that the student requires and so now that's an additional tuition that has to be paid for another year so i'm hoping that answers that question anyone have any questions about that yes tim thank you um yeah sorry if i missed it what's the cost of do you have an idea a ballpark on the 18 to 22 additional years that we provide the service and does the
035state give any funding toward it or is it just an unfunded mandate uh well they no there's no additional money that's being provided because of that mandate it's still it's still this you know we still get the same funding through our idea grants and um and through our budget so what happens is um the the cost of it it will depend again if the student is is being educated in district or if the student is being educated out of the district and in and out placement so as we said the other night our out placements um a tuition cost for an outplacement can run anywhere from sixty seventy thousand dollars to two hundred thousand dollars and so it depends on the intensity of the students needs and the programming that they need and the supports
036that they need so if a student is if so now you're looking at that additional added cost in district the additional cost would be if the student requires uh paraprofessional support so if that student was aging out at 21 that releases that paraprofessional that worked with them and we now apply that paraprofessional to work with an incoming student it's a cycle but now holding on to students longer it may mean the need of having to increase that or pull that from elsewhere so i i sorry jeff i was just going to say to be clear too that's a federal mandate it's not but that's not a connecticut issue that's that's part of idea yeah okay okay and it's but there's no funding associated with it well ida funding is provided to uh the states who
037in turn you know provided that money locally and yes we we receive ida funding but that's considered part of it and i i think you know your point is that since this ruling that it went from 21 to 22 there's been no additional funding to cover that extra year which obviously sets us back a little bit locally okay okay and just to be clear on the out placements so when when you were talking about placements i was thinking of like up to age 18 and i've seen the list before i think there's some like down up in vermont maybe down in new york city the really expensive ones but i was thinking about when you said 18 to 22 i was thinking what do you consider quinnipiac because i thought is is quinnipiac out and
038out placement or that's in-house quinnipiac is our program it's it's our transition program located on the quinnipiac campus yes so that is that you know for our students that we many of our students needs can be met through our quinnipiac program the two quinnipiac programs in our community um community to life program that right now is housed at the park and rep okay okay thank you okay so um let's see the next question that came up for special ed uh let's see the question was what is it that draws people to cheshire for special education um and so you know majority of the phone calls that i get from parents seeking to move to cheshire uh or the phone calls that we take within the pps office or department or even the supervisors you see
039them in most cases they are looking at our specialized programs um they're often looking for supports that are not currently found in their in their current district um in our districts i think our district programs are attractive to parents because they have we have similar supports in our programs that that you find in and out of district placement because they are located in our district the students then have access to um their peer models they're within the community the school they're part of the school community as well as part of our community at large and they are in with their neighborhood friends and um it also um within the school building itself so as they make progress they and they and as we determine what the least restrictive setting is for them if they're able
040to enjoy um go into classrooms with the other peers then they're able to um have some interactions with those with those peer models also the advantage of having the programs within district is that when they're ready to transition to a less restrictive environment then it's usually less disruptive for the student coming back than it is for a student coming back into the public school from an outplacement so i think that is something that's attractive to parents to know that their child when they're ready to transition back into a jet more of a general ed setting or a resource room setting or a less restrictive setting that it can be done right within our community in our district the other attractive thing i they find in our programs is a small student-to-adult ratio and so that's
041another piece that i often get asked you know what's the student-to-adult ratio so because we're able to it really and as i was saying the other night it's those resources in those programs that really first of all help our students make the progress that they make is the most important piece of it but it's also it's the appropriate supports for the student based on their needs does anyone have any questions on that so so that's my take on why they come here because jeff always says it's not the night life well you know thank you for covering that robin and um marlene i you know i like i said i tried to give an overview a summary marlene has more specifics on some of our questions from the community thank you this email is from
042john bester i would like an itemized estimate of the costs incurred by the district for the administration of s back in grades three through eight in the 11th grade statewide sat as well as any costs associated with the purchase of test prep materials equipment and technological updates i understand that such an estimate neither accounts for instruction time loss for students nor the time expended by teachers and school administrators for this essentially non-instructional endeavor in other words what is the budgetary cost incurred by taxpayers for mandated s back and state s.a.t administrations i agree with faith ham and we've got to fight back against unfunded mandates i would like to suggest that the members of the board of ed explore its many options and consider whether it should speak out and perhaps rally other board of
043boards of ed to push back against federal and state education departments that require discriminatory invalid and unreliable and still controversial testing protocols that lack purpose and usefulness in helping teachers understand student learning needs and parents better understand their child's progress unlike any other year this year is crucial for test suspension and that students have received a wide range of instructional methods and no one can account for the different impacts that remote hybrid and in-person in time of covered learning will have on test results additionally how are students in remote learning going to take these tests while maintaining standardized protocols and protecting privacy concerns as our students continue to cope with the social emotional stress of their schooling experience it is incumbent upon educational leaders to seek ways to decrease these anxieties rather than simply stand
044firm in order to check a bureaucratic box there is a grassroots movement calling on the secretary of education dr miguel miguel cardona to suspend testing for this current year although it may feel as a heavy lift the cheshire board of ed could begin to fight back against these this unreimbursed testing mandate and ask sde to request a waiver for testing 21 and call for the suspension of s back and statewide sat for the 2021 to 20 21 22 school year and beyond thank you we have another letter from mary burnham i would like to express the concern i have regarding when students come back to school after covid19 is over what supports are built into the budget to assist teachers with a variety of issues that i suspect may occur because of remote instructions and
045additionally the emotional stress covid has placed on all children i suspect there will have been a loss of educational instruction and therefore the loss of some of the goals that children will have needed to have met and may need more assistance and time to catch up i also have concerns for the children coming in from birth to three who may not have been identified or certainly didn't receive the kinds of interventions they should have received therefore there may be more children than anticipated that might need ieps and or additional supports are these concerns addressed in the budget i would also like to express my concern about having s-back tests this year administration of s-backs will be time lost for instruction that we desperately need additionally i'm not quite clear how children will even take the
046test if they've been doing remote learning these tests only add more stress to students as the board considered requesting a waiver for this year mind you i completely support john bester's statement regarding sbac and sat tests the least the chil the cheshire board of ed can do is request a waiver for this year mary burnham cheshire connecticut that is all thank you very much marlene um and i know vin uh had some responses to questions that came up uh throughout the process and some additional birth information that tim's been clamoring for it finally came through so they'll share that too okay thank you good evening everyone welcome back to the finance committee and budget discussions so yes we did get from the cheshire town clerk's office the number of births for 2020 um and i'll
047keep you in suspense for a minute nasdaq had estimated 199 births for 2020. so this is the last count of the year uh milan mcbroom who had done projections had projected 205 so it looks like the cheshire residents over performed with 221 births in 2020 so that is up above you know both sets of projections that we had you know and i know that jeff you know explain the um you know the one and a half multiplier there so that you know would clearly put if that same factor holds true that would put us above 300 well above 300 five years from 2020. so you know i guess that's good news um but i did want to share that and i you know i apologize jeff i wasn't able to share this with you before
048the meeting so you could have explained it so i got the break break news vin congratulations that's good you know we talk about the fact that the birth rate and those things you know they they obviously impact our budget but you know the data that we've shared this evening is evidence it's positive it's it's evidence of a thriving community it's evidence that that people want to live in this community and i think that's all positive stuff um and you know obviously there's a fiscal implication for that but you want to live someplace where people want to live it helps our home values in a vibrant community and so that's those these are all good things okay thank you so i do want to share my screen um and answer a couple of the pension related
049questions that had come up uh the first was actually a question from tim according to my notes and that is if the cheshire pension plan you know allows for buyouts for our participants in the plan and our finance director for the town jim jascott is is checking that um he doesn't remember having that provision uh but what he does remember definitively is that we've never done a buyout of any participant in the pension plan so that's the answer to that the next questions we had several questions around the investment composition of the current pension plan so what i'm showing you on the screen hopefully everybody can see the uh this bar chart at this point yes yes thank you jeff so this bar chart um was the target allocate asset allocation as of june 30th
0502019 what i'm showing you comes out of the actuarial valuation report as of july 1 2019 which was performed by millerman who does the actuarial evaluations and recommendations for the town pension plan so you can see here the the target asset allocation was 39 in u.s equities stocks 26 in non-us equities and then 30 in u.s interim bonds and 5 cash so that was the target as of june 30th 2019 what i'm going to show you is a snapshot of the car the actual allocation as of june 30th of and you could see that i apologize it's not in the same format but the idea is the same so the percent of the total portfolio and the portfolio is 71.3 million as of june 30th 2020 is equities were 60 and fixed income was 39.3
051so a small portion was in cash actually 8.4 percent is under fixed excuse me fixed income cash so it's roughly um about 60 percent equities somewhere around 30 percent fixed income and the remainder in cash and other investments i do want to point out this 71.33 million dollar number because i'm going to show you um in the next piece of information which i have to scroll to okay so this is again the milliman report this number here these these two numbers i'm going to talk about but july 1 of 2019 the market value of the of the assets were 45.6 million and so two years later there were about 71 million dollars which is what i just showed you so the the assets are up substantially from the two-year ago period the reason that this
052is dated is we have not gotten the updated valuation report so this is the best information i can provide right now but the purpose of this particular slide i wanted to show you here was a question that mr grippo asked you know what is the percent funding of the pension plan's obligations and so as of july 1 2018 based on this 44 million dollars in assets we were funded at 83.9 percent a year later even though the assets didn't change we're funded at 74.1 percent and you might be wondering what the reason for that is and the reason goes back to one of the things that we talked about which was in 2019 the um recommendation from the actuaries was to reduce the rate of return assumption from seven and a half percent and it
053was uh approved by the council to use a seven percent rate of return assumption so these same assets would only provide a funded ratio of 74 again this this point at this point in time this data is dated you know based on the growth in the assets it's probably higher than that but i you know i'm certainly not going to take an attempt at guessing or projecting what it is we'll wait till the valuation report available which i'll share but um you know that's that really answers the the pension related questions so i did want to get that information in front of any in front of everybody and what i will do is you know take the data that i received and send it to the board members in pdf form um and there's there's
05441 pages in the actuarial report so you know if you enjoy numbers like adam does then you'll probably enjoy seeing this information the last thing that i had to present and i'm going to go back to sharing um you can see the par chart jeff yep okay so now now we're back to medical benefits and i know we've talked about medical benefits a lot jeff explained uh reiterated kind of why we are where we are with medical benefits but at the last um the last meeting that we had of this particular group one of the questions raised and i said i would obtain is you know what are the you know what are some of the large claims drivers in in this current year that we're in for the plan year so this is from
055july 1 through december 20th so six months worth of claims and what this shows is claims that are over 25 000 and it's by type and i i do want to preface and explain that the information that i received from cigna on this is de-identified i do not get employee or determined names it's just it's it's disaggregated so there's you know no information related to a particular individual that i'm able to see and so what you'll see here is cancer claims and this could be you know most of this is treatment and the the cost of drugs used to treat cancer which includes immunotherapy and radiation etcetera so 23 of the 2.9 million dollars in claims over 25 thousand dollars were related to cancer bone-in joint includes things such as spine knee um you know
056hip you know replacements um or or any kind of orthoscopic type surgery that's about 22 percent 622 000 items related to you know gastrointestinal you know ear nose throat eye endocrine organ issues you know 487 thousand 17 percent heart related issues arterial or blood related issues with 438 000 childbirth and fertility were 321 and you could see surgery not necessarily scheduled surgery some of it is emergency surgery was 264 000 um counseling and rehab services were about 570 excuse me 57 000 and we did have you know one covid case that exceeded 25 000 at 32 598. over on the right side you could see that we had a total of 45 claims that were over 25 they totaled almost 2.9 million dollars the average of those claims was 64 364. i gave you a
057little bit more detail here so the claim uh the lowest claim in this group again over 25 000 was 25 813 the highest so far is 253 148 you know claims of a long-term nature such as cancer treatment you know will continue to accumulate over the course of the plan year so this 253 000 will probably increase in some cases so of the claims that we have here these 45 claims only three currently exceeded the 175 000 stop stop loss limit which we insure and so we'll receive reimbursement on three of those claims and the reimbursement will be a total of 144 thousand dollars as of the december 31 report um we had 35 000 estimated so it is a bit higher and this last piece of information just what it tells us is that
058um we have 2.9 million dollars worth of claims that were 25 000 or more and that represents about 44 of the total claims that we've received this year which are 6.5 million dollars you know one of the things that we've we've talked about you know not only this budget year but prior budget years is that you know medical claims you know they're not controllable and they're not predictable and we are in a period you know this year which started in the last claim year but it's continuing this year to be high claims it's not um you know the largest claim in that pool is 253 000 so we've got a lot of claims that are 25 and up that add to a you know 44 of our claims that you couldn't account for that is
059above the norms that we would typically see and i could tell you just from looking through you know the claims again the identified that you know most of these are things that you you would never be able to predict no individual knows when they're going to get sick or get cancer or you know you know need to have bypass surgery so that that gives you just a little bit more insight as to what's driving this claim here i know it doesn't answer all the questions as it relates to medical and the last thing i'll leave you with is that you know we have a two-fold problem one is that you know we know that the claims are higher than were projected you know you know by cigna and our insurance broker and two we were
060funding you know into our medical reserve at a lower rate than expected claims because we had a healthy reserve so that's those are the couple of things that i had that i was able to address this evening and again i will send out the information to the board members that i just explained thank you jeff sure i mean i think that just reiterates though what i said about you know you can't fault the the board or the you know this is when you look at our history these claims are extraordinary and they're and they're way outside of the norm so you know this no nobody that is making these claims wants to have them as you can see from the the issues that were just identified and there is volatility so tim i know you
061had a question thanks do you have any of this data for uh you know year on year the first six months of prior years i i don't have it and um just the board of ad the information that we have because we we do um you know work with the town i'd have to have that separated out um and i can get you know information broken out in different ways through tom kwalczyk our broker from usi so yeah i mean i don't know how much time it would take you i mean you know if it was quick that's one thing if it's going to take a while then i'm not going to ask for it right now but what i'm thinking is if we could identify a trend and something that you and i had
062discussed i think in a prior meeting which is although we don't have any as far as i know we don't have any sort of uh screening or testing anyway baked into any of our contracts right now you did mention that there's different ways to approach that which would be either a carrot or a stick so the stick is probably something that would have to get the contract but the carrot might be something you could act on right now and if we see a trend over the last three years you know if you implemented something at a you know it might be a low cost to us and a high benefit to the to the staff it might i just feel like it's something that would be worth considering because you know if we keep on
063this trend then our budget again next year gets blown through it gets blown out pretty quickly thanks again we've seen as we've seen in the past hopefully you know it's certainly not a trend it it's the five to six year anomaly that we seem you know to suffer from so i always call my fingers when it comes to claims to be clear so when i'm talking about a trend i'm not saying that the trend might go up for that million dollars a month but within that you have it broken down into smaller categories we i did we may very well in a second in uh like with the g within the gi category you may see that going one way astronomically with other things being relatively low i don't know i just think it's i
064always find it interesting to see what the trends are but that requires time so that's here um ann and faith both had questions too yeah so thanks uh ben um then you mentioned two things that are very important use about these medical benefits reserve fund and that is that it's not in our control and it's not predictable and it seems to me and i've been talking and i hope that i don't sound like a broken record but i've been talking about having these a special revenue account that is that we're not allowed correct me if i'm wrong that we're not allowed as the board of ed to have these rainy day funds set up but the town is and insofar as we're part of the town's budget um it seems like the medical benefits reserve
065funds shouldn't be part of our operating budget but should be something that we can share with the town and have a special revenue account that um because it is unpredictable and it's um it's busting our budget this year and keeping us from advancing with instruction and education which is what we're in the business to do so i'm wondering if um you can maybe answer this question or maybe you don't know is the town seeing um these unpredictable medical reserve funds also or is it just us on the board at bedside no the the town is seeing a similar pattern although and i talked to sean kimmel the town manager about this a couple of days ago you know they're definitely seeing the same trend although it eased for them over the last uh four months
066so their trend isn't quite as steep as ours but we you know we are putting our heads together and we'll do a you know presentation comparing notes and we'll share that with the board as well as the town council because the you know sean is has to increase his budget for the same reason next year as we do not as dramatic but he has to increase his contributions to that medical benefits reserve fund both the town and the board side had very high reserves and both sides were making contributions below the expected claim rate but it just worked against us and again we don't even though there's not direct coverage expenses that are you know driving our high claims it doesn't mean there isn't you know secondary effects of the pandemic that are causing some
067of these um claims and they're identified in the categories that's you know that that we receive that are reported by cigna but there may be something related to the pandemic that's that's helping to spur this on this year well we get it seems to me that we get hit so hard in this area because we are personnel driven i mean that's our business right we have people um so uh i don't know i i think we need to put our heads together and um figure something out because as you said this is not something in our control it's not something we can predict from year to year that's all i had yeah if i could add something to that uh i honestly don't know what could be done with another reserve fund in the town
068the town already has a reserve fund um and this process is not new for the border vet i think when i first got on the board we saw similar trends if there is a reserve you know it's a town uh it's a town reserve so let's say i'm knocking on wood at the jinx ourselves but let's just say over the next few months um you know this fund gets depleted because claims do come in higher and we can't find the money in our budget to finish out the year we still go back to the town and ask for additional funding to pay for claims that's i don't know if that's ever been done before in the operating budget year we've had years where we've ended the the fund i think one year was 200 thousand
069dollars not mistaking it was pretty low and the town council funded another extra 900 000 for the next fiscal year to shore it up it tends to happens but it's all coming from the same pot the the concern i have is you know it's feasible to have just in you know i'm sure in the tom books there is one medical reserve that they track for both sides but if there was one pot i um i would think that if we didn't have four million dollars per se as uh or let's say eight million dollars in our medical reserve account and that's not an operating budget you know we wouldn't see that in operating budget so therefore our budget would be less but we would think that hey by not having that money we would get
070more towards other school things like analytics in terms of positions everything gonna happen because it's all come from the same pot but i like the idea of somehow you know again this has been incredibly unpredictable um some other school district has seen this i don't know how many i thought the two it would be nice to have something on the books that's not the town reserve fund uh that's always there but something specifically for the town and school to tap into if we reach a threshold um it's worth talking i just yeah i i don't know how to avoid this you know it's right we just can't predict this and it was very good for a number of years uh and i hope the trend stops but yeah i'm curious to see what sean has
071to say and maybe uh if we meet next week you know we'll get some more details on that but i i just wanna ways to get healthier and and hopefully this subsides but i don't know i don't know anymore can't predict that tony i just would add one thing i know that the town has a rainy day fund but it's my understanding that you could set up a special revenue accounts for specific things so we have we talked about that actually for the turkey specifically for medical benefits yeah and that is true back in 2012 11 we were trying to establish a special reserve found with the town to capture ticket sales and other things from the turf field to use towards future expenses well that was perfectly legal as it was not but it's
072possible okay thank you sorry just a little history uh faith go ahead um then i was taking notes could you just clarify did i hear you say that we're continuing to see this level of claims in january or is it did i make that up no no no i i don't have january claims information yet and you don't get you don't get it you know like flash reports or anything no through the month okay um all right um because i was just curious um you know i mean if if the majority of these are cancer claims that you're talking a minimum of six months with it with a standard chemo so i mean these could go on for a couple of months possibly just we may not be out of the woods it would be
073nice to think we are but um it's just it's it's still out there so um go ahead what i was going to say is you know some of the the cancer claims if they started in the last plan year and they continue into this year you know some of them will run you know after the person is done with their treatments they do run out so you know my point is they don't all start in the plan year some can some carry through you know from last year to this year so we'll see yeah yeah um so then this is just a comment um you know i'm looking i i just was curious um with regard to the return of the um of the retirement fund i know you don't manage it um you're just
074the messenger but i mean if you look at something like calpers um you know which is i think with the standard that a lot of people hold up um because it's so huge and i don't know what connecticut is doing what the teachers are doing but they're looking at rates of return of 12.4 in 2020 8.4 over three years 9.7 over 5 and 8.4 over 10. i like a very conservative estimate but if we're not getting this shouldn't we i'm just saying it's maybe rhetorical trying to find a better fund manager somewhere i'm just curious here well the i'm not on the pension board but you know from what i understand the pension board does do a very good job and you know i didn't quote any performance data this evening although i do have
075in the package of information i'll send over it does include performance data for one year five years um 10 years so you you can take a look at that and okay yeah i'm just kind of i'm just looking now the the current quarter there's some you know very high returns you know well over 20 percent but um i'll send it to you and take a look okay and then last question um and i don't know if you've had a chance to do it i had asked about the comparison of cost per pupil of general education student versus special did you get any information on that i wasn't able to um find the time to get that done yet that is on that is on my list thank you we'll get to it okay just curious
076thank you yes uh tim go ahead hey thank you adam um yeah we did just for uh for anybody who's watching then correct me if i'm wrong but the way the pension works just to be clear on this is we have a pension manager the pension the pension manager does what the pension board tells them to do the pension board is appointed they're they're appointed officials by the you know uh by the town council so if anybody is interested out there in town uh just keep that in mind that there's a possibility of getting on the pension board to uh impact these things or affect these things uh so there was um i just want to highlight i've heard you know in the past in the past few meetings i've heard about with the costs
077or you know the costs are not controllable we have fixed costs and stuff like that i want to distinguish between the costs and the rates in my opinion the rates are fixed by contract we as a board could collectively reduce or increase head count by doing that we could change these the costs what we need for the budget i'm not advocating for that i think i personally based on my own household experience with my daughter i i don't think the kids i think what the schools are doing you're marlene monumental efforts in trying to make things happen but the realities of technical difficulties and things like that i just don't believe the kids this year or last year are getting 100 out of a normal year um i'm not i'm not advocating for any reduction
078in head count at all but i do feel like it's on the board we do we do have control over the costs associated here we could make changes if we wanted to that's that's my that's my simple point thank you you already caveat we don't have control or medical claims no matter how many employees we have those claims are unpredictable so if you had 300 employees which is 600 you can still have high cost claim layers it depend on nature and employee the health and in the so i'm not sure what you meant in terms of frame of reference for controlling the cost well sure but i mean logically speaking if you had half the number of teachers you'd probably have closer to half the total medical cost jeff how many teachers have reduced over
079recent years due to enrollment drop where are we today compared to seven years ago down about 30 teachers 40 teachers i think that's a really good estimate if you give me a minute i could get the exact number but the thing is our staff has been reduced no not fifty percent right and that's right as we're being reduced to claim going up so it's just a yeah point taken but we're talking about relatively unparticular claims for very special you know serious procedure codes that's all um katherine go ahead yeah i couldn't find the chat box so just sort of to to address tim's comment i understand what you're saying that um you know we could make a decision to reduce uh without regard to the medical benefits and the insurance costs but you know the
080cost of educating our children can be changed if we wanted to reduce staffing with the result that there would be larger class sizes and i think that we as a board historically have you know will do almost anything to avoid that outcome and um that is always in my view going to be the very last thing that i will ever want to look at in terms of you know saying that we can really modify um costs because that is a pretty critical factor uh it i think to our students success um so while i understand the economic argument i i don't want there to be any sort of misconception let's say um on the public that you know it's you know we don't have a really good valid legitimate strong reason for staffing at the
081level that we do and you know it's and you know as tony pointed out it has gone down over time as enrollment has gone down it's never a one-to-one thing because it doesn't work that way and um the needs of various students may not reflect you know just a straight enrollment drop so um but i just wanted to kind of go out there make sure people were you know understanding that while you can cut heads as much as you want you know we have made the decision that that is never going to be something we look at first it's not something i look at first um but i get it you know i understand what you're saying as well so um okay sorry that's the end of my speech thank you catherine um i guess
082i'll i'll chime in now um uh so then i have a couple questions obviously i sent you an email today uh with some of them um to begin the the budget book i i think the the budget book said that we had 15 retirees last year is that our ballpark around there is that correct well let's assume that it is um as part of their um retirement package um or let's let's say in general uh when it when a uh an employee of the educat education system retires do we continue their their uh medical benefits or um was there something specific to last year where did we extend uh their benefits for several years or anything like that you're on mute then thank you here we go um and to confirm there were 15 teacher
083retirements last year and we did offer an incentive where the teacher could either keep their medical benefits uh for a year at the board's cost um or they could take a cash payout and i can pull the numbers as to how many decided to stay on our medical benefit plans as a general statement teachers can stay on a medical benefits plan at their cost until age 65. but then they have to then they have to drop off unless they were um teachers that were pre-1986 where who weren't paying for medicare and we do have a few of those remaining on our plans that we got a small supplement from the teacher's retirement uh board for but they'll have to stay on our plans you know until they come off okay because like i'd uh be
084and thank you uh for the claims detail um because that kind of sheds light a little bit at least for this year it'd be interesting to see what the claims detail was for last year and perhaps the year before that when we had a we we had a very good benefit surplus or a trust fund surplus um it seems to me that um at least this year that the two well at least one of them was was or two of them were age-related uh which were um the uh the joint the joint replacements and the endocrine um usually those things are are more age-related um and especially with joints that could be you know a one-off let's say a knee replacement or a shoulder surgery or something like that um and so i i just
085you know hopefully those those are tend to be more one-off but the the the andrew can poor enderkin portion uh we know is expensive and i just wasn't sure that you know at least according to our our uh uh our salary projections it appears that you know like a lot of our teachers are in that top uh top step portion which should then allude to that uh that our teachers are certainly more experienced and or older um and so i'm just wondering as far as the trend goes um are we to ex expect these kinds of expenses going forward uh because i am i am concerned that uh we aren't properly reserving uh correctly and i don't know if this trust fund is meant to be a reserve in in that type of definition or
086if there's uh if the uh the stop gap is meant to be more of a reserve and we're just kind of caught in the middle right now um i'm just you know i'm just trying to figure out you know how we should uh fund uh this going forward so i was wondering if you had any comment on that well i mean what comes to mind adam is you know the the cycle that i i showed and you know i don't want to bring up the slide again but i showed the slide that you know every four to five years you know we wind up in this situation where we have to make a large increase to the contributions for medical benefits because of the pretty much the same situation where we had a large reserve
087we were not funding our claims in line with what was expected because we were trying to draw down the reserves and then you have a high claim year and then when you have to make up that run rate right where so this year was saying we were contributing at 725 000 we're expecting claims at 800 now we want to start contributing at 900 000. so making up that difference is steep and um again as as mr peregini explained this this has happened before it does seem to be a five or six year cycle i i don't know what the fix is either because if you fund if you look at the last five years and if we continue to fund our contributions at the expected claim rate you know our reserve probably would have grown
088to you know four and a half or five million dollars and that would feel really good this year but then there's the question of why are we you know continuing to fund contributions at this you know high rate and you're building up this giant reserve that it's coming out of the taxpayer's pocket to fund right so it's not a there's not a simple answer and it all comes back to the same thing the claims are unpredictable and i'm i'm hoping it isn't a trend and it hasn't you know the i don't think the employee population has fundamentally changed in terms of age or or demographic profile i just hope it's another blip and you know we start to see claims come back to a more normal and actuarial expected level right so i think what
089i'm getting at is that i think that that five-year let's call it a five-year dip um i guess should be actively figured into how we fund this trust um because at least you know since you know i've been on the board since 17 um there hasn't really been an active discussion uh about like okay you know every five years you know we look into a dip um you know uh you know you can sh you take a little off now but you never know when something's gonna happen and that's not really the case that we kind of do know when something will happen it seems like at least using the the data from the last 20 years it does look like that every five to seven years there will be an event that that will
090significantly reduce this fund and so i guess just going forward and for future boards i think um just to have that as an active piece of knowledge uh because right now it feels like we're being reactionary to an event that was that's unpredictable and it really seems like it it's not that unpredictable perhaps what form it comes in uh is unpredictable but it seems like every five to seven years something happens um so i guess you know i'm just trying to to get a handle on you know hopefully the funding level of 900 000 is good to get us out of the hole this year uh or for next year and then hopefully that the the trend will be in our favor where that we can refund to prepare for the next event in five
091to seven years i suppose so i'm just i'm just hoping that the the level that we're at is we'll we'll we'll get a reprieve of the of the claims and that we'll be able to moving forward be able to to fund it correctly so i don't know maybe that's a statement instead of a plea but i know i'm just hoping we have enough good information here to be able to to adequately fund that's all because if we get hit with more million dollar claims because you know you have covid long covid coming um that we don't really know a lot about um that that's certainly been making news lately which can can be could turn into a chronic condition which could again fund these uh uh types of claims so there's a lot of a
092lot of volatility certainly coming up in the next year so again i just wanted to voice my concern and hope for the best it almost sounds like a proposal adam you know really i mean well no but i don't know i don't know what that is uh i don't know i think you need to be explored like you should you know maybe a finance committee meeting down the road to come up with a plan slash oh oh i said policy but you know you know down the road perhaps and i guess i i i'm a little slanted because my wife does do reserving and so we've been i guess discussing that and how how major insurance companies normally handle reserving and it doesn't seem like we're doing what what they would do um and and
093i don't think i don't know if we have the data and certainly not the mathematical capability amongst us at least i don't want to speak for everyone but certainly for me uh i don't have that ability to to be able to do that do that high math to be able to do that statistical uh calculation but it just seems like we're we're missing something um so i guess just from a high level just to expect that in five to seven years something else is gonna happen and hope that it's five years from now um so that we can kind of get back on our feet so thanks so listen to adam it's it's it's a i think it's a good sentiment i know we keep saying five to seven years i know vincent had the
094chart up the other night if not the first meeting showing the the the trends it's almost like we should be planning for instead of a 100 year flood like you know so municipalities plan for a seven year cycle right i i only caveat that the actual work that happens in healthcare healthcare payer organizations there's a ton of data um that they have you know hundreds of thousands millions of members lots of medical history i mean there's a lot that goes into that we don't you know we don't have that rich data uh let alone the tools of forecast something like that that's why we have our vendor our actually do that for us so anyway i think it's a good good point i like jeff's idea of me talking about it more depth in the
095finance committee see we can do with that but that's all i want to say so i think that covers our summary um and some recaps and in some loose ends that um i appreciate rob and marlene and vin um trying to tie up and you know at this point i i guess we turn it back to adam and if there are other questions from the board um about the budget um is there any additional public input or comment i will look uh quickly i see none yeah i don't have any okay um then i think we'll move into sort of the main reason we're here is to uh to move forward a a budget from the finance committee to the whole board and so to enter that discussion um i would like to to make
096a motion so that we could at least enter into discussion and or amendments to the motion um so let me get my correct information here i would like move that the uh cheshire board of education finance committee um if i can see this picture that i have here uh um move that uh we approve or full board consideration a budget of uh 78 million four hundred eighty seven thousand and fifty two dollars for a uh an increase over last year's budget of three million eight hundred ninety three eight hundred ninety three thousand one hundred twenty six dollars oh faith can second face seconds and now we can enter into the discussion um so um comment uh i think catherine you're already in there for comments so go ahead no no that was that was gonna
097be for the the last thing forget it okay no sorry all right so uh so do we uh do we have any discussion on this is uh i mean uh for me i i i feel you know we've you know i just been discussing um uh the uncertainty and volatility of the of the coming year and um for me i think it's important that um the board and administration uh maintain uh flexibility uh because of what is unknown um and so uh so at this time i know what we'll probably have at least another week to consider before we have our uh next budget meeting or our full board budget meeting um i think that i would be supporting the motion that i made at a boy yeah um so i just want to make
098sure i understand procedurally we're going to we're moving this the superintendent's budget as proposed to the full board and at that point there may be amendments too okay fine yeah it's because i think fine well i am i am in full support of moving this the superintendent's budget to the full board for consideration there are finance chairs sir can i just uh clarify what catherine just said i if you don't mind so i i and i i should know better it's so used to this but for anyone that's watching i think we had 11 earlier just a little pointy clarification so it's a finance committee meeting in the whole here's why the whole board is here so that we can listen to these you know very detailed discussions in the finance committee about violating ferpa
099and et cetera and that way when it does come to the full board for discussion which will be next thursday uh then you know we're not rehashing another four days worth of discussion uh the other reason too is it gives the public of at least another week to hopefully catch up on these meetings ask questions i'm a little disappointed that we haven't had more public input however i am reminded that there's an extraordinary time you know people's minds are on covet and family and taking care of themselves so you know this is and i'd also like to think that because pressure has been doing reasonably good with schools you know the the their the schools are not first in their minds they're healthy so i would hope that between now next week when the board
100discusses the full budget uh there'll be more participation there'll be no opportunity for public to chime in at that meeting but to katherine's point uh the board and even tonight we'll see where this goes the fans committee can alter the budget but even next week you know if a board member has an idea for the budget has an amendment uh you don't have to it's happened in years past in years past we've seen full boards decreased a lot we've seen it actually increase believe it or not so there's an opportunity for that too so tonight is the finance committee's uh night and look forward to see what comes out of it thank you mr chair no problem uh faith go ahead um i just want to say that i um agree with this we do
101need to put the budget as is forward to the board um it's an uncertain time for sure and um i i was talking earlier with marlene and i am concerned that we really um are so hemmed in by our fixed costs that that we're starting to cut into that one area where we are mandated to we are charged to uh uh really kind of um protect and that is the instruction of our kids and so um i'll be interested to hear others comments but as it is i support this budget okay well that um that sort of makes discussion pretty quick um uh so for this um so i guess i'll i'll read the uh or well i didn't actually write anything like sort of winged it so um um so the motion on the
102floor to vote is to move forward to the full board um the superintendent's suggested budget for uh fiscal year 2021 22 of uh 78 million 487 thousand and 52 for an increase over the um uh fiscal year 20 uh 20 20 21 budget of uh three million eight hundred ninety three thousand one hundred twenty six dollars um all in favor andrew you can't vote you don't vote andrew it's next week it is unanimous uh thank you finance committee um so now the second question is do we need to vote on the covid supplemental what is the status of that i did have a question on that but adam you just asked it i guess so any feedback on that vincent or jeff i've spoken to on um about putting together this a similar approach on
103the town side and you know one of the one of the questions that came up in uh you know one of the other finance committees is what are some of the other communities doing and i i was able to speak to some of my peers you know there's a couple of of the business managers i spoke to they're they're assuming that covet ends and they are not budgeting for any expenses next year and one of the business managers i spoke to you know is including in his operating budget um covert related expenses but at a lower level than he's experiencing this year so you know i i think that it's a little bit uncertain as to what's going to happen you know not only with not so much with pandemic costs but are there going
104to be reimbursements that we're going to see from the state and federal government like we're seeing this year so you know i'm of the opinion that if we should put something forward not as an approved budget amount but as a quest for the council to consider when they're deliberating over the budget and you know i i don't know if we should have a separate discussion with the town council before we finalize the board's you know budget vote i i think what we will know by next thursday though is we should know what that covid reimbursement like the the fund that's coming from the federal government will be at least we'll have that information we can talk with the town about a plan and then i think you know obviously uh well not obviously but by
105april when the the you know the town adopts a budget we should have a better sense of where covet is but it's a good question tony do we have to act on this now so let's prepare for next thursday vin and i will get some information on how much money the feds are giving us and then what the town is doing for their preparation and i'm sure we'll just dovetail together yeah and i asked i thought that a little bit earlier today about this too because from from the board from a board um operational perspective we could just only request an operating budget i don't think we could send two versions to the crown council you know best case worst case that being said you know our only option would be to add that supplemental
106into this budget the next meeting and the worst case but i would hope i'm on the mindset of what anne uh mentioned earlier when we started this process a few weeks ago more than likely i would hope that you know the town and i'm sure they would set up some kind of reserve account and mcbug agrees uh for code expenses be it board of editor town under the premise that we don't know what the reimbursement will be but as you said jeff between now and and end of april may we have a better idea so i just if there's a something the board can do next week to help with that process when we take our vote you know be nice to know uh if not we'll you know we'll work with the town of
107course and my guess would be that either we could have an emergency finance committee meeting before the main meeting or it could just be handled via an amendment i would guess right well if we want some meaningful information you know otherwise we're gonna be meeting and guessing you know what the town can and can't do but right uh hopefully learn more before that okay um are there is there any other comment or question okay seeing none um we have no other um business on this agenda except to i guess uh tony can we officially announce that uh our next meeting will be february 4th uh so we'll have a a a an official official board of education football board of education meeting on february 4th i don't know if you want to fill that in
108tony uh no adam you you did swimmingly i was just uh we had on the calendar a kind of roof every year where we use that special meeting at the finance committee for the board to meet so yeah on february 4th the there will be a special meeting to adopt the budget uh it will be virtual uh i we didn't set a time for that meeting but i would assume would be 7 30 since it'll be a regular board of ed meeting and you know have carol put the agenda together but the topic will be the budget uh and there will be public comment on that uh before and i think during when the board takes a vote so plenty opportunity for folks that might be watching or watching this after the fact that please
109send in your questions concerns any ideas and we'll definitely hear from you but that will happen next thursday and the fourth great um so uh seeing no further business i would like to entertain a motion to adjourn so faith okay all right catherine you get the second in faith or you get the motion you get the second faith and uh all in favor all right that officially ends this finance committee meeting thank you everyone for attending tonight and thank you for everyone for the hard work and robin thank you for sticking out tonight too and thanks for having me thank you so much for all that everyone good night everyone