001item on the agenda from the board. You had anything you want to share? >> Sure. Thank you very much. as well as it major driver for most school budgets. Um so there were there was robust conversation around that and asking legislator legislature to um either extend uh the excess cost reimbursements which are typically less than 100% And for those who don't know, um the special education, um has extra funding that's provided from the state. If you spend four and a half times the cost of educating your average student, every dollar that you spend above that amount, the state has a special fund set up to reimburse for those costs. However, they have a fixed amount of money that they put into that pool that all districts access. So depending on what the uh reimbursement requests
002look like from various districts, we typically see I think around 65 to 70% reimbursement on the dollar. So four and a half times the amount of your average spend and then every dollar above that we get about 70 cents back per dollar. Um so there was discussion about uh expanding that pool of money. There was discussion about uh what we can do um you know to try to address the rising costs for out placements in particular, which can run upwards of $300,000 a year for a student, not inclusive of traveling costs. Um, so that was that was a main uh conversation, but there was also conversation around what to do now that the ECS funding has been uh reached its uh full funding according to the the uh state. Um, this was a goal that
003was set back in 2017. I believe it was a 10-year roll out that they sped up a little bit. However, um, the ECS funding is based on a foundation amount of $11,525 per student. That determined rate of what it would cost to educate a student is from 2013 and it was not accurate even in 2013 to what the actual cost was for educating your average student. So, um there's an additional push to have that foundation amount re-evaluated for uh 2026 since that is the year we're living in. Um to see if we could push that number up. Um and Dr. Casmiro also had put forth something uh that we brought to CA uh for the delegate convention was which was to increase sort of create a a cost of living increase for uh the ECS
004funding given that year-over-year our costs are going to go up just the same as they would any operating business. So, um, so that that was a really, uh, good opportunity for us to get in front of legislators, have some conversations that I think could be helpful to our funding process. Um, but I think my take away from that and Sherry, I don't know if you had any thoughts about it, was that we need to really continue to advocate with our local legislators individually and certainly as a group where uh appropriate, but they count on getting that feedback from us consistently because they take that feedback back to the full legislature and say legislature and say, "Hey, you know, we keep hearing from people on this issue. We keep hearing from people on this issue. We
005keep hearing and that's what motivates the legislature as a whole to start making changes. So really important for us um as board members to advocate on those education pieces um and to encourage folks in the community to do that advocacy work as well. >> I don't know if you had anything to add Sherry. >> It's really nice to be there. >> Okay. [laughter] Um, the other event I went to over the weekend was the state of the student conference that was sponsored by the school and state finance project. Um, I don't know who is familiar with that and who is not, but it is a great resource for information about how education funding works in the state of Connecticut and some of the challenges that we're experiencing. Um, they have a lot of data on
006the website, so I do strongly suggest you check it out if you haven't already. The day that they sponsor is really supposed to be centered around students and hearing student voices and getting a sense of what students feel that they are getting or not getting in the classroom. Um they had some really great uh uh speakers in the opening session that talked a lot about how you know they are underresourced. These are students acknowledging that they are underresourced in school and they understand like we need more funding to come through. Um, but also talking about sort of the difficulty of navigating an academic environment where everything is based on testing. And there's a lot less emphasis on what it means to be creative and to have, you know, sort of access to experiential learning as
007opposed to I'm going to sit here and I'm going to memorize some things and I'm going to spit them back out for the test >> and then you forget them. >> Yeah. >> So, I think that, you know, that was that was really good feedback to take away. that was that was like a forum um that opened the whole uh the whole day. Um and it was a session held. I missed the actual intro of the students, but there were three high school students that were there and um an educator who was running the forum initially just asking, you know, for some feedback and what the experience is like in the classroom for high school students right now. Um then they did breakout sessions. Um and there were you know different pathways that people could
008take. Um they had sessions that were really centered around uh what is going on with the actual education funding at the state and federal level right now. Um there were sessions that were more geared towards what are we doing about sort of the teacher shortage and how are we going to deal with that in the future. Um there were sessions that were more individual like How do we support mental health health care for students in school right now given all the pressures that they're facing? Um how do we support English language learners in the classroom? Um so you know lots of different sessions to attend. Um and I think this is something that it would be great for us to get on our calendar for next year for everybody. Um so that everybody has an
009opportunity to attend and participate and learn some more from this group. And probably few hundred people that were there attending um all over the state. So, you know, again, it's all about building a movement and taking our voices up uh to the state level as a collective group advocating for education. And that's a great group to uh to learn from and partner with >> I didn't [laughter] I was like, "Yeah, I was I was on this year doing it last year and learning more about a lot of researchers and how to build Erica took the year off to do a lot of research and a lot of districts. So she pulled in pulled in the work that we're doing to talk about how we're approaching so that our owners are not just services for all
010kids but critical We have a good partnership with Erica from Sheate. >> [laughter] >> and our uh one of our state reps, Ken Gucker, was there as well. So, there were other legislators in attendance and um that's encouraging to see their interest and willingness to participate in places that >> they're not explicitly invited. I would just add her state school and finance project their website is fantastic if you're looking for some basic primer >> school and state finance project >> there's all kinds of tools in budget district. >> There any questions from the non Y somebody Say I. >> I.