001I'm um chair of the community relations committee I want to thank you for joining us this evening I'm going to turn the mic over now to Dr casiro Who's going to give you a presentation or our budget for the 25 26 school year thank you thank you Kate um so if anybody paid for the cheap seats um the the the prime seats are now available you could move forward um so I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight there's only a handful in the room um but it's important um the reason why we're doing the uh doing another budget um opportunity to kind of review what our ask was is because your advocacy is super important um for those of you don't know my name I'm Cara casmo Hi how are you I'm the
002superintendent um this is my first year so welcome I'm happy to see a few new faces that I may not have seen before um if you are in need of translation services we do have some folks here that can help support um you can sit in the back and we can be able to um get some additional information and support for for language um so I'd like to thank the board members for being here tonight um it's a little bit rainy Bluster could be halting some of our um our attendance tonight um and also the cabinet staff um and some of our members um of our DPS team so I'm going to go through uh the budget some of you may have seen this but I think tonight is more about sort of dialogue around
003the ask and our need and why why it's so important so as with our budgets in the past and with many school budgets um we base our funding we base our alignments we base our priorities on our district plan and uh for the last couple of years um our district through the collaboration of the community our stakeholders and our staff have determined that these six buckets um are where we want to focus our efforts and so we've developed strategic goals for teaching and learning staff development Talent acquisition School climate meaningful collaboration that's how we engage families which is why I'm glad you came out tonight um and resource ation and so when all of these things are priorities and when we align our budgets to those priorities we have something called coherence and sometimes um
004in years past and in different systems and organizations that I have known um folks have a lot of priorities we have a lot of goals and things that we want to do but the resources aren't necessarily aligned to that and so especially when there's limited resources it's very important to be strategic with how we back into those priorities and we say if all else fails these are the four or five things that we're going to work on this year and try to do them really well and support the people who who need to do that work um with the right resources and tools that they need so this year was my first year um as a superintendent but also uh Mike Weaver Mike Weaver waver he's our CFO U Mike is our fifth CFO in
005just a very few short many years um and we're hoping he stays but uh We've developed a a good working relationship and we developed a fresh process to um to the budget development one that had a little more um building based voice with our principles um and the people who are closest to the work and that is the best way to develop your budget is to hear what the needs are um you know in real time on the street um but then also um you know feeding in what's coming down from legislation what's happening in in the community what is our Outlook going to be what else do we have to anticipate in terms of our enrollment demographic um building repairs so all those things come together together to form um a budget and we
006had a lot of help and stakeholder involvement in that this year and uh probably more so than in the past years that I've been here so that was that was a great uh Focus for us um okay stop here okay um for those of you who are unfamiliar with our actual numbers we are up over 12,000 um students this number the Little Star there um we that number changes almost on a daily basis here we have a lot of students that come and go um so that number can be a little bit um a little bit erratic from time to time but for the general purposes over the last five or six years last 10 years we've been on a steady increase um over time we have two Early Child year centers 13 elementary schools
007three middle schools one high school seem to be two campuses which I'm sure you've heard about two alternative programs and our demographics at the bottom we now are at 38% of our students are multilingual Learners we have the highest percentage in the state State um 49% this Statistics is not up there but 49% of the students enrolling in our school system are second language Learners so they are en rolling at a higher rate than the overall so that number U will likely go up as well um we're at 57% economically disadvantage we also believe that number is a little bit higher because not everything is reported and then our students in disabil with disability number is going up we've been hovering around that 14% Mark for quite a while we're now up um to 15%
008um but also some of the needs that we're seeing are a little more severe uh in terms of the support that's needed so again just another way to look at our enrollment over time and um we have a double star on 25 26 we're still um registering students uh coming in we're um getting a handle on how our kindergarten um change over last year will affect the enrollment this year and whether or not those kindergarten uh students that um were held up with the uh age change which was about 200 of them whether or not they will enter try to enter as first graders or they will re-enter as kindergarten so we'll we'll know a little bit more when the spring uh through the end of uh early summer uh and over the summer uh
009this is when folks start to to start registering so again another look at our multilangual Learners you can see these kind of steady increase uh we're up to 4,630 um projected for an next year and kids keep it registering we continue to be a very popular place um special education as well you can see how our numbers have changed have changed over time um and we held steady for quite a while but we are now seeing that that increase so some of our issues our key issues um in terms of our drivers we need to meet uh as any budget any any organization meet our meet our contractual uh obligations um we're concerned about recruiting and retaining staff that's a big um important need as as many folks around the state even in the country
010struggle with Staffing their programs you know so two those things affect school systems and so it's important to remain competitive and to make sure that we're offering contracts and benefits um in some cases conditions that are attractive to our to our folks so we're constantly thinking about ways to do that um we've got several contracts coming up um in this this summer so we'll be negotiating about five of our bargaining unit contracts so there's a lot of work ahead um we have some onetime ARA funds so we're looking to replace some of those we're opening a new school school site I should say over at thhs on the west campus um which is a very costly budget driver but very much a necessity we have a a large High School enrollment um kind of bursting
011at the seams there waiting to to move on to this new site we're very excited about that um part of that DHS West move is uh requires a need to add a lot of plusses to our our Fleet um probably between 20 and 28 buses overall um those buses are anywhere between $70,000 and $80,000 a piece um and we'll be traversing across the city uh likely rering a lot of our school start times next year as well and of course we've got to continue to keep our schools safe make sure that they're secure um and other costs that we have as I mentioned before our growing sped costs tuition and out of District placements uh those tuition and out of District placement rates um are of great uh discussion right now in the legislative session
012because of the cost the skyrocketing cost of those placements and the tuitions and then and really there's no um no system in place to put a cap on those things so districts are really um at a you know held to whatever the rates are and finding facilities for students who are in need so that's something that's that uh it's not just affecting Vamp it's more of a Statewide concern um as I mentioned before remaining competitive and attracting staff is um going to be a key U Move for Danbury and again not just Danbury folks across the state too are all having those same conversations um we've uh are fairly competitive with with a lot of folks but in order to remain competitive we need to keep up and we need to make sure that we
013we don't lose ground um staff teachers in particular have options um one of the things that we're also trying to do is look at one of our contracts which is our our par educator contract our par educators are vital to our school Community um they serve as intervention Specialists they serve as uh ESL support in the classroom um for students who require services and are entitled to those Services um and they also very much so support our special education program allowing many of our students to stay in District to stay in House close to us um with some additional supports that we provide um we struggled to uh retain and attract in this area I think we our we were paying our starting rate was around $16 an hour um so you know there's a
014lot of options out there at $16 an hour not here for the level of work that required so um we're looking at that and we want to make sure that um we're able to staff our schools appropriately particularly coming this fall as we open up and our our school system grows we want to make sure that our classrooms are full um with par Educators who really do make a difference um it's been a root cause in this District uh this year in particular not having enough Paris we had to use agency staff to support the schools you pay a premium rate when when you do that um and it's just not the same level of of care or service and there's that relationship component um just is not there when you have C you know
015rotating staff that come in uh to cover as opposed to kind of really invest in the community so we're looking forward to that um urban districts in general um face greater challenges right sometimes uh we our classes a little bit larger sometimes we have uh very complex student profiles that we deal with and so when you have some of the some of these conditions and you combine that uh with some other challenges um you know it tends to make other places more attractive I will say that tamry public school system our goal if you haven't heard me say it in other presentations is to become the best Urban District in the state of Connecticut it's something that we can absolutely do we have incredible staff they're very dedicated we just need a few more supports
016in place to make that happen and that's what we're working on and that's focus and a driver in the budget so um this year we you know we did a lot of trimming in different areas based on on budget last year and some of that has proven to be um in some cases more expensive sometimes when you cut back in certain areas or you don't have enough staff in certain areas you can become operationally inefficient right your ability to get work done and to service in a way that is is Meaningful can be a little bit diminished and so um and having to use agencies um and so forth um yes the class is covered but are we getting the same return on that investment for the person uh in the classroom so um those
017are very important things we've had increased asses this year um we've had sub costs that um have gone up and some of that impacts learning so when you have a hot large percentage of substitutes in the building the the student Behavior can be a little bit more challenging at times it's not quite the same and so we're looking to really round all of these things [Music] out we reduced about 68 positions last year um you know you may have read in the paper that we only physically laid off about two folks but um we accomplished that um feat actually by um not filling some positions and eliminating positions where people had fated we just didn't backfill so we did lose quite a bit last year even though the headlines might have only been um that
018two staff were were eliminated so um that was physical layoffs so we lost some teachers coaches support staff counselors media Specialists operation staffs and administrators um we did get a one-time infusion from the city um which we were very thankful for uh our mayor worked very hard to um secure additional arpa funds even though they're onetime funds for us uh and super collaborative last year as we were kind of going through it uh with the budget so they did the city really did all that they could good to support uh to support us um and have been very open um there's a very open dialogue around funding um because of the relationship that is built so I am hopeful so this slide got a lot of attention uh particularly with parents so sometimes when you
019see a big budget you're not quite sure how all this what this means for for your child or what this means in the classroom and so one of our chap schools helped me do a little bit of sleuthing and um do some compare a lot of this is available on on public it's publicly available data um but when you lay out um we always compare ourselves to Norwalk and Stanford and some other school systems have similar profiles and demographics uh Norwalk is really close and size so we're we pretty much nearr the size of Norwalk and so um and we've had many staff members that have worked in danber Gone in Norwalk and and back and forth sometimes we trade staff so we have a lot of relationships with the folks there and we laid
020out we have a Danbury elementary school I'm not going to say which one it is it's 400 64 students and the Norwalk elementary school 465 and you can see the difference in the Staffing that supports the school um you know in a in a in a town that's the same size similar similar profile so we're working really hard to bolster the student supports um and increase particularly around uh you know reading Improvement math Improvement literacy coaches and things like that we have um literacy quotes and math quotes in the district but there's only a handful and they share and they they work across all 13 elementary schools so while they're not necessarily um you know parked in one of the schools dedicated all day long to students U they do go from building to building
021to help support um but it's it's very sparse so we're looking to bolster that and again phenomenal staff we just need a few more to close the gap on the work that we're doing um this is just a little chart to show how the 7.5 million is allocated for the one-time funds we have set aside uh money for technology uh replacement infrastructure this is coming at a very good time too as we're opening up a a satellite campus at the high school um the instructional Improvement so that is some of that is um some of the work that's needed to help open up the campus that not necessarily covered in the in the in the bond package um as magnet school that's a a fee a number to offset some of the tuition that was
022reduced uh through State Legislature and legislation over time and uh 1.3 was for the DHS staff enrollment so last year you know when in order to meet High School graduation requirements we have to staff at a certain level for the number of students that are there um so that was a number that we uh needed in terms of staff for for the high school to be able to staff appropriate for this school year um the existing staff we brought back um as part of that reduction we did have media Specialists and instructional coaches in that original reduction um and when the one time money came in it was an opportunity to um to to delay that uh for for this coming year and then we of course you've heard about the audit we had a
023lot of um audit activity and so having some extra supports in there to help handle the the volume of that uh as well as some supplies for students so here just another way to look at the budget drivers so you can see that the of Danberry is the largest largest budget drivers up there you can see that we've about 6.3 million in staff benefits about 700,000 we anticipating to operate the school informal utilities Transportation so those are all those buses that we that we need to add to the fleet um to transport students um we have technology and then school lunch the school lunch is interesting because normally our school lunch program for many years has been sort of self- sustaining so the money that comes in for school lunch also pays for um kind
024of a break even on the staff that we have um because we're opening a new satellite location a new site we cannot take the staff at DHS and just move them over that staff must remain and we have to supplement the staff and school lunch on the DHS West Campus a little bit of a budget driver there oh let me go through the contractual increases so we have about uh 4.5 million in contractual increases a lot of those contracts will be negotiated this this uh coming summer um restoration of the positions uh as I mentioned before um other positions non Academy fed ml needs to support students um competitive par Staffing model so that is a a number um to increase the PA contract and also bring more pairs on at the K3 level um
025I didn't talk about this I think in some other presentations but I want to tell you why that's so important so pair of professionals having a pair of professionals second set of hands working when targeted intervention in the classroom K1 and two particularly K and one is vital to making sure students end up reading on grade level by the time they're in grade three and having at at the time intervention is most valuable at the point where the intervention need is at its narrowest point so when we can we can Shore up gaps in student learning in K in one then we prevent those larger gaps from growing over time where there's there's not that level of support um and we don't want to send students up to the Middle School who are still struggling
026to read or struggling to do their math so um having those pair of professionals those hands in the classroom um K And1 is vital we also see a wide variety of learner profiles that come in some students with uh formal preschool experience many students who do not um students who speak English many students who do not and so there's a wide range of need for that kindergarten teacher to to um to instruct children at and so those par professionals um are vital and they're pretty common in most schools we had them at one point maybe about 10 years ago through a grant and we lost them and it was uh it was devastating so we're hoping to get those back oh I did it again um multilingual Learners uh 1.1 benefits about 4.4 so those
027are increas in health insurance costs and also cost of bringing on new staff is in that number some it improvements and then the other is really just a amalgamation of smaller increases across the system that are um that have gone up um but combined together under under father so the budget request for this year is1 194 million half or so with an increase of about $ 34.4 million and a 21% uh increase and that is a Whopper for sure and um you know the there's an elephant in the room that I want to talk about briefly and that is around recent news around our Audits and having some surpluses in the last couple um years where we've had to catch up on some of our Audits and so just very briefly you know um we've
028had some questions around you know um you know are we budgeting appropriately are we handling our finances appropriately and that's something that we take very seriously um as I mentioned before we've had a sort of a cycle of of financial turnover in terms of leadership but also um you know we we are looking at our budget in different ways and we're putting controls in place that uh likely should have been been there when during the time that that these uh numbers have surfaced so we are looking at this uh very carefully we're taking it very seriously um the audit results as you know we had we did have a surplus um in the most recent finding um but what we're dedicated to committed to is um a new open communication ongoing communication with the city
029so um since since I've taken over since Mike has taken over um we've had a lot of dialogue with our city leaders which is good um a lot of financial conversations with our city leaders and and right now there's crisscross collaboration um to to get that to a place where everyone feels comfortable with it um we are in terms of our internal controls that's something that um Mike Weaver and I are working on now with the finance team they've been buried in audits audit catchup for the last um couple like the minute they hit the door and they signed their contracts the finance team has been doing nothing but but audit work um so we're looking really forward to um kind of riding the ship in this area putting practices and controls in place um
030that make sure that our financial decisions our projections and our numbers are sound we continue to collaborate with the city and have an open dialogue in this area um this is just another way to look at the budget uh we did this last year and folks seem to like the left to right um out look I'm standing right in everybody's way as you can look at this um but this just lays out categorically the salaries the benefits um you know different types of categories that when you build budgets um so you can see where those lines hit um this is available on our website if you want to take more time to peruse it it's it's a little complex to look at um but the total numbers um you know line up to the 194
031and you can see where those fall and the drivers in the blue are across the top left to right and so I won't go too much into the weeds but you can see that there's a large number of staff that this is the staff that's will be um heading up to needed for the opening of the satellite campus um on the west end of town this is DHS West you may have heard it called DCA or Danbury CIS or the Danbury Career Academy it's been out they had a few different names out there um but it is now DHS West Campus and then we'll have the DHS M campus so we need some leadership special education counselors department heads media Specialists special education teachers um Special A teachers t-a teachers bilingual psychologists nurses social workers
032counselors um speech and services um par Educators not just for special ed but instructional par Educators multilingual par Educators we need folks to help support our our Tech um we need 12 custodians sounds like a lot of custodians but it's a pretty big square square footage of a a footprint of a building um this building houses not just the high school but will house the Board of Ed and we're bringing three sites over combined into this new building so we'll also be able to get out of some of the leases that that we currently hold for some Consolidated location which be great um for savings on one end but also great for team building with uh the leadership team that's kind of spread across across the city and you can see there's some other things
033in here health benefits Building Maintenance costs and and just really the cost to operate the school so the enrollment for next year uh will we'll start with our um right now the current students that are in the academy model program are in grade 10 and they're all of at D high school and next year we'll have 10th and 11th graders we're going to allow our 12th graders to stay at gbury high school and finish out their senior year with the exception of CNA who have they have a full-fledged program and that will come over so it's just a small number of students uh that will come over but we have threey that are DHS West the scientific innovation amend medicine emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship and clean energy and Green Design so in total we'll have
034about 800 students over there to open the school and then the next year we'll add the 12th grade class to that as well so it'll be fully subscribed over the next two years for that school um this is just one of the drivers the contractual increases so the total is 4.5 we'll know more closely what that looks like when we settle those contracts this summer and this is the slide indic the positions that we'd like to restore in the budget for next year instructional coaches which are vital um that goes up against those uh the slide that I showed you earlier uh and and the need to provide those additional supports um this is to backfill the assistant superintendent for teaching learning which was my previous job this was very much needed U moving forward
035um make media Specialists um last year we we uh took two Elementary assistant principles offline they remained in the district um but we need to to backfill those most elementary schools across the state have an assistant and some of ours our schools are quite large um a security coordinator that was also limited last year and uh that is very much needed Safety and Security is is a primary Mike C has been doing a great job filling in the gaps but is certainly running all over the the school system trying to keep up um administrative support so these are support positions for um some some are in central office some are in curriculum uh where we lost some of those coaches which help um teachers to break down curriculum to make curriculum more accessible for our
036second language Learners also another vital position and then Associated benefits with those positions here's just a a list of other non Academy SP or ml positions so other drivers um we are desperate need for recruiting I think I counted close to 200 positions I think that we're going to have to open up uh the school year with between all of the new positions at the danber high school academy filling the current openings that we have now and replacing any staff that leave between now and the end of the summer which we always have some turnover um as well as the hiring of some of the parent Educators that we'd like to hire so there's a tremendous surge of of hiring and rehiring and bringing folks uh on board but particularly what's driving that is the
037opening of the of this of the new campus and so the timing of that is kind of everything all at once and so we're going to be starting a push um on that towards um sort of end of April but also once we get our allocation from the city we'll know exactly which positions we can hire we'll have to make some decisions on that um but we have to open up that that Academy um because those kids need to need to move over we need to get them on a t by High School uh they're bursted at the scams there um a senior accountant to help with some of our finance is part of our controls and systems and we need some additional help there student support Specialists those are your folks that are dealing
038um very directly with students who need tiered intervention so students who's really struggling or really behind or off grade level our students support Specialists work with them in an more intense way to help catch them up to grade level and so um I could probably use maybe about 10 or 12 more easy um but we have four in the budget here um Elementry teachers we have some sub schools in some Pockets that are kind of bursting we need to add across a grade level in a couple of our schools um that number changes a little bit over time depending on enrollment um it's a little bit that one fluctuates from time to time and then we um had a small amount in here to do some magnet uh recruiting and student Outreach uh for our
039AIS Magnet School to help balance our ratios and then those are the associated benefits that go along with those positions and this breaks out the driver for the comp competitive Paras Staffing model so overall with all of the par professionals that we have in the district we would predict that by um creating a more competitive per hour wage that we would U meet about $2.3 million roughly across that bargaining unit and then we it is our hope that we can add an additional 45 more so that would be one per at least per kindergarten class across our across our 13 schools um and then the benefits for those new positions would be 1.2 million and as I mentioned before special education is growing here in Danbury um it necessitates um adding a few more special
040education teachers along with some of the services that go along with that um the social worker and psychologist those are not just they don't just service special education students um they serve as all students but in particular when when those numbers go up um there's definitely an increased need in those areas um there's the benefits contracted Services out of District tuitions which are on the rise and sped supplies and equipment and then Transportation um a lot of times we have uh the need to have specialized Transportation um this is sometimes hard to project they come up through the IEP process during the course of the year and they get added in at after the budget has already been processed same is true with some of our audit District uh and Contract Services so some of
041those are IEP driven they legal mandates um and they're costs that are occurred post budget and so what happens is we usually will try to budget for those similarly the next year in anticipation that we may experience a similar a similar increase and for our ml population uh we we have some some needs so for a few additional bilingual teachers par Educators um a second language learner multi langage Le department head um we have very much grown and exploded the number of teachers at the K5 area so there's some need for some supervision and organization um in that area uh we have to uh would love to add homeschool Ag and we lost those in in our budget uh we had a wonderful grant called the leap Grant um that allowed us to pay for
042school a on to school a and would provide Direct Services to the families hey why isn't your child coming to school what can I do to support you and most often in the native language which has been a barrier for us so uh they're vent positions we hope to bring them back um it was it was a position that the principles are begging begging to come back so that came out really strong in our conversations again and they're in the parent contract so and then lastly this was the slide that indicates some of our health increases that we're anticipating Dental uh life uh insurance and workers compensation and we have a very small it network security budget and this is a little bit of an anomaly this year because we had some grants we did
043some offsets were able to offload some of the cost into some other grants as well as the ARA onetime funds so this is a this is a number that will go up in future years but for this year uh we have another source uh thank thankfully to utilize and then this is sort of the miscellaneous uh accumulation of other budget drivers so building repairs and maintenance Transportation adjustments um we have an increase in the number of homeless students in Danberry and their transport they have specific Transportation needs that sometimes Falls outside of the the normal bus runs um alarms security infrastructure some utility increases a little bit in staff development and just again a little hodg podge of smaller increases in mentals across across many contracts and here's a just a visual of how the
044budget breaks down in terms of proportionality with the drivers so you can see that the acmy in the blue takes up a pretty significant chunk of the of the as for this year um as well as the the Staffing model the competitive pair Staffing model Restorations benefits contractual increases and so forth so the total budget again is 194 the increase is 215 and about 5% of the budget is dedicated to the academy however um I will say that you know the budget increase if we if we were fully funded and I know that that's a that would have been a stretch um our increase this year from last year to this year if we were fully funded would be 7.24% so sort of in the ballpark with maybe where other some other towns are are
045projecting um we'd love to get that down in future years but we do we are opening Academy and there there quite a bit of needs um that we have ahead of us so but also some very exciting things in Horizon for students um if I had more time I'd give you the whole song and dance about the academy how wonderful that's going to be um so that you understand how important it is for us to to open that model up and and how that would be transformational for for our students um at this time I'll take some questions and while you're while you're thinking about raising your hand um I will say we did have a couple of questions that did come in through the survey people kind of prepopulated um so I can try
046to uh answer some of these now and um if any other questions come up we be happy to answer those so we got a question and this is coming in kind of left and right from everybody from our staff it's like how what's going on with the with the federal government and how is Danberry responding to um all this information that's coming out and I think like everybody else we were writing a roller coaster of of information coming out about about the changes that were happening um and things that were supposed to stop or start and then as soon as the federal government would put something out state of Connecticut would kind of clap back with their response about oh put the brakes on it um you know this this is this can't happen and
047there's we're going to you know there's a pause on this and then we get another another notice um so we're I've kind of taken myself and my team off the roller coaster of that because it's you know can really be distracting so we're really just watching and monitoring and we're going to wait to see how a lot of this plays out we'll be responsive to to information that comes in real time the biggest problem for us would be any type of cotton Federal funding so directly we receive about uh between $8 and $9 million of direct federal funds to Danberry so things like Title One idea uh title three title two title four um and many other grants in between and so if we were to incur a loss there some of our direct exposure
048could be in that area um in conversations uh with with other folks today um the loss to damber in general could be any can be closer to 20 or $30 million right um and we don't know how how um how any of our ECS money that's that's the thing that I have in question how is any of the other money that we receive from the state impacted by anything federally that's happening so that sort of remains to be seen and it's not a question that I can answer for anybody we're all waiting for the same information right now there's been no disruption to our services so that's what I can tell you is that we haven't seen A disruption uh to to us in terms of our funding that doesn't mean that things can't change
049down the line and we certainly hope that it does not um but like many like many of you we're riding the wave of information that's coming out um you know most of the information that we do in our that we uh follow and are beholding to is at the state level so um the state department we do curriculum locally but we're Guided by the state on what some things like assessments and where those standards um should be so even though the Department of Education is going away um the the directly direct effect on us is not necessarily around curriculum and decision- making it's it could be more around the financial aspect of things which remains to be seen okay so I that's a big nothing answer I gave you no information other than to say
050that we're in this same sort of waiting period that everybody else's and we're monitoring it closely and we'll be responsive as as as needed um somebody had a question about how the budget uh impacts class size and so it's a great question and I'm going to interpret that to say we don't get our budget you know how that impact class size because I wasn't sure not sure who asked this but um so anytime you have to make decisions around Staffing it can definitely impact class size and so we we work really hard to keep our class sizes manageable particularly because we have complex learner profiles in our schools and so the more complex those are the little B more difficult it is for for some of our teachers and so we we really want to
051work to keep our numbers our numbers down so when we don't um get the amount of Staffing or we have to kind of really squeeze and become super efficient those numbers can go up um so so the budget definitely can impact class size um the next question was where are we going where are the ongoing facilities and maintenance efforts in the district so uh we have a now have a capital Improvement plan that we are now communicating with the city and so there are things that we do internally to fix insides of the school and then there's certain things that that that our city Partners um help us out with and so uh We've identified um you know we we definitely have things that we have to fix um we're you know some of our
052buildings are are are getting older and so repairs are and maintenance uh have to become a regular occurrence and so some of the budget that we have here as one of the drivers is an increase in some of the lines around maintenance so that the parts that um that we work on that we can be responsive to those things um and then we have an ongoing di dialogue with the city um which is been um definitely increased and better in the last maybe year or two um with dialogue around what our needs are and so I'm I'm confident that we have someone in place who's dedicated to trying to fix some of our Biggers systemic issues we uh some of the arpa funds so the city received $12 million in arpa funds and they gave
0537 and half to to us directly and then they spent the other money they spent on the schools um and so they picked off they're picking off some of our large like Ellsworth Avenue School the roof is being repaired what were some of the other projects this summer security security vle so there's there's other things so that money went directly towards um did what Siri did you have did I miss one I could hear the Pavilion oh the pav The Pavilion we have a beautiful Pavilion uh at Denbury High School um in the back so if you have been haven't been up there you walk across the Skywalk you can see it our students are using that um during their lunch waves uh right through the winter they s they sit out there but it's
054it's very nice it's lovely um and it allows a great collaboration space for students and a place they can enjoy themselves um but yes so uh we are definitely working on that that's something that's that's in process and you know as budgets allow both on the city side and the school side we'll continue to to make those repairs um and to keep our schools upgraded so that we have you know 21st Century worldclass Learning facilities for our students um is that my phone I was hoping somebody over here was going to say no it's mine sry about that [Music] his ears must have been burning that was Antonio I don't R I got a call so um I'll happy to answer any other questions yeah sure sir um with a reduction of student population High
055School by about 800 this year and more the following year can you tell us how uh much of a reduction you're going to have in the teaching staff the administrative positions the support positions and the overall savings the question the operation of the original C history sure so we are moving a lot of Staff over to the new site so a lot of the staff that um that were on the page were the Staffing is are your support staff so you're n new some new secretaries new custodians new um safety Advocates New Paris because you can't pull them from one site to the other and so all we're doing is thinning out d High School to more appropriate levels of where they should be so the staff we're not losing any staff we're adding staff
056CU we're opening a second site but what we're doing is we're allowing you know right now if many of our staff are going they have they don't have a home room they on with their backpacks are going to several classes during the day um so what this will do would allow people to have a home room it will allow some of our the student population to thin out um some of our classes up there are upwards of some of our classes have students in there so we'll be peeling some students off but really we're just right sizing but what are the actual reductions of the number of teachers who are going to be again with that school and the other administ right so I think it be about 70 staff members to overd about 70
057yeah and and and the reduction of the total operational cost of the high school so high school the staff if you if you factor in the reduction of the Staffing at the building factoring the reduction of the Staffing so this so yeah it's not it's not broken out specifically cuz we're not we're not losing any I mean you it's $21 million for uh the new high school including staff it's 10 mil I'm sorry 10 million y oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm looking at overall 10 mil that includes sta that correct okay most of that which is which is which is a lot of new staff operational staff so how much is the staff saving now the older so so it's one campus so this I understand that given us yeah we can certainly provide
058a break a breakout of who's who remains left at D High School in terms of the number of staff is that what you're asking well I think you told us $1 million at the new High School in round figures y including Transportation including everything y all including the staff that is at that facil correct so you have did you say how many teachers were moving about 70 okay so how much is the Staffing cost at the old high school reduced teachers from this year last year and and other professional I would imagine you have uh one L nurse Perhaps Perhaps so some some of those some of those are so Dany high school right now is bursting at the seeds and so the Staffing so we probably needed an extra nurse a long time ago
059so those nurses would yeah would stay there we need new nurses same thing with counselors we we're going to be adding a few more counselors over but um you know our counselor ratios were not where we would want them to be so it's so it you know in terms of savings it's really about spreading the students out spacewise and in in more appropriate teaching and learning conditions um special I'll give you an example when you have a par professional or par educator um supporting multil language Learners in a classroom at denrey high school we may be moving you know a handful of students out need those services but there're still students in in the school that still need those services so many staff will not come over they have to stay at D high school
060and some of the staff that we listed there are the replacement so it's so it's not necessarily that we're losing staff or that number is going down we're just making more appropriate student to teacher ratios at deny high school so we the whole we we're building this building the satellite location because we have outgrown denberry high school we can no longer put another addition on uh it's not safe um to do that if you ever walk through the hallways at uh changing of the Bell it's like Grand cenal Station and you can get squeezed out and boxed out against the walls so we're trying to make you know safe conditions for the students so you know it's not necessarily that we're losing staff we're moving some staff over because the number of students but a
061lot of the auxiliary staff at the school will stay right good point custodians and square footage alone so you know none of the custodians that are at DHS will be going over to the new set and need a whole another set of custodians so there's no savings there same thing with the school lunch that's an increase cuz we can't we still need the school lunch staff that's serving now um to n a deny High School might you know might be one or two people that go over but we need more school on staff yes hi thank [Music] you question [Music] that sure so reach and Endeavor this is an alternative we have a program um that's part of uh Denver High School part of the middle school so we have students who get placed um
062in this program for for different reasons whether administrative place it could be an explosion sorry TI one Title One um and so the question is uh with all this movement we'll reach an Endeavor get a new home reach an endeavor um are in a building that we are looking to at some point vacate um and put them in a in a different location so um the goal we were hoping to be able to move reach and Endeavor to possibly the vacated Beaver Brook administrative Center um but the costs were very prohibited to to fix and upgrade Beaver Brook um to the place where it is um good for students that are 18 there are different rules U there's ADA compliance there are certain specifications so we're still looking um for a place for reaching Rebound
063in the future but there's not going to be movement in the fall for them yes I'm I have two children and element and middle school right here graduating this year uh my question is firstly uh about checks and balances right so I know recently with the ongoing changes and uh Government Federal and State changes have there ever been uh when was the recent audit in the finances and recent AIT of new programs implemented like um for instance the lunch program I are they checking to see if the kids are going eating the lunch is surveys that have been put out new program launch effective in effective exactly where the numbers are data analytics regarding um such programs or newly implemented program yeah so good question so that we're we're still in the process of of
064conducting audits those are the financial audits with the city and the board and in terms of school lunch so right now we have something called a request for proposal we have an RFP out right now we currently have a sedexo as our as our provider um we are we have been doing some work around um bringing in new ideas and programs we have a farm to school initiative um so we're trying to introduce new foods we're talking the kids during this during these process to ask how they like the food lunch I found myself having to make breakfast lunch and dinner and this is taxing on working moms you know of course Ava is not sufficient I know this is a new um Obama initiative with health launch so I'm not against or opposed of
065the program I'm just wondering what the school initiatives and what type of uh data analytics went out have have even noticed that the kids are not eating CU I know not just one it's probably one out of many well you rais a good point um Mike is in charge of school lunch as well I'm not going to put him on the spot but only to acknowledge the fact that we just had a conversation about quality food nutrition what we're offering in for breakfast I'm a big proponent of no sugar I said I'm not the nutritionist but the the sugar and the carbs and and versus you know making sure the kids have the protein and how we making sure that they that they're eating all the right things um as well as everything else so
066there's a you know there's a cost balance to all this stuff um but there's also you know foods that will make the student take the meal to begin with which is always a struggle um so we are looking at all of that and there is an a request for um there's a RFP out so we have an opportunity to entertain um different vendors as well to meet some of the things that we that we've talked about um it could be that sedexo is the one that we that we continue to to go on with maybe but with some changes in mind but I do like the idea of doing more surveys um particularly with the kids cuz I I have heard that before um and I I have seen some things as well so but
067we're we're trying to make some changes around fresh food farm to table vegetables and healthy Organics so we've just started that we've got um two or three schools now that are in it as well and uh our high school just got brought on board with farm to table so we're trying to make some moves in that area it's a personal passion of mine um so as a parent I completely agree and understand with with your comment the west campus that that's new to me and so I'm just trying to make operation with students that I'm assuming that it's a satellite because you can't builds that and so if you have students who are engaged in Academy in 10 grade and going back and forth mention the buses I wonder if there's any opportun to collaborate
068help around City without having such a huge um frankly that's more bused that I have to be St to go to work yeah it's a great point from time to time we have talked about using heart in fact in the model itself so um for those of you who don't know anything about the model what time what time is it do I have time to to dive in a little bit on this oh okay um so the model includes opportunities down the road for students you know who are very motivated um to do internships job shoting experiences and we we have started the conversation on how can we use our public transportation ones that exist and work with heart to get kids bus passes so they can go to the places that they need to
069go without having you know a huge yellow bus come and pick up 10 kids to go to you know bu rer or somewhere for an experience so so are on the same page you're welcome hi my name is jacn Cera and I actually have several questions um the first one is uh I would like to know what's happening with the uh Staffing at the uh School based Health Center at the high school uh the person left back in November and from what I know they still have not been replaced and that means that the children counseling are not getting it um so that's the okay Kell you want to give an update from from way in the cheat seats back [Music] there super so the has experienced some staffing challenges at actually two of our
070locations we have redeployed staff from one location to out supp and working with to try to continue um additionality [Music] make sure that each one of our loc we have time for one more and then we're going to we have to transition to the board and you can certainly email me those and I can follow up with you sure um the next one is down we have a very large population of multi langage Learners however the testing is very low and I just want to know what is the reason why so most of our multilanguage Learners they just need more time you know when they come to us and we we received we have multilanguage Learners come to us in all different levels some we get have interrupted education right so they may not have
071been in school for a short time or a long period of time we we experience that um we have students that come very fluent in their native language from other locations um so we we service are a Continuum and a wide range of multilanguage Learners here um as I mentioned before 49% of new enroles the deny public schools are multilanguage Learners and so um you know we even have them you know when we look at our graduation rates our high school graduation rates as another indicator um you know they tend to fall out of that 4year rate okay but they do come back and they that we have them on a six-year rate so they do finish with us they just take a little bit more time and so when they come to us and
072they're not on grade level and they're learning a language you know the focus is really about acclamation language acquisition and development so they can access the curriculum if they if they cannot access the curriculum those test course they're meaningless so we have to you know our work is to make sure that we have the appropriate supports in place so that we can um I'm less concerned about raising the test board as I am making sure that an individual child is growing if they grow every single year those test scores will take care of itself a little bit further down the line than for a typical speaking student right but if we're not identifying the children that need the additional supports of the testing how are they receiv support we we know who they are we
073know who they are we need more supports we our students are receiving supports we need we do need more of that we need more touch points um during the school day so that and that's where that Staffing around Elementary in particular is very important so we bolster math Specialists literacy Specialists additional um bilingual important classroom to provide both native language support and systemic ELD support throughout the day well thank you very much we're going to do a quick transition and um if anybody has any other questions feel free to email and we'll get answers out to you thank you so much [Music]