001all right good evening everybody thank you for joining uh our Citywide PTO uh meeting this month sorry we did not meet last month some stuff came up for a lot of people and it just was quiet anyway so we we uh we skipped in the winter um if you can real quick just drop your name in the chat as usual just so we have a log as to who is here um other than that I sent out the meeting minutes earlier today hopefully you guys had a chance to review them from our that would have been our December meeting um if anybody took a look at them I'm asking for a motion to approve those minutes please I see I see you waving Cheryl right thank you Cheryl so that's a motion I got a
002second anybody second second who that was is that Maggie yes all perfect thank you all right so motions approved for that um treasury report um so I'm still acting treasur um for anybody that does not know we have a vacancy at the treasurer position so if anybody is interested in joining our Citywide board please please please we are still looking um as of right now we have $571 73 in the account we did get charged our Zoom our Zoom bill which was $170 for the year that was on January 9th and and as of this year so far the school year we have received dues from AIS King Street milridge Shelter Rock Broadview Westside and DHS so anybody who's on this call I don't think there's anybody here that's not in that group um but
003if you have not paid your dues they're $25 um covers the year and I sent out period if I can resend it if you need just send an email to Citywide for an invoice for that just for your financial records chy I'm sorry who was after Shelter Rock for dues paid yeah Shelter Rock Broadview cool wests side and DHS sorry is taking minutes tonight for uh Jess is double dipping so she's she's holding down the fort while her husband's away um all right so that brings us to school reports um anybody has a report they'd like to give real quick I ask that you go ahead unmute and give us an update as to what's going on in your school hi all right how you doing good um so we have the Scholastic Book Fair
004coming up um my favorite person dance on Friday read aloud for second grade on Thursday um we have uh you know we're going to have an end of year event of of course and um some things happening in the spring but nothing's been really pinned down yet awesome cool cool thank you good things at a all right um so everyone can hear me right yep okay uh so for PTO for penr we got this week um tomorrow we have our meeting for the month then Friday we have our school store um not that it's PTO related but Thursday for the 100 days they're doing 80 seed clothing or attire for the 100 days of school then we have um coming up in March we have our anti-bullying presentation by the hat tricks and then we
005have our family game uh attendant attend the one of the Hat Tricks games okay very nice yeah sorry about that um uh we have our hatrick game then we have um coming in up in April the Monday before April we have a planetarium inhouse field trip for all of our students so we have I'm new to this um but we've had parents say that this is one of the greatest things ever so we got that coming in for our kids um and we got Valentine's we're going to do a little Valentine's treat for the kids on the on the 14th and that's what we got going on so far for p awesome thank you thank you you can I go for wests side absolutely okay so for West Side um on Friday had a kindness
006night where kind work and did stations for our students and families about kindness um students actually created a shirt that is Westside choose kindness that we're selling and the proceeds from it we are our teacher on in the you're pole are next Wednesday the twentine day we are the teach tree a bag of like candy and water um we have our fund on February 22nd and then for this week's PTO we have the Career Academy toing at our school awesome thank you hi there Melissa from King Street um our school uh worked with spice City on their opening night so we had our families go out to support them so it was a great little fundraiser for us they're a great um company to work with um and we had our trpy fundraiser that helps
007us with our um fifth grade uh end of year stuff so we allocate that stuff um our fifth graders are going to have their tall and small this week or um sorry this month coming up so our fifth grade parents are working really hard on that and then um we have Buffalo Wild Wings as well this month so we thought good for the Super Bowl get some wings in there um um and they they're actually great they go like all day they go from 12 till 10 at night so if anyone's looking for something um that's a good one get breakfast lunch and munchies at at night um and then our kindergarten first and second is doing an 80s for our 100th day and our third grade is still doing their old person because they
008love it so much so um that's what we've got going on very thank you thank you I can go DHS this is Gina um we have our meeting next Monday and we have some guidance counselors coming out to do a schoolo g presentation and we're I think we're do a college night at the meeting also so that's our meeting next Monday we are starting to plan teacher appreciation we're not sure if we're going to do breakfast or lunch um and May um and we're trying to decide how we're going to support our our um our seniors typically we do like a cup and we stuff it with like random things that they end up trashing so we're trying to do something that they won't they'll appreciate more so we're looking into possibly contributing to their
009field chip we're going to contribute to their prom um so we're trying to figure out how to best use our funds that support the most number of kids um and that's that's basically what we're working on right now cool thank you I'll go for Shelter Rock all right um last month right before winter break we were able to do holiday cookies so we were able to give every student in the school a chocolate chip cookie before they went on break to kind of do with their holiday movie and stuff we also just did our hattick fundraiser a couple weeks ago uh we're currently working on our yearbook cover contest so February is where all the teachers get to vote on which uh illustration they like the best from the students and coming up we also
010have our carnations for Valentine's Day and we will be hosting a bake sale at our school's talent show in March a all right is there anyone else I thought I saw somebody here from Broadview but maybe I didn't maybe I didn't all right anybody else one's going twice sh all right okay so then I guess um at this point um I don't I don't have anything other than vacancies Tim do we have anything no no okay um so then I guess we will turn it over to Dr casmiro for a budget presentation about the school budget hi good evening good evening um I'd like to introduce um Mr Michael Weaver Mike is our CFO our new CFO for the for D Republic schools and so if he had to had a chance to meet him
011um he's been doing a phenomenal job in his first stent as a school CFO although he's had many stints before that uh in a different uh in different Arenas um but he's done a great job for us so far this year and helped us really pull our budget together and and help us um do some projections that are that are greatly needed so um he is with me tonight and as I told uh Tim he's going to keep me honest with my numbers if I go off of course okay um so I wanted to just um briefly talk a little bit about the last time that we were together uh we talked about um doing a little bit of a poll with the parents to understand their budget priorities so that we would have that
012in mind as we're building the budget but also um you know should we need to uh make adjustments to the budget we understand what the what the parent priorities are so just kind of very briefly before I get into the full presentation I'll just pull up um a slide which shows our survey results and we had about 600 or so let give one second 600 or so parents respond and they selected their top three priorities um and the top three were supporting Sports the Arts and extra curcular activities um increasing safety measures in making class size is smaller so really not a shock that the the top three were those um they seem to be perennial favorites when we do ask this question um the fourth one down uh was upgrading school facilities creating new
013programs for students and enhancing technology class and resources um so these were sort of uh in the middle here um of equal weight and then of course the big priorities are supporting Sports Arts extracurricular activities uh and increasing safety measures in the district so uh we take uh the parental polls very seriously we also um did some polling for staff that we're taking a look at now internally to see what their budget priorities are um class sizes was was one um the the poll is still out there but um making sure that we have adequate Staffing and supports for kids um and uh safety and facilities are were at the top of those as well and resources I'm GNA zoom out of there for a second and I'll pull up another presentation which is our
014our budget second there all right does that look okay on your end everyone yep okay good okay so we were um very lucky that our board passed our uh the first superintendent budget unanimously it is now the board's budget uh we met and did a workshop on um January 21st and the Board of Education cast our budget um on that that following Wednesday and uh we spent time digging into our district priorities the major drivers and unpacking some of the bigger needs that um that we've been facing in the last couple years last year and this year as well um that that we came to the board with in terms of our budget meeing uh moving forward so um if you take a look these are our strategic plan of District priorities um these are
015our buckets if you will of focus uh and where we put a lot of our efforts and then therefore also uh alignment with our budgets so teaching and learning um providing good quality staff development um really important the talent acquisition this is playing uh true ever more so this year than than before with Recruitment and Retention uh improving School climate and that deals with the teaching and learning environment also safety and the emotional growth and Civic responsibilities of um students families um Etc so that making sure that our schools uh are good places to go to school and also good places to be if you are working there um meaningful collaboration so engagement with families um and all stakeholders and then resource allocation using our um using our our budgeted uh our fiscal resources in
016a financially responsible manner so the budget process this year was a opportunity for a fresh start this was um Mike Weaver's first budget build and my first budget build from the ground up um we put a few things in that were a little bit different this year um there is a lot of effort and attention um put into to meeting with every single department and every single School leader so that we really had an understanding of their needs um I think in the last couple of years um you know because we've had financial difficulties um we've just sort of rolled forward if you had it last year you're lucky to keep it and that was sort of the plan that we used so this year was a real fine tooth comb to make sure that
017every single uh School leader and Department leader had an opportunity to really discuss uh what was happening in their building but also the the needs not so much wants we're not quite the place where we could list out all the wants but the things that we really need to be a high functioning School District um we spent a lot of time looking at operational efficiencies um prioritizing critical need areas we've had several hot spots this year um over the course of the year as a result of the um the reductions from the prior year and in many cases we realized that we were functioning below optimal levels which was actually costing us a little bit of money time and frustration which was wearing on a lot of our climate and culture this year and we'll
018talk a little bit more about that further in um understanding reasonable year-to-year growth that we need to catch up for a decade of underfunding so um while the ask this year was large it really is just an accumulation of what we've needed all along that has come to a head um similar to the way it did similar to the way that it was last year um and then with the way that we're positioning the budget this year um creating budgets by location uh which is a little bit different than how we've did it in the past there creates a greater sense of transparency on how each department each school um each bucket if you will um how they are spending uh their money and and comparing U the budgets to actuals and then using that
019as a solid basis for next year's budgeting um and so while that seat May basic there were some pieces missing in in our ability to to um to do accurate projections and so I think uh with Mike's expertise in the way that he built the budget and the way that we're moving forward um on the back end of things it'll allow us to do have cleaner more transparent projections for the future which allows us to articulate our need and engage in Greater dialogue uh with the city so here's our district profiles for those who are on the call um most are familiar with this we have two Early Childhood centers 13 elementary schools three middle schools one very large high school soon to be two sites and two alternative programs our multilangual learner number is
020at 38% so not only are we the highest number across the state but we are the highest percentage wise in the state so we have the most amount of multilingual Learners in the state of Connecticut we are at the top of that list um similarly our numbers are on the rise for economic Ally disadvantaged and students with disabilities has also increased just a tad to um just a little over 15% we were hovering around 14 so we've have some some driving needs here driving needs here and this has been a constant uh driving needs with our multi-lingual Learners uh and the services that they need to be successful our enrollment no surprise that were seem to be on the uptick this is a little bit of an off year because of the kindergarten age and
021the cut off so we're down about 200 or so plus students um so we're looking to see how this affects us this year when students come back to reenroll for the 25 26 school year we think will be around this number but that is uh yet to be seen and students are just starting to enroll now again just a quick chart of our multilingual Learners as you can see in 2425 we've topped the chart at 4541 um with this uh projection holding true we anticipate being at 4,630 give or take and with special education we are at 1756 this year and projected to be close to 1,800 um some of those projections are made based on students that we know that will be coming into the district so key issues for our budget um we're
022at the basic level meeting contractual obligations and cost of living recruiting and retaining staff restoring the eliminated positions from the 2425 budget um and not all of them but uh at least about half of them or so that we need back um moving arpa positions back into the general fund so the city was um did a great job of um getting us securing us about $7.5 million to use for a onetime funds for the for the school system if you recall um city of danber received about 12 million and 7.5 of that came directly to us and then the remaining funds um most of it indirectly also uh came back to the school districts in terms of capital uh improvements um as everybody knows we are in the process of opening up DHS West which
023we're very excited about but to open up that campus it needs to be fully staffed and so supporting the enrollment needs for the high school and and the operational staff needed to operate another satellite campus is is included in here and it's a major driver for the for the budget for next year um transportation as you can imagine uh when moving an additional 1400 kids uh separating them out to another campus creates uh Transportation needs moving across the city in different ways affecting our tier Transportation plan um so we are approximating almost needing 28 or so buses um it could be less we're working on some of that now uh to run across the district for the transportation um ensuring Safety and Security as this is one of the of our parents primary concerns uh
024it is for us as well so there are some in um increases around the security components um and some of this also has to do with our staffing model um as I mentioned before our sped numbers are on the Rise um and so to are the tuitions our out estate tuitions and out of District placements uh for the most part the FED um special education is a very hot topic IC at the state level there's a lot of legislation uh being posed around this because it is such a a rapidly growing cost uh for districts and there's not a lot of controls placed around that and so that's something that um many districts are hoping we get some relief from down the road but right now it's very much a part of our budget for
025next year so I want to talk a little bit about remaining competitive so uh Danberry you know couple few of our contracts are competitive from a salary standpoint um however because we have our enrollment is the way it has been and our staffing levels have not kept up in a way that they needed to the conditions in Danberry teaching in Danberry the conditions of working here if you're an administrator if you're a teacher are a little bit more challenging than they are in some of our surrounding districts in addition to that our surrounding districts and districts in our County are raising the rate of pay at a faster rate than Danbury has been so while we've been working hard to keep up with those contracts we are competing um with surrounding districts and in our
026County for the same people but at a lower rate and so this is causing um us to have a very difficult time attracting and an even harder time retaining one of the greatest examples of this and it's something that again is a driver in this budget uh relates to our par Educators our par Educators work with um special needs students they work with students who need academic intervention they work with students who may need one-on-one support they need they work um in a variety of capacities uh supporting the needs of students in working in classrooms um teachers cannot do their jobs without them administrators cannot do their jobs without them they are absolutely essential um some of our uh parent Educators service our multilingual learning Learners and in many cases when we cannot find an
027a bilingual teacher our par educators are are helping us to fill some of those language service needs by providing native language support in the classroom so between students needing Intervention which is a mandate which uh students needing their second language learner Services mandate and special education services which is iip driven um all of the parent Educators and the work that they do is super critical iCal to the functioning our school district um so you're saying well what's what's the problem with the par Educators well right now I believe the starting salary for our par Educators is around $16 an hour and if you go to surrounding districts they're in the 20s some are even higher than that um so it makes it very difficult for us to attract people to come to our district uh
028and to retain them uh for the future and so we have about between around 40 to 50 opening right now um with our par Educators we spend a lot of time trying to fill those holes and making sure that we're meeting all of our obligations so it's a very serious situation when we can't fill those positions um so much so that we legally we still have to fill certain positions we have to go and use agencies to backfill these positions the agencies come at a very high premium um making it not a cost-effective solution to to supporting this this issue um so one of our big drivers is going to be to um right siize our par educator uh our par educator contract to ensure that we remain competitive um safety Advocates we have a
029similar situation with safety Advocates and uh right now I I don't remember how many we're at now because it changes daily we're also using an agency to staff a good number of our safety Advocates because we cannot attract or retain SA advocates for the same reason so we do have an ask in there around uh supporting uh supporting the benefits and contracts uh in there as well so that we make our contracts more attractive um so as I mentioned before urban districts face greater challenges so class size learner profiles having less support in the classroom make teaching in Danbury a little bit more challenging um than our than our neighbors than teaching in our neighborhood schools I'm sorry our neighbors uh you know surrounding in the greater Danberry area so uh we need to make
030sure that in order to fill persistent vacancies in order to remain competitive and also to make sure that our kids are getting the very best teachers um that we can afford we need to take a good look at some of our contracts and make sure that we're staying competitive we found out very quickly this year um how badly the losing 68 positions in our budget last year has affected us um we are all feeling the effects of not having that staff across the buildings the schools and all the Departments um we talked a lot about how the operational inefficiency that is happening this year actually can cost money down the road so um we have several key positions um when we talk about the driver that is called the restore driver where we're looking to
031restore 29 of the 68 positions that we lost last year back into this budget to bring us a little bit closer uh than where we were this year so this has been a very challenging year Staffing wise um you know the other thing that we talked about is our ability to staff certain positions so when you cannot have enough staff in a classroom sometimes in certain cases um which means we're not able to support certain students here in District which results in outplacement um outplacement uh tuitions which are extremely expensive and so again not having the right staff and not being able to maintain staff creates a a bigger costlier condition down the road in addition and someday it's almost its own presentation but when you have for example um really good intervention systems and
032students are um receiving really robust intervention it prevents special education costs down the road and there's a lot of research behind that um but again that's like a whole another layer of of presentation but there's a lot of research on the cost of prevention as I mentioned we're looking to restore eliminated positions we lost 68 last year in the budget um while that was not highly publicized um because they were not physical losses we only had two physical uh two staff members who physically lost their job because we could not find them another opening in the district but we lost 68 positions out of of our budget that included teachers coaches support staff counselors media Specialists operation staff and administrators um and so our inability to attract and retrain current staff does cause instructional operational
033challenges um and we've had a big issue this year with morale in the building as a result of that so I've listened and heard to many of our our uh staff members and our administrators across the district and this is a great concern uh which is why that was played such a prominent role budget for next year I'd like to give everybody uh a second to take a look at this slide this is an example of how Danberry Compares very basically to a school that is very similar it's one student different difference this is a Danbury Elementary School this is one of our real schools uh not to be named and this is a Norwalk elementary school of 465 in Danberry our staffing model looks like this one princip principal one assistant principal and that's
034only if you're at the larger School the rest of our elementary schools do not have assistant principles uh one secretary one student support specialist one srbi par professional one social worker and a point8 psychologist if you were to go over to Norwalk one principal one assistant principal one dean of students that are that are certified admins not serving as a teacher one principal secretary one administrative assistant in addition to that secretary one and a half reading Improvement teachers or Specialists two math Improvement teachers or Specialists two literacy coaches assigned to the school one math coach assigned to the school one gifted and talented teacher Four srbi PA professionals those are people delivering explicit intervention in small groups kindergarten pair of Professionals in every classroom those are extra hands in the classroom and one social worker
035one school counselor and a halftime school psychologist off of that one school so this is the this is the difference with what we're doing in danburry compared to typical school we compare ourselves often to Norwalk because we are very close in size and demographics and so this is a stark contrast and so again while our budget um this year is a large ask we're only trying to get to the place where we reach minimum levels of the support that we need to be successful um we had some questions around how we are spending our arpa funds that the district that the city allocated to us so um we had we were allocated $7 A5 million dollar so last year given our funding cliff and our budget um we offset this year technology needs the replacement
036technology and infrastructure student and teacher devices so those are our refreshment Cycles since we're one one: one excuse me um supplement for our DHS West Campus to help us make our transition supplemental for AIS magnet school for some of the tuition dollars that have been lost as a result of some tuition changes uh and then this is the staff um at that DHS needed this year to meet their enrollment needs so this had to be offset in onetime funding which also needs to to be recouped um as far as the existing staff we had our media specialist if you paid attention to the budget last year you know that the media Specialists and the instructional coaches were on the elimination block and um the one-time funding allowed us to hold on to them for this
037year um so there's $2.2 million there and then we had some uh money set aside for student supplies and also the fees incurred for the audit um that we had to we had several audits over the maybe the last two years and we needed outside support um for those audits because we did not have the Staffing internally to keep up with those so here's just a visual depiction of the big buckets of our budget drivers okay so on the right hand side the contractual increases are about 4,000 4 million 500 restoration of positions eliminated from the last year's budget is about 3 two um all other new positions which I'll go over uh in this budget um 1.1 million some of those are sped and multilanguage learner and also uh positions that are needed um
038departmentally um the competitive par Staffing model 4.9 million that includes not just the increasing of the salary to to attract and retain but also to add some pair of professionals at the elementary level in our uh K and one class CL K1 and two where our most vulnerable Learners are um who need intervention early on to prevent um uh problems down the road um special education increases in costs are 2.8 multilanguage learner needs are 1.1 benefits for positions above 4.4 and I'm sorry we had an increase was it 19% increase 19 19% increase in the cost of our Healthcare uh and then it improvements in security 233 3,000 normally that would be much higher um but we offset that in the arpa funds this year so normally that number would be a lot bigger and
039then just a accumulation of other incremental um increases across many smaller categories uh that total 1.8 and we have those coming up here so I'll try to move along a little bit more quickly um our total budget request for this school year for next year 25 26 was 4,946 th000 it's an increase of almost $34.5 million which is a 21 and a half% increase uh this is just a a slide depiction going moving left to right it's another way to visualize the as broken down by buckets and category Types on the left and then the drivers going across the top in blue so that you can see where those uh those buckets and drivers kind of meet up on the right is the total increase and at the bottom is the total budget just another
040way to look at the budget visually that some people prefer to look at it this way um I'll try to move through these slides because this was part of the budget Workshop so we spent time in detail we don't have this as much time tonight but you can see uh these are the staff associated with theem of Danberry and basically you know everything from custodians to safety Advocates uh refu removal Transportation natural gas electric uh the teachers that are needed to go over there uh the nurses the uh secretaries the the school resource officer all of those are are needed in a building just like they are um that we have at DB high school but at a little bit of a smaller scale um the projected enrollment for next year is about 800 students
041the building is ready for 1,400 um but we're going to staff it for 800 to do two things one U reduce some of the cost of Staffing in the first year that we there um but also to to allow our 12th graders to remain on campus uh where their they'll finish out their time so that was a little bit of a win-win strategy heading into next year so U our contractual obligations and increases so when you roll up and adjust for um the different contracts that we have across all salaries and groups it's about $4.5 million um the Restorations of our instructional coaches backfilling of the assistant superintendent for teaching and learning which is my former job for which um I'm currently doing and that's also broken up amongst some other folks on my team
042as well um that needs to be filled to provide adequate uh support um and to also uh make sure that we're pursuing grants to make sure that we're pursuing um Innovation and we continue on the path that that we are on it's a very important job um our 13 media Specialists two Elementary assistant principles uh one security coordinator very important um three administrative supports in offices that do not have them and um because of the budget cuts last year and were desperately needed that um are important and our three SC up coaches that were eliminated and are being housed in Grants this year that will be coming back online next year uh new positions non Academy sped or MLL so uh with the number of staff that we're going to be hiring next year um
043and through this budget um and also with the high rate of turnover and the number of persistent vacancies that we're experiencing we are going to invest in a a recruiter um additionally um an HR benefit specialist we have over a $30 million uh benefits uh outfit here and we have one person no secretary no support so the that's the operational efficiency component that we were talking about earlier um that we need to be able to make sure that we're able to um to conduct business in the way that we need to and service not just the students but our staff as well um senior accountant uh this was sorely needed we've been through multiple audits at this point we're paying top dollar for agency support and this is a position that we should have in
044here anyways in our finance department um for student support special specialist to support our largest elementary schools three teachers uh this is a number elementary teachers this is the number that fluctuates uh from the time that we project the budget in starting in November December um the number of teachers that we need can change at the time that we put put the budget together we had about three set aside the number can go up to three four five six seven depending on enrollment and shifts um and so we keep a close eye on that but we have three as a placeholder in here for now um and uh our AIS uh Magnet School needs uh some recruiting we are losing some of our tuition dollars and reimbursements from the state because our numbers are not
045quite where they need to be um so we going to put a little bit of money behind um our recruitment uh of students in surrounding towns so that uh we can hopefully regain that money multiple times over uh in the form of tuition and grants and then those are the benefits for those positions um as I already mentioned before this is the uh par educator driver so an increase in the par educator salary floor and increasing the number of par Educators and the associated benefits special education we we are in need of um at least two more special education teachers a social worker a language speech and language pathologist those are the benefits uh related to those there's an increase in some of our contractual services that we engage in um out of District to
046ions are up $1.6 million so we've incurred a lot last year so this is the projection heading into this year uh next year I should say sped sped supplies and equipment and then increase in transportation costs and runs um as far as our multilangual Learners we have a variety of uh support that they're going to need uh bilingual teachers par Educators uh we need more leadership department head as we're growing and um school aison we lost those last year and it's position that every single principal is dying to get back because they helped support the home to School connections um they also helped us to um reduce our chronic absenteeism numbers very important and then these are associated benefits Health dental life workman's comp and then we had a a little bit of an offset
047with unemployment compensation it in security this is a number that normally is quite large we moved some of this to Grants and then the majority of it will be spent this year using um using arpa funds onetime funds and then a list of other if you will building repairs and maintenance Transportation adjustments uh we have an increase in the number of homeless students in the district um some whenever our transportation goes up um it also goes up we pay for the non pubs as well um so that number has going up a little bit and then alarms and infrastructure utility staff development and some small miscellaneous very small dollar amounts that add up 299,000 if you look proportionately across the increases for the 34.4 6 you can see where the preponderance of money uh is
048where the drivers are so the cies represent 29% new positions around 3% benefits at 133% sped at 8.1 the competitive par Staffing model at 14 contractual incre increases around 13 and Restorations around 10 and in our total budget of 194 464 again it's 21% increase over 5.2% is dedic dedicated to the academy if we had our full budget last year at 181 um all positions which we needed um the increase over the original 181 would have only been about 7.2% uh which would be in the ball Park of surrounding districts um and school systems similar to ours so with that I will take a few Q&A from the from the group and I will stop sharing for a few I know that was a lot I think my only question is um is there a
049way to see this whole budget like if I tomorrow when we talk about it with my school or you know I could talk to the principal see if there's anything that we could do is there a way to like get this budget to share with her absolutely so the budget will be available I think I believe Ken this is will have a recording for for to share correct at the end of this thank you so much and Cara this is Mike a version of this presentation is on our website currently that's right thank you anyone else hello hi hi I just want to say thank you for such a thorough presentation and making the um information so accessible to all of us I'm I really think that this is a very clear perspective on where
050we are as a district and and I appreciate your Clarity and Leadership um my question is pretty simple um how what what do you recommend is the best way for us um as parents to help um with this process right well um just by being present tonight that's a great start being able to articulate you know the why um sometimes when you know in town you know we recognize a 21% increase you know could have a serious effect on on folks um and while we may not get all of that we that we need I think it's important to keep dialogue open um between and amongst the parents about about the why um staying active in the PTO coming to all of things like this where we're having dialogue where our board members can hear
051um what your concerns are um you know our board uh board meetings are sometimes they're really well attended and sometimes not so much um but I know that our board appreciates hearing from parents particularly on these issues it allows them and me um to know where to press on these budget issues and and where to where to be more vocal um and it also allows us to um you know when it comes time to make decisions hard decisions we kind of know what where the parents stand on these things of course um our budget is gets presented um to City Hall in April and there's a couple of open sessions that will come up and certainly if you're a taxpayer and uh you want to start to talk about that and uh you know bring
052your friends that's always certainly welcome the more that we can educate uh people from a point of transparency understanding and having the details um I think the the greater chance we have of kind of building that Coalition of understanding about you know why the budget is as high as it is and why we need to kind of keep keep at it you know the fear um you know I have is you know there's a it's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation when you present a budget this big um and this high and this you know with all the numbers and all the details um but I think it's really important that parents know what they're getting and what they're not getting uh for their tax dollars and I think um you
053know I think it's important that City hears from our parents in a positive way um I do feel good that there's an open dialogue and that the city has an open ear towards this and there's a a commitment to improving our school system I know our uh many of the folks who are in the highest levels of offices there have children in our school system as well uh which is also very helpful so um you know I think that there's a good will there but I think the more that they hear from parents um and people who are directly affected and their children are directly affected by the services we're able to provide or not to provide uh the better thanks for your support so I'll jump in um that one slide that you posted
054there the side by side with us in and Norwalk a typical school to me was a very powerful slide that was um not something I've seen before in any budget presentation and a little terrifying quite frankly um but okay so just like random question teacher pay scales probably vary dep I mean a first year teacher is not making what a 25e teacher so when you budget how does that work how does that factor in like are you budgeting like an average are you budgeting like you know yeah so in the last it's a great question so um maybe about 10 years ago we used to budget you know like $70,000 all in you know 50,000 starting salary and then 20,000 in budget in a in a benefits um but we've been hiring our actuals in
055terms of our hiring have been much higher because the competition for staff is is much greater um there was a time when if you were a a a teacher and you were teaching for 10 or 15 years and you tried to move to another District um you'd have a really hard time because nobody wanted to pay top step for a teacher with experience to come into their District everybody was looking for that first year teacher um the game has completely changed and the we are now constantly looking at staff members with 10 12 13 years experience um particularly if they are in math or science or they're bilingual teacher or they have a very skilled position like a coach um we are paying upwards of you know I think we budget in now for was
056it 85 that we budget all in um because this we're just hiring at at that rate anyway so um it was a false sense to say you know budget at that lower number because we're like I said we have a lot of persistent vacancies on top of this and the stem math uh areas chemistry bio very hard to fill because of certification um so we really do need to do something to attract um greater otherwise our you know the kids are the ones who pay pay the price you know we have high places where we have a lot of substitute teachers coming and going because we've got vacancies and people leave it's very disruptive to students academics particularly at the secondary level could be detrimental um and then just car say do we have like
057a grant writer like a like is that like a designated position or is that like a like a like a bucket list something that we'd love right yes um I would love to get a grant writer at some point um but that's what an assistant superintendent I I did all the grants but I'm still doing all the grants uh I say all the grants but a good number of Grants our assistant superintendent Kelly trus has quite a few grants um in her area in special education and for homelessness and for uh many things and me does a lot of Grants uh for families she's very prolific grant grant writer um but but there's about three of us who who do those and uh it's extraordinarily timec consuming and if and there's ability to pursue more
058if you have the room to do that um but again that assisted soup I did a lot of of that work in that role and I'm still doing it and if we want to get better at some things we're going to have to backfill some of these positions that are key that's that operational efficiency piece um we talk about some point when you cut below the belt and it's just it's not working we could rework the high school uh writing curriculum to teach them to write yeah we can try it Chrissy I'm willing to try anything at this point well thank you I appreciate it okay sure I have a quick question um along those same lines about the grants because I know that um possibly it had come through for King Street to have
059the walls put up in the schools as part of the gr I don't know if you know any information about that some of our parents have been asking yeah I think where that is and where where we're moving and what's going on with that because walls would be wonderful to help a lot of our kids of course so so um as I mentioned before um when the city received an extra allocation of 12 million they started to to put that towards some of the priorities on a capital Improvement list they Ellsworth Avenue School I believe was part of that there's a leaky roof um there was a few other projects in there that were super important the next project that's on the list that there's a lot of attention on right now is the King
060Street project and I know um our city leaders and our delegates are working hard to secure something through legislative funding um and so they're asking they you know reached out to us and asked us lots of questions to help them uh with some things that they're trying to work on to get that project underway so I do know that they're working on it I know that it's a very important project not just to us but to them as well they recognize the need so that's it's on the list and it's high up there thank you you're welcome just have one other quick question if that's all right sure I noticed that um the questions the conversation naturally went towards grants which makes me think about um the revenue side of the budget um you know
061we spent a lot of time talking about the expenditures and certainly there's a lot to talk about there and and I think uh my personal opinion is everything you're asking for is um reasonable and probably not enough definitely not enough um is there a way for us I I think that's a Big Driver for a lot of parents in the community as well to understand where do the revenues come from for the school district I know in the past there's been quite a bit of conversation about how much of the school district's budgets financed specifically from tax levy versus grants versus um you know other you know other opportunities that they have there as well so where can we find information about that to help support uh your proposal sure so we have uh when
062the we're in the process of developing what we call the budget book the big budget book and that's what goes over to the city where it's kind of the complete package of everything um you know for example our largest grant that we receive is the alliance Grant and so that's a $30 million Grant that's going to go up about $5 million next year but it's packed with staff and so some of that increase which would be I don't know if you'd call it Revenue but but some of that increase will will get eaten up with contractual obligations just with the amount of staff that we have in the grant so we'll have some a little bit of of room in there and some relief um but we won't really you know until we kind of
063get the whole landscape we'll know what um what tolerance our grants can have as well as anything in in the general fund so um I would say we have 30 million 3560 million probably about $60 million of of what we do comes from about grants but we but um that's all going to be laid out in a in a larger package um what we have out there right now is kind of the the big presentation that we that we have this book here will turn into you know probably like a two-inch binder with all of that information we could certainly get that out to everybody to take a look at that'll be posted on the website as well that slide with Norwalk was as Chrissy mentioned like extremely compelling and it makes me wonder um
064what does the revenue side of their budget look like relative to danur how much of that is is funded through uh through the tax base um versus through grants versus through others and then how do their mill rate compare as well that might be a question better asked to the city council um but um I'm just trying to uh you know get as much information as possible no it's a great question it's a great question and and Kevin too I'll just jump in um I don't know if you've ever heard of Erica Haynes with the school uh Connecticut school Finance she has like a lot of information too on that that actually Compares us to other districts um and yeah definitely I think there's some for improvement there too so Chrissy I was just going
065to going to mention that too it's school state St finance. org and if you click on the issues tab you can go and line up side by side Danberry versus other districts and they'll they really break out into a bar chart what's Federal what's State what's local you know and then they'll you know there's a whole different ways they'll chop that data but you can go in there and get lost for hours i' I've spent a lot of time in that website great site if I can find it real quick I'll send it to you Kevin but um thank you so and and just so I know too so you said that the 181 was our ask last year which obviously we did not get but then we had that supplemental that kind of came
066in um but had we got that 181 last year it would have been a 7.2% increase which would be sort of in line with other districts that's a and and surrounding towns are any anywhere between like three six eight they one next doors around close to 11 A lot of people are because of the the healthare the rise in healthare costs and then special education costs that are going up but yeah we would totally be in the ballpark of a normal pretty typical ask I think we're just in a place where we need it's like that onetime catchup to get back on track as we lost ground for about 10 years so well yeah I guess I guess yeah you said 36 so like we're the high end of that but to me like I
067guess my question was we're opening a new building so like it should be on the high definitely definitely okay because to me that actually that's why I sound L I'm like wait if we're opening a new building how could we possibly be like sort of what if we're on the high end of in line than that but but even even still though even with the building we would have only had a seven seven point right right like it would have been phenomenal ask right considering we're opening a new building so it's really just kind of puts it into perspective that it's high but it's really not compared to what our needs are and what you know it could be okay hi I have a question a friend asked me she's um watching but not able
068to ask um so the question is have there been any preliminary discussions with the city regarding the budget yeah so we so Mike and I went over um last week and we had our first discussions yes any feedback from the discussion well you know it's a it's a big ask it's a big ask and certainly folks were prepared I think we're preparing for you know the academy but you know when when you put a comprehensive budget together I think I think the big the big driers obviously the academy but you know we have 17 other schools and um you know 9,000 other kids um outside of our 12,000 that that needs support and uh cumulatively building by building department by by Department the things add up pretty quickly um even though there some of some
069places it's just incremental but but um what we're experiencing is really no different than what other districts are experiencing but because of our scale and sort of where we started um it just puts us at a little bit of a disadvantage in terms of you know the ask yeah yeah I really appreciate all that you've been doing that fight for all the extracurricular and your focus on um raising be more competitive salaries because I'm sure you know it's really frustrating to lose teacher after teacher the great when they become great then so I appreciate that that your focus is there yeah I appreciate that the amount of effort and work that goes into hiring recruiting hiring onboarding training um mentoring supporting with very the very few people that we have only to lose them a
070year later yeah is devastating it's frustrating as a family when you when you get great teachers then you lose them it's frustrating yes that's all but thank you thank you and I think I dropped the right link in the chat there for uh this the Connecticut school Finance projecta does workshops all over the state free workshops like just hop into a zoom and you will learn a tremendous amount about how Connecticut Works she's great and she actually she'd even meet oneon-one with anybody she'll talk to anybody she's very very good yes yep any other questions okay well certainly this won't be our first run with uh talking to parents and doing some Community conversations around around the budget and um you know certainly um touch base again as the budget story develops over the course
071of the next couple of months so actually I I just thought of one another quick one um so with the survey that went out so being that like you know improving arts and and sports and whatnot how did you factor that in for the budget I'm assuming that you did the survey to factor it in but we well so in our regular budget that's a preservation of those items right so like what we have now we're not losing um and also to you know on the grant side of things last year we did put a little bit of infusion into some of the different categories so for for instance you know Tim will tell you we we um try to support the music programs a little bit more um we've got a little little tiny
072not a lot of money you know $55,000 in for you know Theater Arts programs and things like that so they can get some of the things that they need um but you know we had heard from if you remember the city we were at City Hall we had kids coming in talking about anything from you know broken tubas and not having the equipment needed to be competitive at these at these you know large large stage events and it's pretty heartbreaking when you got kids that put in the amount of time and effort after school every single day hours and hours and hours a week uh to not have the basic equipment they need to be competitive with with schools that um quite frankly that danber could be you know beating everywhere that they go with
073with our size our number and the commitment that we have on the on in some of our programs so um they just needed a little extra boost and so we gave them a little bit and we're going to keep an eye on them um because you know in when we have tight budgets these are the kinds of things the first things that go um so you know it doesn't take too much to really support these programs um it just takes really paying attention and dedicating funds and when we look for Grants um finding some little niches to to to Sock some money away so that they can keep up with things like uniforms and and um instruments and repair excuse me a little bit of Transportation things like that we've been supporting our robotics program
074the last couple of years we did that with the robotics program they're they are they're killing it they're going all over the all over the place with their program it's blown up so you we make sure that the kids have the parts that they need the the tools that they need to work on the robots and that the teacher has the right materials uh and access in terms of getting kids to tournaments so it's just as important as as sports right we take care of our Athletics absolutely that's what I was going to just say I I you know I love this and it's not just damber it's not dber thing like the sport you know the Arts tends to get get you know out everywhere and and you know it's like CU even I've
075got nieces and nephews in New Jersey and same thing there they have to do their own fundraising they have to do you know all it's like why yeah I mean we're trying to help it's important to our kids it's important to our staff it's important to parents so we're doing our best and we'll continue to do that as long as we can I I just wanted to add on to that I think it's really super important that our kids don't come to school to be compliant but they come to school to be excited and that's how we get them excited the Arts the sports everything extra that's what makes them excited to show up field trips I yeah the field trips I mean we got it like I know personally from me being a kid
076that's what made me excited to show up so totally agree agreed Dr Casmir are you able to send us the or or have P send us the copy of the packet so far normally we would I'll send that right over okay thank you you're you're welcome anybody have any other questions I'll stop [Laughter] asking Cher Cooper did you have something uh thank you Tim I just enjoyed the present ation again and I thank the superintendent and uh our finance director uh doing an excellent job working together and getting the information out to par so they will understand the budget and hopefully we'll support our budget so again I I I I just enjoy the presentation thank you thank you and again I can't overemphasize enough how much work went into developing the budget you know
077that it's it wasn't just the the ask here it's the behind the scenes preparation um having come off of multiple Finance directors um having come off a massive funding Cliff which um you know if you're in the finance world and you have to suddenly find a way to move and shift you know $20 million worth of stuff it really blows up all of your lines and and your back end and it can create wreak havoc and so uh Mike has been doing a a fantastic job of um doing some post Esser cleanup um and also making things uh you know bucketing and categorizing things so that it makes my job easier in terms of being able to um go into our budget with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer um which I think is a
078huge difference I yeah well I agree I thought it was very comprehensive very yeah very well put together actually I was just happen to think too like even for next year like that one slide probably you could even you know trickle that down to like a classroom what's a typical you know danur classroom versus a normal classroom look like you know in terms of what they are provided um you know sports team you know to a sports team band you evand we lost Athletics at the middle school many years ago I was the I was the basketball coach assistant basketball coach over there when we had Sports at the middle school yes so um those got lost in budget cuts quite a while back and uh we just put implemented through a grant um some
079intramural programming to get to start to build that back in that culture of staying after and competing and uh having another adult check in on you and hold you accountable and make sure you're going to class and all of that so we're hoping to at some point bring bring Middle School athletics back motivate kids to want to be successful so so that they can participate in these things yeah cool all right Welles anybody have anything else or anything outside of the budget that they would like to bring up well there was hold on I'll be the guy that ask for homework at the end don't cause trouble sorry um I'm stuck on the the process piece of this so um yeah so the budget has been adopted by your proposed budget's been adopted by the
080Board of Education next step is it goes to the city council um after this we'll have opportunities for public hearing But ultimately each city council member has the opportunity to vote on the mayor's proposed budget which would be inclusive of this and the city's budget so um okay I just wanted to make sure I understood before I emailed my city council yes yeah so our budget went over the board's budget already has been sent over to the mayor uh for his review and he reviews that in line with all of his other departments and then they they do their work from there and I um I I believe um you know what we can send out is the actual timeline right now we've been given Target weeks um that's going to happen I we I
081I'll go back and see if they actually gave us the actual date uh that they're presenting wholesale but uh we'll get we'll try to get that out okay yeah what I'm what I'm really inquiring about is where the leverage points are um you know what is the typical um what's the probability that the mayor's proposed budget will be a red penned version of the one that you were proposed versus does it go to the city council as is and get voted on um and in that respect so that would determine whether the leverage point is with the mayor or with this with the individual councilmen we so we receive Kevin we receive an allocation and then from that point um we we go back with the red line and have to figure out where we
082would have to go to you know stay within the allocation so we'd go back to the drawing board and revise the the budget our budget our ask for the for the following year so um yeah we we will receive an allocation I understand thank you thank you of course and typically Kevin the the part of where the public can speak is usually over spring break I will say this they they they chose the week I think before that I'll go back and get the date uh to their credit that was a a complaint that I had for 10 15 years that the uh the vote was always on April break and that was just never sat well uh with me um and they listened last year and I I believe there's a genuine um you
083know will to make sure that the process is is done the way it's supposed to be yeah yeah no I I all the players right now that we're you know are there's a lot of Goodwill there and and well- intended uh people that are trying to do the best so um we just need you know we need a little time to catch up to where we should be and and hopefully we'll get a really good uh result this year to make a big step in that direction that was a very hard ask when you would go to council chambers over the break and see 30 people there when you know it could have been 500 right right because of break yeah yeah agreed yeah all right anybody anything else Kevin you're done uh for now
084yeah thank you thank you so much thanks Kevin all right well we're good all right all right well thank you everybody for coming so I guess um if nobody has anything else then we'll take a motion to adjourn any motion Dr casmiro if you can just hang just one second after i' appreciate it but um all right so I guess thank you everybody for coming then um we will see you what's up what I say our next meeting was March 3r so a month from today