1/17/24 Board of Education Workshop

001to the of the United States of America and for it stands one nation Vice chair to do the roll call El here Harris Teresa B pres Michelle here Kate canetta here GL Cooper here Mary Cronin Lauren Dy here Richard Holly Richard janelli here thank you good evening again to everyone uh we have public participation um I will read the script that we use a read at our board meeting the board welcomes public participation and ask that speakers please limit their comments to three minutes speakers may offer an objetive comments of school operation and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about Board of Education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the D public school before the start of the board meeting those

002wishing to address the board in public sessions are to sign the public participation sign up sheet complete with your name address and a phone number and the topic they wish to speak on documents intended for the board are to be submitted to the recording secretary the board chairperson shall call on the public to address the board and the order in which they appear on the signup sheet three minutes may be allotted to each speaker and a maximum a 30d minutes for public participation the board May modify these limitations by a majority vote of those present at the beginning of the meeting if the number of person wishes to speak make it advisable to do so thank you right now do we have anyone that would like to address the board seeing that move on down

003the agend and we are happy to have Shelter Rock here to Spotlight their school so come on up [Applause] shelter sorry so we would like to say thank you so much for the opportunity to Spotlight Shelter Rock um Kristen Bradley and myself we are the new administrators at Shelter Rock this is my second year there Kristen started with us this year we're very happy to have her there uh we both feel very fortunate to be at Shelter Rock uh our students are very respectful hardworking and kind to one another and our staff POS is very POS and very solution minded oriented we have a very strong School community supported by our amazing PTO who is here today they absolutely amazing uh as of today we have a total of 561 students placed in 27 general

004education classrooms we have 247 students identify as multim Learners which is 44% of all of our students and 10% of our students have an I but honestly Shelter Rock is so much more than numbers we decided to uh put a video together with our students and staff and they'll be the ones talking about our amazing school commity I hope you enjoy it [Music] at Shelter Rock all students will feel connected and safe so that they will meet or exceed great level standards by the time they graduate fifth grade because we believe that all students can grow and be successful in a positive and engaging learning environment at Shelter Rock we rock these are the core values we created as a school we are safe we persevere we are kind we Empower we are respectful we

005are we are we are we are power we are at shelter walk we Advocate we celebrate all forms of diversity and actively work to protect the rights of all in our community during our Multicultural day students families and staff celebrated a variety of cultures that represent our community we had many different performances activities and food that was donated by local restaurants last year we brought back an old tradition to show to the talent show our teachers encouraged us to show off our many talents and we were so proud of our hard work and performance the night of the talent show was huge was a huge success everyone did a fantastic job at shelter walk we collaborate we work well with others to identify problems and create Solutions with an open [Music] mind I [Music] for

006okay tell me in English what did you have to do wait how many how many columns do you have how many columns two and how many [Music] rows J so what's the expression 2 * 8 good job first grade teacher collaborate Techni work together to teach us important M skills all through the year they go to different agaches to learn about the first grade standards for M skin grow every week we get together with other classes to work on skills that are planned by our teachers we coach younger students by helping them with reading and writing we try really hard to be great role models our principles provide us with time to collaborate as grade level teams and with different departments we always use this time to talk about student work and how to move

007their learning forward at Shelter Rock we communicate we communicate our own thoughts and emotions as well as effectively engage with other perspectives and feelings of [Music] others during our T Hall meeting we talk about important issues we related to our school and we celebrate students for we have the opportunity to share what is happening in our lives our teachers help us talk through our feelings there are special places in our school that we can go to where we need help with our emotions at shelter walk we innovate we identify problems and create solutions for the past 30 years all all the students are invited to create a science project that will be showcased to the whole school we invite our parents to to attend it and learn about the solutions we have created to solve

008problems every day at the end of we used to fill three large tress barrels with all the our leftover food and garbage we learned how to save untouched unwrapped food andly are trash now students can have the extra food they need if unit and of [Music] stress at Shelter Rock we learn we use the chir skills and knowledge to transform life for self and positivity influence the lives of others our class affirmation I [Music] amart I am unique smart and important I am for my own action I will make good choices I will chose be I will [Music] do I am aad I am unique I am confident I am amazing I am respectful I am eager I am loved aong Lear I intelligent i l u c a r e l [Music] [Applause] l

009question does anyone have questions I just want to say something assistant principal Bradley and principal PCO I want to thank you both for joining us this evening I can't stop saying great things enough great things about you are very committed and dedicated staff that you have at Shelter Rock school and you guys have the perfect trifecta because then you also have a very supportive PTO in parent group um so we're very proud of everything that um we do at Shelter Rock we're very proud that the two of you have formed this dynamic duo on behalf of the district um we continue to try to do everything we can to serve the shelter Rock Community so uh we are all I can tell you we are all proud and happy here at district office on the

010board for the first time getting to see you together here at the board meeting um We are continuing to look forward to great things that I know is going to come from Shelter Rock um can't thank you enough put together this presentation for us tonight thank you so much sorry almost got one more sorry um I just wanted to say I was honored to have all three of my children go through shelter Rock School and we're proud Shelter Rock Eagles and um it was there where they got their educational base and that love of learning that they've taken with them and so I just want to say thank you to everybody I see some very familiar faces in the audience who've had one two or all three of my kids um but I want to

011thank you for all that you do and continue to do for our children thanks thank you any other comments from board members Teresa thank you how many full-time teachers are sh uh so we do have 27 general education teachers uh we have all together putting together with the ESL team with our special ed teachers we have around 40 certified staff members thank you anyone else again thank you on behalf of the board and I hope to see you when the spring comes and it's not so cold thank you than [Applause] you we're going to move right into our presentation here tonight um I like to make a little change as we go through the presentations I'm going to ask you we'll start off with two questions you would raise your hand through the chair you

012put give me your two questions and then we'll move around to everyone that's on the board that has the opportunity to ask a question and I'm going to ask you to be mindful and polite to each other we just heard had a school come and your children are talking about being polite and CRI to one another and they going to see us sit at adults and can't be polite to each other that's not a good representation so I'm going to ask you to raise your hand I will put your name down and if I overlook you I had thece chair to nudge me and say well someone is over to say I'm going to ask you to ask your questions if it's okay with our superintendent as we go along this is a workshop and

013I know we used to hold our questions to the end but I'm going to ask you to you know do your questions in if it's okay with the superintendent and uh if it's something that he can't answer right then he will definitely get back to you so at this point I'm going to turn the workshop over to the superintendent thank you Mr is it okay that John also here sure certain and good evening everyone and thank you um for chair Cooper so I want to start by sharing John Mr sping left a there's answers to our January 3rd meeting um at everyone's desk tonight those responses are really in response to some of the questions that came up at our January 3rd meeting uh and it was this handout is also in response uh to

014some recommendations that the board made to fold into our presentation so the thought was we would in this handout John going to ask you to walk the board through this um instead of you trying to find those updates in the PowerPoint John is going to walk you through this handout that was on your desk and we'll just kind of walk you through what those updates are and as we go through the presentation you'll see evidence of that throughout the presentation so John would you mind take a minute to do that first so can you hear me okay and so a few of the things are um just confirmation um of what we've done the first one there um if you recall our the for our tutors um had not been for many years in the

015line for salaries they had appeared uh in the 300 lines as we call them and we've uh moved that up you'll see that in one of the slides um called the money slide as um superintendent gets into his presentation but we've made that change it's about uh $4 million and we've also uh restated uh the prior year that um things U are comparable uh we also um we had not calculated the cost um you know we we plan to move um we plan to occupy the cartis building um in late spring and we put some money in for the high school and middle school teachers uh who will be working there to pack their classrooms up uh before they leave uh this would be right after the end of uh classes in June that's something

016um we typically do most recently we did that with the kindergarten teachers who um moved over to uh St Joe in Brookfield for a year uh once we're um before school starts of course uh they'll come back and we'll they'll unpack uh but that'll be in the next budget the 25 26 years so uh that's been added uh we also got some uh live quotations uh for the tent rental uh that we spoke to about uh at the high school for next year uh primarily to U uh serve meals uh with our cafeteria just uh being too small for the number of kids so um the annual cost uh or the 10-month cost uh for that tent rental uh we estimated at 144,000 that's been built in it actually two tents um you call them

017a wedding style t with the flaps that come over and the doors and and things like that and then uh we'll need some uh a couple folks in there to monitor uh the lunch periods when the students are in there so uh we we've um built in a par educator uh 05 or halftime par educator one for each of the two10 that will be their a total of $35,000 um you asked about um Staffing history and uh call it a new position analysis and as you look through U your handout there what we have called um it's not on here but the the the next page is u a table that says Staffing history uh that's a table that the uh the city asks us to do every year um when we send our materials

018over in February and you can see there by a couple different categories uh teachers special ed teachers Paris uh clerical custodian and so forth uh but the history uh there goes back um six or seven years and you can see what's what transpired over time uh a new position analysis uh would appear later y it's the next page uh we took all of the positions that um you've been hearing about the new ones uh put them on a in a landscape format it's called um requested new positions 2425 I've tried to group them uh by um level so you can see all the high school positions there they come from different um budget drivers but here they are in one place and you know as uh one of our messages as you've been hearing um

019is the surgeon enrollment uh at the high school that's um here now and will continue to grow so you see the the Staffing uh that we're asking you to approve uh is primarily U at the high school uh we'll talk more about that the the driver category appears over on the the far right of that table there some more there um an expenditure history analysis uh that's something that uh City also asks us to prepare uh this is the usual format uh that they get there in these Pages appear in the mayor's budget book uh that comes out in uh late March uh and goes to the city council these have been uh these same Pages have been used uh for many years um ECS funding uh and a enrollment comparison report that's exhibits four

020and five uh exhibit four uh that data is a a replica of a page that uh for many years here uh you received in your budget book it's not it's not quite uh formatted the same way we'll do that but this was the data uh that you'd often get it it talks about uh numbers of students in different categories free and reduced launch or uh things like that there's some economic statistics there as well that um you were used to getting a an equalized Grand list of median household income uh where we compare uh to some other uh cities and towns I was asked uh today why are those in there uh those are the ones that historically have been in your book so at least for tonight uh we went back with the same

021ones um you can see the ECS Grant educational cost sharing uh spread out uh that is where our alliance Grant lives we get our ECS allocation uh it includes the alliance we can talk about that a little bit more too um you also um there's an enrollment comparison uh again this is a a city page what's what's different about this is it um shows our grade level configurations of elementary middle and high school um both historically and then a a three-year projection from our demographers there uh we you know when we talked about uh the next page the budget drivers uh last time uh was sort of an overview and uh here was the break here's the breakout you asked for uh that shows a more um uh item by item what's in those drivers

022I've also uh describe those a little bit I won't go through each one uh now you you'll see some of that in the presentation coming up uh and some notes over there on the side just to help uh understand how we we put those together um so those are the budget drivers and last uh we wanted to give you a call a full Financial summary um it's a page it's a pie chart uh you can see uh the Esser uh Grant in red that's that's the big story of the budget you'll see uh but you can see our grants our general fund uh coming together on that chart so those are the the questions uh from last time and I I think I'll take this opportunity to ask if there are any questions about your

023handout for John for I review the presentation with you which frankly is capturing many of the things John thank you so J I just wanted to clear we got the the new numbers in so we're looking at like 79,000 more for the tents and the Staffing at Broadview because I think originally last meeting it was 100,000 for the cafeteria tents and supervision so is that my the tents uh come to 144,000 and the supervision 35,000 so you're right 179 of almost 80,000 so Michelle at the last meeting we had estimates there was some request for us to get actual quotes and so they've been updated now the actual and then I just have the other question is I'm looking at the student enrollment I think you just highlighted the cage um towards the end last

024exhibit projected 2425 enrollment you have is 12,188 are we talking about 12,000 was it 223 why is that number or what is the number uh I for the projected there I was just taking the slam uh report from the last demographic study I think uh the numbers you'll see uh in the presentation those are really what we think are going to happen and and um you know before these go over to to the city uh they'll be um everything will match and they'll age um I think here what I was more trying to do was show you the history uh coming up to this rather than pinpoint threeyear projections can we maybe update that only because you know it's always kind of a moving number and it looks like we're kind of sticking with 12,223

025right so if they could match that would be great they will thank you thank you uh Mr Janel we're doing two questions and then we one around okay reputation John on your and could you speak in your microphone because we cannot hear I'm not sure how this works but the the on your first page where item number two and item number three if I add this cost 35,000 on the other I don't know um this total some 215,000 is this to be construed that it's additional monies what we've been told or is this just a breakout of something that's been Incorporated uh it's some additional I believe uh a week or so ago we were showing $100,000 for the tents we weren't showing anything for the supervision or nor anything uh for the moving uh

026cost uh but these these uh really are two different drivers budget drivers are two different things um the moving cost uh that's to occupy the academy in the late spring April actually that will be for work it's done in June to move in uh the tents and the supervision uh we need those things this year uh for the enrollment so we would uh erect those tents uh this August coming off from the supervisions so part of the quarter million dollars that I refer to some of that expenses the big part of that or half of that would be for the current year being the T and the other 100,000 would be additional Monies to be added to your proposed budget for for next year is that correct this is off of the 2425 budget just

027so then just want to make sure we say the same okay that's what I'm trying to clarify and so what I Look to assume that whatever number you had of the previous presentations and the total cost would would that number increased by $200,000 well in other words in previous conversations you had presentations you had a number I for get what it was 178 or 176 are those numbers now being adjusted upward because of these additions uh they are they are okay so be corre the other thing is going out of order on your next to your last page where you referred to budget drivers I'd like to see a total on there sure it's about 18.5 million but okay and I keep saying that we look at presentations where you're saying you have incremental cost

028$28 million and we're only counted with $18 million so you scheduled basically for clity purs I should be told that's a good suggestion thank you thank you Teresa I thank you I just have a quick question about the out of town students I don't recall getting the latest figure on that for this Academic Year um I'm sorry teres when you say students the the students that come to the magnet school is it yes you mean in terms of I just want to make sure I understand the question the number the rate was declining the last year coming from out of town to Dan I didn't recall hearing the current number enrollment enrolling declining yes yes yes um we we can report on that but we can we can certainly provide thank you and this just

029a common J on on section two part two here is that supposed to be probably an era typ ER is that 24 or 25 should be 24 24 thank you thank third page it is the STA history yes and is there any way that we can detail please um you have the descriptions the all others I take the time short okay um I can tell you that I'm looking for I see under Administration I see superintendent a super assistant superintendent um the principles and assistant principles directors coordinators and we jump to special tutors but I don't know if we're missing something in would that be like administrative assistance safety Advocates would be one being there um they they'd be primarily um non-certificated positions I'd rather take a look at them so specifically looking for where

030our other administrative positions come in uh many of those uh are in the director coordinator line but there there could be some other like a working Foreman or something of that nature it supervisor could be down in that line specifically on the next page positions yes we have our um our site administrators for our West Campus yes and for the move if I'm not mistake five um would be yes you know that it's the phrase the the devil's in the details and um when we when we take the building in April and um there's still going to be a lot to do um student schedules um organizing things um it's a it's a big deal to start a school it's all the little things um um and uh including the Staffing and and all of

031that so we need uh someone who can do all that uh really before August not before July uh so I we envision some staff um getting things ready for August getting ready to welcome back the teachers and and so on we're not quite sure yet exactly uh what those positions will be or how but we we do need some leadership uh beginning in the late spring and did we have did we have that listed as a three month position right April May and June that that's the budget is built uh that that person would be uh a person for three months uh heading up each of the schools the middle school and high the academy and so I guess my comment is is within our district we number of positions in which we have um

032divided their willings right and I don't know if that had been perhaps a thought by the uh cabinet that you know we we've split positions to different buildings and assignments so forth that we might have some administrative positions that we could have used for those months those are those discussions will um ramp up in the the next few months uh but we knew we needed uh some leadership there um I estimated it this way I'm sure we'll be keeping you informed thees back to number two the building is going to be finished this June 2024 no I thought you said that that was the one not 2025 did I misunderstand that oh I'm sorry at the end of the budget year I I try to correct myself yeah yeah I thought that will be in

033June at the end of the budget years so it's 2025 it is thank you m I just have one question on the ECS grant funding you just mentioned the alliances at 45,000 to4 some change um what is under the alliance grants because last meeting you said it included the Alliance Title One and the grants is that what we're talking about when we're looking at this one item no the um so the ECS uh the educational cost sharing um that's the basic way the state of Connecticut AIDS public education it's a elaborate formula um I know parts of it uh but it's complicated um uh for Alliance districts um one of the one of the ways the state tries to equal level the playing field between uh cities and towns some able to more than others

034uh is with the alliance Grant and um in our case uh this year it's about $22 million and it's uh it's it's it's a u it's an odd way that they pay that and and count it um most grants are not included in your state aid check so to speak uh this particular Grant and only this grant the alliance Grant is included in these ECS estimates that you see in the governor's budget and you hear about so the $45 million you see there uh this year 22 is has come to us and for our programs uh primarily uh full day kindergarten is funded that way uh but the rest of it goes to the city it's a General Revenue just like uh the casino money that comes in or the town Aid Road and things

035like that the um City finance department and Council use that to help um help pay for things including education um the other grants you you mentioned the title one um Perkins and so on you you'll hear some more in the presentation um those are not funded through the state aid some come from the state some come from the federal government up through the state so slide you can break that down a little bit you'll see it yes you'll see it a few minutes thank you second round of two question John on the page 20 2425 requested new positions one again I'm going to ask that the categories be subtotal in the dollars come up the grand total of the dollars you have a recap of the FTE but I think it would help yeah if

036you had to conf in dollars yes the other thing would there be a flow of this schedule do this schedule support anything that we're going to be seeing tonight in your presentation words are we going to be able to flow does this support any of these numbers here just in more DET do you'll be able to so what what John was trying to accomplish tonight was clear that all the updates in the presentation which is like 30 plus slides he EXT he extracted this to say this is new information that we've added into the presentation and he wanted to zero in on that new information that's been added to the Pres presentation specific uh but we will see everything from last week from the preliminary budget plus what you see here in his beautiful presentation

037that we show T long as we can see the connection yes that if it's not that's about yeah and just final question is on the enrollment the enrollment history when I look at this first blush and we make a lot of conversation we have a lot of dollars that are spent in the category forment when I look at this there's nothing really that pops out of pops up to me that's a significant inrease so I I think we're going to have to be a little bit more educated as to what the concern of the enrollment is is the concern over the increase I think in your slides of over the eight years of the impact that the collected 800 students had from that that point to today what it has on the district because when

038you look at the numbers here it's not jumping up and supporting that there's anything drastic it's just a you know I'm trying to play devil's advocate for somebody looking at the slide and they present this they say well I don't see any big deal you know I think I know what you're getting at in terms of the effect on Roll But I just want to play Devil's and that question thank you on the page for new positions just a question um we had a number of positions we talked about earlier this week of positions that were not fed this SCH are those rolled over to this new position they rolled over are they so we don't okay that's what I okay thank you for asking are there any other question yes so we will move

039on to the presentation which is on the screen Dr is going to help you with the slides um I want to share with the board there kind of natural transitions in the slides and so at that point I will break if there any questions this group they may appropriate we don't want to wait until the end um and so I I will just get started and so our first slide appropriately speaks to our vision and mission statement for the district um and I I think as a team as a board as a community we need to be reminded certainly that we aspire to advance all of our students to their Highest Potential um in that of course requires investment that requires planning that requires strategic planning um and we do this in partnership with Community

040with staff with the board uh to make these things happen right our true north as a district and I want to applaud principal PCO and her team for putting together a video and our schools have been doing a great job this year in our spotlights uh referencing our portrait of The Graduate uh making those CS to what learning looks like in your classrooms um kind of in light of our true nor as a district but these are the characteristics in which we want the skills that we want our kids to leave their schools with um and this is I think this continues to serve as a reminder of why we are here this next slide our district um begins to really talk about of course I think every District feels that they are unique right

041here in Connecticut uh but we're going to speak to some reasons why we truly are unique in the state of commitment our profile um so yes in in this data is as of January 9th 2024 we have 12,223 students 13 elemente schools three middle schools one high school that's changing soon U and two alternative programs 13.7% of our students um have an IEP and 47% point1 of our students identify as High needs um I'm going to go back to high needs in a second um and this is another this is the thing that truly makes us and distinguishes us from their rest of the districts in the state of Connecticut and that is 33.3% of our own students are multilingual recers um 41 47.1% of our students are high needs which is a combination of

042being a multilanguage learner being eligible for free reduce lunch having an IEP so any combination of those things identifies you as a i student strategic plan and District priorities and so the board approved in 2022 uh these six priorities and identifying these six priorities is critically important uh to move the district forward so with a focus on teaching and learning uh staff development Talent acquisition uh School climate focusing on school climate meaningful collaboration um and resource allocation than Mike enrollment growth and Mr J had talked about this a couple minutes ago and really asking uh the question out loud like why is enrollment grow such a issue challenge a thing here in Dan and so you'll see our from 20178 um a little over 11,400 students at that time and at the time of the

043submission to the state of Connecticut 12,126 students when we submitted our data to the state of Connecticut on October 1st and I think in the previous chart we had shared with the board in the community um that was plus 630 something students um over that 17 18 years span again what truly makes us unique for the rest districts in the state of Connecticut um we have our biggest Elementary School um is and you heard principal czecho tonight say they had 500 plus students at their school 631 students in the in the district um typically means you need a new school erected in a school district uh and that's exactly what the demographers have told us we have needed um and this is dating back a couple of years ago projections uh with the projections match

044actual growth um it really speaks to again why we are so unique in the state of Connecticut and I know we had another board member tonight point out um that the numbers of the projector of the demographer were actually under uh what our real number is right now so John had included the projections in for 2425 and Beyond but Michelle to your point we outperformed the projections which is what we typically do here and we're about 100 about 200 over those projections that are in there uh so we will definitely adjust those numbers um I think we had 30 I think the demographer projected we will be at about 3700 in September for the high school uh where we are based on our numbers projecting over 3900 School obviously we'll have some something more definitive

045as we get closer to the summer um but those are the numbers that we are seeing right now the next slide this is also about enrollment growth but this is specifically for multi language learners and not special students and again going back to 201718 and up to date to 2324 um you will see significant growth U from a little over 3,000 students to over 4,000 400 students to date um here in the district um and then that rayar represented 2324 we've had 118 students who identified multilanguage Learners since the October 1 submission um no one in the state of Connecticut is growing at the percent at the rate that we are there is another District who is also growing at a high percentage um you will see in some subsequent slides no one is coming

046close to overall number as we are here in so chairperson C I'll pause here see if you any questions in this transition Mr on sign for the enrollment appr yes to would it be as you've done in other years would it be advantageous to show the state of Connecticut so it it shows more meaningful where the the damur growth is increasing and the overall state is is decreasing we will add that in that is missing this year Abol and the other thing as I mentioned the other day when you look at the next Slide the enrollment in the multi language Learners as well as special education there was just recently a week or two ago a report that came out I think by the state school 101 project that had a nice write up on

047this and it indicated that danber was the set of all the districts in Connecticut 169 districts danber was the second largest District behind bridgport in in the enrollment of multi insurance leers and so as I said the other night if you put a chart together of the multilanguage Learners as well as the special ed kids at a part yart showed and I think that came out of 51% of the total population what I'm trying to get at is to build the narrative that the public has to understand is what you're up against you as a superintendent and your administrators and your teachers what they're up against by the effect of the enrollment irregardless of in the naked eye it doesn't look like it's you know every year it's a large Peak we only had about

0483 years that you Peak but it has an impact collectively but also the impact of the classroom having 51% of your classroom being serviced by children that have special needs and the impact that has on district and you to go out and find different kind type of teachers that are going to fill that for I think strengthens our support as to why you're looking for this additional money in these particular areas so what I'm trying to do is is is is build the story relative to the grass and tie them into your financial numbers so that people understand behind your numbers what this classroom looks like we have tendency of making things look too easy I keep saying you guys do a good job in in you know doing lemonade out of lemons and so

049the general public you know in years you said okay you did so you did so great why do you need this particular you know increase well it's on a back of Administrators and the teachers and the students so that's what I'm trying to get to it's some sort of a narrative that ties these things in to what the is and then deal with the numbers to say that we're supporting that by by by this particular Edition for this particular I um Mr J I appreciate the feedback and we heard you lot clear last night um when we went to go begin to think about what that slide would look like um we realized we couldn't put put it together too quickly because we have some students who might identify as an MLL student but they

050may also identify as a special need student and so the numbers will not be as easy to put together as the three different numbers that you saw in the paper so it's just going to take a little bit more work for us to identify the students who have dual ident identifications uh to figure out how we would chart that so it is just yeah right there some cies which will include both so just take a little bit more time but um we we understand the the rational rationale so that we educate the public and the people that are making the presentations to what it's like to be in the school and what you need in order to service these particular needs and also go ahead thank you Michelle Michelle I'm going to ask board members

051again and I'm going to repeat this until we all get on the same page we have people that are in the audience that cannot hear us we'll tap in this and you people are watch watch that they can't hear cannot hear us okay so please your microphone is not going to bite you just turn it on ask your questions so we can hear you thank you Michelle thank you m chair um I want to thank you John for adding these um additional graphs based on our I hope this discussion we had last time where I'm I'm also um kind of piggy backing off and saying if we know there students coming and our demographic is you know 30% or maybe 40% multilanguage learner what is actually rolling might be a fairly different picture where it's

052seven let's say multilanguage Learners out of 10 and you know what I mean so actually inverted um so you know we're looking at 16,37 for an English learner and we want to take into consideration multilanguage learner is 48,000 needs is 72,000 per student so those numbers depending on how we considered it's not just the you know 16,000 so just so that we're prepared because we always seem to be a little bit short trying to um get the resources for those students or in our minds realize what those numbers I think really thank you very much fora uh Michelle touched on this and it's a good point the pro did additional 300 students we're supposed to get is there uh a way we can qualify them as to how many are MLL uh students is there

053any way to find that out I mean we seem to know a specific number but do we can we get to know more of what's coming and be prepared so we have 300 additional students coming up to the high school so uh Broadview Middle School uh that enrollment bubble is at Broadview Middle School this year and so that bubble will be moving up to the high school and so we have the demographics of the students that we know of right now we can't necessarily make projections of how they would identify we certainly have the projections of an idea of the kind of numbers that might be coming in and so what Dan doeses as as an example will kind of leave spacing classes any the event students move in after uh after the um after

054the schedule has kind of been put together but we don't we don't necessarily have an idea of who who the kids are going to be when they come in and how they will identify just to make sure I hav the SE that's how you're asking so it's strictly from within the system getting that right now yes it's moving up to the high school uh the Middle School governs at the high school so that 3900 that we're preparing for at the high school is enrollment growth from the middle schools coming up now plus the students of course that he has you want to C second yes yes pleas so the next slide is the district reference groups and often times in this important meeting we talk about our durs and the next slide slide 10 is

055a definition of District reference groups and the rationale about this whole section is really beginning to build a case for what our uh districts look like who are in our district reference group um how they are being funded how the town um funds them how what type of resources they are receiving from the state and then that and kind of getting a look at what that means for D and so the the durs District reference groups are a classification system that groups local and Regional public school districts together based on similar socioeconomic status of their students so this is developed by the Connecticut State Department of Education the durs have not been officially updated since they were first released in 2006 um although as my understanding they are they have actually updated it but I

056don't think it's been released by the state yet um is the state going away from the durs that is our understanding yes yes that's our understanding next slide um DPS versus the durs and and what we mean by that is this is how we compare uh against other districts who are in the same uh demographic reference group and so I just want to bring your attention to the table here are some of those districts who are in our dur right now and that is in Sonia dur East Harford maridan Norwalk Norwich Stanford and West Haven and in this bubble plot that you will see uh some of the board members were here on the previous term um we have talked about I've talked about the Next Generation accountability index um I had described that as

057kind of our report card um where it's U this is U kind of developed in various areas from growth of our students SAT scores GR graduation how students are doing in fed um how are the students are doing with access to the Arts um so it's a number of different indicators and um when you look at this chart that's in the bubble chart that's in front of you um from north to south is um the the accountability index going from 50 up to 70 and then going from left to right or east west um is the amount per student that is spent on a student so really there are two things points that we want to get across from share this with you one we are very responsible stewards of the taxpayers money here we

058spend 16 a little over $16,000 per student here in danburry which is $6 more than Meridan as of the the publication of this chart and you will see uh when looking at the accountability index we score or rate at a 67 and this is if you go to the school and state finance project uh this information is also going to be found on the State Department of Education uh but also in the state finance project and you will see Danberry um at it's a score of 67 and then you will also see districts like Norwalk like Stanford at 21 over $21,000 per student um and then when you look for the corresponding color um and so you for example you'll see Norwalk um at close to you'll see their index is at 69 you'll see

059Stanford's indexes at 65 and so despite the fact that they're spending $5,000 more per student um their index is really in the same ballpark as ours um I am here to share with you this evening we cannot continue to count uh on our staff to continue to carry the burden that is in front of us um so you know for years we have continued to enjoy The Works of our administrators and our staff across the district we continue to get um to continue to be applauded for the growth that our kids um continue to exhibit and there outcomes that we look at every year uh but times are different in the district not just in Danver of course it's in in all districts uh but the other districts has resources that we do not um

060and this is really just the beginning page of why we need to make sure we are uh investing in a district uh because we can cannot continue to expect these kind of outcomes with um declining investment in funds for for staff and schools on the next slide demographics and per people's spending this graph uh again this is a part of ight and this is a State Department of Education reference this is from 2122 school year this is the latest one that was available uh by the state uh but again this is Danberry Public Schools versus it's durs and so you will see and this is really just a demographic breakdown 52.5% of danburry students identify as I need in 2122 um a multilanguage Learners during that year was 31 31.6% students with disabilities or special

061ed students 13.9% um and students who identified as um black or indigenous people of color U was at 7 5.3% um and so you will see um how we match up against the other districts who are in our Durk um and then you will also see how uh the purpal spending for US versus those same districts who are in under just give you a moment to observe this CH and then the next slide um again going back to 2017 to 2023 um and again and beginning to really show um how different we are from the other 168 districts in the state of so since 2017 specifically uh we have had um over a th000 multilanguage learner students in theberry public schools um and while you can see the count in our other districts that look

062like us most look most like us um and certainly Nook and Stanford have experienced growth uh but nowhere at level that we have um and then you can see the same also West Haven has experienced growth as well um but certainly not um like we have and there are other charts when looking at the entire state of Connecticut uh there are places like new Milford for example has experienced significant growth amongst their multilanguage Learners uh and so percentage wise off the charts uh but in terms of numbers of course the district is not so big um but even with districts like New Milford who experiencing significant growth of this population um just been talking about sheer numbers um there's no one in terms of percentage gross to s in numbers like and great public schools

063in the next slide this is a snapshot of 2324 operating budgets for Danberry no walk and stord and um you will see the operating budget for Danberry at um in the magenta or purple bar at 150 million Norwalk at 226.50 million and Stanford at 313 million I believe Stanford has about 2,000 more students than us um and I think Norwalk has about a th000 or 2,000 less than us um as we are about 12,000 I think nor a little under a little over 11,000 or high 10,000 but you will see just looking at the high heat numbers U the numberb is reflecting students with disabilities again no one looks like us when it comes to nml students uh the similarities is we ask the question before we AB absolutely perf no one have any question

064then we can move on to the funding I'll get any question could you speak into your mic okay think help is on the way thank you Kevin the the a suggestion do you think your explanation what you gave to us as your audience as to what the interpretation and the purpose of putting these grafts together you think think on the graph attached to it would be a narrative so that a reader understands the interpretation of these numbers and and the importance of so when I look I Tred to spend today to to look for other Gears of the Next Generation accountability and I couldn't find it just uh but if we can get a couple of three years and it works in our favor that shows we' constantly increase on that average um I I

065think that would be another feather in our Cal said that we're good Ste Steward or a return on investment is ENT but again explaining to to the the audience what the purpose of the the graphs are okay in the the demographics that we have by the by the durs with the exception of the nor language all in about the same the same group so I mean there could be comments made on that but essentially as you're speaking to us and giving us the education I Look to when I read something is to say okay let me understand it further if it's not applied because I don't have the background and the knowledge to interpret it as as you do and I think perhaps when you go before and give it to the council particularly it

066helps educate them basically what you're trying to say and enlightens them a little bit more as to what the significance of these numbers are from our perspective so just just a thought thanks Mr thank you um on the slide where you are comparing the operating to in Stanford I think last night jry had mentioned um that those cities were a little bit not in the S with danburry is it possible for us to get some comparisons with possibly Meridan or you know something that's more comparable to danur we can Lisa um I just want to share however of the comparable districts and I'm just going by the definition of the dur because the group we're in all the districts are here and the two districts who are most Like Us in terms of size and

067demographics are no walking standard and we we have no problem also adding meritan or substituting districts um but when we put all the districts side by side the two districts that continue to look most like us on example but I I'm happy so also add meridin because they're here um their purpal spending certainly is more in line with ours that that is for sure but their size and scope they're they're not the same but we certainly can add but I I just want you to know the ration these two um because they are most likely size for sure Teresa on that same vein when you say the demographic are the same are you talking strictly the students the educational system as opposed to the total population so these respective cities so yeah like what are

068what are the points of the similarities mik can you go back to the Der so the the district reference groups um they are grouped together based on so socioeconomic status of the students which of course means the parents uh and um that's how the districts improved and in this case um Meridan similar to us obviously because we're in the same group um but just in terms of the size of the city obviously is not as big as ours that's why the district is not as big as ours no what stord is but again we can certainly add some more comparison so the board can see some other numbers on side by side thank no Mr J Kevin I tend to think the the budget on the operational budgets and comparisons personally I would eliminate I

069think it opens up more questions to we would have to defend somebody saying okay provide me with number of students population tax rates uh you know and stuff like that we get into areas where we shouldn't be you know we're education here we're not looking to see what size of our budget compares to no budgets in the city so it might be something that that would open up but I'm trying to do is prevent your presentation from being side rail to get to another aspect of it as we've seen before where something triggers something and we get off the the beat path I don't think this really reports any the the things you're trying to make without going into somebody being more argumentive or more inquisitive and say it's not relevant so so I I

070do think it's sorry uh and I agree Mr janelli I think that it's up to the superintendent and our finance director to come in and if they think this is relevant for our budget or they make the decisions I'm not telling to do just a i no just let me finish they'll make the decision if they think they should go in there then they should do it that's for him and finance director and his SC so you know that's the only thing that I'm going to say So Lisa um thanks for the feedback number one this evening and I know Teresa this is probably you'd probably also like to see some additional districts in there as well so we're happy happy to make those additions I think it's important however for the board and the

071community to have a reference point because without one you would not know what it takes to run a school district of ourselveses um and so the point that and and Mr J to your point um we will make sure we preference the section of the rational why we're putting this information together so I I think that was lost in here so we'll make sure we add that like this is why these four or five slides are so important uh but but I I I need our community I need our board to understand typically these are the costs this is what it costs to run a house and if you've never ran a house before we would not know and at least if we have some reference points other than being 169 out of 169 know

072what this really looks like in terms of a total budget we have a better idea so that that's really the rationale and I'll make sure the story flows in the way so that folks understand why we're sharing these slides cuz the last thing I'm trying to do is make it look like like bang on the table look how much NOK is getting a standard that's not what it's about but what it is about is just trying to for folks to understand District's our size this is what it typically costs for districts the size of dam schools and if you can provide statistical information relative to student body or population stuff that you know has some sort of relevance because if you have a student body in one city that's 15,000 students one automatically been cost

073more money to to do that so um that's why I said I mean it may open up but if you provide more information could be good opens up more of a narrative and takes us off to Michelle I I just want to say that I I agree with um including the information because I think that um these numbers that are coming through I mean even for me who's been sitting on the board for two years um it's kind of enlightening to realize that the students that are coming you've got aund students enrolling most of them are multilanguage Learners and I don't think that we really understand what that cost is and we're looking at other schools and I want to say I think I'm really I'm reading for the first time we might be 168

074out of 169 $6 that's Improvement that's what we're looking for so I just you know um I I know that we don't want to confuse um the public with information but I I really think thisinformation really helps to paint the picture of what we're looking at in the district as far as it's thank you thank you so there are no more questions on this section uh the next area is called grant funding and John is going to review this section I think this really address is um not all of the questions about grants but I think it will provide an overview of how the grants resp spent how much just by categories and classifications and just overall um the first the first slide really begins to just talk about the mission and kind of goals

075of each Grant and so John will get started you I think to I just to explain you're you're seeing um more of an emphasis on grants in our presentation this year and there are a couple reasons for that uh one is the biggest reason our budget is going up is because of Grants and one Grant in particular losing the Esser Grant um but so we also thought it's important for for you to take a look inside our grant so you can see what we look at um and what's really going on with the Grant I thought that was important this year um when add our grants to our operating budget we're up over 210 million we'll see in a minute here um but we also want you to know uh how dependent we are on

076the grants uh and when we lose something uh big like the co Grant um you really are there really is no place to go uh when that happens so um the grants themselves and I I know that slide is very small um but the grants are either um entitlements or they're competitive and um you know they originate either with the federal government or the state government um and and in those governments when they see a need uh they will create a grant to help meet that need uh a couple of these have been around really forever um just picked a couple out the Perkins Grant that's up there the car Perkins Grant uh that started in 1984 almost 40 years ago and it was uh to improve industrial Arts at the time um it's been

077um changed a couple times now it's it's for Career and Technical education but a a very specific purpose um the title ones you hear about a lot the title grants as we call them uh that started in 1965 uh 58 59 years ago and and um that was U earmarked for uh what they called economically disadvantaged schools not school districts economically uh disadvantaged schools within those districts and it was uh designed to teach math and English in those uh in those schools uh that's been reauthorized uh over the years several times uh now it includes uh stem um science technology engineering and math so they change up with they've been around a long time and and do get reauthorize but um the point I I'd like to make what this chart helps with is uh

078that they're for very special purposes each of the grants that uh are designed they're they're not for general purposes although some uh have more flexibility uh than others um I won't go through U each of those you'll U you can see see them uh for yourself on there I think the important thing and it's hard to to read uh the second to the last column on the right uh shows the number of Staff members that we have in these grants um see the very first one the alliance Grant that's a state Grant uh 149 staff members are in that Grant um that proba I think all of our kindergarten teachers are in there that's what we use to go from half day kindergarten to full day kindergarten the alliance Grant so that that's where they

079they live but you can see uh the second Grant is the Ida Grant that's a special education uh Grant there's 21 staff members in there I won't go all through them the title one I mentioned um 53 people in the title one Grant itself and so on so forth um at the bottom is our Magnet School Grant uh that's a very important to grant grant to us uh you can see in the second column almost 1.6 million uh comes in from the state uh to run AIS and uh we have 16 staff members primarily teachers uh that are paid with that state money so that you can see we're dependent uh on these grants for kindergarten teachers for AIS and so on and so forth um next Grant mik next slide and uh so there

080are a lot of GRS we have 5 55 grants uh and you can see in this this slide what we've just tried to do is highlight the larger ones as I mentioned there uh there's the Esser right on top that's the one uh we're losing but you can see the alliance I I talked about earlier 22 million um those uh six or seven grants that we've highlighted um combined for 43 million uh the other 40 or so grants that brings in another 14 million some of those are competitive uh we submit an application it matches what they're looking for if it's a good application uh were awarded that Grant those are tend to be smaller grants and not grants that we really think we can count on to sustain themselves uh over time those are

081the B ones Mike you want next slide right so uh this takes those same grants all of France um shows you what we're spending it on and and you can see all the staff members I mentioned uh you can see the salary and Ben the salary benefits themselves almost 42 million of the 57 million in the total grants so that that's a pretty big U piece um that's one of the reasons we feel um these grants particularly the Esser uh that in the last few years were a place we could go uh to finance our gr to Finance U the additions at the high school uh there are not other grants to go to now uh they're all being used as might put it one way uh but the next slide uh I I believe

082to me this is the most important uh slide when people say to me uh John why is why is your budget up so high what's going on it's that first line it's that Esser Grant almost $1 million and you can see along with the other 55 grants of 46 million and our general fund spending level budget uh for this year there's over 210 million uh but next year we won't have uh that 10 million as a grant and and that um is the major driver uh as to why the increase is what it is I think that's it for the slides um questions on grants Melle so looking at the last meeting that we had for 2324 we had the grants broken out and totaling 62 milon 500,000 and now it's like 5 million dollar

083less is what I'm reading now with this new with the 7 million you so I did the numbers real quick and it looks like there's a $5 million difference that it's carried over page was the so this is the the Cliff of last week of the last meeting that we had and we had the Esser gr uh grants and all of the other grants totaling 62,500 th000 and now we getting the new numbers which are 5 million less than what we projected the the only number that seems to really kind of deviate is the other Grant number that I had brought up the 34 million that we showed for 21 22 22 23 school year okay so we're 5 million less this your projection how are you where did we find that money then in

084this new budget how did you allocate for it couple things Michelle are you saying in our projections 20324 yeah in this the original I think the one that want to be at H was showing um 62,500 th000 as available grants that we for 23 24 and then just I was comparing that when we received the last week we were going to be preparing it it looks like we're five 5 and a half million short so I just want to make sure that because when we I I did have an opportunity to go through everything I was kind of concentrating on the budget on the grants themselves so there's 5 million short 5 and a half and I don't know where we're making that so what um the the page we're talking about um if I

085could we we've called that the cliff slide so let me uh keep calling it that uh we put that together a year ago um its main purpose was not to U provide as find an estimate or a budget it was really to alert people uh that things were about to change and that the the whole point the point there was to show the Esser money uh dwindling over three years of um the ESS the co grants Esser grants same thing um one of them we had two years to spended uh this last one we had three so we're just trying to show in general terms what was going on I I'll I'll look at it a little more carefully but I I think we uh very likely um projected some increases in the alliance Grant

086um at the time uh there was talk of speeding up uh Alliance uh formula um we think that there's still a a strong possibility that's going to happen uh but what you see here are the grants that we have this year the 23 24 not an increase who may have thought it was going to accelerate sooner than we now do but but the the these slides tonight are based on what I call the award letters uh when you when you put in your application the state says y or n that's what we're adding up uh that's what we're spending okay so those 5 million that we were considering to be money that we would have in the in the budget right CU that's we were kind of well I I'd like to go back and

087and look at that slide again it's um but I I suspect that's what it was yeah I'm just wondering where do we capture that because at the end we've got new budgets that are totally 178 I just don't know if if you're aware that that number have come down significantly I know we're going to be asking for 5 million in reserves I just don't I don't want to be you know surprised later that oh we didn't get the funny because it's only a week or so difference between our projection of 114 last week or when we met last that's from our book a year ago no I get it I get it um I'm just saying that thank you okay um John first of all I just want to thank you for this slide that

088talks about the grant spending by category gives us a breakdown and we can see how much of that is going to salaries and benefits and that's those are costs being covered by grants that are really part of our operating uh as as a school so as a school district so I appreciate that WR down so that folks can understand that um can you talk a little bit about the purchase Professional Services under there if I remember there were some positions that may be covered by that category Mike can you go to the slide called Grand funding slide 17 and at the bottom there's a link for major gr fund summary hopefully it works in the presentation and I'm not sure which Grant specific been refer to looking at SL 18 oh okay um okay so

089uh go so uh purchase Professional Services um that covers uh quite a bit of things um including um what comes to mind are some areas in in technology um some of the other things uh some of the other improvements uh that our alliance Grant uh provides for um just just by the fact that the alliance Grant is the largest that's where you find most of these uh some of the other grants are very specific um purposes I hope I describe um I might turn to our assistant superintendent car casmiro if you could I hate to put you on the spot but um there's some exciting things in that Alliance grant that we're doing yeah I'm just actually just pulling up my list so just as example sorry Sor just as an example um in Alliance

090we have our um our new leader aspirant program is built in there we've run our Delta program so if we contract for services or professional development any outside vendor generally that goes under falls under that line um tal will be doing a new tal model in the next year I professional development services that we need will come out of that line as well um we've invested in obiously new ESL um program and so there's professional professional learning professional development that is involved there uh we've had some power school training that we've done to help our administrators um get better with with scheduling and learn more about the ins and outs of power school on the scheduling side um we've had some of our ncac Career College and Career writing training in there so anytime you

091see purchasing Professional Services it's generally us Contracting for some level professional develop that that either goes with a program that we're rolling out or that is needed to um achieve the superintendent Souls uh just a quick followup question then car can you um help me understand how to differentiate that between the line that talks about dues fees and staff development please dues fees so I'm looking at that same um slide 18 Grant by category um and there second line on there is dues fees and staff development versus Professional Services 27,000 sorry I'd like to uh see if we could bring you a listing of that next time if it's okay that's it's a big number to Wing I think so sure if we could yeah John 16 where you do the grant funding why is

092the $10 million left off this number and also I feel it should be included then footed to total of 57 million because your following schedule include the $10 million and you would have the continuity continuity of having this breakdown showing 57 million into your other schedules Sor say page 16 16 I don't see I don't see listed if you look at your other schedule in your funding you're including the10 million so it is part of the 2324 still right and just and put it so it shows 57 so again you have a tie in one sched to the other the next question is on your P I think it's page 19 the general fund you show is 154 I disagree with that the general fund is 150 that's the appropriation from the city why do

093we keep flip-flopping from 150 to 154 the message what we're trying to say with that slide is that that um we are together um combined over $210 million the that's a fictitious number I mean you're making up numbers it's not a factual number your budget for this year is $150 million that's what you got you may have a spending issue of 154 okay that's a different question what your appropriation is $150 million that's the budget that's what you've been showing on your financial statements and that's the number that should be here we will make the adjustment any other questions um I just have a question so on our on the $150 million budget that was approved we knew that the $10.9 million es was going away so what did we do in preparation last year

094for that money going away was there any plan moving forward or did we just know it was coming and we were just warning the cliff and just waiting for it to go well a year ago so um the other Esser Grant Esser 2 uh was about uh I it was $6 million or so but it had 15 to 20 positions uh we added that into the school budget that was one of the reasons we were up last year you'll see that in the Staffing history report I think there were total of 37 positions we added most were from sr2 but we didn't make um any specific plans for the sr3 one of the reasons uh we we don't think those positions are really extra uh or we could do without them some of them are

095both Esser grants we've used to help Finance our growth and uh both with the uh multilanguage learner but the increases we've seen um those are you know many of classroom teachers so out of the most of this is full-time staff there there are 80 positions 73 of which are fill uh right now yeah that's the primary I think um might be 7 million almost 7 million is salaries and another couple million are the benefit packages thank you our next SE section Miss Cooper is um titled key budget drivers there are six budget drivers that the board had seen previously on the 3rd of January and an additional driver that we have titled um instructional Improvement that I want to be able to walk with so slide 22 as a driver and this is our one

096of our biggest ones uh in this speaks to Sesser 3 and the staff that we are looking to fold over into our general budget in the 24 25 school year Beyond so um the total for this category is u a little over 10.7 million in which a little over 6.7 million um is in staff uh the benefits a little over 1.5 um Kelly Services which is the service uh that the district has partnered with to provide U substitutes um for uh both teachers and Par professionals um is at 2.4 as a cost to the district and uh the rental cost for 43 Beaver Brook um for the front of the building is a little under $50,000 a year all these things are paid out of s s s 3 U which is expiring and that

097is a little over $10.7 million the next driver on dber High School enrollment which we talked about and this area total is at 1.9 a little over 1.9 million for high school um is requesting nine core teachers at 675,000 five elective teachers at 375,000 2.5 par professionals fun supervision that John had referred to earlier that's a new addition uh the benefit cost for the teachers um is pumped in at $336,000 the tent rental which is also in New addition to the enrollment change which John had pointed out earlier comes in at $144,000 um the four additional buses John I'm not sure if you mentioned oh well we had this originally um the four high school buses um at $775,000 each comes in at $300,000 in the furniture for the adustment kids um to the high

098school at $660,000 the next driver I think there were a couple of questions about this when John in John's hand um and certainly also at last meeting U this is for the of Danberry and really these are transitional costs that we are anticipating uh that will be part of the budget and so to lift and make sure we're ready to open the doors in the summer or August um of 25 the recommendation is that we have uh at the point5 we hire a high school administrator for derury high school for the new campus um and that we also hire a middle school administrator for the new campus um so that those two sites are ready to be open and ready to uh welcome staff and students in the fall uh the benefit costs for those

099positions are projected be a little over 20,000 for half a year uh the teacher pum cost um John also pointed out before we open up the presentation which is it in your packet uh we projected that to be a little over $56,000 this is make sure that our teachers have time accorded to them to uh pack their respective rooms for the teachers who would be moving over to the new campus um and then operating cost um to actually run the building when the keys are handed off to us handed over to us uh we are projecting will be an additional cost of about $300,000 from April through June 30th startup supplies U just to make sure that the building is um ready to go before the July 1 in the new budget um is projected

100at 19 and this is a total of 56,000 for the acem of d section to recent the site administrator for the high school and middle school is that in addition to principles for each schools this is a site principle for um theem The Academy with uh 1,000 students um this would be an assistant principal charge of each Academy and then principal and this is an addition try to understand your question the the site administrator is that in addition to the principles that would be a principle of the site and then two assistant principles each assistant principal is in charge of the academy and so if you think about the same Staffing that we have at Broadview middle school and Rogers Park Middle School essentially th000 students principal to assistant principles we're trying to replicate that

101same Staffing formula principal to assistant principles in this case the two assistant principles are charge of the academy the staff will report to them the principal will be in charge of the entire school so the site administrator is not a principal that that that that is a principle we just title it site administrator until the building is actually open so this is getting the build ready oh so this is just in the spring of 2020 because the schedule has to be developed hiring has to be done for the new school so this person will be charged with that uh the middle school and the high school prior to the school so so for three months they're getting $100,000 each well these are projections right now I think when we initially put this these Monies to

102this budget together um a05 um suggests that it's half the year um and so it really would be less than a05 if we talk in for 3 mons year so that those numbers can be massaged CU this is a little high projection for only 3 months thank you Lauren um so the $144,000 for the um tents that the high school do not including heating the tents during the winter and all that it it does okay awesome and then um Kelly Services is that project are we continuing with Kelly Services how was that I that's what we're budgeting in for moment to continue that yes okay so for the next slide uh page 24 umies of danburry I think we just conclude that one page 25 is academic support uh and this is uh a breakdown

103of something also you've seen earlier and so this is for Danbury High School four bilingual teachers projected at 300,000 one scup coach for the high school at 75,000 uh four bilingual par professionals I'm at 140,000 um at the middle school two World language teachers I'm at 160,000 projected um at our for our elementary schools a bilingual 1.0 scup coach um then two bilingual pars uh for our elementary schools at $70,000 and benefit cost for all the phans above a little over $300,000 coming in that a little over 1.1 and then just a few more slides for drivers for special education and on slide 26 three special education teachers for the uh 24 25 school year projected and two additional people Personnel staff um and an approximate 4 $1,000 number for 2425 school year safety and

104Technology um to address the enrollment growth at the high school and also to maintain the numbers that we added to the middle school for last year uh we are uh look projecting three additional safety advocates for danur high school um and projecting that cost to be 90,000 the local share security Grant and Technology mik can you speak to those two for a second cuz I just make sure I get this right any you have some background take the local share of the security Grant this is this would be for the raer system that we've been talking about uh we have a state security grant that requires us to it's basically another reimbursement Grant we would pay it up front and then we get a 65% reimbursement on that amount um $100,000 would cover roughly our

105share of that and then the technology this is just making our Network more robust and includes additional security measures in light of the we had last year um and just more upgrades as we continue our one one device program it's just a bigger strain placed on that Network we have to continue to make it stronger Mr Janelle you to ask question sure Kevin on your this page it's the academic support this is for the regular school system correct that's not yeah okay that's fine and the other thing in my page 27 you start you talking close to 34 of million dollars for technology that's that's a big increase I mean is there a way to get more specific breakdown as to what you know what this is yeah we we can provide that yeah we

106can and I I believe uh mik through facilities um walked the committee through um these numbers uh Mr janelli but given the repurpose that a board as a board uh we certainly can use this forum or committee Forum uh to provide a little update on these numbers you know whether it's um the local share of the security Grant technology because everyone here may not be aware of security Grant initiatives and grants that we've apply for and so certainly we're happy to use um some subsequent meetings give do more background on the rationale of these tasks yeah I'm sorry I'm asking for information I wasn't here which makes sense which makes sense I appreciate it abolutely thank you m chair um going back to the ummies of danburry and the site administrators um these are two

107campuses one high school am I correct so it's it's two campuses it's danur high school will Dan Donovan be the principal of both campuses because I think it's getting confusing because we have principal administrators two campuses it's essentially one high school with two separate campuses and one principal correct that is correct so there's one principal of record with ADD District um I mean I'm going to be frank we should have two high schools right and so we have a building on two separate sides of town U and principal Donovan will be the principal of a campus still close to 3,000 students and uh we will have another school on the west side of town uh with um a th000 students maybe more depends on what happens and we are envisioning someone leading bothies as per

108the model and then one person in charge of the campus um similar Staffing model as I was mentioning earlier are no different from what we have in Broadview Middle School what we have in Rogers Park Middle School so that's what we're trying to accomplish in this case um with within and so there s we' shared the kind of off chart with the board again and probably be appropriate for us to come back again given that the bases have changed at the table but it's still stand down then over the two campuses and then you're going to have an onsite administrator at the other yes yes and I I think we're going to change this on-site language cuz now it's like like someone is just helicoptering in just to be I got a question in reference

109to technology is that including the white boards to the new school or do we have white boards yeah we put a lot of those requests in our capital budget um there is some flexibility in this depending on what we ultimately decide to buy in terms of network security there could be some flexibility to afford some more things are there again I'm new to the board so are there white boards at D High School currently so we have we have a few white boards we have more classrooms with projectors with traditional white boards behind you WR on as opposed to a promethian board um there are some of those but there we have we really haven't purchased those in quite a while but there are still some high school I would again being proactive I think

110we need to somewhere down the road start budgeting this for the newer version because that's what everybody's going to the small boards and we we're leaving our teachers behind on further developing and it's quicker education it's quicker to getting their uh the lesson out to the to the students comments thees as well try we lowered possibly our supplies um to try to make our budget work and I see that there's 19,000 allocated for new school for supplies I just want to make sure that you know we provide the if we're going to go ahead and not just do the the budget that's like turn the lights on kind of thing that we put that money back into the supplies for the teachers um and you just reminded me and I'll thank you about the capital

111budget and the one toone computers the almost million that we were putting there um i' like somewhere to address that again maybe in this meeting and um my last it thank you Mr could refer to slide number again I'm going to ask if you can total this just roughly this is some 18 but yet if you go to your slide 31 you make comment that the budget increase by $28 million so I'm looking for that $10 million difference somehow to be categorized so that again I like to see numbers tie in so if we talk about increases we show it one way $28 million we don't have to add up things and $8 million and figure out where the other 10 is so if you can figure out a way what the explanation for the

112additional 10 is and somehow I was going to address that one more slide coming up the money slide I absolutely agree that it should be spelled out so slide uh 27 we just reviewed slide 28 um is instruction Improvement and uh the question was OS at our last meeting Uh Kevin what do we really need and this slide um is a better representation of quite frankly what we feel like the district should look like and so what you're seeing here is um a parent professional uh supporting a kindergarten teacher in every classroom in the district at $1.5 million uh what you're seeing here is 15 additional bilingual Paras across the school system to support our middle schools this would help instruction in our classrooms and to the point that Mr Ji raised earlier um we're

113looking at the U demographic breakup of our classrooms this also means that our teachers um are trying to meet the needs of special education students multilanguage Learners students who are learning the language for the first time um at the same time while they're trying to meet the needs of our regular students as well um bilingual professionals afforded to our schools that could be deployed to support in various classrooms would help to address those needs considerably as part of our original ask for Danbury High School we had four um bilingual Paras uh we would add six under this plan this would give the high school 10 additional bilingual pars for the 2425 school years 2425 school year and then you see four additional buses for the system uh which will address some of the concerns that

114we've heard from families uh and students for extracurricular activities and make more buses available uh for our sported and extracurricular programs um so this comes out to an additional two a little over 2.6 million um when we originally had a preliminary budget it was a little over 100 178 million um John came out really happy and excited and said I projected really high with energy costs and insurance cost and in the next budget uh presentation the number was reduced U we appreciate the feedback from the last meeting and that's why the number has bounced back up uh to reflect uh some of the requests that were made at the last meeting and so this next slide titled Financial summary I'm going to hand it back to John I think slide 30 begins to answer some

115of Mr janell's questions I'm not sure but before we do that may some questions thank you so much um just a quick question for you slide 19 specifies the SR funding source at 10,937 um and I'm I'm noting on the key budget driver slide on 21 that the sr3 expiring is 10, 790,000 it's not a huge difference but I'm just wondering um where that think it's almost so the lower number that's what we're spending this year 2324 uh the 10.9 is what we're projecting for next year so carry those U staff into the new budget that's what it cost maybe I'm asking a question John the grants a general fund listed for the Esser for this year for this budget cycle that we're in is 10 10.9 the budget driver for next year is 10.7

116so you're saying that the cost for next year is still going to be 10.9 maybe maybe I misunderstood the driver is we took all the uh people that are here now um I think that's the issue um and it's the people who are here now I'm sorry but I think that's the issue sorry yeah the people are now put them on their steps and lanes for next year looked at the benefit selection from open enrollment um looked at the couple of other things that are in the Esser now our um Kelly Services our uh High School overloads uh some of the rent we're paying up the street and just projected that for next year so the driver the 10 point I just want to make sure I I'm I'm understanding your question Kate to make

117sure we're answering it um the 109 on slide 19 is what's left in Esser and uh what John is speaking to is we had a little over $8 million projected in Staffing for this year it turns out we have enough vacancies that that number is a little more like 7 million and something and then we took those same staff salaries and benefits projected the cost of the next year and the reason why it looks a little under is because the staff that we had in there that was not here we only fully over the people thank in in this gr and I yeah thank you madam chair um I I just want to Echo Mr J's point about um the difference and and I know that and I saw you've got this information in the

118slide that's upcoming so of course give you a chance to talk that through but when you look at the key budget drivers and that 10 million is missing for the key budget drivers even if it's just carry forward for contracts or whatever their services it might be helpful to have that category listed on the slide um in some kind of way represented so there's a$1 million gap between the total ask of what is reflected on a bun of drivers it might be might be helpful to just have uh an overall category to break that down because I I don't see later in the presentation to break down that 10 million specifically I just see like the total askes sense but um it's hard to understand and so people can see yeah okay thank you thank

119you thank you on slide 28 the instructional Improvement the 45 kindergarten Palace do those include the parents that we currently have at that grade level this is an addition to addition okay um and we're only focused on kindergarten there is no need in a grade one through five correct in this in this strategy not saying there's no need but this is what we think is most important I see you Mr yes Kevin just the the point of repeating myself your explanation relative to the instru Improvement is good but again to the reader if there's a way that in your in narrative on these slides if you can stress that so again it emphasizes why you're doing this in your need again I keep going back that we have to educate people what's necessary um and

120why we're you know why we're up to this do this thanks I'm going to go back to uh un's question in reference to the 45 kg PA my question is wouldn't it be proactive to identify maybe two or three uh kindergarten PA bilingual because if we're going to use 4 to let's say move around uh it's not just kindergarten school it's other grades I don't uh my question is why don't we consider you know maybe there's an answer to it that I'm not sure but why don't we talk about uh ml you know our district being you know multilingual you know kindergartens do speak Spanish and Portuguese and all before they come to school uh so I'm just saying why can we do that my second question if I can uh the DHS enrollment uh

121I know you said that Mr Donovan requested nine additional core teachers will that help us reduce class size to additional what we have in other words is these nine additional positions going to reduce our class size significantly probably not uh but it certainly will address the antip growth uh that's coming to the high school plus address the students who are going to be remain remaining so and then the my have followup question too and we also consider and again I'm all about being proactive but we also consider about those teachers are future reti or possibly moving out of the [Music] district I'm sorry I don't understand what I'm saying is are we considering possible future retire of Educators retired are we back filling this those positions are these nine positions going to fill those I

122just I'm just trying to right so the nine positions are new um and I there's a case to be made about preparing for attrition every year because we our system is big enough for we have new folks going into the high school at every level um so that's certainly something we experience uh we try to encourage uh our people who are retiring to let us know as early as possible um and then of course as a system we have to deal with staff who might be leaving us and find multiple ways to try to backfill them um of course we have some uh pipeline programs and so let some of those help as a feeder into the district uh but in other ways it's kind of typical recruitment whether that's from my HR principles cross

123system yes thank you um I I really want to stress that our um students in our elementary schools see it appears as if they're kind of being pushed inside secondary our our Focus has been on the middle school and the high school we don't seem to have a focus from what I can tell on our grade one through grade five kindergart so I would love to um to look at that again and um I don't know why that's not part of this strategy that you're talking about when you say I I don't understand so with your instru improvement I'm looking at 28 the 45 Paris are all being focused in the kindergarten and I'm not why that um why the other grades are not included in according to John the strategy moving forward um why

124the other grades are not included as having a similar need um and looking at our uh investing in the earlier grades to look at success higher success rates in your middle in high school as we're having greater success in the elementary um and especially when we talk about our bilingual um I'm not sure if if we're looking do we have any transitional numbers students who are transitioned out of the program um we're you know we're putting a lot of money into and we're talking about the increase in enrollment but I haven't heard anything about student we must have numbers that are transitioning out or some type of data showing us transitioning out of that ml programs that we offer and so that's just and number two um I would love to uh see the cabinet

125go back and look at been alloted um for the schools for the upcoming we as opposed to what the budget they submitted and asked for um that 30% decrease from last year to the upcoming year it appears to me as um inappropriate certainly is not enough for what we are asking our schools to do and staff to do I would love for you to go back to the table to see if that 30% could be reinstated so the next slide which is slide 30 uh is part of the financial summary and John is going to walk us through this one and at that slide 31 we'll U so I think in in the interest of time I'm I'm going to uh get right to the point on this the money slide and you've heard Mr

126janelli and Miss Keta talk about um we need to explain this better but this this is what I I think we'll be talking about um you know we spent a lot of time on budget drivers because these are the things that are these are the new impacts on our our spending plan um and and they allow us to move the district ahead incrementally um the the bud those budget drivers and it's a great idea to show the total uh it'll be $8.5 million when we draw that total and what you see here on the budget year to year and using the the lower the 150 million ion you see an increase of $28 million uh that that 28 18 or so is from those drivers and so what's the rest the 10 million that's what

127the two questions uh have gotten to now um but the the answer to that is if you look up at the chart and you look at the middle column uh this year's budget particularly the undesignated um that was the shortfall this year that's the difference between what Mr janelli and I are talking about what should should we in that or not but we have to make that up next year if we want to continue with this year's program and services next year those we need that money that 4.7 million that we're making up that's half of the 10 it's half of the 10 now if you just go from from 150 to 160 up to that's a 6.9 million increase and here's the point I'd like to leave you with just making up that deficit

128is 3.7% of the 6.9 the rest of the budget the operating budget year to year and that's what we need to explain and talk about is 3.2% so the the lights on budget we've called it up slight that's not like it's millions of dollars but 3.2% 3.7 to make up the shortfall and then the drivers on top of that that that's why we spent really think so much time on the drivers because that that's the story this year so we can do more on that um at our next meeting but that's that's the point of the the money too much questions yes Michelle that that doesn't reflect the almost 2 million in the one to one computers in the capital budget correct it does not capital budget not part of this put that way that

129we've always done it that budget would be million almost $2 million High correct I just want to make sure that Mr on the slide I'm not sure that we're matching apples and apples in your current budget 2324 we''ve got the 4.7 negative numbers I I think it's your last meeting that we discussed last night these numbers were reflected down to come up the the net of 150 so it shows a better it shows better comparison the other thing is is how do we go from purchase Professional Services 6 6 whatever it is $6.8 million in 2223 to $2.5 million um so that that's the restatement of the tutors uh in years up until now it was a$6 Million doll figure I've only restated this year and change next year I I didn't go back till

130last year okay it's going to open up a lot of questions so you're going to have to figure out whether you restate everything or just be aware you're going to have a lot of questions that that are going to be questions the same thing on enrollment impact a million3 in the first year and then they go to 16.7 uh those are big increases right so the the increase in that line last year primarily was the um absence of sr2 and some of the other enrollment uh needs that we met and this year it's the budget drivers other than the last one you heard about the academic any EV has to be detailed explain the other thing I would look for this is one way of presenting it because you look toage everything together and give

131a general break down by category salaries benefits etc etc another way to look at it which I'd like to see tying to your next schedule is to historically we've always look to come up with terminology for lights on budget like to see with a comparison prior year this year lights on budget and come up with that and then you can compare your your budget drivers so that you show what the incremental increases are on the budget on the the budget drivers so hypothetically just for the arithmetic if your lights on budget increased $10 million and your overall ask is $28 million then you have all the budget drivers totaling $18 million and you got the light on budget showing $10 million you know people can see really where it is so it shows both ways

132of showing your financial statements one by category and the other in in the lights on versus basically new a we have that we prepared it internally for ourselves that's easy to reproduce okay do that next time for sure that concludes our presentation question one question this is not even you GL you had brought it up at one of our expulsion hearings and I was just wondering is there any thought to expanding the uh the reach area for due to the explosion of the number of explosion hearings uh to accommodate the students that are sent to reach Endeavor me this is coming down the pike and GL has pointed it out correctly I think I mean is there any thought to this for the future for expanding the facilities I think we are in the place

133where we're going to have to perhaps re-evaluate almost every program that's offered in the N Public Schools given our budget situation um and so I I think it's going to be a need for us to evaluate kind of where we are and where we're going first before we look to expand anything I think that's part of what with some subsequent discussions be about to including our Retreat thank you thank you Teresa yes Mr what is the the calendar I know you guys got a lot of work to doday day work plus the add a burden developing is for the presentation I think it's mid-February but based on the conversations we had previously and tonight you compiling that and then refiguring the presentation when or we I mean you don't have to answer tonight but I'd

134like to see calendar that that we meet again to you know again go through your next phase of it so that we again to tweak it and so that we can meet as often as possible prior to the adoption of the final the final presentation uh rather than be up against the the gun on the 11th hour and and a couple three days before you know we're making final changes so if there's a way that you can figure out according to your schedule you know some different uh meetings we can have to talk about this even if it's only finance committee then we can brief the rest of the board um that that that's fine so I'm smiling as you're asking this question Mr Janell because I um shared with the team U no don't

135put the calendar in here we will not need it and and and then there's your question um and so I'm looking at my calar on my phone now uh we have a regular board meeting on the 24th uh we had an open window want to call it open window on January 31st we have a hold for a board meeting anticipating we may need more we did not put a hold on the calendar but there is no uh board meeting on February 7th and the next board meeting is not until um we're back in cycle again on February 14th which is when the budget is the recommended budget is due to the city um so I'm saying all that to say we still have three Wednesdays um available to us if we need them um one

136of them is a scheduled meeting the 30 persons a hold and if we need more time we still have the seventh opening available if we need to take advantage thanks I just didn't want you guys to be under the gun under the pressure to to you know as we go through this we con refine it to improve it and and I tend to think sometimes the more you look at it the better we tweak it there but I'll leave it up to you as to what your you know I agree with you we can meet in the future whatever your timetable is that that's fine thanks I just want to make a comment I just again reinforce what uh rich said you know the narrative and telling the story is what's all about about the

137budget and I got to compliment uh you know the team uh for coming up with um you know from where we were about 2 weeks ago last time and and to where we are today I got to say that uh we became a little bit more quantifiable on our information and I still say we we're not there yet but I think we're going to get there uh I've always believed and from my experience that when you quantify a presentation uh the end result is always good so congratulations thank you thankk thank you all for your questions tonight concerning presentation and uh please keep your dates open this is budget season and then we're going to leave budget season and go right into another season so before you put your hats on and get out the

138door I have the super the chairperson's um report it's going to be very brief everyone in your package you have your assignments okay and it's it's late and and I have spoken to most of you and you have your assignments where you want to be now at some point you want to change and have a conversation with me pick up the phone and call okay everything this is the correct way that we're going to do our standing committees and you understand who has been suggested to be the chairperson of those committees okay the next thing I'm going to ask you please please you ask to to be a representative on this please check your emails don't go two or 3 days uh without checking your email things are coming up that's very important sometime car

139that to ca some of us three and four times to let us know that she needs to speak to you or what your assignments are okay so just you know take time and go into your emails okay saying that thank you all again I ask for a motion to adjourn this worship made by uh okay by Teresa thank you all again and we'll see everyone Saturday morning at 9:00 yes