1/19/23 Board of Education Budget Workshop

001I just wanted to call the meeting to order that pain at seven o'clock seven or five just want to welcome everybody uh thanks for coming out this rainy night we appreciate it um turn this over to Kevin and John in front of the presentation and um Mr Wilson I'll just start with a good evening when I think our guest for joining us this evening and making their way through the tough weather that's out there tonight also want to thank our families to maybe watching from home and I know we have a couple of also appearance impacts and thank you for doing everybody as well so I have an agenda I'd like to walk everyone through tonight is our Workshop night tonight and so we have an opportunity to roll off our sleeves and dig in

002and ask ask the questions that we typically may not have time for during the regular board meeting I will ask I think it will run smoother if the team and I have an opportunity to go through the slides because our board members you've seen a lot of the slides that we initially opened with I saw a move a little faster through those and then of course spend more time on on the slides that that is a little bit more meaningful so let me just start with superintendent overview that's me Kevin Wilson again good to see you everyone number two School enrollment projections you'll see in the agenda and so previously we had opened with talking about enrollment and really talking as an aggregate talking about district-wide enrollment and so we so we make sure we

003found an opportunity to break it down k568 and 9-12 and ending on I-12 appropriately so we can then transition to Danbury High School enrollment and Staffing give everyone give the community an opportunity to all the certified Staffing requests and when we say other it's Staffing outside of the high school some of it does impact the high school so it does not we want to make sure we address that and then in this fences you have heard from John Spang and Mike Seeley previously about some of those other expenses we will define those as we go through the slides but it's things like energy utility increases and also laptop Replacements and that reality that is in front of us right now last but not least I will then come back and wrap up with covet relief

004grants SO2 talk about some next steps hopefully for us as a school community so the next slide in there are you taking care of that for us we will do an everyday thing and so the proposed annual budget see each group three beautiful kids on the front page and then on the next slide you'll see our board members so I want to thank you for your foreign years ago we spent a lot of time developing a vision for this District admission for this District some of our board members Might Recall really a lot of time that we spent on providing transformational learning experiences I I just want to say tonight that that line that word is really uh resounding with this District right now as we're in the middle of launching uh what we've been

005calling the Career Academy that's really going to change experiences for kids in the school district and there's another word that oftentimes I include in my emails and that is this idea of the partnership the partnership with our families that have been a priority across school district and in partnership with our community members here in the district and of course I want to thank it's a very key community members who are here this evening mayor thank you and council members thank you for joining us and so on the next slide thank you Ken are two things that really serve one thing that's really important for us as a school district and that's this idea of a portion of the graduate which frankly serves as the North Star for Danbury public schools how we get there is

006our strategic plan and so that kind of serves as the road map if you will for this journey to continue to get to this North Star which we call our portion of the graduates thanks bye program needs reminded in our last meeting or budget drivers and it's really a combination of both we will explain as we go for salaries and benefits you'll see a big number there five million dollars It's Quickly this is really if we had not one additional staff member salaries and benefits will increase as a result of fair and competitive contract negotiations for our labor units energy utilities and I will be providing a brief overview on that one Energy's utilities and inflation uh John will cover this from for us and think a little bit deeper on what that means and

007itemizing those areas that lead up to the 1.2 enrollment increases 2.6 million and so I will cover some slides on just kind of walking you through the enrollment increases number one to slam projections that's our demographer but in then projections versus actual not least walking you through those things and then following me will be Dr casaniro and Kelly trucius our two assistant superintendents then talking about um what that means for Staffing increases to address the enrollment the enrollment increases and we have a special guest tonight and that is principal Donovan who's also going to be talking about what this means to go to high school the extra shortfalls John will be talking about that talk about our expiring grants and what that means for SO2 and the state where else the respective staff that's in

008that Grant right now technology replacement cycle the one million dollars Mike Dr seelick has talked about this in committee meetings but he's going to talk about that again tonight for additional questions and last but not least equipment and services in John and Michael take this one and it's a combination of equipment and services that's involved in both respective portfolio's performance slide thanks it's just our district profile I'll go to this question at the time of our submission we had when I say submission 12 210 students on October 1st so annually we have to submit to the state how many students we have and then that kind of serves as our attendance number of course we continue to grow after that number has been submitted I'll talk about that a little bit later but that's two

009that's 12 210 and then of those students we have 48 of our students are identified to economically disadvantaged 14 identified as students with disabilities which frankly for a district as needy as ours is a really low number and then 34 multi-language learner you've also heard us refer to this group as English Learners as well next slide and so an overview of our program increases savings and efficiencies and that is a slide later on I'll be talking about I just want to talk about these lines in aggregate so Sally's a benefit's five million dollars enrollment increases and this is Staffing to address the enrollment increase 2.6 energy increases 1.2 technology 1 million equipment and services 2 billion Institute shortfall 2 million and that means the Staffing that's in Institute with that Grant expiring into June 30th

010the subtotal is 13.8 Millions but savings and efficiency and we'll talk about the details of that lands us at a request this year of 9 million dollars or 6.4 percent increase so fiscal reality and I I've actually highlighted a couple of things to walk you through this slide and that is enrollment continues to grow beyond our Productions and that's nothing new here in Danbury for us those gain those enrollment gains mean increased Staffing primarily and you're going to see in our detail Pages primarily in um for our multi-language Learners and our special ed students Pre-K is a number that also needs to be addressed and so Kelly will be talking about that later those the Staffing increases also improve the high school they get our special guests will be talking about that Staffing costs have

011also increased significantly through contract negotiations and I'm open to talk about that initially um and that's that five million number inflation in the great economy has impacted us here at Danbury and last but not least in an effort to reduce the funding requests we conducted of our own kind of internal reviews and again we'll be talking about that to wrap up and this is just reiterating the 9 million dollar request proposed request from six point four inches salaries and benefits so you will see where we were last year at 79.7 for salaries 29.3 benefits I believe we were anticipating a increase in benefits we did not experience an increase and so we're really happy about that but but still just in terms of normal increasing costs our benefits are projected to be a 1.3 million

012dollar difference for the 20 to 23-24 school year our salaries the 79.7 million told me 83 .4 million next year and that's a gain of 3.7 million and that's for a total of five million dollars again this is reflective of our contract negotiations step movement for our teachers Etc across the system and you know again just a reminder we do have over 2 000 employees in the district and so 4.6 to that many staff members these are the kind of numbers so enrollment growth and the board might may recall this slide I just want to review for the board again and for our visitors tonight and then we're watching um the key on the actual account and that's kind of the yellow orange on the left right but first I'll start with the key the

013yellow is the number that we submit to the state of Connecticut on October 1st annually and so you'll see 21 22 22 23 because that's who we are now the blue is the projected number from our slave report so you'll see those three numbers for the next three years from slamming in our demography report the red number in most districts they don't have to worry about this but in Danbury we do because we continue to experience increased enrollment we're not upset about that it's just our reality we're happy about that but this is our reality and so last year in 2122 the demographer projected 11 843 that was adjusted because by October 1st we had 12 190 students um we've lost some students and then by October 1st this year again I'm looking at the

014number above the red we had 12 210 students however you'll see once again that outperformed the slang projections of 12 110. and then for the 23 and 24 school year 24 25 and so on you'll see in blue the Democracy projections 12 189 we've made an adjustment given we've already outperformed that and estimated that we would be what we did was we essentially just added 100 students every year 12 out of 289 you'll see 12 288 from the demographer again we've added 100 to 12 Etc and so we wanted to provide a little bit more detail until the board has not seen this back up so I just want to make that clear just one of these are new slides for us providing back up to those whole numbers and so this slide is focusing

015specifically on students with disabilities and they talked about the enrollment growth in that area so if we start with 21-22 we had 700 students last year and that number includes Pre-K and so the grade number at the bottom are Pre-K students the blue is K-12 so we have 1716 and as of year to date we have grown about 25 students in Poland and that's just K-12 but then in pre-k and Kelly keeps saying we're growing we're growing growing in pre-k we've had to go grow growth of 42 students to date with our pre-K schools so we Pre-K students so we've had almost 70 students to date and those are special ed numbers as of right now then you'll see the projections of 5 with growing by wrong to almost 75 students minus 24 25 23

01624 I'm sorry so these little projections for next year here are our multilingual students or English language learners and I'll start with 2122 and you will see the the Staffing request really aligned to the previous slide in this slide here because you you will see we have an estimated almost 250 students additional students we've had specifically in this area so we we had last year 3736 students and you will see the growth of almost a thousand additional students just of English language Learners this requires significant special Staffing for the students and again you'll see that reflected in that house thank you and again and it's the last slide on enrollment and it really just walks us through a breakdown K5 6 8 and 912. you'll see the gradual growth with Pre-K and that those numbers

017reflectively left to right K5 you will notice we are beginning to Flatline and even lose a couple of students in K5 the unfortunate thing is and AIS is a is a great example of this we've we've had decreased enrollment at AIS as an exam but not enough to reduce teachers because we have to have at least 22 to 24 students depending on the grade level at every class we can't have any more than that so for years we've had three sections in every grade level at AIS similar to other schools that create claim for example we've typically had two sections at every grade level if we don't have enough but if but if the decrease is not is not significant enough to reduce it down to just two teachers per section at AIS there's really

018no cost saving opportunity so the K5 numbers yes there is a reduction across the system but not enough across the system or in one building to reduce that in millimeter and six eight um our middle schools um I I would argue that don't get me wrong because principal Donovan and High School staff also need relief middle schools need relief uh 12 has been a problem in terms of population growth in those respective buildings the middle school after this year will begin to get some relief the bubble that we have experienced in the high school is about well they're in the bowling there right now the bubble was at the middle schools were at the end of that bubble a little over a thousand students at Broadview Middle School just under a thousand now for the

019first time in the last couple of years at Rogers Park so you'll see the numbers really flatlining at Rogers Park as a result which is High School on the other hand continues to do different things and we had year to date so we have a 3691 students we understand here today at the high school this is and I don't have the number in front of me to clicks so excuse me but this is a unfunded number unbudgeted number because these numbers have grown since last year's October once Edition so between October 1 last year budget season by the time we were requesting Dan Donovan and Danbury High School has received more students and so that 12 210 and I'm sorry at the bottom you'll see the 12 210 that number will be growing to about

02012 300 next year at least close to 55 students but again we still need to address the Gap from last year because it was unbudgeted and unfunded and we'll have a slide to show all of the what we call overages we have five sections as a teacher Contracting is supposed to teach I was a socialized teacher so I would teach five classes in social studies but because we have more kids but Dan may not have five new sections to offer to hire a new teacher but he may have three because of enrollment growth and so I I take a sixth class Mike takes a six class Kelly takes a six class and those are the overages that are on budgeted in the system and again you'll see kind of a roster over those overages then

021the next page um and this is where I began to hand it off or bring this to staff and this is really to address the enrollment growth I just walked through so at this time Dr casimiral principal Donovan they will tag teams and then I'm sorry Switzer Paul will be other assistant superintendent as Kelly members thank you um so the next slide represents really the kind of bigger buckets of Staffing across the district based on the enrollment that Mr Wilson just presented the first two lines on the left you can see that those are really the services that are needed in terms of the increases that are that are required based on the enrollment and then the last three lines of the slide really represent sort of the aggregate staff uh core areas of electives

022and so on and so you can see that our ESL my label needs a growing we need a total of eight ftes in that category specialized people Services an additional eight Middle School about three is what we're projecting at this time high school 13.5 which is really a reflection again of that large shift in enrollment but also just to the sheer size of the high school and then safety Advocates an additional five FTE for a total of 37 and a half fdes at 2.6 million dollars exercises and so we are fortunate to have Dan here tonight to talk a little bit about the high school Staffing specifically because I think it's important to understand uh when there is a request on you know what how we arrive at that number but then also what happens

023when we don't actually get that number but just to Dan while you're making your way up to the to the table um for next year we have proposed 0.5 FTE for an Academy administrator so if we begin our part as part of our plan for the hiring of additional staff in that area we'll also have an additional 200 or so students and and to participate in some of the training as well that will happen as a result we have the opening um six ftes in core classes uh so those are certified teachers for total 480 000 three empty pools for Academy for counselors um both are needed just in terms of enrollment but also they're in court for the Academy launch as well and then four ftes of elective class teachers uh to meet graduation

024requirements and so Dan will talk a little bit about kind of how we arrive at those numbers and then um talk a little bit about some of those overages that Mr Wilson referenced earlier thank you hey principal Donovan how are you doing thank you for having me I appreciate the opportunity from this week you know when discussing this with Mr Spang and looking at the numbers that I projected it was that we needed the question always comes up as to you know where does that come from how did you come up with that number and I thought it would be and asked if I could tell me kind of speaking explain how I come up with these numbers just so I really have an idea of what goes on uh you know the first part

025there's two parts to this and this is my seventh Year's old family high school and dating backs about my second or third year I had a meeting with Dr Sal and Joe Martino at that time we laid out a plan because two things were coming to a head that we all knew about one it was graduation requirements in the state of Connecticut that was 21 to 25. that was four extra classes for students who used to graduate with 21 credits luckily for us what majority over about 50 in that year when I did the Lookouts graduated with more than 25 a lot of the Getters who decide them and take more classes competitive sales for college or work whatever they wanted to go but the class of 21 we went back and worked out 303

026out of the 737 that graduated had 25 or more credits that's 41 percent of students who are finding different ways and getting jobs and things like that didn't take those extra classes which kind of helped us but the problem with that is you have 110 students out of those 300 remainers 110 needed four more classes so for them to get four more classes that's 440 seats they have to take up in a class somewhere whatever elected they need to take besides the English boards and all of those things do that if you divide that and following the model each teacher can teach 130 students and you've got full seats for 440 of them you come out to 3.4 teachers just for that group of 21 credits to do that following the kids that have 22

027credits 23 credits and 24 credits to fill the requirement for all of those students to hit 25 you need a 9.1 teachers just on the enrollment just on the credit Team part alone to satisfy the class of 21. so um that number hasn't really changed that much it's gone up a little when I looked back all the way back to 2018 it was a different a little bit of a different thing back then because I high school had 3050 kids in it 2018. now fast forward now believe my numbers at the high school today where 3587. we did hit 3 600 at one point it's a nice little screenshot of it it's about 3600. um but that's it's gone down a little bit changed the population of people coming and going and different things and

028transfers and stuff like that but we've remain steady of the 3 5 85 type of women for the rest of the time so because of that credit to 25 we needed 9.1 teachers we had that conversation with Sal and Joe at the time and also what was coming down was his enrollment increase and if you take the enrollment increases that I just mentioned for easy math purposes we'll talk about going from 3000 to 3 500 500 kids that's embrace the easy math okay take that each get taken seven classes Why seven with an eight period schedule but not you know on a staff until all eight so we go with seven some seniors take four a person like to take eight depending out as much as they can some take seven in some cases we're

029having some now because of difficulty with enrollment the population state in six classes which means it results in two study halls which we don't like students to have so we tried very hard so with seven classes as our average part that's 3500 seats that need to be filled you take that number you divide that by at 130 I mentioned which is the teacher can drive contracts that's 26.9 teachers that we need when an enrollment slot gone up by 500. so around that 27. so now with the graduating classes of 757 going out this year and 952 coming in as ninth grade we'll go easy math again we'll take 200 200 freshmen coming in taking seven classes is 1400 classes they need to take or 10.7 teachers that mean it's a short version request foreign luckily

030by the two years after that I did not get much of an increase in time remember correctly it was like a zero a three and a zero when it comes to the number of teachers last year we were lucky enough we had to be attained by the time we were done stop Supply around 15 to 16 teachers I mean absolutely needed last year so we got that so we took a big chunk out of that 29 that we had requested from there so that leaves us with what we're asking for at the high school again as this comes and that's the numbers that we know about superintendo Wilson discuss unbudgeted numbers another problem we've had is between if anybody you know kids at the high school when we start registration coming up it's in March

031so when we go through we build our schedule off of student requests from there we build our schedule CMD sections we have with the ftes and see what we can do we make our budget become there's so many teachers we got there's so many classes you can get great we felt very comfortable with what we were running this year and then from July 1st to September class started we had a number of like 141 students ago so if you do that and your new registers that committed 141 times out by seven classes you're in the same math that we were before and that leads to another problem of something superintendent Lawson actually which is overages so now I have no more seats in art class none whatsoever so I have to come here and try

032to joke superintendent walsen as best I can to get them in a good mood before I go oh by the way I need three sections of art to fill these requirements because of the 25 we do not have a lot of room in our schedules for students to take six classes and it was 21 it was a lot of music you could almost graduate as a junior if you did it right now with the 25 it means our seniors who are typically used to not taking the full load so they can go get jobs and earn you know our seniors do that right not to take a full circle that is and wiped out a little bit so they're taking more classes and we're trying to get them through so we go back and I

033say I need an art class it's not enough to hire a full-time teacher I mean I don't need 100 I love the 130 seats but I think this role for myself for the building and the community very serious about making a budget in my ass is I don't just say hey Dan feels like we're running another art section let's do it there's always something behind it so I'll take this very serious when we do it but sometimes we have to come and ask for it this year we are running 53 overages so there's 53 teachers who are teaching an extra class right now at Danbury High School they are compensated for that uh but it leads to another problem it's the amount of work a teacher can do because now they went from 130 students

034to about 150. and the more students you add on the more feedback that student can get the more attention that student gets and as much as the teachers compensated for it they retire and unfortunately some of them we have to you know if someone doesn't volunteer for it we we have rules that we have to go by to get someone to take that work he teaches you were forced for a due to a low person on the totem pole you're the one that's taking in that class and sometimes it's you know first or second year teachers that are now taking on a sixth class where they are trying to develop their craft as new teachers because best is able to prepare coming out of some of the great programs we have around here in our

035secondary edits you know when you step into the classroom and teaching it's a whole different project and they're trying their best to prepare themselves through five classes now when you add a sixth one on an error and it becomes that much more so if you look at the the slide that's in there on page 21 that's kind of a list of our overages now all of these when we look at our overages there's different reasons and I don't want you to think that's all enrollment because it's not there's some up there that we call usuals and these are just terms that we make up for January high school they're not in any textbook or anything like that whatsoever usuals mean to be we run them every year no matter what for example hpsa6 class that

036is our nursing class in order for the students to reach the number of nursing hours they need to go to the hospital we have to pay the teacher exercising to go with them so they can get the number of clinical hours they need to take the CNA test that's been going on since well before all of us except Miss Cooper have probably been around on this court right yeah there you go so we um although we have those usual Fox then we have another term if we call people people are somewhere out on medical somebody maternity you need and things like that there's probably 30 of them out there that are that those are already somewhat budgeted for uh in this year's moment where there's leads us to another problem that we're having which I

037believe everyone's happy naturally it's teacher short I can't find a World Language teacher anyway we have had those hosting Justice at the Union School we have tried to find him it's the same for the counselors It's the safety and special ed staff math you know we haven't been able to climb it and see the World Language runs out there you know the district has said yes go ahead go get them Dan fill these classes with it and we can't we can't when you see something you know if it says 70 something days out there or otherwise I'm going to teach you left with how many days are they're going to be out for an entire year before they resigned and we just can't fill it and then the last one last category we use what

038we call enrollment those are the ones that because of the amount of students we've had we've had the parcel schedules together to make core classes and elective classes available for our students we have 12 of those which equals another 2.2 teachers that would fill the gap for us so in total you know if you took it the the 10.7 the 2.2 that we have and I don't know what's coming down look like from July to whatever we don't build a schedule except for our ell classes I get ESL one or new Congress we leave room in those four new students that we know coming in because over the past seven years we can somewhat predict how they come that's how I end up with a 13.5 adding on one counselor because while we're getting 200

039new students not all of them are classroom teachers that we meet our counselors at the high school I believe are overloaded already with numbers around 300 we were cited and we asked for that so those 200 students we would need a counselor for a school counselor and that's what I'm going to put it there everybody awake sorry but that's you know I just want to come explain where we come up with our numbers it's not a perfect science in that because I can't tell you right now how many students are going to take this class next year because we do run a schedule on enrollment but I do know that those students need seats and I need to put them in seats so they can get credit towards graduation questions I think thank you thank

040you Dan good yeah can you repeat that whole thing then no no so just for clarification on these these overages here are not not budget for obviously in the budget stay away uh 30 about 36 of them third 41 probably are okay but there we can't find teachers for them right now but we thought it was important to show that just the overages like how much of a you know 50 top teachers are teaching an actual classroom right there's the bathroom yeah okay there's 12 sections of those are unboxing before okay and then we try to project the enrollment numbers but when the kids show up we don't tell them to come back next year because we don't have anywhere to put them right no you can't okay you can't do that you have to

041address the the um the growth yeah okay they come in we do our best to try to get them seats you know and the way we've done it at the high school and we think it's the best way to do it is we let our seniors pick their like pick the classes when they load as we call it into PowerSchool they go first because they have a graduation requirements they have things that they need to hit profession can last to me to a problem we were looking at this year with the freshman in the last classes that were open to them because we don't want students sitting and studying also we try to avoid that one is is okay to have but any more than that because [Music] thank you yes Mary you're ready sorry

042that's okay thank you Dan okay so next week we might call you back okay um so next we're going to look at our sure okay okay um so the next slide talks a little bit about our ESL bilingual needs as you saw the increase in enrollment uh in our change over time we have eight additional FTE full-time equivalent Physicians to satisfy Connecticut bilingual law and the provision of ESL services for our students and so we have one bilingual Portuguese FDA Pembroke other than Portuguese at Broadview bilingual Spanish at Broadview the Heritage Spanish which is technically not an ESL class it's really a world language class for Native Spanish speakers in a Portuguese Portuguese and Spanish full-time basically Paras and so how these numbers determine really in terms of the Connecticut legal law we have a

043data collection that occurs every October 1st so who's present in the school system on October 1st of the previous year determines whether or not a school system is has to provide by law bilingual services to students and so the here reflect our PSIs data collection from the previous year the Portuguese Spanish full-time Paris the 4.0 ftes those are paraprofessionals that work in our our classrooms to support the teacher but also to help with our bilingual needs it's very difficult to find valuable teachers and so where we can't find those those staff we try to ensure that we have at least a paraprofessional working in the class to help support I think Kelly talk a little bit about the Middle School needs you could go just back to the Middle School side for a moment um

044so you heard from superintendent Lawson earlier that our Middle School enrollment um has been trending um pretty similarly across the last few years and what we are noticing with our students is that there's an increased need for interventions and social emotional support and so what you'll see here is reflected in additional um after year full-time equivalents at each one of the middle schools and the particular focus of this will be on Intervention and support services to students as well as meeting their social emotional needs we should also knock that west side which is driven by a lottery is also something that we watch and monitor closely as we're still not sure which of our sixth graders will attend so that does impact both our special education ESL Support Services as depending on the number of

045students that are selected through that Lottery process one of those activities that website may need to be considered for either of those or more services for students um the next slide is reflective of our special education needs a superintendent of Austin alluded to earlier we've grown by 70 students today in previous school years we're growing about 50 or 60. um so the fact that we're growing about 70 students in the less than a half of a year this is the most significant Spike that I've seen in my seven years as a center of special education we are projecting about another 50 students before the end of the school year and we have kind of two bubbles of students that are moving through the first of our preschoolers our preschool population is exploding we have currently

04650 students that are somewhere between two and a half and and almost three that we need to evaluate for services between now and the start of next year we anticipate that we will have a significant number that will need additional support and while we'll lose some students that move on to kindergarten and this will cause us to need to add at least one more classroom at the preschool level we are also seeing an increase need in some of the needs of those students which causes a more of a specialized program for example we have more recently needed to automatically fragile program to our community school program these are students that are significantly medically compromised and require additional power support nursing support and so forth so it's not just representative of the number of additional students

047which we are seeing on a significant uptick but also on the means of the individual students within the program and how we support those of the masses of K-12 again we're we're seeing growth across those across the district at the elementary level we are anticipating the need to add two additional programs we are very fortunate to have one program that consists right now six self-contained classes for students on the autism spectrum and the numbers that we're anticipating out of our preschool program are going tomorrow in the seventh class but these are students that need a smaller class size typically 10 to 12 students with a special educator as well as parents to support what they're learning in addition at the middle and high school just due to overall student growth very similar to what um

048was alluding to earlier we graduate less students with special needs then we have coming in the door so at the high school we will need two additional teachers to support with Staffing and our Middle School while our enrollment has been consistent as far as the number of middle schoolers attending school the needs of those requiring special education supports has increased and will need to add another special education teacher to run you as well as one of our team Rogers Park due to that increased enrollment um in addition you'll see it here reflected on the slides physical therapy as well as speech and language therapy the physical therapy is predominantly at the pre-k through two level nursing and increased need of students receiving Physical Therapy supports and that physical therapy is to access schools safely so

049this is not Physical Therapy that you would receive if you had an injury or something like that that this is to make sure that our students can safely access the educational environment can be mobile that we can train staff on how to meet students needs things like toileting moving from a wheelchair to a walker to a standard all of those standard require a highly scaled staff member to train others to ensure safety paper students as well as to provide those Support Services to kids and then lastly we're seeing a need of increased speech and language Services again at the high school and the preschool and so that would be one position that would be split to support the overages in both of those are thank you oh sorry [Music] what is the uh what's the

050student counselor ratio at the middle school in high school sorry um over 300 um so you're holding around 300 at the high school at the middle school you have three counselors for about a thousand students um so 3 30 or so and the West Side you have 750 students but across two concerts so are we including any of that as far as additional counselors so so the Middle School additional Staffing as we are looking at that that was what I was looking to for social emotional support between the intervention the social emotional support at that point okay the next slide talks a little bit about Staffing from safety Advocates we currently are playing for about 36 or exactly 36. uh safety Advocates and next year we'd like to add 5.1 for each uh middle school

051and then two more at Danbury High School this group had talked earlier about getting closer to a 300 student to one safety Advocate ratio currently uh that's that's compatible what we're doing in the high school but by adding two it gives us a little bit of flexibility people will cover government people when they're sick we can move people around and not not take away from security at the high school so Cloud safety Advocates and about 150 000. all right energy and utilities I think we've had it pretty good the last few years trying to predict these things but it's quite a challenge this year but what we all know is going on with our electricity price comparison at home and each of these energies you see up there really has to be looked at along

052the different things that impact these utilities you can't you can't apply apply a format rush so the other night we went into it pretty deeply with the finance committee I'm just going to give you the kind of the top level things we've talked about I uh what I said to them is uh we're very fortunate um I've relied pretty heavily on chip hoping the town's purchasing agent he's very good at these kind of things he um he understands the market he can he can tell you what's what's going to happen he's with what's going to happen every day in utilities these crates are working with so um we I worked a lot with him on what these projections would be for example the natural gas which is shot way up you'll see they were looking

053for a 44 increase that's because a year ago we were paying 59.7 cents per 100 100 cubic feet that's how it's measured 59.7 cents this year we're paying 86.25 and that's a 44 increase we didn't think it was going any a little higher next year than it is now that's a pretty big increase but that's that's what we're seeing so far electricity a good example of what I was just saying a chick with your electricity bill are just Outdoors at home really comes in two parts there's the supply cost and then there's the delivery cars and for us it's about half and half half of our bill is one half's another and what a chick was able to do for most of our accounts is locked in the supply cost through December of 2024 at

054a very low price and uh hats off to him he's saving us a lot of money the delivery costs are so it has a number of different component parts that has been moving up in the last uh six months it's moved up 13 percent it's and we think in the next six months will be another 13 and no matter that's half of our cost and we felt that those that Trend would continue after project trajectory for the next year as well so we added another 13 and 13. again because it's only half that comes out to a 20 probably 27 percent increase next year over where we are right now of propane uh we put propane in all our school buses propane power we have had a cooperate cooperation with the city chick had locked

055in our propane price for an extended period of time in a very very low rate not a dollar nine uh lasted for a couple years but it ran out last June we are now prices were much higher so we're stuck we didn't think it was the right time to lock in again all of our new we thought the price would come down and it has come down we walked in a little bit for this year but from that dollar nine price uh it's now gone up to a dollar 62. and that's a quite an increase we think that might go up even a little more [Music] increase on that one and our bus contract we paid for the fuel uh the gasoline that's simply the gasoline price that we pay for our buildings and garage

056vans that we run around town because to put a little bit more increase in there just in case in case but that doesn't seem to be coming up either the heating oil that was uh pretty tough when we looked at what that what has happened with that talked about it it's uh it's been very very volatile on the market um saw that about a 30 increase from what from budget to budget uh would make sense but in all of these what we decided with the finance committee uh the other night was uh we we set these uh projections in December and we thought we'd go back again take a fresh look at it before we adopt a budget in it's going to change so a couple days before we're going calling chick again see what

057he thinks uh of what's going on that that's the plan the other thing I should have said to start with on all the views who are predicting the same quantities uh next year as we have this year [Music] you wouldn't change the quantities unless you thought something was off from the previous project when we were changing something of the building or in those times same quantities it's all about prices and it's the same kind of thing we're seeing at home okay technology replacement so pandemic changed a lot about learning but probably one of the most significant things it did was it made Danbury about applied one-to-one school district and the device of choice for us is Chromebooks we are including District we use Google classrooms Google Suite of services that initial thrust of Chromebooks that

058we bought to move into remote learning was largely bought with cares act money and Esser funds and as John's alluded to those funds are now drying up or having or going to be expired very shortly um and now that we're a one-to-one district is something we have to maintain um the life expectancy on a Chromebook is about five years um that's assuming it gets treated well it doesn't get dropped or still done uh so the the responsible way to make sure we keep every student with a good Chromebook in his hand is to start a replacement cycle or punishment cycle where you do about one bit with the computers every year over the course of five years and then that just becomes a cost that gets embedded into your budget going forward so we're going

059to be starting that next year we're planning to about 12 500 units which gives us a few there for coverage for for breakage and drops so it's about 2500 units a year we'll be doing that for five years and that brings us to about 875 000 a year that's the initial cost for next year's Chromebooks we'll see if that price goes up at all but that's what we're planning for next year and then the remaining 125 000 we're going to be starting to use for our printer and photocopier replenishment uh we have some uh really old copiers in the district I think our record holder is a nine-year-old copier at Park Ave so uh these lead to delays in printing and reading materials and um like imagine of the line of teachers that just need

060to get their copies going off in the morning before class so we're going to be replacing the copiers they have a little bit longer life span in the Chromebook so that'll be a six zero punishment cycle and 100 five thousand dollars we'll be going towards the first year of that and then over the course of the six years we have 112 copiers in the district right now when we add them into the Career Academy we'll be adding in a few more so we will planning for about 120 copiers were placed over the course of 6 dollars equipment and services we took a deep dive on Transportation also with the finance commits on slide 33 North Carolina and then earlier three distinct component parts of that look the public school transportation home to school going back

061up the our contract with the STA was extended last June or June of 21 or a year and a half ago and in hindsight that was a very good move to make the increases were three and a half percent of the year no one really saw the inflation that then burst on the scene um schools that today are going out to bid their contracts around contractors don't want to extend anymore including SDA with its customers so we uh we caught it caught it louder and and we're budgeting for the same number of school buses school bus routes and regular education next year as we have this year the reason as you look at that first line with its up more than three and a half percent is an accounting change I'll call it uh we

062uh we also bus students to add a tech and until this budget the cost for that Tech buzzing uh appeared in Dan's budget uh in your line item budget you'll see that what's on page 34 that's now a zero in next year's budget we've moved it over here because the bus routes in the morning they all blend together sometimes anyway plus make them a habit Tech than a broad view then a shelter rock or something like that there's there's no reason to separate that out the state doesn't ask us to report it differently foreign Public School transportation as I mentioned the finance committee if a non-public school in here in Denver including the parochial schools if they're enrollment is more than 50 percent of their students live in Connecticut [Music] but a 50 or more

063live in Connecticut then we have to pass the Danbury case to those schools and we have to give them the same level of service that we give our Public Schools so if you know a kid who make kids walk if they live within a mile at the high school or high school and they don't get a bus service they can't say well Immaculate that's three miles they have to apply the same criteria so it's the same number of buses that is something we have to report separately to the state at the end of the year so that's a separate line falling out the cabinet moves around over there is special education and there's a couple uh things going on next year we expect we think we may have a handful of new placements out of

064District so we have to provide for those who want to have an out placement we also have to provide the transportation there as well but um our contract with sta does not really cover you see a lot of white bands out on the road carrying school children on top and things those are going to out of District Schools they're for special education and what we do is every year we take those runs and we put them out for competitive bit okay five or six different companies that did those and at different prices and advance for example in our rest will do itself the uh but last spring when we did them for this year those providers were experiencing higher fuel prices higher gas prices so we saw much higher costs than we had before we

065hadn't had a time a chance to budget for that because our budget was already done by then so we need to reflect what we think will be the higher cost for those right threads so we see that going up but the the rest of the service or middays are our Pre-K all of that we're budgeting the same number of buses Runs kids games same with Summer school just what we've had for the last couple years and there's a couple slides in the deck that just show you uh the numbers of buses in each of these categories I want multiple trees so I'll back up a little bit so we are now in this bucket oh my god um have we had to adjust the number of buses based on this increased enrollment that we've been

066seeing uh no but they're they're very very proud as you look at them as you know I talked to Danny's out there every afternoon in morning beautiful so what's the average amount of kids first two of us right so uh let's take a bus that goes um we're going to do three tiers it's a high school middle school elementary and you'll see on the side of the bus capacity 66. um that that's not uh high school and middle school kids you can't put three on a seat that's the capacity for elementary students for the high school and the middle school about 50 kids so and you'll see and some are some may look empty because of where they're going or might have a short movement between two big ones but those are capacity to try

067and vote for them so are we looking to add buses thanks John so uh just wanted to go back a little bit we kind of jumped past this slide so we are in that bucket of equipment and services there was a total of a two million dollar increase so John just talked a little bit about Transportation but this bucket includes a lot of different things Building Maintenance uh Lexus licenses memberships paper equipment repairs there's a new personal hygiene mandate around dungeon products uh the schools are mandated to provide cleaning products service contracts software so it's a whole a bunch of things that go in here I want to talk a little bit about some of the building maintenance and improvements that we're planning to do um so as our buildings continue to age it's important

068that we have an updated facilities master plan this does the sort of assessment of you know the age of the roofs and floors and you know doors and things like this so that we just don't get caught short by linky roof we know that it's coming up on its replacement cycle and we have to plan accordingly for that so that's something uh we definitely want to get done this year and you'll see a theme as we go through here the a lot of these are about partitions and and making new classroom space in existing spaces that's one thing that we want to do at King Street primary give them a little more classroom space KSI and KSP some new flooring Morris Street they need additional classroom particip partitions and some new doors as well out

069of South South Street office partitions KSP if you've been over there they have that Media Center where there's that kind of pit and it's just it's just not the safest things fill that in and make it a nice flat surface we want to paint the auditorium and DHS in that district-wide we want to buy some new auto scrubbers our custodians cover a lot of a lot of square footage and those Auto scrubbers allow them to get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time so we want to buy some new some new machines for them uh Haze town and Great Plain we want to add some new entrance vestibules uh this is something we've talked about over the last year and came as a recommendation from some of our school studies DHS Jim

070bleachers currently they are mechanical some of them are electric but some are mechanical and now with the new floor um as I understand it when you pull them out the mechanical way that there's a risk of it damaging the floor so by making them electronic they'll come out a little more smoothly and not floor and then again Shelter Rock room dividers for additional classroom space so a lot of these are things that we're just doing to try to make do with the current space we have and make sure that everybody has learning spaces and workspaces and spaces for private conversations and offices and that's coming to about 689 thousand dollars now I just want to say there's an additional budget off to the side of this which is the city's capital budget that's more bigger

071projects that's a couple million dollars that is a separate budget so I know we've talked about both insights and Facilities so I just want to be clear this is a separate amount of money that is in our budget not the capital can you fast forward to slide 37 then I will wrap up with these last few slots so you may recall earlier in the president this is one of the piggy banks page 37. so you might recall a it was a subtotal part of the initial ask we went from 14 8 million to 14.89 to 9 million so 13.8 I believe it was 9 million in this and this is the idea of efficiencies and cost savings cost savings are frankly because of the various vacancies that we have throughout the 22 School we don't

072anticipating we will we hope to filter but we do not anticipate we will be filling the vast majority of these positions the majority of them are actually paraprofessional positions that we have district-wide we hope we don't have to pay for that later I'm going to go to that detail right now but um there is an opportunity this year so we are planning to use the monies that we are saving from salaries this year from the vacancies to pay for the technology replacement to prepay for some of the energy costs project the energy costs and utilities finished here and and this is an opportunity for us to pay down on some of those other things I opened up with to open up the presentation additionally look at the Institute shortfall and there was the staff members

073that are in esso2 that's expiring this dirty it we will have we will carry that forward into other grants in this case the extra three what we will kind of fold it over to S degree and really frankly worry about that next year which was a whole another story that I'll talk about in the subsequent slots so I just wanted to take a moment to talk about unfunded mandates this the Board of Ed has heard us talk about unthinked unfunded mandates two of them there are a number of them by the way there are more than two but two I want to bring the attention of the board and for our uh one it's the K5 reading initiative and you'll you'll note that it was not part of our budget this evening because we are

074looking to use Grant Monies to pay for it but indirectly it still impacts the budget because we have four between four and five million dollars that we can be paying for something else instead and by the way this is the right work like the district is fully awarded it believes in the science of reading and uses this type of reading program District but it's a mandate that's uncommon so we will Cobble together Grant Monies to pay for the whole Bank four to five million dollar Grant and we estimated them for what happened this includes not only programming but the professional development Etc to launch the program the next one is circling back to the presentation that you heard from Principal Donovan and that's the 25 credits and so we moved and are we in year

075three or year before then of that mandate I don't remember okay okay and so we previously we were at 21 credits which was which requires this many classes for a student and for the for the system to 25 credits and then all of a sudden it's this many classes we need to assist the system that comes at a cost for us uh we estimated that's at about 1.2 million dollar cost uh maybe a little more a little less but it's more teachers because there are more classes that have to be off and then this is not a one-time cost for the district this isn't a cost for the district every year on top of every year so even though well enrollment is increasing but it's enrollment times the unfunded management going from 21 to 24

076credits that's really impacting our region and so on the next slide you'll see it says long-term effects of covet and this is just really thinking about some of the challenges that we have been faced with post pandemic and I know we're kind of feel pandemic but really I'd like to thank RuPaul's pandemic but what we're feeling the impact so for anyone who will listen I will talk about our challenges around chronic absenteeism and I had a conversation with the board just a couple of weeks ago had a conversation in our initial launch of our Collective impact meeting in chronic absenteeism essentially means typically we have well we have 180 days of the school year if any of our students are asking 10 of the time or 18 18 days they are considered chronically acid you

077could be chronically absent because of an excuse day you could be chronically acting before on excused day you could be chronically absent because of a suspension you can chronically I've said if you are missing instruction more than 10 percent at any point in the school year so if we've only had 50 days and you've already been five days out you're chronically absent according to that that metric and we now have in this District I'm proud to say this and be part of it we had single-digit chronic absenteeism well belong the state but below the state average seven eight percent if our kids are here we can teach them our staff does the magic that they've always do we are we are closer to 23 and 24 chronic acidism right now now it made sense last

078year uh because particularly here in Danbury our covet cases were higher than really the entire state of Connecticut and we were encouraging staff to stay home if they were sick encouraging kids to stay home because they were sick encourage their parents to keep their kids home if they even smelled like sick like everyone was just encouraged to stay home and so our chronic absenteeism numbers just went out of the roof well this year we're still fighting it and by the way I I was sick coming you know going into the break a lot of Staff would sit going into the break a lot of kids were sick going to the break and so whatever the impact whatever the decision-making is at home uh we're finding that we have elementary students staying at home at a

079record-rate middle school students staying home at a record rate uh chronography numbers at the high school level is normal because adolescents make sure not always don't always make the best choices and so they may cut class which may contribute to Chronic absenteeism but K5 and 6 8 they don't make those decisions historically and those numbers are well beyond anything we have ever seen so when I talk about the long-term effects of covet it's in Kelly earlier talking about social emotional support for students the challenges are different pulse pandemic our board knows that we've had expulsions at a rate that we have not experienced here in this District before um those numbers did not exist prior to the Pandemic those numbers exist now it's part of our reality close pandemic um suspension rates are higher post

080pandemic and the support needed needs for kids it's also true and that's why you continue to hear this kind of song from us and our staff next page Mike there's only two more uh the so light bill and so it really hasn't so nationally you read articles on really kind of how the SEO funds and the release monies have been used and what we have found across the country particularly in urban school districts is really it's allowed this District it really has and and the same is also true for us here in Danbury we are in a position where our Lifeboat at least for institute is expiring soon we're fortunate that sr3 and some of the commitments we had initially made we will be able to get creative and move some of our SO2 staff

081over to Esther three but when we're talking about staff we're talking over a hundred staff members between the two grants and one yes we will be faced with some tough decisions but a lot of those teachers are at Danbury High School that that's how we hire them that that's why it was so easy for us to say sure Dan we will get you those teachers and and some of the board members might may recall we were able to use S2 and nested 3 they were eligible for that Grant because of social distancing because of the pandemic last year we folded eight to nine teachers elementary teachers through attrition and so we cut those positions because we no longer needed them but post pandemic we still needed the positions that we brought on during the pandemic

082at the high school so that that's kind of our reality now in that regard and I I just want to talk about next steps for us here as a community there are there are several next steps for us as a community but I just want to touch on because I had an opportunity to be part of a cause meeting uh this week I know we have um letters between legislators and our councilmen Council women of course our mayor and our Board of Education we we are and I am happy to say and partnered with the mayor's office on this get behind a bill to fully fund Danbury public schools and other districts across the state the ECS formula right now does not acknowledge or weighed differently the needs of our community I I think we've

083talked about this several times in presentations but we didn't really underscore here tonight when we talk about our multi-language Learners or our ell learners we have the second highest number in the state of Connecticut without any acknowledgment financially for that number and when I say the second highest I'm saying we have more ell students than the Bridgeport the new Havens the Waterbury there's only one other District in the state of Connecticut that has more than us yet we also have the highest percentage of Elo students in the state of Connecticut by far the ACs formula does not acknowledge that in way it's not weighed in a way to give us extra money to help support the special Staffing that we need and so in this partnership with the mayor's office we're hoping to again Advocate

084as we did last year advocate for a bill to accelerate that funding but I but I think we need the entire city of Danbury to get behind in support of accelerating this funding so there's more to come I think in the next we've been talking with Ryan Ryan Bingham who's our lobbyist so we have a meeting with him next week and Mike and I will provide an update to the war on Wednesday it's a little early yet but we just want to give some initial updates to the board around Tyler I think it's like over 1500 bills that came through um I'm assuming those those things will begin to be sorted out soon and hopefully we can find ourselves in there and continue support across the state 14 in the ECS formula and for us

085it really means Alliance so I just wanted to end on that note I know that there are probably a lot of questions our presentations have been a little bit longer than I expected um of course I didn't know because I was talking as well but I want to make sure the board has an opportunity for questions also I know we have some folks excuse me so chairperson so yes first I'd like to open it up to our board members any questions and then um Mary Esposito if he wants a question and then the education um too many council members if they'd like to ask some questions that was easy Mr Russo okay okay just to start off thank you Mr Lawson gentlemen for an excellent presentation we certainly appreciate all your work on the technology

086replacing the performance for 12 000 years but we are we heading up for one student K1 contained first grade students also we're looking at over 12 000 years the answer is yes but um Dr casnero can you talk about the why behind that sure so during the pandemic it was it was critical as you remember for all of our students to have access to technology so initially we wanted to make sure that everybody had had the new Chromebooks um and it is especially our arcade ones needed a little bit of a different type of touch screen Chromebook for easier navigation we are having some conversations now though moving forward about whether or not those students actually need to take them home on a regular basis um and and screen time for for our youngest Learners

087so while we have that I think it's part of the account now we are going to be monitoring um really how much you think students will need to have the one-on-one versus having a laptop cart um you know between those two classrooms um so we're having some of those conversations now but I believe the initial number that's up there was a was for the true one to one which included our kindergartners um so it should when we get to the point where those uh laptops need to be replaced um then we will we'll be making some decisions at that point also a question on Safety and Security uh I notice we're having some safety advocates it will be considered uh additional school resource officers instead did you say instead of instead so um well yes

088the answer is yes we would consider it um the three for each Middle School was originally it was really a follow-up to the request the board made last year we're trying to get three at every middle school and of course continue Advocates to help support the increased enrollment at the high school and I believe we also had a question about maybe having a discussion do we need more at the elementary school and then we kind of ended there we opened up the school year with two at every Middle School most because one we hadn't budgeted the career forever school like when we talked about I think it was at the end of the school year and it was kind of all budget cycle so we got three more advocates in but Mr Wilson I guess

089what I'm trying to say is The Advocates are reflecting kind of the conversations we've had here if there's a appetite for a different model I think it really just we need to talk about here at the board and see if it's something that we can afford [Music] yeah are projecting to equipment it depends on the budget whether you're getting it yes that's right so you know it's a projected number that we want in place it has not found the event requirements that we wanted to have them in place and I write about it yes and of course there's from the course um I I personally would like to thank everyone for the presentation I think that was done beautifully um I know we on strict time bring back times but sometimes it takes a little

090bit longer to understand this budget and this is a budget that I've seen on this aboard all these years that have really as I've gone over the years trying to understand it more and more and more and I've always came to the conclusion that we support the budget because it's the right thing to do for our students and our administrators and our teachers and everyone that's in place to teach our children and I would like to say to Mr Donovan who has who has opened up and let some of us see what goes on up at Danbury High School because it's not a One-Shot deal to go in to bring in a teacher to do this there's other things that's involved with students working with students and the parents to make sure that a child

091can get through the educational process and sometimes it's not easy so I would like to say to Mr Donovan and I know he's always jumping with me because you know him and I've been playing the school to tag with this knee replacement for the last two a year and a half but I would say to him you have did an excellent job in Ran the educational expectations where students should have to get out of Denver high school and it's not a place that some students just want to go and and and get out it takes the it takes the pairs it takes the student to want to do what they need to do to graduate everyone and I just wanted to say thank you Mr Donald thank you any other questions from board members no

092Stop opening no way anytime you want a hard out at 8 30. what time is it I won't even hate 26. um Mr Mayor has a question or anything thank you very much first I'd like that the active really state that state is being done does an excellent job I'll see what happens to this unless there we go I just wanted to uh congratulate Diana the average city forward through our high school we all know that that's a larger school in the state population wise we all know that we're working on resolving that popular population or crowding order over a proud of the situation but I really wanted to thank each and every one of you here tonight of course the staff is doing such a great job and they put forward the best they

093can year after year Kevin I just want to congratulate you for your success as the uh the superintendent of this city we took over from the second spot and I appreciate all your efforts so I think what I'd like to emphasize is that I've always done this from day one is we need to work together I see what you're offering here tonight you've done your job your diligence on the numbers we bring all the information together we know where we're lacking we know what we need for the future and I thought I think I've made it clear that education is a priority of my Administration and we're going to work together with the council to bring forth the best possible solutions we can working together and just want to thank you all very much for

094your effort thank you man thank you guys so any uh council members on the education committee no any invited council members yeah good evening everyone we're going to keep into three minutes well then I've got many questions I know that I can ask them during our budget process on the city council side um but I said to just one Court base here at this presentation I've been part of this on on both sides I'm city council over here and this is one of the best that I've seen that really broke out um the differences in the need in the district um I'm we've got a lot of concerns and I know that you do too what I don't see here is any kind of projected budget or beginning of a budget for the cost that

095you're going to incur with the Career Academy there wasn't any of last year's budget either um and we can go back to those discussions that we've had done too um is that a safe argument to say that there's there's nothing in here that's really preparing for the growth that you're going to have to have when the Career Academy does it yes yes I I will say however through our task force committee meetings have kind of outlined costs associated with that growth at those meetings we have not had it as part of this packet but we could put it as an appendix to our country clubs yeah I mean I understand where you're coming from these this cost here is just basically the Martinez so turn on the lights and pay the bills right with no

096frills to this we're not doing anything condition s finally our last question if you don't get this asked what are you looking at as as a potential downside oh no because I don't know what our final number will be you know we're watching it or it's going to say we're fortunate you know the the relief monies have an amazing time and a relief monies came until you know the easiest one to talk about is we had a three-year dedicated plan when we were accepted for the grains were not an automatic I'm talking about the SUV coins and so the the one that everyone in the community knows about is Brookfield and so that that was a three-year plan and because it ended up only being one year there was savings associated with that so with

097that savings and so let's just say hypothetically that was five hundred thousand dollars between Staffing and rentals and buses Etc we could probably slide three or four people in there for one year because it the last thing we want to do is lose Services right now now as it is the folks who are in SO2 because that was not part of our access to two folks the staff who's in S2 is not in our asset is weird just recognize it shouldn't be in the ass but but the day is coming for us and we're trying to get as close to the acceleration when we finally get that bump and and we're hoping that bump in Alliance um that I'm sorry that Revenue stream from Alliance when we get that increase closer we get that we're

098hoping to offset some of those staff that are in these other grants right now this is my long way of saying um I don't want this District to be in a position where we are cutting a whole bunch of programming for our kids and our families if we we were never in a position to be able to do it we really can't have them and so I'm hoping we don't have to have that day we I was pushed pressed last year to answer this question um this is how we answered it last year in and out we we ended talking about some of the things that we are not required Services we are not required to provide course we would have to look at every level from district office to buildings to classrooms we don't

099want to touch the classroom this way but services and interventions and compliance we can move so but full day kindergarten we can right and so we're not required to provide full day candy bar we're not required to provide Athletics for kids it will not be required too right and so we're not required to provide every elective possible for kids at Danbury High School we could say you just these are the classes you get there's no such thing as electives again um and we get offered 25 credits and then that's it right and then I just want to turn my phone off okay well there's a broader conversation right and so so yes there would be impact um I I don't want to send you or any of our other council members of the mayor um

100thinking oh my God if we don't because I I don't want my staff to think they're going to lose their job tomorrow right um and I don't want my parents think they're not going to get Services because of it but it's faced with that question we will be ready any other invited council member okay well um you know I figured I would have to come up and ask some questions uh considering uh you know far away asking something so let's do a platform review on Poe members uh that's a question and hopefully my colleagues are safe in theirs for about the adopts so first of all it's really nice to see all of you on this side of the table it's a little weird but um it's cool nonetheless but um thank you again for

101that presentation for the invitation this evening your chairman and the superintendent Wall Street I just wanted to kind of follow up on a question that barley had asked about that task force and the projections kind of for the future was there a number that came out of that task force specifically and I believe that Middle School number was four to five million Dr cashmere does that sound about right ironically enough the while she's looking for and so there really no cost savings for starting the new middle school because we need we need everything from a new secretary principal teachers custodian Advocates everything for about 365 students by this year but high school we do have an opportunity to you obviously found it we do have an opportunity to and Dan and Cara have done some

102of this work so I'll let you just jump in or so um you know if we were to open the high school um you know like today we projected that it would be about 55 total staff members uh either the 912 level um just just shy of five million dollars and then the Middle School component of the project is a six eight piece so those are all new staff and that was about 59 new staff there and that was almost like almost five and a half and then I was like 5.4 million Transportation ball parked around a little over two million dollars so around twelve and a half million dollars just to really open the doors a lot yeah and it doesn't necessarily account for the growing enrollment over time as well so that would

103be factored in okay all right well thank you for that and um I guess my my last question I'll keep it short um in regards to the cost efficiencies slide um I think it was like four or four points I think it's just my big picture question like how what what's the huge implication to those costs and efficiencies that's something that is sustainable long term is it sort of one of a king can down the road that we have those savings now we're going to use them now but they may not be there in the future how what is the how is that number kind of this is not going to sound right the way I opened but I hope not because the majority of our efficiencies are found in unfilled positions this year and

104so that's really how we're able to pay down on the technology replenishment are we able to pay down on the fuels and energy costs for this year to your question uh Mr President this is not a sustainable strategy yeah because again we're participating we'll be able to fill our position the the SO2 question is well that's just a bigger animal because we have so many staff tied up in that in that in that Grant um it's really next year we'll have to come back and talk about what this means for us okay uh uh thank you for that and um you know I'll just leave uh just one one last you know kind of you know great response to Mr Donovan's principal Donald's presentation um you know I just have anecdote for the room those

105of you that didn't know us after I passed the bar exam and I was applying to Law Firm jobs I was actually a substitute teaching this fall at the high school every day so I was kind of the inside man so I got to see everything and trust me when I say I saw everything and you know and Mr Donovan's presentation tonight I there was a lot that I think sounded like you know I was frame rate positively because the Fantastic principle but I I can tell you personally having witnessed and having experienced that high school like it is Breaking Point I mean it is serious and I know there are board members here that get that I know there are order members that don't know the cabinet that's everywhere people hear that getting there

106are people that do not so my for all of you as a colleague official here is to take this year seriously now we are at a point of the return of this District take this budget seriously my colleagues here in the council take this budget see these are our kids this is the future of our savior so take it seriously so thank you again for the time I putting invitation this evening and thank you all for yourself we have time for one more question if any other council member wants to come up foreign too much of what anybody said but there's a couple things one we do look at the Historical side of things and you presented some of those as well as the next couple of years which I like to see kind of

107where we were a few years ago where we're going and how this fits in we kind of use some of that data one of the realities of budgeting is surpluses for black thereof and it's not uncommon to see surpluses with budgets because you're doing the best you can in figuring out what what you're going to need I know the last few years that have been server pluses those things are returned to the city but we could put them aside to get it back in some of their budgets and whatnot so maybe maybe the presentation or a presentation of some of the historical side of the surpluses that have been part of the budget and what the projected perhaps surpluses are just to have an idea of what those moving parts are because we move those

108monies around once a year so we have an idea of what they are we can we can play accordingly and the other items a great job and I'm doing very well respected I don't know you do well personally but the decided about the staff and it was 37 or so at the top of my head I think they were part of this um I think realistically you're not always able to hire those even if you wanted to hire those teachers there's a market and what can you bring looking at intake and on board so sometimes maybe perhaps there's that are fully budget for a course but the realistic expectation is that everybody's not going to be there from day one use all of that money for that so it'd be nice to see maybe projections

109or milestones at the beginning of the year the middle of the Year where Staffing will be and that probably would be a proponent of that surplusing and the forecasting so maybe that's a little more integrated than talking through it but some of some of those kind of things may be a little helpful for some of us to look at historically and projection wise management there should be no service projected but at least there's an idea of what's happening I'm going forward on a normal basis but again thank you thank you for your condolences thank you just so final words I just want to say thank you for everyone um I know and today it's we're about working together and I think over the years the we've had a good relationship with uh you know City

110Hall and the council and we want to continue on with that so I want to thank everybody in this weather tonight like the fact that everyone's coming out um you guys need a great presentation some really good questions and we really appreciate it thank you foreign