001[Music] cemetery is not here thanks to me okay so let's go on to the next so uh let's all stand for a pledge of allegiance more large thank you oh present arms I pledge allegiance and the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation [Music] is wrong order arms because right Face Forward March all right so tomorrow Rachel here Michelle here okay here glasses here Lauren here Bridget here Julie here Ralph present Al president the recognition Spotlight your school South Street Elementary thank you foreign thank you good evening everyone happy chairman good evening board members and um came from Pennsylvania she can if you were unfortunately no because the clicker one isn't compatible foreign what can I tell you about South Street um do you know it's past bedtime
002so I will do my best that I can from South Street I started in South Street back in 2017 and I remember that building very well I'm still there today and it's an honor for me to present to you I am not feeling my best but I couldn't miss this opportunity to Spotlight our school and so there we are one of our greatest accomplishments is back in 2020 we were awarded a National Blue Ribbon School and we are very proud of that moment and as you can see very happy smiling faces in that picture laughs um if you the link we're not going to click it now but again you go to the Department of Education and you see our recognition there you also have as part of that 20 000 to 2020 recognition as
003a National Blue Blue Ribbon School I was also awarded at Darrell H Bell awarding for outstanding leadership out of the 365 schools that won national food Ribbon School I was one of 12 principals so that's a very proud moment for all of us we were also part of the I had the honor of having the Danbury delegation come and present to me a citation Mr Watson was there and it was a very exciting moment as well uh Ken if you click on number four we also have um if you scrolled up there is our Mrs Coelho who was awarded an alumni for the wswcsu Alumni Association we're very proud of that as well and if you go back to the presentation Ken we have been a school of Distinction for the past three years obviously
004we don't count the covert years in 2019 2020 and 2022 this year Southwest street was also named as a school of Distinction for both our accomplishments in English language arts and for also for math so we are very proud one of our strongest areas of growth you've seen this um Mrs wanzer was produced back but as you can see I remember when I started here south street was one of the lowest performing schools and now we are one of the top three schools in the Danbury public schools so we are very proud of that look at our fifth grade if you look at South Street kind of can you put the cursor it's the one in the green for last year's s back 2022 considering that we just came out of coven we had 62
005percent of students that were able to be at or above in English and language arts actually aside from West Western academic AIS we were number two in the highest of the elementary schools here in Danbury that's a huge accomplishment and if I want to say we really are the best um when you look at Ken the map it's very similar you look at South Street there again last year we did 47 of our students went to the sixth grade at or above Proficiency in s-back and every year we have gotten better and better those numbers actually look better than when we want the National Blue Ribbon School you look at the next one that's our growth and again we have about 75 percent 65 70 of our students in South Street are Ells and as
006you can see to to be able to accomplish that is amazing because as you can see our growth continues to go up and that's what we need to do to close the achievement Gap what else is good in South Street our school time and culture these are just some examples of the things that we've been able to do this school year we are very creative very artistic and we are very proud of our school uh you have there that be kind we started that in September with a start with Hello uh all the kids took the pictures in that K in the in between the K in the end they were the I and we handed those to the parents we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month uh at the bottom you see the kids in the
007green shirt for the um start with hello program and then of course the little characters from iready when we started taking our district Benchmark to get the kids excited uh to start the year already with Tesla and if you go to the next one we have an amazing family and Community engagement I am very blessed we are very blessed in South Street later on I'll show you some of our partners uh in the community but South Street has been able we have a strong PTA an amazing PTA um and these are some of the things again that they've done we have our mascot we've done dances we've done um picnics they've done movie Nights we had a wonderful start of the school year with a back to school for the families they handed out t-shirts
008they had little uh props but picture props we had a dance this winter some really good dancers in South Street we've had the hockey team the Danbury uh hats what is it called they came they talked to our students just a lot of activities and engaging our families and uh you know it takes a village it's a community and that's what we have in South Street and these are just some of the Community Partnerships that we have in uh in our schools that I can't take credit they come to us they're constantly coming um we have United Way we have unit Union Savings Bank we have Toys for Tots we have the cea holiday Fair this year we have the look and look and live life center Ministries h m as you can see gave
009us donations we have Jericho we have Knights of Columbus we have the Danbury Bethel Seventh-day Adventist Church we have Odyssey teams Incorporated and we have the most helping Concepts all those people don't contribute a little bit they contribute a lot to our schools for the past two years my students have gotten a blue water bottle every year every single one of them that's donated by the motel planning Concepts um The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Danbury and the look and live Center minutes Industries donated our baskets we distributed 25 Thanksgiving baskets this year and they're not little baskets they're like a full meal and we had to tell them we didn't need anymore because they would have given us more Knights of Columbus donated this year 120 coats um Jericho donated uh they took cult as
010well we have Toys for Tots we gave we gave I think 120 baskets of toys this this December um it's just amazing the amount of support that we have the Partnerships and again like I said I wish I could take credit and tell you I go and knock on people's door no they come to us they know we're a great school and they come and donate things for us so if you look at the next slide Ken uh can we have audio there's no fun without audio so but these are the best people that can tell you a little bit about South Street this every year Dr zelita comes in uh carols for my kids in December and so the kids line up in the hallway while the students from Rogers Park Middle School along
011with the principal Dr Salita and the music teacher they come and they Carol uh various songs and the kids just sing along with them and hopefully you get to hear them foreign [Music] and these are my kindergartners they came and they sang to me how wonderful you are but they also sign language with it for me and I just thought it was so cute [Music] foreign [Music] so you can tell they love pajama day you can go to the next like Ken this is they're my biggest cheerleaders go ahead [Music] um and the next one here Kevin uh This I Gotta Give You can you pause it for a second can obviously I don't go around hearing my phone with me but he he's a kindergarten he came right because I I always go to
012lunch with all of the lunchrooms I sit with them I eat with them and that's very common for me so they just come up to me and we had conversations he is a kindergarten he came to me and he said but he's good you're gonna hear but I didn't have my camera and I I said wait I'm gonna go back get my phone you're gonna say that again so this is what your the second time he said it of course he forgot and I had to remember so [Music] um so he said to me I'm having an amazing day Mrs Guevara and I say oh why are you having an amazing he said because of the school so I just had to record that and the last one can Carol how was your day thank
013you all right so they all know that South Street is the best we have a wonderful Community we have a caring loving Community we have dedicated teachers dedicated staff dedicated parents and uh it's a building that everyone who walks in always says your school is amazing and you have hard-working teachers and welcoming environment thank you you so much amazing job I do a dedicated staff we really appreciate it oh is there any public participation no no thank you foreign participation by once twice so okay great so in the consent calendar tomorrow did you read some of the I make a motion that's Board of Education okay I need promotion that the Board of Education approved the items on the content calendar it said it's 23-01 through 23-06 as recommended second okay motion made by Lawrence
014seconded by Mr Al Russo any discussion all in favor Eddie against extensions all right let's see anyone any student Representatives here all right come right up just uh state your name when you are passed away I'm Jillian I'm the board I'm Julian I'm the board of Ed's secretary for Danbury High School so our quarter ended on November 4th and now we're almost done with our second quarter on January 25th so everyone's super excited for that halfway mark to be over um at the end of Twitter though we had a parent-teacher conference which was well attended by parents and students um the fall Sports also have unfortunately come to come to the end and conditioning and those teams have already started their new season uh which includes wind Indoor Winter track and field they have their
015very first meet um I'll be doing this Saturday and we're looking forward to kicking off with an amazing start uh we always have a great turnout for the fall Sports we had a great shout out from Fall Sports which was really um amazing like all the students had a great time the football games had amazing turnout um now that we're almost reaching halfway through the school year Student Activities have really began to get started we've recently had our National Honor Society induction ceremony which if I made you say so myself went great um our own student announcement broadcasting has just started up again so during Flex or during third block teachers play the announcements so all the students get what's going on with the school finishing clubs all that which is a great there's also
016been a lot of fun places taking place again um science National Honor Society was doing a big sale for female hygiene products in third world countries which has been so far a great try now and the hottest Cafe is doing science and Pie sale for Thanksgiving which also was a great turnout a lot of things were sold uh there's also a new DHS production in the works with a new director Mr scalfini um they have I believe they haven't decided what they're doing yet but a lot of people are excited to do this and there's also Capstone projects coming up which is amazing um some kind of food drives clothing drives we've had a great so far great Trend out especially for under the can drive so hoping to help people out with those um
017everyone's transitioning pretty smoothly off from Christmas break everyone had an amazing time taking those couple weeks off so we're all ready to get to get started again um midterms are coming up unfortunately so all the students are getting more anxious and you know studying um seniors and counselors are working hard to complete college applications we just recently have our FAFSA night to help students apply for financial aid and had CT for dream to help undocumented students also receive financial aid and senior portraits um final finalized in December and we also at the end of December we had fun flexes which was great trying out a lot of students had fun and they're starting to create new fun classes so people can have a great time during Flex if they already have all their school work
018done um that's a majority that one last thing we are having a student the yearbook is soon finishing up and doing finalizes for like everything um so if you have a quick request I'm supposed to take pictures of like natural photos I guess to like Post in the yearbook so if you guys can all just like pretend you're intent listening [Music] [Laughter] [Music] he's my achy leg teacher can you take a photo with me in it as well let's pretend we're listening you know thank you all right thank you so much thank you um does anyone have any any questions thank you so much thank you thank you thank you for all being great actors come on no hello testing okay good evening Board of Ed members cabinet and community members and welcome to the
019New York thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the Alternative Center for episodes on Saturday December 17th 33a students in 13 staff members came together to put on the most successful breakfast with Santa's in Aces history over 200 pancake breakfasts were served children were able to take pictures of Santa and the Grinch as well as have fun in the holiday themed arts and crafts room which also included face painting it was a wonderful experience in the Ace Community really came together to make the day a success Daniela Esposito's guidance group we're in a Dorothy Day project during the month of December to give back to our community students collected cases of water winter socks winter jackets food and toiletries to be delivered by Daniella and her guidance group Joanne told
020us in all the ace guidance groups participated in the Ace holiday snowflake project 57 snowflakes were created and delivered to the fraxair center on the large snowflakes were messages written by the a students to the patients the snowflakes were delivered by Joanne Charles CeCe Rodriguez and Roger Rodriguez foreign [Music] guys her journalism class has returned to courses offered at Ace the class is reporting on the happenings in the Ace Community the greater Danbury area topics of interest for reporters and readers not just the basis of journalisms but the class is incorporated the international Society for technology education standards and has become a member of the reading Roots Scholastic press Association the alternative time is finally the turning point and we have an online presence that can be accessed with this website during the month or
021this month we had students visiting Ace from DHS so that they can going in during the second semester at Ace we are right now currently scheduling entries interviews with students who have visited this past couple weeks from Philippine positive relationships with them one of the hopes that they will come in successful transfer and finally things would like to celebrate the following students are so far so much for caring Genesis onu R Santana who will earned the Ace of Spades award for a hard work [Music] since 10 um [Music] student of the month award winners that's it thank you for um [Music] Board of Education approve the education specific specifications for the HVAC Grant proposal at Danbury High School as recommended by the science facilities committee and in accord coordinates with 3-07 thinking I'm not reading
022all of them by Rachel any questions foreign funds to finance Board of education's share of the CT HVAC grants as recommended by the policy Committee in accordance with I don't see a an exhibit charisma motion made by Al seconded by bridgen any questions all those in favor um they have sentence saying non-function parents originally [Music] policy 3542-1 food service for sale Professional Standards motion that the Board of Education except for second reading and Adoption of policy 2.41 Food Service Personnel Professional Standards as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 23-08 which is on page 25. it's made by Richard any questions photos in favor bye anyone opposed your Snapchats okay motion carriers [Music] policy113.12 minimum duty-free lunch periods for teachers and other certified staff promotion that the board of education is set for
023second reading and adoption policy 4113.12 minimum duty-free lunch periods for teachers and other certified staff as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 23-09 page 27 of motion made by Michelle Obsession any questions all those in favor let's give this one the Rachel so she hasn't had her release in a while I was looking for a longer one but I'll get you over there oh come on Austin there's so many um I make a motion that the Board of Education except for second reading and adoption policy 4118.232 uh Slash 4218.232 alcohol and drug-free workplace as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 23-10 second beveraging any questions all those in favor aye aye aye all right any opposed I have Snapchat okay about Julians to that policy 3524-1 pesticide application motion
024that the board of education has set for second reading and adoption policy policy 3524 that one pesticide application as recommended by the policy committee and in accordance with 23-11 page 29. second second by Rachel questions all those in favor interceptions seeing none motion cares remove presentation that sounds like fun will that be uh [Music] shut up [Music] thanks yeah I'll just check it out okay um so thank you very much um before uh I go through the presentation um what what do you have in front of you uh from Monday night we talked about uh having more detail to understand what we're presenting and you have a blue spirally bound uh document it's called the line item budget but it's inside that are really there are three different sorts um the first one is a
025uh is what you see every month one of the pages on your monthly summer it just takes the make what we call the major objects salaries benefits so on the second sort combines the line items from different locations you also see that every month that's in the same format as you can see for example all the textbooks for all the principles and things like that that's the second one so those two you're familiar with but the third one you haven't seen before and that's what we call a bi-location by line that's as granular as we get that's in some cases what each individual principle put into their budgets when they built them last month line by line so that's uh everything and what I what I'd like to recommend is that at one of our
026workshops coming up so we're our next one where we have the finance committee next week but then we have a budget workshop for all of us on the 19th and what I recommend is we put a time aside called the line item review of the budget and what I'd like to do is walk you through them because there's a couple new things in there meaning new ways of showing things we haven't done before I like to explain those to you and then uh with any questions you have and please time to look through it maybe there's some particular lines you'd like to know about and we could do it all in a special part of the project it's your you know your budget you can do it in every way you want that would be
027my uh okay so and then uh before we start um I was speaking with the school administrators about what I do and I described it this way because I I think we we are in a unique situation compared to other schools or neighbors and so on and the reason I think we're unique is because while the pandemic is the pandemic money running out and it's going to run out for us it's come in a time when our enrollment is growing and it it's hard to find another place that has those two things going on everyone's losing their money but not with uh not seeing enrollment grow and and of course our student needs are different we went through a lot of that last year if you remember I won't go through that now but when
028we try to compare ourselves to what we think are similar communities we're really not so um and then the other thing uh the point I want to make and hopefully you'll see it here is it um no surprise our high school is overcrowded it's it's over it's not going to be overcrowded it's crowded right now and we have some uh Appropriations we're proposing that will deal with that in the budget as well and at the same time though um we need to be realistic you know there's only salt you can't expect everything so what we've what we're recommending to you is something like we did last year in June if you remember when we had to deal with the reduction from the city council compared to what we asked for we did a couple things
029there were some ways we could reduce our budget you know we had some salary savings we were expecting I think we called breakage where we said you know we know some people are going to retire we'll uh you know we'll hire it less salaries so we've built that into the project we also thought we could reduce a couple sections but the main part of what we did is we looked at the Esso grains those are the covet grants uh to put some of the expected expenditures into those grants because it was running there the end menu so we're gonna suggest another uh approach not those exactly those same things but as a way to keep the budget increase down so I'll show you those in a second so why don't um want to you want
030to click to the next one so that's the first page I I was smiling when the girl was talking about the pictures I think that they'd be much better than these but maybe we'll use her to take a photo um and uh you know we always were Guided by our vision and our mission and um it's very appropriate to restate that in a budget document because that guides all around the next one okay um about our strategic plan really does I should say filter down into the budget or budget filters up into it it these are animal coincidence but they they really do outline the things we do the things that you're about to see uh whether it's a talent acquisition or staff development of course teaching and learning both the things that are in
031the strategies that you look at show up not only in the in the summer year but in the line I'd we can talk about some adults but to you know to meet those goals you know strategic plan we need the plans to go away this just connects and of course the portrait of The Graduate underlines instructions okay so um I think this is important this important page it's important because of the number right here is 12 000. you know we talked not long ago about oh soon we'll be at 12 000. better get ready all that stuff it's here it's not coming it's here today as we're talking we're over 12 000 12 210 and I mentioned our student demographic is a little different than the folks we compare to the uh we display it
032there numbers so when we yeah after we put all the requests together you know one of the ways we wanted to explain to you in the community why the budget was going up as we um we talk about budget drivers what drives what's pushing it out of teacher contracts whatever they are and we start to put that together um it's suddenly dawned on us it really these really aren't this year budget drivers because we really don't have enough money for all of those so we said well you know they're really program needs and you'll see us with some ways to finance these things off budget and use that word um so they're they their program needs but then at the more we got into it what they really are are pressures on our project and
033things that we need to do phone so you'll see them we talked about them Monday night I'll show you in a second energy and utilities is way up just like in our homes we're seeing it too moment we'll talk about that in a second in that Esther shortfall there so there were three covet grants I called it it was the cares Act first one that expired last year the second one was called sr2 that one ends this year and then sr3 is another year of development sr2 was a big Grant it was 12 million dollars we were we spent half of that on staff over two years so there's there's staff in there that's very necessary I'll show you this afternoon so that just shows us and then the next page try to add up
034the uh this page just adds them up mathematically and you can see that of all the things we need to do we really we need another 13 almost 14 million dollars but we need to be realistic we're not going to get that we need to do something so what I talked about those strategies like what we did last year three we have some that are going to bring the increase down to nine million or a budget of 150 meters so we have to go to the next one here the proportionary numbers this page it doesn't display 12 but what what it dawned on us was things have really changed in three years it will be three years in March since we've all shut down and things are different today especially here the um our enrollments
035are up above what the professional demographers said they'd be we have uh and and with that increased enrollment there are more specialized kids English language learners and so on one of the biggest changes is I think we've got a lot when we all had to go home and all the students a lot of computers that came up we've got free computers from the state of Connecticut we got computers with the cares app some of the other restaurants we're now on a what we call one-to-one ratio every student has a Chromebook and that's great we can't go back but they don't last forever we have to replace we want to replace so many a year so we don't have to do them all at once but it just tells you how how things are a lot
036different than they were and the other thing we're seeing particularly in this budget is inflation just like we're seeing at home or at the grocery store everything we're buying too costs more so this page just narrates that a little bit I won't throw it too much but the next page this is what we're proposing 6.4 percent increase a total of nine million dollars up from our 141 million to 159. now when we built the budget the way we build it um what you see here is uh currently budgeted positions so we went into our software we looked at who was working here on December 6th that was the payday and uh pushed them up a year in their labor contracts meaning if they're on step five now they'd be on step six next year and
037if there are any vacant positions that we haven't filled yet we put them into the starting salary so because we want to fill all the tickets but we just so this is for the budgeted positions no more but this is who we have now what will cost next year and it's you can see just for that it's 3.7 million so right out of the gate we're looking for nine to do 3.7 of that just for people who are hearing about their salaries another million not a big increase this year for health insurance four percent but it's still a big part of our cost structure so those two things alone are five million I've got a good question so on the increase of salaries is 4.6 on the contract a uh no no um the the
038salaries of well you got to look at I think certified differently than uh up on the classified non-certified um the teachers have steps and um that that gives them probably I think we're close to two percent very high-step costumes yeah um and I think that the contract most definitely raised step is a raise with a gwi the steps go up too um so we settled we just settled the teacher contract at two I think or two something but with the steps yeah so overall Five Points and it's a good point because um one of the you know you've heard about this we all schools now we're having trouble maintaining staff people are getting um been away by other school districts and and we've had to keep Pace just to keep our people so the the
039twos and the trees are now being replaced by threes and fours another increase on the benefits is that at our cost or what they participated so uh thanks so when we did the uh the look at the payroll who do we have now um if we came with the same benefits if they were having a single health insurance they kept them in single if they were familiar thanks good question and this by the way um we had we had a typo in there um Monday night thanks out for pointing it out the number we were showing for salaries for this year um was too low we were using the actual what we expect to spend not the budget this is budget to budget we corrected it it balances with we keep walking through this the
040next one's important um we need some help from the superintendent Madness so let's look at this five this five years everything's going up we're not trying to show what happened five years ago or what's going to happen five years out that growth it's going up the numbers at the top are the ones that matter the flag numbers there's that 12 210 of today um and we see both going up here underneath it that's the yellow is what we counted on October 1st and so when we officially capitalized for that the blue is what the demographer is telling us what happened as recently as last June no we should expect this we flew through that so uh that's what we're projecting but it doesn't count the whole story because I keep saying it's a story there's
041a story within the story and that's our high school our high school we expect to go up three or four hundred kids