001according to Comcast it's 503 bringing us together for our January 2023 Finance subcommittee meeting thank you all for taking the time I know we have a crowded night and we have a lot to discuss here also Gladys I can't see you but thank you for joining us Rachel Rachel it's always an honor to have you on board matter of State Rep 138. and uh let us begin and say without the agenda in front of me that the big tune tonight for us to play is is our our budget proposal for 2023. and uh excuse me uh Al we have to uh select the committee chair and vice chair well done man all right I'd like to nominate Al Russo as chair I don't even know do we have a do we have a quorum yeah
002you you only need three we've got it okay I'll second that motion sorry do I hear any other nominations any other nominations on the floor any other nominations taking a deep breath going once going twice I move the nominations for the position of chair of the finance subcommittee be closed all right well without without any uh one to uh run against I guess uh do we need to vote well motion all in favor I say hi we sir welcome aboard Luisa Britton all right being there having that issue settled uh as chair I would I would also like to put for the the subcommittee to uh bring on a vice chair once again and for the position of Vice chair uh I I would like to nominate uh Kate knetter do I hear a second
003I second Luisa are you on board Luisa you are muted um I'm here I'm sorry nope be sorry be happy yes I'll second yes okay do I hear any other nominations for the position of Vice chair any other nominations for the position of Vice chair going once going twice okay I vote for Cape Canada for vice chair all in favor aye aye thank you so much for Robert okay all right thank you do we have that settled down any other administrative little do we have to do we have to accomplish before we get down to the the I would say the problem the issue at hand which is our 2023 budget if it's okay uh Mr Walston would you like to start off with this or hand it off to John or what is your
004pleasure sir I will do both um Mr Musso so thank you um and again happy Monday evening to you all and board members I want to thank you for joining us tonight uh one first I'd like to make an announcement this evening we have uh Citywide PTO meeting scheduled it is a remote meeting for tonight and Miss Erica Haynes will be joining us to provide an update on school Finance 101 and so I encourage any board members who have the time and availability this evening to join as we have um asked a number of our families to do so as well so if you are available it's really just gives uh some Basics around how the school budget is formed and developed so we of course would take this opportunity to thank Erica for her
005continued partnership here with us in the district uh second I know the board and of course subcommittee finance committee received an update we were hoping and planning for an opportunity to review some of your questions that you might have before before we should we speak about it publicly on Wednesday and so I've asked John and Ed to have the PowerPoint available John is prepared to walk you through the presentation tonight and anticipating there'll be some questions that follow of course all of us will be available to take on those questions John Ed could you guys post that plan up and thank you Kevin and um Mike do you want me to do it for my screen or do you want to do it there you're muted I can do it for mine okay um before
006we put it up I just wanted a just a couple uh preliminary comments um as Kevin mentioned uh Wednesday night night we have our uh full board meeting and um we'll be uh presenting the budget again um and then the way the uh calendar Works uh we will hopefully uh after several meetings and workshops adopt a budget on our February 8th board meeting which will be in time to get it over to the City Hall um by the following Monday that's the statutory deadline for us uh submitting our request to them and then um the next big date to look for is uh April 4th uh that's when the the mayor releases his recommended budget which includes our our spending levels uh by April 4th I think that's if it's not in the uh chart
007or it's in their their rules and then we'll see the City council's ad hoc committee uh sometime in May we don't have the date yet for that uh but that will be uh the usual process that we've gone through here uh before the city council adopts its budget the first week in May the full City Council um of course we're hopeful it'll be the same uh as we're asking for but if if it's not then we'll come back to you at your June meeting uh if any adjustments have to be made so that's the that's the calendar um it's uh the calendar itself is unchanged from last year so uh they what uh what I just uh looking back you know is how did we do this year uh we were talking Friday um just
008about the city and our budget and all of that and we want to we took a look at our increase last year uh remember we went to 141 million uh it was a three percent increase uh the overall City budget though went up almost four percent uh there were other departments that got a bigger increase than we did um not that that means anything but we hadn't gone back and looked at it uh until now and um that's what we saw uh so what uh if you remember in June what we had to do was we took when we got our reduction uh there were some places we could cut our requested budget you remember we cut um what we thought would be some salary savings from teachers who were leaving at the upper end
009of this uh schedule we knew we'd be replacing them at uh staff at the beginning of the schedule so we every year we save some money there and we also at the time thought we wouldn't need as many K5 sections uh just a few so so we took those uh positions out of the budget and uh but the the big thing we did if you remember was we looked to our one of our Esser grants uh those are the the pandemic grants that the covet grants uh we'll talk about those in a minute and uh we put expenses that would have been in the in the school budget we might have been faced with reducing and uh we assign those into the Esser Grant and so what you'll see in a minute here is uh
010almost the same kind of strategy uh the the there are two s or grants one expires in June and then there's uh one that expires the following year I think there's some room left and uh third grant that we're gonna propose uh accounting for some expenses there again so uh without his background Mike you want to put up the the first slide okay using our our new software not sure we see it yet Mike what do you see right now uh black screen Mike C league has started screen share um okay try again it's not it's not micro John I can share it as well let me try one more thing that should be working there it is all right okay so we're we're seeing the first page and a little bit of orange at
011the top there we go that's it good okay so we could probably go right to the next page Mike you know everyone uh will recognize this of course um you know this our vision and our mission at that guides us uh through everything we do and and we think it's important to uh restate that this is a good place uh to remind people uh what those are for us so we we opened our document with that and maybe to the next page Mike all right and here we are us cabinet members don't get pictures but we get our names uh so this is uh that's the second page we can go to the next one okay uh so for a minute on this uh you know the Strategic plan that we've uh spent so much
012time on and put so much effort into it it really does guide uh preparing the budget the the different things that um the different uh the six of them uh the sub plans that we have the priorities uh we really do uh fund those in the budget that you'll you'll see next in our efforts are when there's choices uh where to put money or where we want to we'll we'll put them into these areas so that we can come back uh a year from now and and tell you about the progress we've made and not uh say to you well we we didn't have the money to do it uh this is this is how we we get the money to achieve these objectives and you can see them right there you'll you'll see uh
013more of each as as we go through things in the in the next couple weeks but this this guides us as does a portrait of the Danbury High School gradual so the next one and um so uh we all know this but it's I think to a a reader of the budget it's it it this is our our point really that um you know our enrollment has been up over 12 000 now for a while we've we've stopped saying that we're going to go over 12 000 we're we're over you can see there right at 12 210 uh and then uh over to the right we we described that a little bit nothing that um you're unfamiliar with but um to some of the readers um it's always good to remind them that um given
014our our demographic that leads us to make uh certain decisions that are probably not made in in other districts that are nearby or that we might compare to but it's so it's good to um to start with that next slide okay so what what you see here uh we've taken the different uh parts of our budget that we subdivide we manage uh they get built each one gets built uh a little differently uh and then together uh they represent uh the whole budget uh salaries and benefits uh as you know you go through that with uh mostly our collective bargaining process uh dictates a lot of what that will be enrollment increases there it's um you'll see something about that in a a second uh enrollment continues to go up especially at the high school
015um the new um you could almost call these budget drivers uh what's what's driving our budget and right there in the middle uh no different than what we're experiencing at home uh our prices are for energy and electricity are are going up uh particularly electricity um you'll see a chart on that but that's uh that's pushing our budget uh in a way that it hasn't pushed before uh technology uh we'll talk about that the Esser I'll call it the Esser shortfall that just means that um what we have in our sr2 grant that's expiring uh we we need to keep the the staff in that Grant has become uh very very important to our uh the the Strategic plan you just saw in our our mission and our vision we'll we'll talk about that so
016this this page uh just summarizes the different categories that we're looking at so um a little different way to look at it when you start to line it up and add it up you can see I won't I won't repeat what I I just said but you could see our needs uh are much more than what we can afford so we're going to um to try to not to try we're going to identify other sources of financing that will include our current year budget where we have some uh we think we're going to have some available money come June 30th that we could uh Advance purchase some things we'll talk about that in a second uh and as I mentioned the other uh the remaining Esser Grant the sr3 I think there's some capacity in
017the area I called them here savings and efficiencies uh there are also other sources of funding to bring our total increase uh down to to 9 million in what's being proposed next slide Mike right so I'm not I'm not going to read through this but um we things things have changed from the pandemic that's that's our point it's um we're more for example uh more technological uh all of our students have Chromebooks now they didn't have them before a lot of those also came in uh from Grants or from the state but but they're being used they're being used a lot but when you have more computers and more technology you uh you need people to support that and you need to replace them as you go along there's there's no going backwards on technology
018so we talk about that here are changing our enrollment continues to go up as I said especially at the high school I you'll hear more about that uh in the weeks to come but that increase at our high school is not just on the way we're not done yet but but we like to think it's it's here now and it's it's very difficult uh to staff on a regular basis uh so we mentioned that um our enrollment gains also bring kids with special needs whether it's special education or English language Learners you recall when I when we showed the demographic uh this isn't a situation that every school district around us has to deal with but we do so we mentioned some things on this page I mentioned uh the utilities coming up as well
019so why don't we move on to the next one Mike just a summary uh before we start 6.4 percent is 9 million uh when it's added to 141 million next one Mike okay so uh when we say uh currently budgeted positions the way we build our budget the way we built it last year we went in and uh called exported the December 6th payroll looked at everyone who was here what they were working then began to look at what bargaining unit they were part of I used teachers for example we put in the labor contracts in our software for for next year and then uh for everybody in the uh who was here 1700 employees uh I'll use the term we push them up a step so if they were on they're on step five
020right now uh say with a master's degree and we put them on step six next year with a master's degree but next year's collective bargaining agreement did that with uh everybody in the in the school district and you can see the increase there is 5.2 million it's a 6.6 percent uh because people you know they get steps as well as their uh gross wage increase and it's um you know one of the reasons we have the vacancies we have is it's it's so hard to hire people they're just they're not there to hire at some of the the salaries we've had so as most of you know as we've settled our labor contracts we've often said to you uh we need to stay competitive it's a little higher contracts around us are they're not settling
021for two percent anymore and I I won't go into each one but but the theme uh the last six months has really been uh labor contracts are going well uh the other thing we did was we we looked at exactly um what type of benefits uh people have today uh meaning uh if they're in the health insurance program uh do they have single coverage or family coverage uh what it whatever it is they have we assume that they would keep the same thing next year and then built in what we think the costs are for our our health insurance claims and Cigna and all of that and uh it came up with 30.6 million it's not the the uh large increases we we've seen in other years but this is what it came out to
022uh mathematically based on the people we have today so um this again is just the currently we call them the currently budgeted positions really they're they're the people working here uh right now uh next slide Mike uh so this let's just state for this uh for a moment um I like this thought slide because certainly our enrollment is what leads us to our decisions um but this is just a five-year look and you can you can take away a couple things from it um it's going up each year uh for the five years uh number one um a second thing is we're already over twelve thousand as I said earlier um and uh so what what the key is what the different colors mean the yellow bars are um you know we have to count
023our students officially every year on October 1st all school districts do and and those were the counts uh when we took them in October of each of those two years um but um I'm yeah I'm sorry the the uh yellow is the actual cow yep the um blue is what our uh demographer uh McClone and room they now have a new name slam uh that's what they were uh projecting but as you can see there we're already over the projection look at the figure of 12 210 and compare that to what they were saying we'd have next year and you can see even on there this was their High projection they have low medium and high we've been blowing through that uh by uh what we predict here is uh by a hundred students so
024our projections you see that red adjustment uh that's what's that's what we think is here now um so we thought rather than just rely on those um projections done earlier uh we're bet we're better off doing this um I I don't know if Kevin did I explain that uh right it's a it's a hard concept uh in all the different colors wait did I miss something or right and so uh for the committee we added a quick little legend key on the left hand side of your screen because we got some feedback um while we had posted this on Friday and so we added that what you see in yellow again to John's Point those are the numbers from our uh demographer starting at 11 843 this year demographer projected 12 110 and then you'll
025see all the way up to 25.26 the um the demographer projected up to 12 301. again these are all the colored bars yellow and blue are both from our demographer what sits on top of that number going back to 2122 our projection was 11 843. um I'm sorry our October one count was 11 843 that's the number that publicly we submit to and that's what you would see publicly if you would go to websites to see what the actual number was for the district when in reality we serve 12 190 students because after October 1 that number grew and so that's why you see adjustment in red 12 190. in 22-23 school year which is where we are now again the board Might Recall we reported out actually on the 12 110 students um that
026we submitted and that was again our October 1 count as John was referring to but as of January this month uh we're at 12 210 and and again that that is that is typical of the district uh we will continue to grow significantly after that October one count and so the subsequent years again in blue 12 189 in Blue 24 25 1288 the next year twelve thousand three hundred and one are the demographers projections but the point John was Raising was we are projecting an adjustment for every year by at least a hundred and you'll see the asterisk at the bottom enrollment is currently a hundred students higher than the highest projection by the demographer because based on our last two years and frankly years prior we've outperformed a demographers projections and we are projecting
027numbers at 12 to 89 for next year at the minimum um 24 25 12 388 and then the following year twelve thousand four hundred so we're just trying to give you an idea number one what a demographer's numbers are and our reality last year and this year and anticipating what next year's number would look like and so um what I like to say uh is there's a story within the story here um and it's it's all about Danbury High School uh like if you want to go to the the next slide it's um yep okay so um a couple things like the the enrollment is already here as I've said now a couple times and it's going to continue to uh increase if you look down there at the fourth line we we need 13
028new certified positions at the high school just to keep up with what's going on now and and what will go on um next year it's uh been incredibly hard to staff all of our classes uh we've had to uh have teachers uh work extra periods uh we call those overloads you've heard us talk about those we've had to have a large number of teachers just give up their free periods to cover classes uh it is it is not easy uh to run that that school uh with so many kids there today so that that is the biggest increase we're looking for um next year is high school teachers in this budget the um at the top there the ESL the bilingual the special ed that's that demographic that we all know about uh but those
029um those kids need Services uh some is required by state and federal law others it's part of what we have to do to educate our kids so you see those laid out Middle School enrollment is also expected to go up next year we think by a hundred students as fifth grade moves in uh larger than the eighth grade that's moving out it's it's that simple all three schools will be we'll have more students next year and then uh finally uh safety Advocates we we need more we've we've talked about that a lot this plan uh would add uh five more safety Advocates uh one at each Middle School and two at the high school a total of five uh new positions and you can see the the dollars alongside that so this this really is
030is the story of the budget along with you know the the Prelude of Staffing going up uh this is what what's needed it um you heard this a year ago uh but I think it's it's much more pronounced today uh in our high school it's that's what's changed next slide Mike okay I mentioned this uh for us uh utilities includes natural gas uh electric of course uh propane uh you know all of our school buses are run on propane our contract with sta we pay for fuel that's about five hundred thousand dollars uh and we also have uh heating fuel all of those are going up uh I've had a number of conversations with chick Volpe the city's purchasing agent and using his forecast and and we do try and do joint purchasing as much
031as we can uh for these things and um but just like uh our homes and uh we're seeing the same increases uh that homeowners are and uh this year it's a budget driver so we'll have more to say on that too in the in the next month okay um right so when I we labeled it efficiencies and cost savings uh but we're gonna uh they're gonna be three parts to our uh three strategies I'll call them uh the first it looks at the current year budget uh 2223 operating project we have a number of unfilled uh positions that we're trying to fill our our preferences to fill them uh right away um different reasons why we can't do that but we we have saved money because those folks have not been here not only on
032their salaries but on the benefits they would have been entitled to uh had they been uh hired so what we'd like to do and we will come back to you I think in February and asked to do a budget transfer in our operating budget from some of these unfilled positions uh into the technology line and what we're going to propose is that we use that they can position money to begin to replace some of the Chromebooks that we now have with our our one-to-one ratio of computers to kids uh that this will be the first year of a continued uh program of replacing uh Chromebooks uh we think this is um a good strategy uh that instead of increasing the budget next year so we'll we'll talk to you about that when we bring back
033a proposed transfer uh and then uh the the two Esser grants um s or Roman numeral two and S or Roman numeral three uh s or Roman numeral two uh which ends in June uh has some uh plans that we never needed to complete although uh what's going on with students and and learning and instruction uh that's uh exceeded our expectations um as the pandemic has uh slowed we haven't needed to for example social socially distance as much as we thought we had would have to we didn't have to do as much uh cleaning and PPE and all of those things so what we are going to propose is going back to the state uh amending our sr2 grant even though it only has a few months to go amending it to help pick up
034some of the expenses that otherwise would have been in our budget that are eligible for um Grant financing and then we'd like to do the same thing with sr3 as the pandemic has weekend some of the things we had planned to do we don't have to do um a good a good example of a pandemic expense that didn't quite uh go the way we thought it would have to is is the move to Brookfield and the kindergartens at St Joseph's School you know when we we laid down that plan we thought we'd be doing that for three years uh we thought we had to separate student deaths uh six feet apart and we just didn't have room in our classrooms to spread that many kids out six feet apart we needed classrooms but we didn't
035need it for three years and as we found space in our schools it turned out to be a one-year plan not a a three year uh we'd also plan to have school buses uh go up and back every day a half a million dollars for three years it was only for one year so uh we're gonna see if we can repurpose uh that uh sr3 grant for some of these things that are would otherwise have to come out of the school budget that also would be uh called a grant Amendment approved by the state Ed department but those three sources uh as I said were turning to to help with our needs for next year now what we also want to make a point with particularly as we get to the the mayor's level and
036the city council if you've if you pay real close attention to the uh the state budget our alliance Grant is supposed to get a pretty good bump uh in I think it's two if not three years from now I think it's two we're gonna check where they're going to shift um some of the funding away from the wealthier schools into the uh schools with more need we would stand to gain a few extra million dollars for that uh and so what we're we're way we're looking at things is we really just need a bridge for a year if I could call it that to get us to that year where more State funding will come in and that we're we've come up with when we think Three Bridges uh to get us to that point
037so that's uh the plan we'll be we'll be clearer on that um in the next month and also uh we'll be seeing uh the governor's new budget in the next couple weeks but I I don't expect him to uh Backtrack on that plan uh right now the state is uh flush with money um so it's just they're not in a cutting mode so far okay next slide Mike is there one more okay uh I'd mentioned that a couple times the the Chromebooks uh replacement cycle we find ourselves with now it's a good problem to have but we also need to start uh to replace some of our copiers uh we really haven't replied and there are printers I call them copiers but we do a lot of that's where you send your print jobs to
038as well we haven't uh replaced any of those really other than the new schools in five or six years and uh they're they're breaking down too much uh it's it's hurting uh it's making the teachers less efficient um and it's time to uh get back to replacing those again on a smooth schedule we'd like to get to a point where uh every year we're replacing some and uh avoiding a big spike where we haven't done anything and then find ourselves behind so that that's built in that will be part of the transfer I talked about we'd like to do that with this year's budget uh so one more mic after that or okay uh sure um I just thought we'd describe uh some of the other things that are that are in the budget some
039you're you're familiar with um we have some new uh mandates uh that came out of the uh called the short budget last year some personal hygiene mandates we have to finance um but then the usual kind of things of just running a school system for 12 000 pupils uh on uh you know 17 or 18 different locations uh they're just things you do but that's um that said other line when we looked at the the program needs that was that bucket down on the bottom right will you'll see things in there for example High School expenses just to run this run the school non-staff and some of our technology our uh our buildings and grounds program is in there as well uh it's it's everything else for next year and I think that's the last
040one is it oh oh of course um so it's worth um a a couple words on on the essers and uh we we thought the analogy of a Lifeboat uh was the right one to because uh the Esser monies have been keeping school districts afloat uh for a couple years now we're not alone uh by any means uh we desperately needed These funds um but you know we you know when we I use the example of Brookfield but but you could use the example at our high school you know we we had to uh make more sections everywhere but now that we've made them they're being filled up with higher enrollment so we need to keep uh the staff uh as it says here not only to address uh learning loss but some of the
041social emotional needs that are out there as well as including our growing enrollment um so you know it's I I think all of the districts that have uh had the RS or grants are are faced with this problem right now they they talk about maybe extending it uh but there's nothing that we can count on uh right now so that's we thought we'd end with that um and we'll of course talk more particularly about that in our strategies as we go down the path so that's um that's the presentation Kevin a thing you want to add first or what do you think oh I'm I'm assuming or anticipating there will certainly be some questions and I'm I think I'll start there and a little follow-up from there and get reported opportunity big committee an opportunity
042to ask some questions here Kevin if I may um on one of the back sheets I saw a 6.6 percent rise in labor cost and four point um nine five and benefits and for a total I saw uh 5.95 total increase uh could you reconcile that for me yeah um La I think if we could if we could get that to you in the morning I noticed the same thing and I I think it's the um The Advocates that we've added uh this year that we're not in the budget uh is part of the difference but I want to be exact on that if it's okay I don't have the uh the answer uh right now because I'm I mean roughly from a Layman's point I was I'm seeing almost an 11 increase rather than
043like six percent okay thank you I'll balance that in the morning thank you Teresa uh question about the safety Advocates the ones you stated in the um in this new budget is that in addition to what we already have yes it would bring us from uh 36 positions to 41 positions and we would be adding one at each middle school and uh two at the high school well for a total how many it uh in the middle schools to each Mike it's yeah we're currently we're currently aiming for two each although there's there's a backstory around some of the challenges we've had with hiring although right now we're we're slated for two each at the middle school this would make three each at the middle school which I think is consistent with the conversation we
044were having towards uh last summer we wanted to get closer to like a three to four hundred to one student uh Advocate ratio and um and also you pointed out the high school or the academy principle will have to be hired uh I guess next spring um I thought there was also going to be a principle at the for the middle school at the uh Cardis building are we going to hire a principal for there right so the the initial planning behind is Teresa is to have a principal on board for planning purposes so that we're not hiring that person blind that person oh no that's fine it was just that I was concerned about for the Middle School the Middle School's not opening in 20 in 20 uh 24-25 and we're moving forward with
045our plans we're going to have 3 800 students at the high school the high school is still going to need admin support as we needed previously and so the idea was is to move forward with our high school plans as as we hadn't initially outlined that planning called for us as part of our plan it called for us to have a principal in place by the midpoint of the school year they would be here as part of the planning the scheduling because it's going to require some unique scheduling now to everyone even more unique scheduling now that everyone's going to be in one location but because the middle school principle is that building is not opening yet we don't we're just we're not hiring that person right now oh okay I was just wondering where
046that was in the budget right I won't be into the 25 school year um leading up to the 25 school year for that summer thank you you're welcome thank you for asking so that position is in the increase or is not in the increase I'm really confused I I want to make sure which which position are you talking about we're talking about the um the academy principle that that we're onboarding this spring for middle school or high school just want to make sure I understand which one you're asking about because Teresa was talking about both well it I guess it doesn't um specify in the asterisk inside it just says includes half full-time employee for Academy principal yeah that that's a year from now that would be January of 24. so I'll I'll clarify so
047the academy principle is for the high school right and so our plan is to move forward with our academic Implement our plans and our academic academic plans and we still need to plan for 3 800 students that 38 students 100 student planning requires us to be really strategic without scheduling and it also calls for us to meet the needs of 3 800 students in the building um we can't we don't we feel strongly that if whether that person was going to be ready to open up a new a new school or whether we have to do this on one campus we still need that person in place for planning purposes and to to ready ourselves for the 24-25 school year so our thinking is to have that person in place this time next year so
048we would be budgeting for the 23-24 school year but on a 0.5 basis because we would not hire this person until January so this person will be here with us for uh critical planning to open up next school year plus they would be here for the second half of the Year helping and understanding how to school operates okay and that I guess kind of leads me into my overall concern about this presentation um I'd really like to see you line by line um budget with the details that you know with all of these bucket amounts broken down so that we can really see what is what's making up these figures these very just general buckets I understand so we have um three and and perhaps I should have opened with this we have three subcommittees
049we have two subcommittee meetings planned um and then one that I'm asking to move around to make sure curriculum committee could also have an opportunity uh so what I would like to do to suggest is the curriculum committee on 118 uh switches with our community relations committee so community relations is scheduled for 2-1 I'm sorry curriculum committee is scheduled for 2-1 and community relations Is schedule for 118 and so I would like to flip those two so that Cara can speak to the request the Staffing requests to address the enrollment gains um over these last couple of years so this will allow her to speak to enrollment Staffing and any of the items that are speaking to the budget for this year um the same goes with Mike Mike has sites and Facilities this Wednesday
050um on the 11th and so I've asked Mike to make sure to his um agenda he has added in budget detail talked about safety talking about technology and maintenance and other any other services that might be part of um his Department's various departments presentation and then last but not least it's the finance committee we will have another finance committee meeting before our next board meeting I believe and that is on uh 117 and for John to speak to those program needs that he talked about with utilities utilities and and I believe it was gas I believe it was propane and give the more details around those things um and so we we understand as as part of our uh budget book last year we submitted line items um if the board if the committee recalls
051um and we also um try to give some kind of detailed presentations in our various meetings leading up to the first so just looking back to uh last year's plan out our first meeting we gave and and that was a condensed version of our finance report if you will but the first meeting was an overview in January of the budget process the next meeting was kind of an overview of the read the budget drivers and the requests um and then we jumped in kind of the detail behind it so if you know we'd like to do something different we're happy to do so uh but we've been just kind of following kind of what we've been doing the last couple of years uh but we're happy to adjust but but I did ask uh my
052my three Liaisons for those committees to make sure they provide that detail in their respective areas um and then of course we'll be prepared to speak in even greater detail at all next meeting Kevin and find me I'm sure I see on Wednesday night's board meeting you're going to have a your present budget presentation uh if we could switch not switch things around but give us the line by line earlier so we have a longer time to digest form an opinion and make some hopefully suggestive comments positive comments I think waiting till the last farther out we go into the shorter period of time when you have to submit this to the city uh puts us the board at a disadvantage to help out and comment and possibly change to any direction that we may
053need to change okay that's right or the rod is not better for for me and just my Layman's opinion sir I I am not an accountant that's fair that that's not going to require much work for us to have it ready for Wednesday so we'll just need to make it have an adjustment which may not be ready tomorrow morning uh to post for tomorrow afternoon but we can certainly have it on Wednesday all right thank you I thank you for your efforts gentlemen thank you yes thank you to Ali I totally agree I think talking in generalities is is you know it's helpful you know we always say you know we don't want to be bogged down with the numbers and just give it to us in layman's terms which is helpful but um I
054really need something that supports these generalities so I I appreciate that Alex and I agree um beef before our presentation on Wednesday would be nice any other questions well I just want to clarify along with the presentation right so we'll incorporate it into the presentation the detail thank you Annette and we'll be getting the book or is the book will be forthcoming yeah right so right the book we have typically as we get closer to the 14th and we make sure the board has a representative book that the council will get um you know but we typically don't have the book as until we get closer um and have that level of detail that is going to be provided there because I think some adjustments are typically made before we go to print but I
055can clarify with the team well even just to have an online version so we can see what makes up these numbers right and that's what we'll have on Wednesday if we're saying the same thing okay can I also ask in in those numbers um you have the uh special needs the English Learners uh those categories I realize some of the same students are all three some are all two is there any way we can break it down to see how many total students were dealing uh with those needs I'm sorry Teri So when you say three and two I don't think I understood that um the categories the special needs categories the English is a second language like what is the total numbers um they're basic some people need to uh those categories some need
056what was that other category um uh was these special Teresa this is Kelly if I Kevin leaves in handicap if I remember so I think what you're asking for is the total number um and we could break that down for you for sure of the students that received special education services ESL services and free reduced lunch you're talking about our high knees populations thank you thank you yeah we can certainly do that and then what we will let you know is the total number of students that fall into individually who qualifies for those um and then who um how many are in more one or more or I should say two right just curious you know it just seems to uh it yeah that's it's getting bigger than the number it seems it definitely is
057yes and uh John and Kevin another thought uh I saw I remember correctly a two million dollar Esser shortfall uh well some of our other Grant items be take uh picking that up a bit or are we gonna still be at that two million dollar shortfall and grab money um well the the grant that we're going to look to uh finance that primarily is the sr3 grant okay yeah we just have to make sure the positions fit meaning that they're eligible to move that but I imagine if they were eligible in s or two they're probably eligible in sr3 the purposes of those two grants is pretty similar and once again I have to ask do we have any strategy to increase the traction on uh the state money the increase that is out a
058couple of years to bring it in closer like July 1. well we we do uh we share uh the board of edge shares with the city uh the services of uh uh lobbyists uh Ryan Bingham he he's very good uh we we do look to him for advice um he'll often ask us for information as he has those conversations and he um communicates back in real time and he's talking with uh the Reps and legislators so um we could ask him what uh he thinks the best things we could do between now and the next few weeks and and see what he says possibly if you could reach out to him and maybe get back to us to see if he's encouraging or or not a lot of times um that work begins after the
059governor uh releases his body because it's really don't know what's going to be in it till we see it and then once we see it that's that's when it starts but let's see what he has to say and I'll I'll let you know thank you all right and I'll I will also add there is already a plan to make a reformal request to the state again and I just want to reiterate again because we advocated uh with a number of other districts last year and a joint letter to the governor's office asking to expedite or accelerate the Esser funding to districts uh like Danbury we outlined the reasons why we went to a big press conference last year that may and I on behalf the city of Danbury they were certainly not a lot of
060other districts there as well um our request was you know that did not make it very far but that's not going to stop us from submitting a similar request again and so the city and I have already been in discussions about uh submitting a similar request as we did last year and and hoping that this year will be a little different um but that but the same request will be forwarded again and again hoping that obviously the results will be different Kevin I believe Kate had her hand up first then Terry with number second number two okay thank you Al um Mr Walston and and uh John Mr Mr Spang I just want to thank you for the presentation this evening um I I really like the the clean look of it sort of piggybacking
061on what Mr Russo and Mr Laskey were saying I'm looking at like the Esser funds um summary which talks about you know these numerous positions that would have been unbudgeted or non-existent and they allowed us to perform critical functions I'm not I'm less concerned with having like a line by line um for the Wednesday meeting and and much more interested in seeing sort of like you know a short list of the positions you're talking about um to give us like a fuller picture of what it is you know you're talking about the social emotional needs you're talking about pandemic related learning loss what are the positions that we've added in that have sort of you know allowed desert funding to provide this sort of Lifeboat for our schools and that will sort of help us
062I think get a stronger picture of um you know what what we need to focus on keeping for our kids um so just kind of taking that approach with with all of the um the slides here just to have like you know if you're making reference to positions or you're making reference to you know um under the equivalent services yeah the equipment and services you know the equipment and services there like you know if you can talk about some of the specifics in that section I think that would really go a long way to help us understand what it is we're looking at because I'll be honest with you sometimes when I look at the line item list um I have to go back and pull out the budget from previous year to sort of
063do a side-by-side comparison and that does get a little confusing so I would rather just have a sense of what it is you guys are specifically talking about all right okay that's true Thanksgiving give us both thank you Jerry you're up um it was at the soup meeting Uh Kevin you said that we got six hundred thousand dollar Grant yes from this was it the state yes I just thought that was a good chunk of money what did we do um the 650 000 is planned oh gosh seriously I'm sorry you caught me off guard Kelly do you remember how we playing that money I know we had outlined some things through Cara's office I don't remember and which specific one because there was more the latest the latest 650 000 Grant coming from the
064state oh yes that I'm sorry because I was I'm not sure I wasn't sure if you were referring to one of the previous Sr ones um that one we are working on um working towards additional uh trainings to build uh to launch our literacy program and also some additional social emotional support so those were the um to we're actually working on still finalizing the submission for that um but those are the two Focus areas predominantly in the ground right and and conditions of the grant so the the conditions of the grant were postcovid um recovery and those were identified areas both the reading um as well as the um social emotional needs of kids which is why those two main areas were um picked to focus on and help support our population thank you any
065other questions Rachel thanks um and going back to the um the the reallocating funds um pre-buying services for the next fiscal year are we is that legal are we allowed to do that I mean how so the uh board of education has complete autonomy or control over its operating budget um and there's uh absolutely nothing wrong with ordering uh things in May and June to be used in September many districts do that as a procedure just to make sure that they're here on time um so there's no reason not to it the reason places don't do it is is they don't have the available money to do it primarily okay did you touch upon some examples of what those Services would be and today uh it'll mostly be the uh first year of our one-to-one
066Chromebook replacement uh program you know many of those Chromebooks that we got some came for free from the state others came with the very first cares act sr1 as it's sometimes looked back on now but now that we have them and you know we need to manage them and then the the second piece is The copier replacement program that we need to begin uh I think that's a six-year program um and we'd be doing one-sixth of our our need there may be so there very well could be some other things as well um we haven't uh completely identified what could come uh so that that's what's in there so far so is that in addition to the additional 1 million for those things no that that is the one million we would spend one million
067dollars for Chromebook replacements in June after making a operating budget transfer from vacant positions primarily para educators okay okay thank you any other questions ladies gentlemen Citywide PTO at 6 30. I would take a motion to adjourn Teresa a motion to adjourn all right I'm sorry Mr Russo close out with a couple things please my apologies sir and no no no no please um so I just want to thank everyone for the feedback on this meeting um as I had shared with the team um is really important to our overall process we will incorporate the updates as um as we heard them this evening um and get them in I don't anticipate we'll have them better close the business tomorrow all of them but we will have them by Wednesday morning and we'll be able
068to post the updates uh to the presentation so I appreciate the feedback and we'll make sure that that level of detail that the committee was asking for has been Incorporated so I appreciate it thank you sir oh thank you thanks Mr last call Terry Kate Louisa Michelle Julie Josh Paul George Ringo anyone have any final questions I don't have a question I just want to make a quick comment based on the budget did you guys um um you guys uh them you need to replace some of the equipment such as copiers in general have you thought about listen those equipments sometimes still they come up um a lot cheaper than buying I mean it's just a suggestion I'm not sure how much is a copier machine but maybe if you list them might be saving
069some money on that yeah one of the most common ways that schools and and cities and towns Finance uh copiers and printers is uh through leasing but it's uh lease purchasing it's it's more akin to uh installment contract where at the end of uh five years you there's a dollar buyout if you want it or not um so uh and there are the state has has bid many machines that way so we'll we'll be looking at those uh very very carefully great thank you ladies and gentlemen once again all right uh I want to thank Mr walson Mr Spang Mr Miranda Mr selig uh Kelly yeah I know okay I was looking at going down my list to make sure I didn't forget anybody right uh you know Kelly and and Dr casimero and everyone
070for attending tonight and and our esteemed Council uh Kim Thompson is he smiling but you've been quiet Happy New Year to all so I would I would like to make this motion to adjourn and I will probably see you all in a virtual world in a few more minutes so moved all right so be it if not maybe we'll see each other live Wednesday night okay great