2-8-22 Board Budget Workshop

001toward the committee i'm sorry we left the committee with a number of budget lines that were going to result in i'm sorry we left the board with the finance committee with the number of budget drivers that were going to impact several different lines in our annual budget and so i wanted to find an opportunity this evening for um for the finance committee having an opportunity to do a little deeper dive into those budget drivers whether it's enrollment whether it's state mandates stand mandated programming or you know transportation or facilities i wanted to have an opportunity for number one my team to present out a little deeply on those areas provide an opportunity for feedback for the committee so that going into tomorrow night any questions that you might have about any of these budget drivers

002are answered and so um we have a presentation you'll note um and kate i believe you had asked the question you know why is it that tonight's powerpoint are it's absent of some slides that were shared um previously and that is because i'm sorry can you hear me okay it just came back thanks okay and and that is because we we want to focus on the budget drivers and so this evening so we don't overwhelm the committee with 50-plus slides we just wanted to go straight to the budget drivers himself remind the committee of of course the ask of 6.2 increase an 8.7 million operating budget and then speak to the respective budget drivers that i had opened with um and so the team is going to walk you through in a little bit more

003detail why we why this ask is coming to bring been brought to your attention this evening and then i'm going to wrap up with the summary uh for the committee and so we're going to start off with and mike if you can share the powerpoint we will start off i think appropriately with the finance department's office and they will walk you through the hard copy book that you received and so there's the 8.7 million just as a reminder in a total of 6.2 percent of the proposed budget for this year we can go to the next live mic and then um just an update for the board um you should have seen this in your packet i'm sorry you this was shared in your packet uh for tomorrow night's meeting and it is actually an

004amount of 152 million which is reflective of the 12.8 overall that we're asking however we are proposing that we utilize an increase of eight seven in the local budget three million dollars from reserves and then 1.1 from esser and other grants and that's how we're looking to mitigate the overall ask of 12 points 12.8 million actually um and so john's going to give a little bit detail from this and i believe there's a link in there that might compress and you'll see it right here john [Music] thank you kevin um so what um what we just what i thought we'd do tonight is uh i just replicated a few of the pages from your budget book some i think are more informative than others and i'm just going to highlight what they're trying to convey

005the this should look kind of familiar to you you see it each month in the monthly report those are our categories of spending the difference here as we present our budget is we've uh shown you what our budget uh was for the same things last year you see that very first column and then uh what we actually spent uh compared to the budget last year and then as you go over uh what we're proposing for what was proposed and adopted this year and what um we're talking about for next year um so um mike if you want to go to the next page um so um this is the media your budget book is really the the different line items and in the details section you'll see four or five pages you'll see 120 different

006line items that explain our whole proposal this one is salaries that they follow the same order as the summary uh but in that we break down that salary number you can see things uh like teachers there obviously that's the biggest one of 46 million dollars but how much we paying for nurses custodians things like that if you go to the next page there's some more substitute teachers esy especially that's the special ed summer school so any of the individual uh line items are right there and again we're showing last year budget actual this year the budget and next year the budget and we want to repeat that in in your budget book for different categories this is benefits and um you you and when you drill into that you see it's going up a million

007nine that's that's six point six percent uh we talk about but um it's made up of really six different components you can see health insurance and dental there um we've done a really close look at uh everything this year so you can see some of those uh actually coming down based on our analysis and a lot of that is using the new computer system and uh really providing a much uh more exact way of predicting those expenses um and then what what follows uh we've talked about these different categories of professional services that's where our uh tutors are you can see that line right across the middle there four and a half million dollars but but other professional services like there are times when we need attorneys to help us you'll see down at the

008bottom there the um occupational therapists and physical therapists that kind of thing but uh all of those lines and and these uh categories are the cat the categories we use are the same ones the state uses for year-end reporting that's how they want uh school districts to capture their expenses so we're we're complying with that a couple of the others i'll just mention purchase services that's uh really to keep our buildings running you can see uh the different monies we budget for repairs or contracts on our computers or elevators boilers and that kind of thing refuse removal is in there um so again that's a category the state says if you're doing these things uh put them in that group here's another one contracted services you'll find our tuitions you'll find some of the drivers

009there we talked about this tuition for out of district special education youngsters is there our insurances uh through kerma uh public liability that includes um all of our coverages that we get along with the city transportation you'll hear a little bit more in the presentations tonight about that line and what makes it up a couple more supplies and materials interesting there electricity you wouldn't often think of that as a supply but that's how they want to see it that's that's the biggest one of all uh propane is big but also here um instructional supplies those are all the things your teachers use in the classrooms and things that are disposable uh each year if i could use the word but this category uh this is the big one this is what you're gonna hear the

010most about tonight in previous budgets it was where we put equipment and you'll see it there um mostly that's uh computer equipment and it's it's about the same next year as as this year but this is where we've identified the three improvements uh that you're going to hear about i needed a place to put them so we could isolate them so we could see them so everyone would know exactly how much they are and where but the facilities improvements the instructional improvements uh which includes both our english language arts uh improvement and the after school programs is in that number and then the enrollment uh impact and what that's going to do to the staff i have to say again those three items uh make up three percent of the increase meaning um that 8.7

011that we talked about is going up 7.5 percent but these three things are three of the 7.5 so you really could say without these things our our year to year budget is going up 4.5 so i think that's a very important message to carry uh there's one more chart uh coming up that one you you see every year it's uh some miscellaneous things um and then just a word um we didn't put it up about your budget books uh that you got today um the topics in those books are all the same as as we've uh given you historically every year some of them are exactly the same the pie charts you'll recognize some of the other charts on state aid and things like that are are the same a couple of the others we

012tried to give you what i think is a clearer view of those same areas i'll mention them uh briefly um you we we talked last week about the about comparing our pupil spending to other uh cities and towns and who that should be and why and what it means um what you'll see in your book is a a list of all 169 connecticut cities and towns you can we can pick whatever ones we'd like but you'll see everyone and how the calculation is made what their spending is how many pupils and and then the spending per pupil so that's a little different look in previous years you had some of the dergs highlighted now this year you have all of them so that that's one change that's on page 12. um you'll i'm sorry page

0139. on page 12 you'll see um you you've heard us talk about um funding our schools on an equal basis and giving principals um a little more in the of the decision making process you'll see exactly if remember it's 65 75 85 but you'll see those dollar amounts the projected enrollment and what the allocation is you can look at a particular school and and see how much they're getting for those kind of things other things i mentioned the state revenue is all there the educational cost sharing and so on but also if you look this year we have a page we always put on state and federal grants where we show each grant how much we're getting this year how much we expect next year i think that's important to look at this year because

014uh you'll begin to see the coronavirus relief funds uh running out next year is the first of three years when they gradually disappear it's been called a cliff but what you'll see there is the cares act which we have this year for 795 000 that's gone that ends in june so that that's good to look at but you'll also see on that same page our alliance grant which is going up again this year it's 17 million next year it's gone to 19.4 million so you'll see it right there too so those are the the highlights of the book and like i said you'll you'll see more about some of these really important things coming up thank you all right did you john i'm sorry you have these two more slides at budget driving sure yeah

015and these were from our earlier from last week and i think i mentioned some of those but salaries and wages of course that's always always the biggest driver and along with health insurance that's uh two-thirds of our budget at least and if you looked at the total increase uh that represents half of the increase that we're asking for and that's that's pretty typical uh year in and year out um that's what drives a school budget and um as as you all know it's it's largely your teacher contract and um what that settles for and and what that pays that is pretty much what drives your budget uh transportation special ed you'll you'll hear some specifics there those are contracts uh for the most part whether it's the contract with sta or bus company that has

016a couple more years to go that's calling for a four percent price increase um special education tuitions those of course come out of the pupil placement process and the ieps here's the numbers are right up there you see those that first column that general fund increase uh that's adds to our total and if if this would be my point if it's 9.2 percent the first two items are 4.7 when you take them together so that's why i say it's half and then as you look down the chart the literacy the enrollment um and and the afters uh there's another uh another third of the increase right there so that's that's why we've chosen um what we'd like to dive deeper on uh tonight and you can see uh displayed clearly there um what we're looking

017for in local funds after we apply some of the uh reserves and the grants the finance committee itself uh had a good look at what the actual reserves are i think it was their september meeting um they're they're specified there's there's a half a dozen of them but there's one that's specified for health insurance so we'll we'd like to apply that to our health insurance budget line there's another one for special ed i think there's one for technology so we're going to try and line those up right with uh the the line the items right now there's about 10 million dollars in reserves on the city balance sheet this certainly wouldn't draw them all down we think a gradual um release is is the best instead of all at once or uh over more time

018than that so you see it right there and i think is there a mic is there another slide for me there okay this is um i think it'd be karen and perhaps kim thank you thanks john um i believe cara cara is up next time for casamaro uh carawanzer you just did advance the slides i think it's me i think it's kelly yeah so i just want to take a minute cara will go next um just to talk a little bit about the special education and enrollment growth what i did here is projected the special education numbers from 2016 until our last account and remember these numbers are based on our october first count every year um so over the last six years we have grown by 340 special education students in district and even

019though this graph looks like it's a gradual increase over time that's equivalent to one of our smaller elementary schools um so the special education department and program is has certainly expanded uh quite rapidly in recent years um and along with that comes some some funding challenges um so for my uh portion of the presentation i'll focus on uh two different pieces of information um one of it is the staffing that's accompanied with an increased enrollment like this and um the other is some of the higher cost of some of our out of district placements um that are encumbered when when more students are with us in district um one of the things that i also want to just highlight for the board is one of our most rapidly growing populations is the preschool over the

020last uh six years we've grown by about 50 students at our preschool level and we currently have 168 as of our october 1st count and those are students that are identified with special needs so we have other typical students in the program so the program runs at about 250 students but 168 of them in the beginning of the year were identified as students in need of services the preschool is unique in that students begin and enroll based on their third birthday um so the enrollment there is different than kindergarten where most students traditionally start the first day of school we enroll students throughout the entire school year so we'll typically start around 1 150 or 160 um in the last year or two and grow up to about 220 or so by june by the

021end of the school year um and so uh these these um enrollment growth have have caused us to have to hire staff in a number of different areas um and you'll see in later slides so i won't go over it in too much detail now but additional special education teachers as well as related services staff members i know in previous years i've spoken to the board about occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists and so we have continued need um in that area as well as school counselors or social workers um and we are also seeing um an increase in some of our social emotional needs of all students but particularly our special education students we have seen more concerning and challenging behaviors among a small population of students that have caused us to place

022a couple of additional students out of district and you saw in the previous slide there was a 600 000 um dollar distribution of an increase in out of district tuitions um and that is our projection for next year with a a couple of additional placements on that that will be at a cost of about 600 000 to the district go ahead dr casamaro thanks kelly um so similar to other special special populations we are continuing to see growth in our esl population our multi-language learners and so you can see from the graph that the elementary is represented in blue middle school is in orange and the high school is represented in the gray the preponderance of our esl students come come to us in the younger grades that number has kind of gently gradually increasing

023um along with our other grade levels as well um most recently between the 1920 and 2021 2022 school year we saw an uptick of about 436 additional students um so our numbers in this area continue to grow the good news is is in terms of staffing you know we have added quite a bit in elementary over over the last couple of years so we've stabilized somewhat in that area but as those numbers move up and the students move in um we're seeing a little bit of a of a need to increase stopping um in the in the higher grade levels um so uh in general okay that's fine thanks um and gentlemen we'll talk a little bit about where those students fall in this chart as well um so here you can see the number

024of sections and i want to clarify kate i know you uh jotted a question down uh regarding um this total the total student capacity and the percent capacity and i just want to clarify that um so just to back up a little bit you can see that the number of sections that are represented for k-5 are actually representing the core classroom teachers so mrs smith in grade two at a school is one of those sections when you add up all of those sections across the district that's the amount of sections that we currently have representing the the current middle the current elementary schools um the second column are the projected numbers of students and so those are the students based on the based on this year's enrollment moving forward rolling up we expect to see

025in those seats the total student capacity is the next column so that's how many students we can accommodate within for example in kindergarten those 47 sections um first grade for example 1056 um can fill the 48 sections that we have there and so on and so forth the percent capacity is really just the number of the the uh the number of the projected students and then what we have in terms of the the number of sections and so you can see them in kindergarten and first grade a little bit tighter when you get down to grade three it we have a little bit more room um not necessarily a lot of room but we definitely have some room to to to look at how those sections fall out the high enrollment projection uh is really

026based on if you remember we did a demographic study that was updated in april of 2021 and that's what the demographers predicted at the time on our high enrollment projections that we would see and you can see in kindergarten in second grade that we have already exceeded the high enrollment projection um so we have to look closely at those areas there and then of course the percentage of high uh capacity of the high is listed to the right and so just to clarify kate the um the percent capacity isn't representative of the amount of space that we have in each school per se but rather the actual seats chart you know seats of students available in a particular classroom represented by those numbers of sections it does not include special area classrooms it does not

027include intervention classrooms uh the classrooms that are needed for special education or esl which is very much growing uh in fact so of this um in the second column if you look at the total 5407 projected students for next year of that 2307 are esl students who will all need services um and therefore you know appropriate staff and classroom space with which to provide those services so i hope that that clarifies um across in terms of the spacing of the of the school we are we are quite full okay any questions there all right and then um one of the questions that kate also had mentioned uh was it was why don't we have that type of granular level uh data for the the secondary level um it is available and it can be done

028we just happen to do um the sections and the percent capacity so detailed this year um if you remember because we were trying to open up dpc we had to comb through every single classroom every single seat to see how we were going to configure uh to configure that school and also to understand what the remaining space was was left in each of those uh remaining of the of the schools of that they were coming from and so for the middle school um curtin project enrollment you could see that in sixth grade we have a total of 927 the projected was 939 7th grade 952 with a projection of 992 and then in eighth grade 976 with a projection of 952 so our total current students is 28.48 are projected for next year is 28.83

029okay next next side please thank you and uh similarly we're growing at the high school um our current projected uh our current enrollment from ninth grade 1181 the projected is 9.79 and 10th grade 839 the projected is 11.78 and 11th grade is 702 with a projected of 842 and then the current 412th is 781 with a projected of 714 for a total of 3503 projected for next year rolling up is and i remember correctly our high school capacity was around building capacity was around 3370 so we are well over that that number so um that is we are definitely growing there and there are students currently still in the registration process as well coming daily thank you thank you this is the one that kim's most excited about hiring all of these new people one

030way or the other um cam can you talk to us about staffing [Music] sure um just to give you some idea um we currently have about a thousand um teachers on staff and um i did see there was a question in the q a i think from theresa we don't have a cap on staff hiring at the teacher or administrator level we do have some non-certified um contracts that require us to cap part-timers but we do not have that kind of restriction on these two categories of teachers and administrators so what we endeavor to do is we're doing staffing is we try to match as carefully as we can the kind of the least number of teachers that we can make fit the jigsaw puzzle it's particularly challenging at the secondary level and that's where

031we're going to focus tonight at the elementary level it's clear if we have to open a section of a grade level we hire a grade level teacher and we push in ancillary either content areas like art music and pe or related services at the secondary level it's a little bit trickier because we're talking about electives we're talking about graduation requirements and we're talking about schedules that are very much in flux and so we have to be a little bit more careful about how we build the puzzle so this slide speaks to staffing increases that are needed at the high school to handle increasing enrollment as well as the 25 credit mandate the graduation requirements so you can see here as we go down the list 1.2 art teachers and the reason for the fraction is

032that it's not a pure 1.0 that we need but we need a 1.0 plus a little bit so it might be covering a section right now what we try to do is we try to make sure that we hire in the 1.0 but we do have circumstances where you might hear us refer to overloads at the high school and what that means is we may have just one section lingering out there or we may have a persistent vacancy and so the remaining teachers in that department will assume responsibility for one of the classes of that vacancy so that's why you'll see some fractions here or you'll hear us refer to overloads at the high school so 1.2 art teachers one business teacher one health and pe teacher one world language teacher the 0.8 are the

033overages i was just referring to so that might not be a whole teacher in for example art it might be that we need to make the schedule work one english section one spanish section so we're cobbling together some over overage assignments and then a 1.0 science teacher and the costs um really look to where we generally hire in teachers um we are seeing fewer and fewer teachers at the ba level and more and more at the m a or master's level so you're seeing numbers that reflect that so that's a total of six ftes for that um enrollment increase coverage of sections and also to meet the sections that we need in order to be able to offer students sufficient classes so that they can meet their graduation requirements on time next side please similarly

034because of the rapid growth that you've or the persistent growth that you heard dr casemiro described for our english language learners we continue to see large numbers of increased staffing needs in order to be sure that all of these students for whom we have an obligation to provide this particular kind of service are going to be able to get it with a certified staff member so you see year over year the numbers of ell requests for staffing particularly at the high school and middle school levels continue to grow in order to meet those students that are coming through the system and new students that are arriving so their request is for five at the high school this year um five at the middle school level and one additional at the elementary school level who that's

035typically someone who will be assigned to different schools they may do they may cover two or three or even four schools with um a section in each location at the elementary level so those folks tend to be more travelers and that would be for a total of 11 ell dedicated enrollment or staffing and then um you heard kelly talk about the staffing to support special education enrollment and again she has laid out over the last couple of years plans for a gradual increase in some of the ancillary service or people services that we provide so um one additional social worker is part of that plan and 2.5 additional counselors those are part of the growth plan and also part of this commitment that we've made to sel to social emotional learning and support for students

036particularly important in the postcovid period that we're in now so that's part of both the gradual increase as well as meeting these other goals that we've set for ourselves with dedication to those needs one slp speech and language pathologist those are folks who have very large case loads and serve students with our provide students with services required by their ieps so that's one additional in order to help meet the growing demand for those services and then you see five special education teachers um those are spread across the district and we work pretty closely with kelly in hr to get her the the kind of special ed teacher that she needs it might be a teacher in a resource room it might be a teacher in their bas program it might be an elementary teacher so

037we work with her to try to make sure that we can find sufficient staffing to fill those gaps and sometimes if for example there's other services that she needs we might work with her to try to find that staffing as well so she's allocated five um new ftes and that's to cover um as we said increasing demand but caused by increasing enrollment and increasing service needs and staffing to support middle school enrollment again you can see and this is across the groups there's two art teachers one health teacher and one music teacher for a total of four and again this is to try to accommodate really growing middle school populations and making sure that those students are getting all of those particular areas in order to do that we need to push in additional staffing

038just to cover and make sure that we meet contractual requirements for class responsibilities and by that i mean some of these folks can teach up to 125 or 130 students so we're trying to balance caseload if you will with class size so these additional supports will be put into the middle school so summing all of that up um total staffing for the high school at six ftes total staffing for our ls at 11 total staffing for special education 9.5 and total staffing for middle school enrollment at four for a total of 30.5 new ftes at a total cost of 2.2 million dollars estimated thank you kim mike kevin may i ask you a question real quick of kim on that kim that staffing is that's to meet both enrollment expectations and the high school uh

039accreditation issues that we need to do with it with the new credit requirement correct that's forgets to address both of those issues yes okay thank you may i also ask a question please can you mention that the special education teachers are going to be district-wide um the social worker counselor positions are those also district-wide or um kelly i want i don't know if you want to address that i can answer that um social worker position is um due at the high school and that is driven by iep needs of students that are there um the counselor positions um as you guys know we have been trying between middle and high school to increase school counselor capacity and reduce their caseloads to support students um so we are projecting those at the secondary level so from

040grades 6 through 12 we will reevaluate um closer to the end of the year the actual enrollment that's in the buildings to determine the best placement to put them because we would love to give one additional to each building but we know that this is part of a multi-year plan um the high school will definitely get a portion of that staffing just due to their needs right now um and then we will also look to support the middle schools where we can thank you so bye much quick question uh in the high school numbers the 35 to 3 700. does that include aids the a school and region endeavor programs also in that number are they separate it does it does include it mr russo okay thank you all right um facilities so i'm gonna

041walk through there's about 12 different items here and i'll just give a very high level overview of what each of these is um at ais there needs to be an exterior staircase installed um currently there's no way for medical personnel to get from one level of the school to the other without going through the building so that's something we have to put in just for safety purposes at the high school there's a life skills classroom that was recently installed and needs to be finished up there is also at the high school a high priority safety issue around chemical removal and a tank in the outside underground parking lot that we have to remove there's a new work system coming in school dude where people will file their tickets and we'll be able to track the

042progress and close tickets out once things are done and that should smooth a lot of the back and forth between facilities and teachers and principals that just want to get things done at their in their school um new box truck and new maintenance truck the current box truck uh is a retired food truck um and it's showing a lot of signs of rot um and our telecom technician currently has no vehicle we have a few people that are using personal vehicles so this would be a step in the direction of getting uh essential personnel where they need to go um at king street there's a special ed room um we need to add some offices for privacy um questions around uh you know privacy for special students that have special needs around changing clothes things

043like that um currently this is something we need to do to just give that to the students and teachers there and at the high school there is another special ed room that is currently open and there's a need for some offices so people can have more private conversations on discrete issues um at beaverbrook we are in need of some new doors there's some severe rot in the doors and frames um and at king street primary we need to install some partitions there's some open classroom concept there that is very distracting for students and for teachers and at the intermediate school we have not completed the flooring changes hallways were redone about five years ago the classrooms have older tiles that's just about bringing everything up to consistency i'm at prembrook there's some flooring issues as

044well there's some classrooms that are are half hard floor half carpeting especially in special ed classes we want to remove carpeting it's not a great option it's very hard to clean disinfect things like that so this is really a safety concern that we want to address and at south street there's several areas that have buckled on the floor and heaved in the floor i'm not sure what the correct term is uh but we need to repair that so all told we're looking at about 530 000 um and these are really essential repairs there's there's not a lot of wow and flutter in here this is just just things we need to make sure the schools are are running people have the space they need to do their job thank you my transportation don sure can

045i'm sorry to interrupt can i can i just ask a quick question um and i i saw that somebody responded on the question sheet about this um mike the the information you just gave us put it at 530 000 for facilities um and i'm just looking at the the budget driver page i don't know if that just wasn't updated um but it's got other items which includes facilities security and supplies at 370k let me take a look at that and get back to you we may have combined uh security may have gone into a different line um i'll have to look at that and get back to you okay thank you actually can i just follow up with one question to michael on that last section sure um a stairwell at ais that building is

046not even not even 20 or 25 years old why why why do we have to build stairwells to accommodate things that we didn't have to do when the brand new building was built less than 20 years ago yeah so joe did this for a hundred thousand dollars right so joe the issue is um what we have found um in and the board might recall when we had an incident on the campus um at um western a couple of years ago um and i believe there was a concern about someone carrying a weapon it turned out to be an umbrella right that's right that's right and we had to remember that right and then we had to go into lockdown and they we also had an incident more recently at the school as well but what

047we are continuing to find is um you know we have two separate entrances at the school um and the building cannot be unified in any way during emergent situations and so we had one incident and i don't recall the emergency at that time but when families went to go pick up their children we can't move students from one side of the building to the other so it creates tremendous chaos for us um recently we had an emergency response visit the building for another walk-through of course this is not the first time emergency response has visited the building and i'm not just talking about matt becky's office um during our schools we have the entire you know we have representatives from various offices of the city do a walk through our schools um and so they

048recommend it strongly that we um look into installing some type of exterior staircase to make sure these two these two these two sides of the school can be joined and emerged in the event of an emergency okay so this isn't co this isn't code this is practical that's right that's right okay thank you yeah you're welcome i i have a question about the box truck a new maintenance truck um you said that the current uh folks are using their personal cars do they get reimbursed for truck mileage travel that sort of thing you know in the interim they do okay yeah but we still don't like to have them do it you know i understand all right yep transportation um you want to put this light up mike right so there'll be two slides on

049busing uh the next slide is special ed but but these two sections are connected i'll explain in a minute um so to build the transportation budget for next year we took a snapshot of what we were doing in late january and then said if we do the same thing in september what would it cost so this is the service uh we have now uh the bulk of it of course is those are the big buses we call them 72 passenger um you probably couldn't get 72 high schoolers on there but that's that's what the industry calls them we have 83 of those big buses school for 180 days and the contract extension we signed in june with sta is typical of the way these things are priced you pay a price per day per bus

050in the contract next year it'll be 399.72 so you just multiply across and and there's what it'll cost to run the big buses we also run buses for summer school this is regular ed summer school there's 10 buses that program lasts 15 days and similarly in the contract there's a price for that uh 390 dollars and uh same thing with the math uh the early release i'll just take a minute to explain that typically a typical school bus run a driver would do a high school run drop them off do a middle school run drop them off and a elementary and drop them off three tiers but if we uh release one of our schools early then let's say the high school dismisses early the uh the drivers have to go early to work maybe

051an hour early do the do the high school and then wait until it's time to dismiss the middle schools or the elementaries and there's a cost for starting the drivers early now when it it really comes let me just jump down to the uh non-public schools the connect in connecticut the law is you have to provide the non-public schools the same level of service that you provide your public school students meaning if your bus runs uh for your public schools are 45 minutes you can't make uh but private school runs 60 minutes or if you're loading 50 kids in a bus for one you can't do 72 in another it's got to be the same but what happens is just like we have early release days for different things maybe it's parent conferences or what

052have you if we release earlier maybe it's just an early release day for us before thanksgiving or before a holiday those non-public schools may be on their regular dismissal time so the network takes longer and there's more layovers same thing just the way we might dismiss our high school a couple day days have an early release immaculate might do the same thing and uh if we don't then that that run time uh extends and so whenever we're off um alignment with the non-public schools on our early release or theirs there's a layover so if you go back up the chart we think there were 16 early release days for us uh last year and uh it involved a total of 74 buses there's a price in the contract 56 uh 28 dollars uh 56 28

053cents and there's the extension and then finally for the public school we have some late bus runs we have two buses that run from danbury high school that leave at four o'clock on monday and wednesdays and then we have some buses uh called for adult ed that also leave the high school monday wednesday thursday and friday there's a price of 82 dollars we have a late bus out of pembroke on monday and wednesdays and we have three late buses at rogers park four at broadview monday wednesday and thursdays they depart at 4 15. they're there for different programs that we have going on but that's what the late bus is um we don't have six that we had a total of um late bus runs uh as you can see on a given day we

054might have uh five or six or seven uh not six hundreds just the way i i put it in the chart and they're eighty-two dollars a day too so at the bottom you see um there are in addition to our 83 buses there's another 14 buses that just do non-public schools uh immaculate and some of the parochial elementary schools there's 14 same price as we pay for those but that's a million dollars and then early release days that really are attributed to their early releases we think there were 15 days that they don't have as many buses as we do 14 so there's the math going across so those are separate categories that's the way the state of connecticut wants it reported at the end of the year and those numbers appear right in the

055line item budget that we talked about earlier and then the next slide mike is the special education um a little there it's just a little um there are more things going on um at the top there are type two uh that's what they call the mini buses the the 16 passengers we have 32 of those same 180 days the contract for them is next year i get the question a lot why don't the smaller buses cost less why do they cost more they're smaller there's less steel but that's what they cost when you buy them they cost more money and that's passed on back to us wc that's a wheelchair lift bus um you know a lift in the back a door we have seven of those uh same thing 180 days they're a little

056more expensive um we have some dale i apologize i didn't have more description there but we have some programs in special ed that run every day uh that take kids to different it might be a job a work training site or a site where they can improve their skills for later on in life and and just things like that we have uh 12 of those that go out every day they don't cost as much because generally that's um in the middle of the day and the bus is paid for the next two are really kind of transition programs that you know we have to educate our special education youngsters from ages 18 to 21. uh western connect that should be connections um that's a uh transitional program there are only three buses but um it's

057it's different um and then the uh the academy and there's a danbury high school program that that runs out transitional academy it's just um all of that is really driven by the um you know the iep process and and those things uh we dismiss our our pre-k in the middle of the day um it's a little cheaper but there's 34 uh buses to take uh half the kids home and and bring the other half back the way back um we also um you know many of those runs need um monitors on them so that you know the monitor um an onboard uh monitor there they'll watch the students so that the driver can keep their eyes on the road if if something happens so we have 40 of those you can see the price there

058it extends out and then those midday runs that i just mentioned uh they'll have monitors on them too you you want monitors on your pre-k runs because uh those kids are strapped in or seat belted in they need help uh getting into their seat and out at the stops and then what follows after that is our special ed summer school uh we use type 2 buses we use wheelchairs we have a special midday or shorter program in there um some of the monitors work for four days in summer school some work for i'm sorry four hours a day others work one hour a day so we've we've broken that out and then finally those last two lines those are um those are the we contract out for all of our white fans like everything with

059sta is yellow but you've seen some of those white fans that's carrying school children at the top and usually a sign on the back there going out of town they're much more fuel efficient than a big bus per all perfectly legal so we have a a couple companies that um do that out of district service uh for us every day and and this is the amounts that we're we're paying this year we're not thinking we need much of an increase uh at all next year so uh that's the special ed piece the the five million three that's also a line item you can track in uh the budget we had up there earlier so that's uh that's transportation for next year kevin i had two questions on transportation uh john for the other non-public schools

060that includes all of the parochial schools in danbury saint joe's saint gregs st peters uh emmanuel lutheran immaculate um there may be others that i'm forgetting does that also include worcester um you know i should know that and i don't um they may not have enough to need a bus but yeah well no the rule is if you have um more than 50 of your students are our residents of connecticut not danbury residents of connecticut then the public school has to give you service the following year okay um and in border towns like us sometimes that goes up and down uh because there are a number of westchester kids come over and attend this school so i i just and worcester worcester's enrollment's pretty low so it could that could be affected right yeah it's

061the percentage uh that does but all the others that you mentioned uh yes they're they're in that network um of uh we call them non-publics but uh they're primarily parochial schools here okay and one other question and kevin this kind of goes back to the question i asked last week about sta and services this year i'm looking and this is a good budget breakdown i like how this lays out transportation because i can follow it um you know we have 83 buses times 180 days times 399.72 number this year we didn't get we didn't we certainly didn't receive this year however many number of buses however many number of days times whatever the price is um are we able to take some of that budgeted money that we did not receive from sda enrolled into

062next year from this year so joe the last time we met um john actually had some folks in from sta the very next day um so john can you provide an update from that discussion yes um and uh joe one of the things uh not just with transportation but with any of our budget lines you know it's a 12 month budget and at the end of june really what we haven't spent um goes back to the city and we get a fresh new budget so um but there are a few things you can do you can top off your tanks there might be some tires inventory but um to answer the the question so it's hard to you really can't roll a savings over but what we have done with them is uh two things

063um of course you know in early january when uh omicron really gripped um there were certain runs that just didn't go you know bus 44 56 whatever for example my son's bus is a double bus right now so there's at least one run not running because his bus is carrying two right so on the ones that um on ones that didn't run at all uh we're not paying for period we just okay that's what we're just gonna deduct it and we won't pay it but on the ones you're talking about um what we've said to them is we we're not going to pay for a full run if it's doubled up um what we'd be willing to do is pay any extra driver cost for sure yeah but but nothing more and they've been quite

064agreeable to that um apparently we're not the first district that has said that to them um and it sounded like they had a a menu for when districts ask and we'll start to spend less um in those cases i it began in december we just haven't gotten all the bills uh tallied up yet so and i wasn't looking i wasn't looking for a number i was just the concept is good and we can always if there's a savings there we can always ask the city to let us keep that savings the city let us roll over some budget savings in 20 in 1920 we can ask them to let us hold that savings and not give it back so it is impossible to ask them from the surplus you're absolutely right and also you know

065a board has a complete autonomy on its operating budget so you could if you had a need in some other area you can transfer it to that need and it's perfectly legal and goes on all the time so you'll have some choices thank you ask a question as well please yes um so john just so i understand we're looking at a one and a half million dollar increase for transportation based on that that budget drivers and again i don't know i'm assuming that that summary is accurate for transportation i believe it is okay um and it looks like the intention is to have that applied to you know from grant monies um well um i'm not no we look carefully at the grant i don't want to get ahead of things too much but um

066you know there are three grants the cares act which is ending sr2 and sr3 sr2 is where we're paying for brookfield this year and with that going away there'll be capacity in that grant um the just the motion you saw um looks to tap that grant but we think it's best to to use it uh because there's so little time left for one-time occurrences not for uh staffing and the one-time occurrence we'd like to put into that grant would be uh what you're going to see next a part of the if we can part of the k-5 literacy uh upgrade uh we think that's uh more likely to fit with the state guidelines as we read them today we don't think the buses would fit as as snuggly okay so maybe that's an adjustment that

067just needs to be made on that page then because it looks like it's yes it's still okay um thank you and then the other question was in terms of that one half million dollar increase um you know i certainly appreciate the way you laid it out because that makes it very clear uh you know how the different types of transportation that we need to provide and how often we're providing it so that's that's very helpful just as an overall glance um the one and a half million is that attributable to um uh increases to the contract or you know are we getting like a certain number of additional buses that are that we need yeah i um i i i st i don't fully understand the calculations that went into this year's budget um that

068would lead to the increase uh we've been looking at as much as we can i haven't been able to explain it yet it's certainly on our list of things we have to do i'm not finding as much detail as you saw tonight so i just i can't i wish i could answer it okay thank you dr casemiro yeah yep so just just before i start to talk a little bit about the right to read legislation i do want to go back and just correct myself a little bit al you had asked a question about um if the numbers i mentioned included reach uh and ace and i just uh looking back in my notes i just want to clarify that the projected enrollment for denver high school was 3589 the overall high school enrollment for

069next year was projected at 37.01 so just a distinct that the high school versus total high school enrollment of which ace and reach are our programs within the high school at the high school level so i just wanted to clarify that number thank you thanks um and so this is um just a little bit of information about the right to read legislation i did mention this a few um subcommittees uh back uh that this was something that was on our radar um so past uh this last past june in 2021 um kind of quietly was the legislation that was basically going to change the face of reading in connecticut and really put in sort of a statewide effort and initiative to improve reading outcomes for for all students particularly at the pre-k to three level

070um the goals are as listed is really to create a system across the state of connecticut to be able to create targeted professional development so that there's a collective of professional development and offerings and trainings for all connecticut um teachers uh dedicated in a particular targeted area um our teacher prep programs which we have known for some time now are in need of of greater alignment particularly with the teaching of reading and phonics at the youngest levels um the the push is really based on the science of reading so i'm really the sort of declarative statement about what is considered to be critical within a reading program and then again overall improved outcomes for for students in connecticut um connecticut will select five reading programs there's a timeline for that which i'll explain on the

071next slide um but basically the the tenants are that they have to be evidence-based which is research based and then focus on competencies which are listed on um on the slide there as well next slide please so really uh since the implementer bill was passed there's a process of research selection um then adoption and then of course districts will have to implement so starting in july 2021 of this past year um the state of connecticut was required to establish a center for literacy research and reading something that we've been really lacking at the state level for some time that we've had some some experts up there but not really a fully dedicated group um that that meets regularly with with with these goals in mind um so in between 2021 and 2022 of this year

072um danbury as a group decided to start to begin to try to predict these five reading programs that will appear on the state list and so we've begun to delve into our own research to explore programs that have been rated by by neutral uh rating systems to see proactively you know which ones might make it we've invited a couple of a couple of of these uh these folks in to provide demonstrations to us and to begin to explain uh a little bit about some of their programs so that we can get a head start um one of the things that we know that we'll face uh which is pretty typical in these kinds of situations is that once they post the list for these five literacy programs that districts will adopt um every district in

073connecticut is going to be scrambling to reach out to those same organizations and to secure professional development and technical services so there'll be quite a run on a few of the top programs so we've begun to start to get familiar with some of these um and and be proactive while we're waiting for for this list to be posted so um danbury will eventually select and adopt a program um once this is posted we have heard from some folks at the state department that we're likely to see that list even as early as the spring but definitely by june so we might not have to wait until on july 1st um but then by july 2023 each district is going to have to begin to adopt a program we'll have to identify what that is and

074work with the state um and then 2024 will be somewhat of an evaluation across the state now there is a waiver process that districts can can elect if they feel that they have a similar or better uh reading program than the ones that have been posted by the state of connecticut um um but so we have some some time to go before we kind of make those decisions and um you know as a as a curriculum group and as our and with our building leaders we'll start to to delve into what the state posts and and make some selections over the course of next year so the implications for this school uh year coming up is that we will have to purchase at some point over the course of next year at least uh all

075or some parts of the program to begin a particular rollout so you see that there is a a ballpark number that's listed in the budget that uh represents uh sort of a middle range of some of the quotes that we've been hearing from a couple of the top programs on what it would take to implement in a school district our size and bring that to scale and so while the program is mainly targeted at k3 reading alignment is very important so we would look to at least begin k3 and then we'll also include grades four and grades five as well um so for right now for next year um we'll be waiting on this list and we'll begin to delve into and understand exactly uh how much of this program we would have to implement

076if if at all it could be that uh some of the programs that we use now are currently on the list but we uh we do not know that at this time so for now we will be um putting a placeholder in um to in our budget to be prepared for that next year so that we're ready to roll eric thank you let me ask a quick question please sure um i just want to understand cara because it looks like we've we've set aside 1.3 million for that curriculum um can you just give us a sense of when you do a purchase like that what what what parts are part of what what the parts are yes sure so um yeah so it's definitely sticker shock when you see uh you know 1.3 million so

077currently with just the two programs that we've brought in so far getting very baseline broad stroke implementation um so purchasing the actual curriculum so curriculum curriculum these days is a little bit different it used to be the districts everyone wrote their own curriculum there is still some of that that goes on but now there's uh there's so there's such technical components and complex opponents to curriculum and embedded assessments and so when you actually purchase from a company uh you're buying the proprietary rights to their curriculum materials and so that's that is part of it so one and but there's also open source material that's available as well however um a big part of the purchase is really student workbooks uh access digital licensing um and when literacy in particular there is just a massive amount

078of literacy texts that go with this and so when you are talking about several hundred books in a collection for for students at a grade level times the number of sections that you saw in the enrollment slide times the number of teachers teaching those sections who all need the teacher materials times the number of students in all those sections who need the student materials to go with that um and then there's the professional development and technical support um in order to help access the programs unpack the complexities and the different iterations within the program itself which will be new to our teachers and even to our teacher leaders who would normally help with this we have a couple of literacy coaches that will be helping but they too will need training um in any new

079program so when you multiply all of that times 13 schools the price adds up very quickly and of course refreshing libraries that will be needed to go with you know research collections that go with certain units or modules will also need to be refreshed as well so yeah so the the cost of curriculum materials scales pretty quickly um at the elementary level for sure thank you very much so it's about a hundred thousand dollars per school it's expensive curriculum yes thank you thank you thank you cara um so return on investment and certainly there may be some additional questions by the committee but i i just have one slide remaining from from my desk but i want to start off by summarizing in this way one um the the team and i we consistently as

080in previous years um we project uh a savings of at least uh 500 000 next year um through attrition and i thank kim earlier she had alluded to the fact that um during hiring seizing typically we are looking uh for staff typically at the at the bachelor's degree level and so we will interview and try to find the best candidates possible for the various openings that we may have across the district um but because typically we are losing staff uh to retirement um and a few staff members perhaps to transfer into different school districts but oftentimes these staff members are more seasoned staff and by bringing in younger staff oftentimes not all the time this does not always happen but we typically yield a savings of revenue to the district um close to 500 000

081a year we will do our due diligence this year as in previous years to find a similar revenue for the district secondly on the district we are also exploring commercial spaces throughout the city of danbury to see if we can't find ways to consolidate the various offices that we have across the city so we can also propose something to our cycling facilities committee and then ultimately the board and try to find another another savings for for the board um and for the city of danbury um so i just want to make it clear we're also doing our due diligence on that side um and being as respectful and responsible of the budget as we possibly can um as well um this slide in particular is very is significant importance to me because one i just

082want to start by acknowledging our staff and acknowledging our administrators and acknowledging our teachers across the system a term that's been often associated with our team and when i say team i'm talking about everyone i'm talking about our teachers certified non-certified and our administrators across the district and that is we've consistently done more with less and then we've also that is associated with on the ongoing growth in our city ongoing growth in our schools across the system um i don't know if all the board members are familiar with uh but we have the connecticut's next connecticut's next generation accountability system it's a set of 12 different indicators and it tells the story of how well our students are being prepared for college and career and beyond in this regard our district our schools are doing

083really well we've had several schools of distinction over the last five plus years we've had two blue ribbon schools and we continue to experience success particularly in growth and this is because our administrators are amazing our teachers are amazing and everyone in this district quite frankly they work hard but i also know that our city is continuing to grow and so our families like probably everyone on this call who owns a home or a condo they look up the school systems when they're looking to interview or interview a potential city and the city of danbury certainly we have ranked well in this regard in terms of schools of distinction and blue ribbon schools but they will also look up websites like great schools and and niche uh to find out what the rate what the

084rankings and the ratings are of our school district of our schools um we we want to continue to do everything that we can to make danbury um a an attractive place to live and oftentimes it's the schools in the city um that make it attractive for families we we know that we've consistently done more with less here in danbury and so in that regard we feel like the investment that the city has continued to make in our school system we've been able to yield tremendous results um i think we have shared some facts when showing our dirk schools across the state of connecticut um in and quite frankly we've outperformed those schools not only in our dirk but some schools who actually pay significantly more per student our challenge however is we're at this interesting

085intersection in which we have increased number of meteor students coming to our school district and when i say meteor i mean high need students that require services that continue to put a strain on our budget and so that's why you are hearing um the request uh for additional staffing and special ed and for english language learners um and then you'll also continue to hear uh particularly from the slides that you see this evening about the growth across the school system particularly at the 612 level over this last couple of years we are in need of continued investment um to not only continue the success that we've had over these last five plus years but but to also continue to make this city an attractive place for families to move to and to live we we

086are confident that with an investment um we will realize the successes that we've had in the past um but you will learn if you talk to our teachers and talk to our administrators or anyone on this call this last school year has been unique um the the challenges that are coming to our classrooms on the heels of the pandemic have created different kind of needs for our staff different kind of needs for our administrators and so the investments that you see help to keep class size down across the school system it helped to ensure that we have social emotional support for kids across the school system and the in terms of percentage you will find although the 6.2 is higher than in previous years it's it's i believe it's about 60 percent of our overall

087increases in salary and the rest of those increases are coming in areas like program improvement but the 60 of our increases in salary and benefits were the remaining items uh you'll find are in transportation um you'll find them in some of those improvements that we need to make in facilities in some of those areas um i i just want to just reiterate to the board we we find ourselves at a critical stage right now on the hills of the pandemic um we're already behind um due to covet i know we're not alone in this regard but when state reports start to come out again state accountability reports are starting to be shared in the 22 and 23 and 24 school year we want to make sure we're on top of those charts like we have

088been in previous years and so i've actually worked with my team to find some reports to kind of demonstrate our return on investment in this district um and and so mike if you can go to the next slide and i just want to walk on the committee through this and so i and i recall teresa asking the question clarification um about cities like stanford and norwalk um the other the other um comparison of those three dots in green is actually middletown and these are three of the higher districts their per student expenditure three of the districts that are higher in our in our dirk schools and danbury you'll see that a little over 13 000 we spend per student however we are in in terms of the next generation accountability index there are multiple indicators

089that make up this index um and you know the indicators include and i'll just go through some of the lists ela and math growth rates chronic absenteeism college and career readiness course taking four year graduation rates six year graduation rates um the number and percentage of kids going into college and our students who are passing physical fitness exams and so those indicators make up this next generation accountability index you can see norwalk stanford in middletown as an example although they're spending almost five thousand dollars more per student we are outperforming all of them um i i have i i have every um every and every i have confidence that we will continue to experience that kind of success but on the heels of the pandemic we need to make sure we invest to make sure

090we continue to experience this success um and so we feel strongly and we wanted to share this page we feel like we've been responsible stewards of the board's budget these past few years uh for all of these years um and and request a budget um that matches the needs that we need right now on the hills um on the hills of the pandemic um and so i hope this evening helped a little bit with a little further drill down into these errors regarding enrollment and staffing transportation um and and the uh the mandated um scientific reading program and then of course if there are any additional questions we'll be happy to respond any questions from board members i'm just curious if i could ask questions please go ahead kate thank you um i know we

091talked a little bit about this last time and i i keep bringing it up because i guess i'm just um i'm thinking about like a portrait of a graduate work and and sort of how we're trying to tie in you know the academy piece on this and talking about you know building up our staff according to what our expectation is to be able to open that facility and i know we're adding students based on enrollment and additional needs that are within the district i'm just thinking also about some of the staff expenditures we're going to hit when we open a new building that wouldn't necessarily be covered by those enrollment that enrollment piece um and trying to figure out you know is there some way that we could tie in parts of this presentation to

092sort of that that anticipated goal um and and sort of giving you know sort of a sense of you know as we go for the through the next few years what our plan is as far as bringing that staffing up so that when we get to the point of opening the academy you know we're ready to do that all right so mike one mike can you go to the next slide and and kate i i'm not suggesting this bullet number three answers your question in full um but we are planned um we started conversations with the city of danbury um to begin to evaluate and address the short and learn some financial needs of the district and this is specifically about um staffing on the new academy and helping the city understand um specifically how

093what kind of numbers we would need in terms of staffing for danbury high school where it is now uh with 28 2900 students and then how many staff we would need to open up a new building um and i think we will need a little time to kind of walk the city through this process in terms of actual numbers we will need but in the meantime if we don't meet the basic needs of the enrollment growth now we will not be in position to open up the school at that time and so i i feel confidently as long as we can continue to meet the needs of where we are right now with the 32 300 students at danbury high school um we will be we will be in position to open up the new

094building uh but if we are behind with staffing then we're going to be troubled with opening up the new building because we would have an ask way beyond numbers that we're asking for now okay so it sounds like you guys are working on that piece of it to be able to to bring that to city officials and talk about actual numbers yes yes and so engaging with the city officials is a a concrete next step um that we're looking to realize in the hopefully in the next couple of weeks um many of the members of the task force have been identified and really right now it's just a matter of aligning up schedules um and clarifying and clarifying the list from the city side for the team okay thank you and kate that just gives

095us an opportunity to um do a deeper dive in the challenges before us um because as you know we haven't had an opportunity to have this kind of comprehensive discussion about staffing needs um at the city level and i think we all agreed last year um i understand it was a different board but i think we agreed last year that this kind of strategy was necessary to make sure that we can open up that building staffed 24-25 thank you um let me ask one more question please of course sorry um i just want to talk a little bit about um you know the background concern i think we've we've had for a while now which is that funding cliff and in particular i'm looking at the health insurance claims um which you know is one

096of the major budget drivers here and i know that probably in this coming year you know we're going to see a lot more people we're anticipating a lot more people um you know making claims because they're going to be able to go to the doctor or put you know have surgeries that they put off or whatever um so that 3.2 million that's earmarked for it which is going to come out of reserves are are there any concerns about future years that we're going to see a high number you know more than one year in a row that we're going to be depleting our reserves and sort of put ourselves in a a dangerous spot going forward that was actually my question kate too is is how much are we depleting our reserves by what would

097we be left with after that 3 million that projected 3 million um and then i i don't recall what the max was that we were the goal was to have in the reserves right so i i don't know what the goal was for to have to keep in the reserves i don't know if there's a a reserve kind of number there is i could get some help from john on that um but i recall john saying earlier i know we have reviewed these numbers early in the school year um there's close to 10 million dollars in reserves right now given the surplus from the 1920 and 2021 school year um and so the three million dollars um if we were to use the reserves for the 3.2 million dollars projected cost for next year um

098that would mean at least in my eyes anyway um any um that would mean and i think we'd have to talk to our consultant in this regard but if we're covering it all with the reserves in my eyes we would have additional monies left over that we're already budgeted for but john perhaps you can help clarify that for me yeah that's exactly right the of the 10 million at least half of it is designated for health insurance or more than five million and we wouldn't be drawing down um you know if we probably look to draw any reserve at least over a three year period no no quicker than that just by coincidence uh cigna is coming in tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock uh to talk about trends and and to give us information on

099what's the latest um certainly we can share any reports that we get um with the board and um see what they say i we do know it's a um it's these have been very uh unprecedented years um for healthcare i'm just restating the obvious particularly at hospitals and things like that so um but i think we really need to rely on our experts like cigna in um you know unprecedented times like this so uh i'm i'm really looking forward to hearing what how they predict the future next 12 months let us know how it goes yeah absolutely well well we're meeting again tomorrow if only they could predict lottery ticket numbers there's a game on sunday if they can just tell us how that's going to come out um i actually have a follow-up if

100i may rachel on on health insurance then one other question in i don't know whether this is john or kim this may even be you as we're as we have staff i think i heard before that we're anticipating some increase in retirements and replacing staff the net effect of that usually is we're replacing staff with people who make less correspondingly they usually make less because they're younger do we anticipate that to have any effect on health care claims considering the older you get the more often you make a health care claim usually you know it's really it's really tricky i mean i i took a quick advance look at the deck for tomorrow and you know it's funny year to year you know our claims experience is so different you know this year it seems

101to be a lot of um rheumatoid arthritis and you know gastro things some years it's depression and anxiety so it really is all over the place and and it's hard to connect it up to younger workforce older workforce the thing that we're seeing about replacing though is and the thing that bears noting is it really depends on the area that we're replacing so if we have to replace for example hard to find special ed teacher we're rarely bringing somebody in a ba too we're bringing them in you know top of the scale can't find anyone so it really is hard to predict the other metric that i think is interesting this year and i actually just got a request for information that we just pulled the data today since october 1st we've had 35 teachers

102leave that's really unusual for us and they're leaving either to some are going other districts some are going you know to different jobs some are leaving teaching um and and i think that's just something that we haven't seen those kinds of numbers since october um and we're continuing you know the other metric that i think is a good indicator is we just surpassed our 200th certified staff higher this year since june we've never done numbers that high and we've never done them consistently this time of year so i i think you know to john's point i think this cove post-covered world is just it it's really hard to predict and we're still going to kind of mine the data and see what we see um but it's hard to do generalizing about you know cost

103of bringing somebody in or its impact on health care it's just hard right now thank you just one general question about the budget and as point of reference i'm using page 15 of the budget detail and budget book that we received tonight but the total number that we're looking to increase the budget is 12.8 we're only asking for eight seven because we have five million we of other monies that will absorb that you know a third of the of the increase it see am i reading this right that of that 12 million 9 million is just enough just just keeping up with la with with this year is is that what maintenance budget means uh yes that's correct that's correct okay and then and then the remainder of the improvements right but improvements that the

10425 credit mandate's done that's not voluntary we have to do that and in terms of dealing with enrollment growth students are here they're coming we have to teach them so well i was going to say the curriculum is a requirement too right so it seems like most of this is not really discretionary am i reading this correctly uh i think you are we're you know i'm trying to highlight what's new and and different and uh it's those four things that you know we had would be new that are right but but most of this is either programmed increases because they're contractually bargained for or things that we're required to do it all is um in fact um that's why i said at least um half of it is just salaries and benefits and then you

105know the rest is as you mentioned transportation special ed the usual suspects thank you that was it any other board members have any questions thoughts comments okay go ahead sorry i certainly don't want to monopolize this um but i am curious um you know given sort of the historical trend we've seen as far as funding what do you anticipate happening if we don't see this dollar amount in other words are there do you do you have a a game plan for um how to adjust the budget to to still meet the district needs if we get less than you know the 8.7 that we're looking for right so kate we will make the hard decisions that you know that are required of this office um no different than in previous years um but you know

106i'm i'm having a difficult time answering because i want to remain optimistic um that we can get to ask uh so that we can meet the needs that that was just outlined uh by joe and john just now um i you know when looking back at this ask and i'm talking about positions now um you know the majority of those ass support the recent growth that we experienced in these last couple of months um particularly growth in our secondary schools and english language learners and special ed students especially students required as you know john and joe were just talking about and english learners um if we're not supporting them we're literally pulling away from services from all of our students and so you know i those are i mean everything that we presented and our

107eyes are priorities um but certainly we will have to make hard decisions if we're not budgeted at the number as we has submitted okay thank you mr wilson and can i ask and i hate to put you on the spot and i appreciate that you know i was invited to sit on um you know a meeting with the city finance and our finance together at the table how are those conversations going i know the mayor his goal was to begin conversations around the budget earlier and more frequently um so just just curious you know if you could share a little bit about how those are going how you feel they're going and are we providing um everything that the city needs on their side right so um yeah thank you for bringing that operation i

108don't feel like you put me on a spot at all um i and plus i've had a little experience being on this spot these last couple of months so it's okay so so one um we've now had my office has had uh three meetings with the mayor's office the first and person the next two remotely um our last meeting focused primarily on um working on a conversation regarding lobbying for acceleration of the alliance funding and uh meeting with our legis our legislators in that in the community um and through our lobbyists um he kind of facilitated the conversation um and then also had the mayor um in his right hand um at the meeting as well um and in that conversation talked about the strategy about pushing on the state again for accelerating the alliance

109funding as we had previously discussed i believe at our last board meeting and the the legislators you know made it clear to me kevin um if danbury is going to be excel is going to get accelerated um on the schedule then that means someone has to be pulled from the schedule and have one year less funding and then of course as an advocate of danbury my position was well the rest of the state of connecticut you know and not pointing specifically at any school district but the rest of the state of connecticut is continuing to express a decline in enrollment while dan barry is experiencing an increase in enrollment and so for my seat um i think that's warranted for someone to lose a year of the payment schedule while we receive an increase um

110an accelerated schedule so i i didn't hear anyone on that call who disagreed um and i feel like our data can support um as much as any year um i think our data can support um an acceleration of payment uh particularly with the fact that you know we have more english like we have a greater percentage of english learners in our district than any district in the state of connecticut um and i again i i think we have all of the talking points you need to support an accelerated alliance payment uh so this was um some of the um heavier lifts if you will in our last conversation um the second meeting um the le the first two meetings were really trying to understand uh what the board's request might look like this year so

111really just a preliminary discussion the same way i shared with the board regarding the budget drivers i had reviewed those reviewed those budget drivers with the mayor's office and really just giving him a heads up as i had shared with the board i also shared with the mayor walking him through the budget drivers that were on the page that john ended with just before he handed it over um to kelly um i reviewed essentially that same page with the mayor and his finance director just walking them through so that they have a good understanding of um where our ask would be this year and why uh we spent a significant time along with john and eddie um walking um the city through the mayor mayor through um one of one of the biggest budget drivers

112and that's the health insurance claims um certainly something that the city can appreciate given on their experiences with health insurance claims as well and then also you know just kind of walking them through some of the other budget drivers that we've walked the board through um so it was really just a an opportunity to share with the city um as you know i continue to try to partner with these different offices across the city of danbury just think it's in our best in our best interest to do so um but really from my perspective it was an opportunity to educate the mayor and the finance department on our ask um rationale behind the ask um and what to expect um as we continue these discussions um and and hopefully with an approval from the board

113which you should expect um we'd have his office to review and the council to review when that time comes so we we we hope to have ongoing discussions it may or may not just be about the budget i anticipate our next discussion will be about the academy and hopefully we'll have some concrete updates regarding that as well but the important thing is is that we have some times carved out in our respective calendars for ongoing dialogue in the budget obviously given the season this was forefront at our discussions at the moment so that that's for the most part been been what the discussions have been about right thank you i i really appreciate that approach of of you know looking at it as a partnership with the city and and making them you know a

114part of this process as much as possible um and not just in discussions with them but also you know finding other ways to pull from from different sources of funding and you know proactively looking for for other savings with uh buildings and things like that so i you know i hope that they they see that as well that you know this is this is an effort of of coming from a place of being partners and um so i just i really appreciate that and i also appreciate the return on investment slide i know you know some of some of the council will say well look you're doing so great what what more do we need to invest in the city but um it shows that we're not we're spending wisely we're not spending willy-nilly um

115but i that also shows that we've hit a cap you know in in our student achievement and um we could go further we could take it further with a little bit more investment i think so i think that's a really important slide but also it has to have that narrative with it agreed um and and the same thing with the the schools of distinction you know um i've heard the argument well you have seven schools of distinction [Laughter] but um and i've also heard recently someone said um connecticut rewards growth to the detriment of proficiency so i mean that's those are two very different things and and the state you know rewards growth which is not necessarily the same as a blue ribbon school for for app for you know academic achievements right right so

116just to throw those things out there um but i appreciate all of the information that's been provided to us over the last few weeks um in finance committee and these uh past two workshops i appreciate everyone coming out and spending time to educate not just us but hopefully the communities watching and listening um [Music] and and i have to say thank you for the binder that was delivered today um that was a nice surprise and it's nice to follow have something to follow along with you as you present so i can make my notes on my end and um just i really appreciate all the effort that's been put into this and i hope that um you know tomorrow tomorrow's vote is go smoothly as we've had lots of opportunity to discuss and ask questions

117um so if there are any other questions i hope board members will have you know ask them now or forever hold your peace do i dare say is there a motion to adjourn or is there anything kevin before we adjourn no i i i just want to take so yes one more thing rachel number one thank you for your partnership in this process i know we've had an opportunity to meet and and discuss um strategies several strategies along the way in this process um and something tells me um tomorrow will not be the last time we talk about budget and strategies to help meet the needs of our kids and school community um but i i want to thank you for your partnership in that regard i i too am excited and optimistic about our

118partnership with the city um this is not to suggest the city is always going to honor uh the request that we made in in a given year every time we do i i understand it that's not the way it always works uh but but i but i'm also optimistic um that we're going to get something fair to meet the needs of our school district um and i'm i think the investment that we are making um in in this partnership is going to pay dividends not just this year uh but for years years to come um so so thank you for that for your partnership in this work and and then of course um you know my hats off to the city and the mayor for his commitment to education and look forward to to subsequent

119work and committee work with them to open up this night this new high school and realize some of our aspirational portrait of the graduate goals um and all the work that's um associated with that so i'm i'm looking forward to the exciting things that come for the school district thank you anything else from anyone motion to adjourn made by joe is there a second seconded by al all those in favor signify saying aye hi thank you