001uh theresa brutaid here rachel chaleski is here michelle coelho is here kate canetta here gladys cooper i i saw glitz there she is lauren daley here joseph de silva here catherine hodgston here albert russo here and luisa thank you so we're we're all here um this is our first workshop of two that we have set aside to go over the budget for next school year so we have plenty of time for discussion and questions and answers and time to digest it all but i do just want to um remind everyone that we are on a timeline we do have to have this to the city by i think it's february 14th correct me if i'm wrong yes february 14th so we're looking at a a vote at our february ninth meeting correct yes yes okay
002so i just wanted to remind folks of that timeline and um with that said i will turn it over to you mr walston thank you thank you so much so i am looking forward to sharing the long-awaited budget overview given the feedback over uh the last year and certainly this year heading into the budget process there was a request to try to simplify this in a way where indigestible bites where the board and the community can understand it and make a better informed decision so i certainly hope we've accomplished that this evening so share our screen and just circling back on yesterday's conversation in which we had talked about the ask and so you will recognize several slides from last night but we have made a significant number of additions uh to further uh represent
003our case uh for the for the for the 8.7 million so let's just share and i'll put this in presentation mode and so this evening i'm going to present out on the beginning and end of the slides and john will appropriately present in the middle where it is more of a focus on the numbers and then of course john and i and the cabinet will be available for any questions that might come from the presentation so to begin with our vision and mission statement these were concluded during the 18 and 19 school year and approved by the board so i'll just give you a moment to review these then of course going to the next page so board of education who serves to help us realize that vision and mission statement we thank you for
004your service of course and um the leadership team and more specifically the district cabinet and then our story so to begin with um and we will further highlight illustrate this demonstrate this i'm in a presentation this evening but danbury's enrollment continues to grow while other districts throughout the state of connecticut continue to decline not only are we growing but we continue to add a disproportionate number of high need students who require services like pll and special education and at the same time dan barry spends less money per student than all the other districts in the state of connecticut um i know these things have been well documented over the last couple of years um the district has not increased has not been increased sufficiently over the last last decade to keep pace with enrollment increases
005in student need we'll have slides later on that speak to number one our budget history but also speak to the increase in enrollment growth specifically for danbury and this imbalance has caused budget deficiencies um to compound year after year uh driving us us for rapidly approaching cliff as the board um our board members who with us last year the board members are aware and our new board members i think you're also aware we have we hired positions to address some of our social emotional needs and academic learning loss needs through our recently the american relief monies um also called esse2 and s3 we budgeted positions into those two major grants and then of course addressing this cliff question we want to make sure we have strategies and an appropriate budget will help us address falling
006off that clip as we have talked about so often over the last two years this budget the budget drivers in this in this presentation will help us sustain district operations while enhancing academic programs but also preparing for the opening of the new career academy and our position of course is without a significant investment we will struggle to not only meet our primary staffing goals but also compromise our ability to open up the new school and so the budget history and just want to provide a backdrop for the board and the community dating back to uh 2017-18 you'll see the request the board approved numbers from left to right and so the categories are the year um the the number in which the board approved the board approved increase and then the number that the city
007approved and ultimately the number that was approved by the city in that increase so going from left to right you will see increases of 1.79 [Music] 3.12 in 1819 essentially flatlined in 1920 2021 we had a bump up to 2.54 and then last year we had an increase at 2.87 and then this year's budget we are requesting um proposing a budget of 6.2 overall in terms of money is 8.7 million dollars and just want to walk the community and the board through the ways in which we build the budget and so i'll start at the bottom first with school allocations individual school budgets are primarily determined by enrollment and unique student needs i mean so this varies from building to building certainly district priorities which include the superintendent goals strategic planning priorities painting parent and
008community feedback also inform the budget and state state mandates are also included in those district priorities the revenue is is calculated from from various local federal grants and other funds and so it's important for us to make sure all of those revenues that are coming to the district um are considered as part of our ask and then one of the most important ones is to ensure standard service for everyone we allocate dollars uh based on the staffing model and the enrollment informs that staffing the budget drivers and just reiterate these from last night um salaries and wages this is a slight adjustment from contractual obligations we just thought it was cleaner to say salary and wages given that's how you repeat your monthly reports health insurance claims and john spoke to that last night he'll
009do so again this evening transportation and special education projected costs state mandates you might recall dr castamero speaking to those last night and ongoing increases in enrollment um including the 25 credit mandate for the high school after-school enrichment and extracurricular activities k-8 throughout our k-8 schools we've had families request and request for support of extracurricular activities particularly in light of the pandemic and requesting for additional engagement opportunities for kids for their kids after school support for high need students and so in the opening opening of our story talked about the disproportionate number of students coming to the district whether they be um free and reduced lunch eligible students or english language learners and or special net students we continue to receive students in our district at a disproportionate number compared to other districts in the
010state of connecticut and then last but not least items like facilities security ups grades and supplies and so budget drivers with a little bit more detail and you will see salaries and wages new dollars at 3.4 million health insurance claims at a projected 3.2 million john will speak a little bit to that later transportation at 1.5 million uh special education costs projected out of district placement specifically six hundred thousand these two line items have been adjusted since last night as they were able to make some clarifications uh so alex jones provide an update for you afterwards k5 curriculum upgrade um this is the literacy mandate that the districts and districts across the state of connecticut are required to implement state mandates including enrollment 2.2 those are positions which will have some more detail for you
011in subsequent slides and then the student enrichment extracurricular activities that i talked about with our families project that at 200 000 and other items that had mentioned previously facilities security and supplies um 370 000. this is for a subtotal of 12.8 million which is a hundred thousand dollars more i believed in last night that we talked about and then we would pay down the 12.8 and bring it down to eight seven with grants and reserves to the eight seven uh that that you saw in the previous slide for the ask um and john is gonna similar to last night he's gonna give a little bit more detail around those budget drivers um he'll take you through the next several slides and then i'll come back to wrap up thank you kevin i wonder if we
012could just go back to the slide just for a second i want to just lead into something here because this one's a little less intuitive but if you look at the first two items here our our salaries and wages and our health insurance the 2.44 that's a quarter of our increase of 9.2 percent and same with health insurance that's about another quarter of the point two percent so those first two items there uh that's half of our increase and and that's um that's one of will be one of our messages and then as as kevin walked you down the list if you looked at the three of the last four the the enrollment and the enrichment activities uh together they bring it they're another 30 percent of the increase so one of the ways i
013like to look at it is if we didn't have that 30 percent increase our total increase would only be going up about 4.4 percent so it's those three things that are really part of our message tonight and that's what we're going to dive into a little closer so if we go to the next slide uh yeah uh the first one salaries and wages you know um of our employees are um represented in collective bargaining or are members of the union and um the labor laws are that if if you have a union or unions in our case there are three things that you have to bargain for at the bargaining table salaries and wages is one of benefits is another and working conditions is the third so you can see here that our two two
014of our biggest drivers and as i showed you half of our increase is really coming out of our collective bargaining agreements and some of the things we've negotiated so as you see there the what we mention is uh we have about a four percent increase in some of those and um it's not that we're settling we've settled our contracts with four percent increases but when a labor contract uh settles particularly in a municipal environment frequently there are step functions each year you go up a step until you reach the top step so if we settle a labor contract for three percent uh the people who are at the top step the next year get three percent but if someone is not quite there yet they'll also get a little bump from uh from moving up
015a step so a three percent uh settlement uh many employees could get closer to four and as our staff gets younger uh with as we've uh tried to meet some of these enrollment needs we're bringing them in of course at at the lower steps so that's why that number is four percent even though what we've been negotiating is much closer to previous inflation rates also as i said benefits are negotiated too and and you know largely we might be uh negotiating how much the employees will pay of the health insurance or or what type of plan it is ours is uh hsa plan health savings accounts uh but we're also self-insured for health insurance um experts will tell you that's uh usually the best way to go we pay only the claims that are incurred
016rather than a premium to a health insurance company and and if things go well uh they they're the winners we pay just the claims and what's hap we have a a consultant uh a gallagher we've used for many years who uh helps us project what the claims are going to be and it's if if you remember from last year the 2021 year our claims were down we gave money back to the city because we didn't need it for health insurance but they were down uh because of covid and many at that a year ago a lot of people our employees included were not going to the hospital or not going to the doctor for different reasons they didn't want to uh some hospitals couldn't do some of the elective surgeries that might get done for
017a while so the claims uh were lower than than they typically would be uh but our consultants now are telling us um that claims are going back up at a normal pace there's a lot more outpatient work going on and they've told us what to increase our health insurance for the um it's not just the claims however we have insurance policies on top of that in case someone's claims gets really high insurance will come in and cover it so we don't experience a loss we also look at how much we're getting from our employees depending on what a plan they're signing up for so we take all those factors uh put them together and um that's how we come out with our totals so that's that's health insurance claims uh but again those two uh
018drivers are are half of our increase uh transportation uh that's primarily our contract with sta uh the bus company and um last june uh the board um wisely uh extended that contract at a very uh reasonable rate of a four percent increase so when we built this budget we looked at the number of buses uh those contracts you pay per bus per day so we simply put the price that had been negotiated uh against the number of buses we have on the road and that becomes our our new budget that one's actually pretty easy uh to predict but we have a a little more uh transportation going on uh both in uh special education and in regular education where we've had to add a few buses because our enrollment's going up so that's a little
019higher but i i have to say the four percent was awfully wise bus companies are experienced the same type of inflationary pressures uh we all are uh they're having trouble getting help uh their fuel cost is going up uh their cost of parts and just about everything i think a few months after that sta probably wouldn't have wanted to extend they're also the bus contractor in greenwich also about the same size they didn't extend they wanted to go out to bid they greenwich opened bids a couple of weeks ago they had two bids one from sta was up 23 percent uh another company from new york was up 12 percent so they're changing bus companies so in hindsight uh we're looking very good there uh next slide okay um we met uh special education uh
020we say it's going up six hundred thousand dollars uh that's not a big percentage increase but what that expense is largely driven by individual educational plans ieps or 504 plans that become mandated and programs and services we have to provide it's it's not a big percentage increase as i said but um it is uh 600 000 but it's those next three items there that's what i mentioned that's that that is our message tonight kevin will dive a little into that but uh we have a curriculum upgrade upgrade in english and language arts start at the lowest uh grades uh and over a three-year period implement that new english and language arts curriculum uh about a third a year or a million thirty uh 333 000 each year for three years uh that's something we have
021to do and that's that's pushing our budget up more on that in a second um estate mandates and enrollments we're putting that together i'll show you some details but the state of connect the state education department has changed our graduation requirement at danbury high school where students could graduate up until now with 21 credits of classes now they're going to need 25 so what that means for a student is they have to take more electives and we'll need teachers to teach those electives so that they can graduate so i'll break that down for you in a second but we also our enrollment is rising you saw that uh in the chart it's it's unusual because the rest of state is going down but if you have more kids and you need more classrooms you need
022more teachers and we'll show you that in a second uh and then finally the 200 000 for enrichment or extracurricular um you know we've had some uh very good uh parent forums uh over the last two weeks where we've listened uh to hear what do parents want uh us to do with our our budget and we're hearing um more activities uh primarily after school uh one of the ideas that will be coming up first uh will be an intramural program at our middle school we're very excited about that uh and then we think that we know that can grow uh from intramurals and into some great things um uh i'm sure we'll we'll also have some uh offerings in uh music and art and things of that nature so the next slide so let's just
023look at the numbers uh for a second uh if we go to the chart uh so th this um here's your your budget uh what we have this year uh in this second column what we're proposing next year the dollar increase uh the percent and um what that uh those dollars mean as a percent of the overall increase and this looks just like the report you've been getting each month there's a summary page on top these are the uh categories uh that we use i i talked about salaries and benefits um it's more than just uh salaries we have other things that go on related to the click the bargaining agreements for example the coaches on our sports teams the some of the advisors for our clubs and activities they're in there as well as
024some of the extra things that you see uh going on whether it's staff at the football games that help out and those kind of things we actually have 44 different lines of types of salaries that we we have to subdivide because at the end of the year we report that to hartford uh it's also in the in the report we give you the port there's other benefits uh besides health insurance for example social security employers and employees pay uh seven percent so our portion of the social security uh is in there uh things like workers compensation insurance unemployment and so on and so forth so that's a 30 million dollar category when you uh add it all up what we call professional services when you look at those lines those are things like um when
025we uh use attorneys to help um help us in collective bargaining or help us with some of the lawsuits that are brought against us uh or um the biggest thing in there is some of our uh tutors and uh which uh they're not one-on-one tutors at home like you might think these are people in the schools uh every day working with uh groups of students that's where we classify it uh in that line that's a that's a big item too uh and then just uh some of the other things we do uh with just to keep things moving and existing services nothing new in there uh for next year our property services that's really um our repairs and contracts for our boilers our elevators uh that kind of thing um our computers you know we
026need to keep service contracts on that to refuse removal is another one to keep our buildings in shape the other purchases i wish we had a better a label for that because it sounds kind of miscellaneous but it's that's where the sta contract is that i just talked about and that's where we put uh the tuitions we pay when uh special ed students are placed in special schools out of district that it goes right on that line supplies self-explanatory that's what your kids use in the classrooms or on the athletic fields and that kind of thing program improvements that that's what i um highlighted before that's the line where you see that 30 that's where you see um the enrollment uh growth that we need uh the curriculum enhancement that i talked about is also
027in that line and then uh finally there's uh a line for dues fees and and teacher training in there so those are the the items just uh a quick word on uh amounts that the next slide uh i mentioned the high school uh change in graduation requirements um go to the next one so this is uh this is what we need um to uh we need uh ftes mean full-time equivalents uh our teachers when you see 1.2 um that really means uh we need someone six days a week six out of the ten days one week would be five six days is 1.2 so in our teacher business teacher that's where some of the new requirements are coming a health and phys ed teacher uh a new science teacher uh we think uh five high
028school teachers uh will allow us to to offer the the five meet the five credit mandate but enrollment growth um kevin will explain in a few minutes why uh why this is happening here um but uh we'd like we'll we're gonna ell stands for english language learners so the staffing we need for english language learners next year we we're going to need 5 esl as english as a second language slash bilingual five teachers at the high school for that a world language teacher that's a foreign language teacher one of those at the middle school we're also going to need five esl or bilingual teachers and another one at our elementary schools but there's uh 12 teachers uh to support english as a english language learners as we call them eight hundred and sixty four thousand
029dollars next slide yep so um here's our total um i don't know if we missed one there kevin but the uh the total uh staffing is uh five for um the high school graduation uh twelve for um enrollment increases and uh 13.5 for staffing improvements we'll we'll talk about that in a second too a total of 30.5 but if you remember on the very first slide uh we mentioned we need 2.2 million uh as an improvement oh here it is okay sorry john yeah that's the missing piece um so this is really just to support uh enrollment it's not related to english language learners not related uh to the high school graduation requirement uh this is uh to me um all of the students that have entered our schools this year and the uh projections
030we have for next year uh we're going to need three and a half more counselors and social workers at the high school we just we just don't have enough right now um and then at the middle school uh we need these uh teachers just just to meet our enrollment increases uh we're not changing the programs uh we're offering there uh on this slide this is just uh to keep the same things we have now about with more kids and uh special education teachers are another five so uh 13.5 teachers uh for that enrollment increase you saw uh kevin uh show earlier this isn't all happening next year um it's been going on and will continue so uh there's the total um i think that's that's what i had kevin is uh that's right john right
031yep okay thank you thank you thank you and so i i just want to pick back up pick up where john left off and provide a funding breakdown and share with the board and for the community actually how the district is funded so one 69 percent of our local dollars are contributed to the school district and so this long blue bar here 69 percent of our 100 pie is from local local taxpayers here in danbury our state funding which include alliance and priority grants represents about 21 percent of our overall available monies to support staff and students here and last but not least we have 10 percent of our overall revenues coming into the district as an example idea and title grants federal grants and so these are the different revenue sources and percentage percentages
032associated with each one that is helping us uh meet the needs of kids in our district so we wanted to walk the board and the community through some district comparisons and so the state our comparison groups are milwaukee and stanford so i will begin with and i think this is the slide john was alluding to earlier when talking about the unique position that danbury public schools is in this is from the 2021 data this is from the state at site and so you will note from left to right in 2010 enrollment in the entire state of connecticut as high as over 560 000 in 2010 and you'll see those overall numbers for the entire state of connecticut has continued to decrease um in the last 10 plus years and if you look from left to
033right you can see that decline meanwhile the red the red line represents danbury public schools and so again this is our numbers as of and you'll see our numbers have continued to incline we had a slight pause in 1718 16 17 18 18 19 and then a significant jump in 1920 when we um experienced a significant bump of enrollment and fortunately for us that enrollment has continued to climb um as you're aware we are um at the 12 000 number as we speak and so the conversation about not only enrollment board but a different type of enrollment this is also from the it's pulled from the ed site data 21 2021 and we have a significantly higher percentage of english language learners in danbury as not only compared to the rest of the state of
034connecticut but even our um comparable districts milwaukee and stanford and you can see we almost double um norwalk in terms of percentage of english english language learners i mean almost triple that of stanford uh to two towns that are very much like danbury public schools not also and i i know it's been well chronicled here in the district i'm talking about how the district has changed significantly over the last 10 years and you can kind of see it here the number of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch has increased by 25 over the last 13 years this is important uh because typically um students who qualify for free and reduced lunch are identified as high need and require a different amount of support instructionally but also social emotional support as well enrollment with
035our neighbors and you'll see these numbers are very similar in terms of total enrollment students who qualify for free and reduced lunch very similar to those columns as well you'll also note my number is actually lower than norwalk and stanford in special education um kelly troost does an amazing job with her team keeping these numbers down for the district and our general-led um teachers and staff as well but it's our english language learners that continue to we continue to have very uniquely enrollment in our district it's very different from the for my neighbors and then per student spending in danbury and then those same neighboring districts and so again this is data pulled from this data this data source i don't think it's showing up at the bottom of the screen my apologies i'll they
036should make that adjustment this is pulled from the state finance project and uh like norwalk and stanford you'll see that we both receive monies from the state that also receive our share of federal monies as well but unlike norwalk and stanford locally they receive 85 of their monies from local taxpayers and they receive around 12 um of their total dollars from the state and three percent from federal grants uh we receive conversely 21 of our our monies uh from the state of connecticut and then approximate then 10 uh from the federal government and so in the now taxpayers are paying at 69 of our total revenue and so um we just wanted to wrap up before we got to questions on this note um annually like every year uh we are meeting with our lobbyists
037we had met with the lobbyists earlier in this school year a couple of months ago on behalf of the challenges and reimbursements we were hoping we are hoping to get for the purchases of chromebooks and the loss that we had taken with food services during the 1920 and 21 school year so we are optimistic that we'll have an opportunity to get monies through the city not exactly exactly sure how that would benefit the district but i would like to think if the money is going back to the city that positions us well one way or the other secondly build community support for budget requests and so after tonight and after the board has approved a budget my team and i we will continue to educate and inform the community and get feedback and just continue
038to just educate the community work with our subcommittee community relations committee hopefully and continue to get the word out about the budget engage the next bullet engage with city officials to evaluate and address short and learning some financial needs i shared with the board reece most recently that the mayor is very excited and embraced the idea of forming a task force specifically for this purpose um i'm sorry specifically for um helping to open and staff the new academy for us but certainly there will be opportunities to talk about when we will not only be talking about long-term goals but also short-term goals in order to get us there to open up that building successfully and then last but not least um certainly my team and i i i have an obligation to make sure we
039are working with all the revenues that has come into this district to minimize the ask of the taxpayers and maximize the various revenues that has come into this district we felt um very responsibly we've done that as part of our ask our ask was actually 12.8 but we feel like through through our grants um and in other federal dollars we're able to pay down on some of these requests and reserves i'm sorry reserves to paid on some of these requests which leaves us an outstanding ask of 8.7 million so i will just leave it there i will stop the share for right now understanding there might be questions but i'll be happy to bring it back up if the board would like me to um focus on any particular page rachel i have a question
040when it's appropriate go ahead joe um i'm not sure who this is for john kevin um i saw the transportation increase and john i agree if if the numbers have gone up so far then it's a good thing we we extended and locked in when we did is there any savings to be had based on what we didn't get this year from transportation we had a whole with a bunch of new buses that were supposed to be rolling in the fall we didn't get them and as far as i know we still don't have them um there's a whole bunch of routes that were supposed to be being run in the month of january a whole bunch of routes didn't get run and as far as i know we're still not back to 100 are
041we kevin i think we're still doubling and tripling routes in some spots um is there any savings to be had based on what they didn't deliver i mean i recognize everybody's got problems but you got a contract to deliver what you're contracted for or hopefully there's some savings to be had um i i expect savings uh in this year's budget uh coming from two sources uh one is uh the buses that we didn't run especially uh in early january uh it was really uh terrible to have to send out that message that we wouldn't have service on certain runs uh so of course we won't be paying for those and so there'll be a savings uh this year uh i've also called them in um and and they're agreeing to negotiate a lower billing price
042when if one of their drivers is out part of the day's sick and they cover it with another driver but they run it late uh we're not going to let them build the regular price for that it's it's going to be much lower and they've they've agreed to do that they do it in other districts uh but that also will be uh this year uh the budget for next year um is built that they'll have all the drivers and all the runs uh that we uh want them to so um there's there's no uh real savings projected for next year like when i'm talking yeah when i'm talking about savings i'm talking savings specifically from this year that hopefully we can roll into next year um and i'm also thinking especially about we were so
043we we contracted with them we came up with money to add a whole bunch of new buses right in september we didn't get those new buses as far as i'm aware we have the buses but they never wrote they never rolled those buses as far as i'm aware did we ever implement those new new buses or they were kevin i don't know if anybody knows right so the the new buses that i am aware of joe are the buses for brookfield obviously um but i think the additional fleet to help cut down on right you know cut down on the right student writer's time um i don't think we ever met the true number um i'll have to get the detail around that i don't know if john you know that offhand um but i
044don't think they i ever met the the exact number of people hoping to open up the school year with and i recognize it's hard it's hard to figure out when people are out with new buses and new routes and brookfield and everything else like it may not be an exact science i just wasn't sure if there was money that we were saving this year we could roll in that we're allowed to roll into next year's budget thank you anybody else questions from board members mr walleston so question just jumping with an opportunity joe i i i will look up this information to find out exactly what the number is that was uh contracted because i think that's what i'm hearing if yeah if the bus company promised 100 and they only did it delivered 90
045right of that number and make sure that we're credited in some way yeah that was really the question and and i recognize it's not an ex it's not an easy number to figure out because it might be more like 732 runs and we got 687 runs and then another day it was 822 runs so i recognize it's not necessarily a round or easily calculable figure thank you thank you um oh go ahead al i apologize man i'm sure i will yield to the chair go ahead oh that's okay um my question was uh for the 25 high school credit graduation requirements that's not something that's new i mean so are we after this year are we done phasing in the student classes that have that new requirement so that that's a great question um so
046this year is actually year two of the uh implementation uh so it was last last year's ninth grade group and so and now this is year two and so what we are finding um because and to your point rachel last year uh we had made a similar request and kind of had a bracket specifically for the 25 credits that was also under a seven period day schedule and so we made the decision to move toward a period day schedule to try to provide more opportunity for kids to meet this need and of course you need more teachers if you're offering more classes um and that's so it's it's more class opportunities to get to the 25 but then you need more teachers to make sure kids can meet the 25 and so some of the
047board members on this call we may here may have heard hey my you know yes high school has eight classes but we have a lot of too many students in study hall and we have too many students in study hall right now because we don't have enough subjects to to make classes available for kids to take and so that's why oftentimes we have them in these study halls so we would be able to fill up some of the offerings for students in this case as we continue to outfit the 25 credit requirements so right now we have a ninth grade class that's in that's in there um the ninth graders now and we hired additional teachers to help support 25 credit mandate for that group um this would help support another wave of kids that
048are coming in and so and there'll be another wave after that and i'm just asking like when will we when will we be suited to offer everyone the 25 right no no that's a great question no that's a great question and rachel i think part of the answer is i don't have the exact answer for you in terms of the math um but i think part of the answer is with this task force because one of the questions i was asked was you know can you give us the exact number it's going to take to open up the new high school um obviously and not to mention at the same time we need to have a number to support uh staffing for danbury danbury high school plus danbury academy um so we're going to need
049a little bit more time to have those exact exact numbers and projections but i i don't i do not believe we're gonna need this for the next three years if that's what you're asking i i don't believe that um i think we're gonna have to stop pause and reassess you know for the entire system as we move into the new building um so i just wanted to be clear about that point our issue is that we're continuing to get more kids at the same time so the enrollment has not been static you know since last year so the 25 credit mandate plus enrollment has just kind of exacerbated you know this challenge understood and and the federal funding piece that ten percent versus uh three percent in other districts is that high because of the
050one-time grants for covet or is is that in our our typical are we typically 10 in federal funding so this is um actually without without um without the american relief monies um so idea for you know special needs students um the titles the title grants title one through four those grants and for whatever reasons it might be eligible for free and reduced lunch it might be english language learners um it might whatever makes our district a little bit more unique we've qualified for more money than some of the other districts got it thank you welcome hi quick question for john john off the top of your head do you have the populations of uh stanford and norwalk versus denver well um you mean the people population the census um a year in 2020 had us
051said a population of 86 000 uh norwalk 91 000 and stanford actually grew to this our state's second largest city i think it's close to 120 000 but i i'd have to get you the exact figure there okay thank you any other questions i don't see any um anything to add from anyone any so rachel i'll just say teresa earlier um in our meeting in preparation for this meeting you know she she did bring up the point of towns like stanford and towns like milwaukee do have more um we're you know we're certainly closer to norwalk in terms because she was asking a question about why are we compared with cities towns like norwalk and stanford and so the state you know based on their algorithms um tell us that these are our districts most
052like us uh but to teresa's point she made a great point um you know i i i don't want to put words in her mouth but she thought it was somewhat unfair like a city like stanford as big as they are and john just kind of demonstrated that with 120 20 000 um in the community but but certainly those are the districts we are most compared to we're looking at this data so al thank you for bringing that up and theresa thanks for raising that point earlier yeah yeah kevin i just looked stanford's actually 135 at the 2020 census okay and norwalk i think is 91 i think that's about the number we're really close to norwalk okay we have to be compared to somebody right i mean that's it's kind of by default like
053you have to compare something yeah and we would much rather be compared to norwalk norwalk than bridgeport you also have to understand the differences is that we're going to say teresa well stanford look at the tank space they've got skyscrapers i mean right it's apples to oranges it's they got a lot more money a lot more businesses their tax base is huge compared to ours yeah i think that's no it's unfair that's a good point teresa um i've been a little frustrated on the other end that sometimes when we get um to the city level for these conversations we're compared to the new britain district for example which receives substantially more state aid than we do um and you know to that end like their their tax base is much lower than ours um and
054they're at a much higher mill rate so you know i i agree with you i it would be better if we could just go as ourselves and and talk about what we need from the state and what we need from the city but you know unfortunately we find ourselves in these conversations and we have to do the best we can i agree i agree thank you kate okay um if nothing else i will entertain a motion to adjourn uh we will be meeting so we will be meeting again next week if if need be i i just assume that everyone would like time to mull this over and then come back with any additional questions before we head into our meeting on wednesday the 9th yes kate can i answer a real quick question i
055know in years past that we've seen a different breakdown of the budget brought to us and i'm just wondering um you know sort of how folks land as far as the presentation we've seen tonight and and sort of what we're looking at versus previous year's information that we've seen you know what the comfort level is there and sort of yeah um previously in previous years all board members did receive a binder with kind of a more detailed breakdown i remember asking for that several times last year at this time um i don't know if that's something that would help board members i prefer it just because that's what i that's what i've always known um but i i think the the presentation was was comprehensive and easy to understand and very well laid out any
056thoughts to that yes you can put in front of me and give me to uh just thinking mull over in the bible i can stand from the public uh the better presentation i can also make to them would it binder be possible with a detailed as we have had in past years kevin yeah more data is not bad yes to totally agree i think i think we were prepared to have that data set available for the 14th submission i mean forgive me i haven't um i i'm just going by what i was told was done previously um has the board received it before typically the 14th submit the 14th means we submit to the city yes certain times all depends on the schedule yeah last year i don't think we had it for the first
057workshop like this i think we may have got it i think to the second workshop or the meeting one or the other i don't remember exactly which one why did rachel do you remember it might have been the meeting yeah it was it seemed late last year i i recall getting it earlier in the in the budget process in previous years we did but in previous years no one had ever heard of covid so i don't know how much that affected things last year i mean two budget cycles one was normal and one was covered but i just asked the question before we adjourn uh the presentation that was just when will we receive the information that we presented hi miss koopa i i actually just sent it um a few minutes ago okay and
058i know you was waiting to present it tonight but you know i like to you know unfortunately you know i think it helps me as a board member and i know that he was trying to put some figures and some information together uh to at least before we have a meeting to be able to look at this and digest it this is where i'm coming i understood but we do have next week um to to ask questions and certainly i think mr walston has an open door policy if you will um should board members have questions yeah my last comment is the financial structure that you're going to be putting together to give this budget to the city how is it how is it going to be different than what we have already seen in
059the from last night to tonight to get the community to say i will support this budget as far as the amount that we're asking the programs that are listed that were needed we're talking about uh the 21 uh versus 20 uh one credits that we need how is that money going to be intel and put in a in a frame so everybody can sort of understand what they're looking at at the budget so miss cooper i think that um kind of circling back what i had mentioned earlier about partnering with the community relations committee um and once this board has approved a budget that they're comfortable with we will begin with dr ann mead with john and presenting the budget to the community in a way where they can digest it understand it where we
060feel like we've done a good job educating the community um and and with those three strategies um hope and expect that the community will then uh be in support of our budget this year so we we we are very prepared uh to make sure we're out in front of the community uh with several engagement sessions um leading up to the april date where the city approves approves the budget or makes a decision on the budget i should say we will be out in the community trying to get feedback i'm sorry get support for this year's budget submission uh thank you and and thank um your entire staff for help putting this together it is very informative and i know it's not an easy job but i i thank you and and to me it's very
061important uh that the community so to understand those that are willing to listen as to how we go about going before the common council asking for an increase in dollars so i and i also like to thank the finance committee uh for their hard work and and supporting and and coming in the extra time to understand uh the budget a little bit better so i just want to thank you gladys anything else from anyone before we adjourn no motion to adjourn moved by joe all second seconded by kate all those in favor signify by saying aye