001call this meeting to order and hand it over to we'll start with kevin i'm sure you have a lot to enlighten us with sir i do i believe i do mr i believe i do good good evening everyone um and i'm happy to see everyone this evening and um but i i was really hoping to have an opportunity to prepare the committee for the workshop tomorrow night and speak to some of the overall budget drivers for the 2223 budget and so what i would like to do um is present put up on this share my screen with the subcommittee and john and i will speak to the items that are driving this year's budget i'll provide kind of the opening an overview if you will and then john and i will kind of tag team
002and then circle back at the end for any questions that the committee might have so please let me get this up on the screen [Music] i was just encouraged to close all of my things that were open on my screen and now i can't find anything okay here we go and so the the budget this year um for the for the board members um that are new to um this process with us i think you're going to find that tonight and tomorrow as we provide kind of an overview it's important it was important for us to kind of walk the committee and the board in the community through the history of on the approved budgets over the last number of years speak to the challenges that are before us in terms of staffing and ongoing
003enrollment growth and then immediately on the horizon what's ahead for the 22-23 school year and the budget that we feel like is appropriate to meet the needs of our kids and and improve student outcomes here in the district so let me just move on and so as part of that story and just kind of an overview of the presentation this evening and so for the board members that are not aware we receive danbury that is receives less funding per student than any district in the state of connecticut meanwhile enrollment continues to grow with the disproportion of those new students to the district requiring additional services like english language services and special education additionally growing enrollment causes our financial challenges to compound and i think that those things are well documented budget drivers that we'll be
004talking to talking about tonight aim to continue to continue our current operations while also enhancing services and of course this includes the opening of the amber career academy last but not least um without a significant increase on the district will struggle to meet its basic goal of staffing a new academy in 2425 and we firmly believe that this process knowing that we're not going to be able to drop in um 15 20 plus staff members at once we know that this is going to be very important that we do this we do this in a very staggered and incremental way and so these recommendations are addressing our needs now but then potentially could address our needs um as we move closer to open up the new academy and so i want to start with it
005and get straight to it um and the proposed budget for the 22-23 school year is 8.7 million dollars or a total increase of 6.2 percent but that number um also comes with a couple of asterisks that i want to walk the committee through and so the board history i'm sorry our budget history that i was referring to earlier and so over the last five years these are the approved budgets and approved increases that we received and so you'll see last year our increase was a little one to three at 2.87 2.54 the year prior pretty much flatlined in 1920 3.1 to in 1819 and 1.79 in 1718. and so these numbers in some communities might address their ongoing needs given the ongoing enrollment growth in our community and um i think the statement that many
006board members particularly our prior board members will hear is the number to keep the lights on is typically four to five percent and our contractual obligations oftentimes is at least four percent um and so receiving a number under four percent um positions us and challenges us challenges the school district significantly the budget drivers and i just wanted to outline those for the committee and so contractual obligations were started this is the greatest percentage of our school budget so our obligations um the the increase for our general fund will be 2.44 this year at 3.4 million um health insurance claims i'm sorry that's supposed to say claims it's a increase of 2.3 or 3.2 million transportation costs an increase i'm at 1.3 at a cost of 1.8 million john's going to speak to a little bit
007about that later special education increase at 0.15 or about a 215 000 increase for next year state mandates one of those state minutes include overhauling our k5 curriculum or literacy k5 that comes at a 1.33 million annually for the next three years so all of um districts recipient of alliance funds and alliance funding are required are required to um implement the new literacy mandate um in danbury's inclusion in that mandate our mandate plus enrollment 25 credits for graduation this is something certainly we had talked to the community about last year staffing before the 25 credit mandate continues those challenges at the same time enrollment continues so it's not just about making sure we have the staff necessary to make sure our kids can graduate with 25 credits which is an increase from 21 just last
008year but but now we continue to have more students coming into the high school which is just compounding the challenges at the building also as part of our feedback from our parent forums there's a outcry for enrichment and extracurricular activities families are asking for ways to engage their kids and address some of the social emotional and opportunities to socialize with other kids in a meaningful way so this is an estimated number at 200 across the district and then there are other items we currently have a security grant in order to realize we would have to budget for about approximately 250 000 certainly supplies is always part of a typical district budget and then some facility upgrades that we're also looking to make i meant 0.33 part about 0.33 of our budget and 1.4 million this
009total is at 12.8 million which i understand is different from the ask on the previous page but and our strategy would be we would apply grants for areas that are eligible so for example the k5 mandate is at 1.3 million um it is we we anticipate that the literacy overhaul will be eligible either an alliance eligible item or perhaps one of our federal grants that are expiring eligible our special education health insurance claims are two areas that have been parked in reserves for a rainy day with the city and so our strategy would be moving forward and to go to those two respective reserves uh to pay these two issues and the increase in total new dollars for 22.23 um and so and i'm sorry and then the same goes to transportation which we've also
010um feel pretty confident that there will be some eligible expenses those those two items will be eligible expenses and some of the grants that we um can spend down for this year um i'm sorry for next year and so with the subtotal is 12.8 at a 9.2 percent increase however once we apply the grants and reserves uh we would be looking at a 6.23 in general increase increase to the to the general operating budget at a total new dollars 8.7 million and then uh the bus the budget drivers uh with a little bit more explanation uh john's going to walk you through and then john and i will come back at the end for any questions the group might have john oh thank you kevin um salaries and wages you know as everybody knows are
011really driven by collective bargaining and what we do with the bargaining table the um you know if you're not at the if you're at the top step you're you're really the only uh group that's getting what we call the the gwi or the gross wage increase if we you know settle a contract for three percent and you're at the top step you're gonna get three percent increase but if you're not and you're at a a lower step you're gonna get the gwi plus a step so the younger teachers are more apt if we had a three percent increase for example they're more apt to get four or even four and a quarter as they they move up this the step function so our increase there is uh four percent um that's higher than uh we're
012settling our labor contracts for um but it's really to recognize uh steps and and we do have um many more uh newer teachers and younger teachers who are not at the top so that's why that number is higher than we've been settling for and we also at the moment uh have two or three contracts that we haven't settled yet we'll be doing that uh in the next couple months and for those uh we've put in a uh estimate of what we think uh they might settle for but um of course that will depend on on what happens and sometimes you know you can get to june 30th and and still not have a contract settled but at least this budget anticipates that everything will that should be settled by june 30th will be uh with
013um you know typical increases for what's going on so the next one the health insurance claims you know we self-insure for health insurance cigna is runs the program but the claims that are uh whatever claims are incurred that's what we actually pay so uh we also use a broker slash consultant gallagher many of you know of them they've been in a couple times in the last month or so they recommended that our employee premiums if you will go up a little more than six percent to pay for the increased in claims uh but there's also a lot else that goes into our uh insurance program aside from just paying the claims for example we with us we have an hsa program and our as the employer and through our collective bargaining agreements we pay certain
014amounts each year into those hsa plans so that that's added in also our our custodians uh you know they're not in that plan they're they're teamsters they have what's called a welfare fund that's a misnomer it's uh what we do is we pay uh so much uh per payroll uh to the teamsters and they take care of the the health and health insurance and what's there and then uh other things that go into it you know every year we have an open enrollment period like most employers some people may switch back and forth between employee only coverage or employ or employee family coverage and so when we go to put the budget together like you have in front of you it considers all of these things there may have been a shift from a year
015ago where we had more uh employee bluffs family and now we have more just employees so um that's why the the total increase of a 3.2 million may not be exactly six percent but it reflects all of uh the things i said and we can get more into that as we get into the you know looking at our budget uh in the next couple weeks the transportation uh the uh we do a combination there too of course you know our our biggest our contractor is sta um you the board had a did a very smart thing a year ago um extending that contract with four percent increases and uh who would have known that the districts now that are going out to bid or didn't extend their contracts they're seeing much higher increases the bus
016companies are under the same inflationary pressures as everybody else they now want more money they're having trouble uh hiring drivers too so uh that was a a smart thing um but we have a number of other things that go on besides just the uh home to school buses as they call it uh that you see we for example our special education transportation for kids who are placed out of a district we'll use other carriers we might use our our resk at advance uh to do some of that transportation you'll see those vans um you know with the sign on tops carrying school children and they're much more efficient than than sending a big yellow bus out of town that's a part uh there's other contractors like that connecticut transportation solutions between them and at advance
017there's probably six hundred thousand dollars of expenditures that go into that um and then we have a a bunch of other things uh that go on um for example uh we pay the money we pay for the monitors who ride on those special ed transportations those are um we they're their employees but we pay um you know for if we need a monitor on a bus they'll they'll hire them but but we pay for it and then we have things like the pre-kindergarten buses we have some wheelchair lifts some midday runs that go back and forth it's a pretty complex program and once again when we get further into the budget uh process we can lay out exactly what we did but we built this budget bus by bus from the ground up and um
018so that that's what you're you're seeing there so that that's uh also a driver um special education itself uh that's um very that's a very modest increase uh we uh spend close to probably three million dollars a year um that's not a lot for a district our size uh and that's not going up very much percentage-wise uh next year uh uh 215 000 i don't want to say only 215 that's um it's still a lot of money but it's a very small uh percentage increase um on the total uh see next page uh kevin mentioned the uh curriculum overhaul i think the uh important word there is that's a mandate uh that's been handed down to us from the state of connecticut uh as mentioned uh we're gonna try and spread that over three years
019to make a little easier on the budget and by doing that it would be 1.3 million uh each year and i'm sure carol will explain more uh what exactly uh we'll be doing uh my understanding is uh the first year will be the lowest of grades and and will move up from there the box that says mandate plus enrollment there are a couple things going on there when we say mandate there's a new the state board of education um determines what we what kids have to take or i should say the number of credits they have to take to graduate from danbury high school and and that's going up uh to 25. i i think it been 21 something before but more credits mean more electives that students have to take and you need teachers
020uh to teach those electives so we have to add additional high school staff to to be able to offer those things and then we've we just have rising enrollment um across the district particularly um students who english is not their first language so we need uh more bilingual teachers uh tesol teachers that kind of thing uh we'll explain more there um but we we you know we when enrollment goes up um you know we have to have teachers to teach that's stating the obvious i'm sorry um and as kevin mentioned the enrichment and extracurricular um you know we some of you have been on the family forums we've had we've had two of those they've been great we've heard some uh excellent ideas right and i think with dr ann mead um we've really gotten
021some good input from parents as to what uh they'd like to see i'll let kevin uh explain some of the details but they'd like us to have more things after school for their kids and and discussions i think have started with chip our athletic director uh is a intramural program first i think targeted at the middle schools and then trying to grow uh things from there won't be just sports uh but that's i think one of the uh the exciting things uh that they're planning on uh with this money so those are the drivers i i think that's the pages uh for me kevin yeah okay so preview of coming attractions thank you thank you john and so i just wanted to end on this uh just a reminder for the number and the ask
022then assuming that there would be questions um i can take the presentation down now but i'm happy to jump back in there if any questions and one of the committee members wanted to see a specific page mr chair can i ask a quick question please i'm going to assume that's a yes um i just uh first of all thank you guys i think that was really well laid out visually so thank you really quick on the increased enrollment the 2.2 million for the the credit mandate and for the increased enrollment this is anticipated enrollment that we're building in is this um building off of the increased enrollment we've seen this year can you just kind of give me a sense of um if it's if it includes planning for next year as well and it's
023it's both kate um it's acknowledging where we are now and then projections across the system k-12 of what we anticipate by the time we open our doors um in september okay thank you kevin are we going to get a presentation tonight on the k-5 curriculum uh overhaul or would that be for tomorrow night no to tonight and tomorrow was not going to be about the presentation on the literacy tomorrow uh mr russo was going to be a more comprehensive presentation on the budget um and so giving and and i'll ask john and eddie to make sure they can give you give you and kate at the very least kind of a preview of what that looks like tomorrow but really a preview on the budget meaning you know walking the community through our enrollment over
024the last five to eight years and how that's impacted impacted us relative to the monies we've received to operate the district it will kind of walk the community through our ask in the different revenue sources that are coming into the district and our ability or inability to fund initiatives and kind of mandates that we've opened up with tonight but but tomorrow will be more about the budget and just just kind of providing a little bit more information regarding the ask and providing that and certain providing that rationale not terribly different from what you've seen in previous years thank you kevin i have i have a question about the 20 new 25 credit limit what kind of courses are going to be created and the teachers needed to fill the gap between the uh 21 credit
025level to the 25 credit level yeah that's a good question so um i remember some of the courses um between karen kelly i'm sure they remember the the other ones um i know there was an increase for example in business courses that was required for students but i'll i'll just let karen kelly speak speak to that question sure it was around pe health and world language as well so we had to basically double up on some of those courses in order to make sure that that kids would graduate in time with a second health class for example so we used to have one one health course now there's health one and health two and so this year's junior class is the class that was a most affected by the was affected by the uh the
026change over to 25 credits and so um you know so each student from that junior class up had to take four additional credits before they graduated um and so so while this kind of started a few years ago we really haven't caught up with the staffing that's needed to make sure that um we get everybody to have those credits before they leave so the high school has been very creative with the way we've been grouping things and and scheduling courses and sections but we're definitely at a tipping point if you will of number of teachers being able to teach the number of sections that we need to make sure that we graduate everybody on time with the courses that they need so kara i'm going to share a screen real quick that might help with
027the outline sure and just kevin while you're doing that just add there was also the addition of a personal finance course under the new graduation requirements that is another course students are required to take that's the business yep right and this kind of just outlines the 25 credits and then the breakdown the breakdown in those 25 credits and where they could be pulled from kevin um do you want me to speak just briefly to the right to read legislation yes please i think that'll be helpful and yeah and and please also um care if you don't mind when we do have a curriculum committee um that certainly will be one of our bigger agenda items when we talk sure sure so um this past summer is passed as part of the implementer bill um legislation
028passed the the right to read legislation and so what that did is it it established um effective july 1st of 2021 um the the push to establish a center for literacy for research and reading success and so the department itself the state of connecticut department of education um has to create a center specifically dedicated to reading and reading research and success they're in the process right now of populating a committee in this center that will help to drive changes in reading instruction across the state of connecticut and so they're still in in this process of forming this but the goal is um to post a list of five research based literacy programs that meet um a particular criteria um that's behind that that falls in line with the science of of reading so uh one
029that is evidence-based focused on companies such as oral language phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary uh auto naming letter name fluency and reading comprehension so it's very specific criteria and so the center will evaluate several reading programs that they'll use to create sort of a cut list of acceptable programs and districts will have um you know by january 2023 to start coordinating and selecting their program and then by july 2023 danbury as well as other school districts will have to implement one of those programs and so what that means is that in this next budget cycle we'll we will need some funds uh to begin that process of purchasing curriculum over the course of next year to begin training um in readiness for a 2023 school year implementation whether or not that takes place in two
030or three year phases it remains to be seen it depends program that we end up selecting um and how complex that any training that's involved will be and how much in terms of staff we have to help implement and build capacity for the program um so we don't know how much this will be we don't know if if some of the items that you have on that we use now will be on the list um districts can can apply for a waiver so um you know if we felt that what we were already doing met the the test of of the criteria um you can apply for a waiver but um we you know we believe that there'll be we have a hunch of the five or six programs that we think will be on
031that list we're happy with some of our k2 uh phonics structured program that we have but we do believe that some of the upper grades will not make the cut in terms of the programming that we have so um we were in the process of looking to replace some of that and meet some of the uh the literacy uh changes that we've already started at the middle school level we were working backwards so we did put that work on pause a little bit when the implementer bill came out um to see what the state would produce um and so that we could just make an informed decision and wait to spend our monies uh when that list was posted so um we'll hear probably by the spring we'll have a better idea but but the
032deadline is july 202 for this for this new center to declare the programs that the districts will have to back into our cdt team which is a group of our curriculum administrators and our supervisors have already started to invite some of these groups in from these programs that we believe will make the cut score just to get a head start on getting familiar with what they have to offer and to begin to get a sense of how much this would cost our district with any one of these programs so we've already gotten with just a couple of programs that we've invited in to do demonstrations anywhere between two million and four million dollars um just in sort of the initial articulations with these groups so we're not again not quite sure how much this is
033going to cost but it is important to have a placeholder in our budget so that we're prepared to act when this list is posted and we select our program all right if you give them too much no one's going to want to go to your tv show oh okay i'll stop talking sorry i could go on all day i'll be with myself now she's excited about this work um kate i you asked a question about enrollment and um the projections if it's okay and we will share this information tomorrow as well uh but i just this is kind of an internal document on our kind of data for the district so when we look at these numbers um across the system and so this is kindergarten first second third all the way across and please
034just hold your eyes for a second um you're going to notice at the bottom it says grand total and then high enrollment projections these high enrollment projections are from our demographer and so i'm going to scroll all the way over and so these two numbers uh we're basing our budget on this 12 279 number um this is if all of our kindergarten classrooms um this is rolling up every grade so it can kindergarten students roll up to first first to second etc um and then anticipating that we get the same amount of kindergarten students that we got this year that number would be 12 279 which is about 279 more students than we have now the malone and mcbroom high um the high numbers um in terms of projections for next year by 12 346
035and as you can see we're pretty close to their highest um projection and so we're basing our budget on this number as of right now um hopefully we don't get this high this soon um but you know this as you can see we're kind of in that ballparks i just wanted to circle back on that question thanks mr watson 12 279 rather than what our we know it's going to be higher than that is that correct statement that is probably correct i yes thank you um can i ask another quick question in the presentation you guys reference needing to hit a certain level of funding to you know to ensure that we can properly staff the academy um in a couple years and the way that the the spending here is broken down doesn't really
036make it clear how we're how we're sort of implementing that um i'm wondering if you could if that's something that's better asked at the presentation tomorrow but no no i we're happy to um answer now okay at least the best i can anyway i know the team's thoughts are but um one we we have ninth and tenth graders um our ninth graders now uh are mandated to graduate with 25 credits next year we will have at least half of our 50 of our school requiring that 25 credit mandate and i think our position all along is we need to continue to hire additional staff to meet those demands um and if we wait until the end we don't i mean kind of given our history we don't think we're gonna get enough enough enough of
037an increase that all of a sudden we're gonna be able to drop an entire staff um in a new building and so our concern is number one to make sure that we can keep up with the current demands that we have which will position our which would position us when we need that last bump to open up the new school uh but if but if we continue to be if we're behind kate at least how we're seeing it if we're behind we're not going to be positioned to open up the new school um i'm happy to report um that the mayor is embraces the idea of having a task force uh to meet specifically on this item and so we will be looking to work with his office to schedule meetings really soon um and
038the committee might recall um i believe it dates back to 2008 when mayor mark had the 2020 task force from 2008 to 2020 so may esposito is very open to the idea has asked my office to start setting up meetings and so we will um carry is you know trying to pull the pieces together um i've axed um that we used the same template that was used in 2008 which called for two board members uh representative two council two council members um several people from um the from city hall including the mayor you know his chief of staff or or chief of staff you know a designated person um certainly someone from facilities that would be antonio uh someone from finance if that if he deems them appropriate um and then um i believe we
039had an nea represent representative at the meeting and then i had recommended that we also bring in someone from dsaa which is our admin union as well and then of course the appropriate people from cabinet to be at the table so it looked like the previous team was all the key stakeholders were at the table and my recommendation was that we do something similar to just make sure everyone is represented so we we all working on that and given you know the green light to move forward and so i'm i'm optimistic that you know we can land on a solution uh that makes sense for the city so they can do this in a in a way that's reasonable for their budget but also meet the district's needs thank you i'm sorry teresa kevin is
040the presentation for tomorrow night already prepared three shots with uh i i believe there's a couple of updates and fine-tuning ed and john would like to make uh to numbers um but i think outside of that there's not a lot that still needs to be done a little bit of polishing but mostly numbers just to make sure they're fine-tuned okay my point is that uh i was wondering if prior to the meeting tomorrow a few hours at least uh the board if you could send the screenshots to the board so we could have time to read up on them before the presentation i i personally would be better well-read to bring up questions and comments and concerns and congratulations if with a little more a warning and okay i'm not a big fan of seeing
041it once on the screen and it it goes away and i'm better prepared if if i can get to it ahead of time that's fair and uh i'll i'll make sure you have it ahead of time absolutely thank you sorry teresa i was just going to make a recommendation for that task force recommend contacting westcon and even naugatuck valley for representatives because they have business programs that would uh end up uh our students would probably go on to those to those schools so they might want a uh you know a hand in the setup i mean just a suggestion you know their dean or or the department chairs i'm that's where i come from okay no i appreciate it i appreciate it thank you anyone else catherine i see you in there good evening gladys
042cooper good evening i don't know who the unidentified zoom user is but maybe michelle um yep al that's me okay good evening to you all any additional questions ladies and gentlemen okay mr wilson yes sir anything additional sir or the next step yeah so next step um at least from my perspective is walk the board and the community through a more comprehensive presentation which will include how we've been funded over the last number of years certainly which will include our enrollment over the last couple of years kind of side by sides with districts that a lot like ours including milwaukee stanford how those districts are funded how we're funded and and really to help further justify the ask we feel like with our growing population which is certainly unique in the state of connecticut so
043we'll be finding ways to talk the board through that tomorrow as part of the workshop and the community um and it's we we just feel like it's really important for us to try to educate the community to the best of our ability um so that the board um and eventually the mayor's office city council can make an informed decision thank you sir thank you so that that's my long way of saying that's it for now mr moose at least from our side unless there are any more questions thank you anyone else uh if the committee finance committee subcommittee has nothing else to say i see rachel celeski and and on board gladys cooper rachel you are muted in case you have any comment to make for today well i i just want to say thank
044you for the presentation that everyone will help put this together it was very informative and i look forward to seeing there's a subcommittee do we need a motion to adjourn we'll see you all tomorrow night thank you mr rooster we'll get back to you thank you very