001um thank you for your participation and being on time good evening everyone we're so happy recording in progress right so happy to see everyone um your suggestions and your thoughts about our budget is really really important to us as we put the budget together um and so we want to hear from all of you so what i'd like to first do is go ahead and introduce our superintendent of schools and our director of finance and then we'll come back to me and we'll talk about some group agreements and then we'll move into the listening part so i'd like to turn it over to kevin if you would good evening everyone i'm happy to see our families on the call tonight as we have part two of this community engagement session try to get feedback from
002our families to help inform some of the budget priorities for the 22-23 school year so we are eagerly anticipating a rich discussion this evening and i'm genuinely looking forward to your feedback as we continue to work on building building our budget priorities behind the scenes so again my name is kevin wilson i'm your superintendent and i will hand it over to our chief financial officer thank you kevin and um i think grace is going to help me with a few slides um i just wanted to take a a minute or two um just to try and bring us uh all up to the same place so we have the you know the kind of the same working knowledge of the budget so that we um we'll have a better discussion i think that way and
003and also um along with that uh show you uh where you can make a difference uh in the process at what points time so uh the first slide uh next grace okay so um here in connecticut uh school public schools are what's called fiscally dependent and what that means is we depend on our city or town governments uh for our money um and as you know uh here in danbury that's done through the local tax levy or the tax bills that we get that's how uh we pay for our schools and uh so the city council sets the tax rate and they really um have a two different kinds of authorities one is on operating budgets and why not is on capital budgets we're going to talk tonight about the operating budget but just so
004you know the capital budget is uh that's why i call it the bricks and mortar there on the slide it's the big things uh the career academies some other bigger projects they may be things that the cities can issue bonds on uh they have absolute uh veto authority on those things so they call the shots and on the operating budget so including the school budget they can they cannot make line item cuts on what we're doing unlike with the police department budget or the fire department budget they could cut money for conferences or uh the amount of sand we're buying for uh the winter they can do that with city departments but for us they can only set the overall level of our budget and then the board of ed decides how to allocate that
005so if we were to ask for a hundred and fifty million dollars they might say we're only going to give you and then it's the board that would decide how to spend that 149 so that's that's kind of the background and our our budget and all municipal budgets start on july 1 and go to the following june 30th so what we're we have in front of us and we're starting to prepare is the budget for next year we'll call it but school that begins uh in late august uh so next slide grace so when we build the budget there's really um i like to say five component parts and i'll just say briefly what those are now the upper right the salaries and wages employee benefits most of those come out of our collective bargaining
006agreements almost all of our employees are members of bargaining groups or unions that's not unique to us here in danbury it's across connecticut that's been that way for a long long time so we bargain with our employees uh if you look um over to the left we also have some amounts of money that we look to our principals and our program leaders to decide how to spend this year uh we're giving them a per pupil amount uh based on the enrollment we're expecting they'll have in september so if the schools are expecting uh 300 pupils and we're giving them 65 dollars a pupil you do the math and and that's uh what they can make decisions on uh of course all their plans come up uh through us and the board of ed first but
007that that's a part of the budget uh and then on the bottom there um some of our costs are are fixed in uh in the short run i'll say uh we have a contract for example with the school bus company sta uh that has uh four years to run on it so um we can change it up after that but for now um there's we're kind of like it's a good contract but it's not something we can change too much uh next year um in the middle there we'll we'll also have things that i'll call uh one-time needs that come up maybe we have to do some work on in one of our school buildings or maybe a copy machine has to be replaced or a kiln in an art room for example the the
008bigger things like that really can't come out of the per pupil amounts uh because it would take away all of our principal's money and uh they wouldn't be able to do that the things that they they usually do so there's some one-time uh things that occur and then um last but certainly not least are what we'll call improvements and um they may come from the board of education's goals or the superintendent's goals uh we may have uh be introducing a new curriculum of for example uh in one of the subject areas or um maybe where um want to do something different with um uh graduation requirements and things of that nature so those are really um things that make us a better uh school system and you know you don't want to become complacent uh
009with what you have you always you know want to keep moving forward so those are the the concepts uh that we build it with and then uh grace if you go to the next slide let me just tell you what it looks like um i so when we put together this is our current your budget and you can see there that um most of our uh budget and it's the same in other uh public schools is is uh for salaries and and the biggest um part of that is our teachers that's what most of our employees are um but also in that line our salaries for the custodians and the um secretaries in the school the uh safety advocates uh everybody you see uh is right in there and uh right beneath that are the
010employee benefits that go with those so those are also bargained uh at the bar opening table but they're things like the employer share of social security that everybody has to pay or some things for workers compensation health insurance is in there that's that's the biggest thing in there but um they're kind of hard to change in the short run too both of these first uh two items because when you bargain uh with your unions it's uh you might have a two or three year contract so if you're coming up to negotiations you can do some changes but once you have one in it's a little more difficult uh than that um some of the other lot things that we this uh this is the way we regroup it this is the way um schools uh
011the state of connecticut like schools to do it um but will professional services um most of that are the uh tutors which are uh work with our special education youngsters uh over four million dollars of the six is for that um underneath that purchased our property services it's we didn't come up with these names uh the state does but those are that's to keep our our buildings and facilities are running in in good shape we might have some maintenance contracts say on our boilers or the elevators uh things like that um if we have to make repairs that's where we put that money but that's really just to keep things uh going well uh other purchase services that's a big number 16 million uh but there's only a couple things in there mostly are our
012contract with the school bus company sta uh that's about 10 million dollars and it's uh for both public public uh and non-public school students we uh we have to provide the same service to non-public schools as as we do to our to our own students so that's there as well as um you know some of our special education youngsters uh their disabilities uh we uh send them to out of district schools uh and uh uh that's about four million dollars a year uh that's in that line too so the transportation uh the special intuitions takes that out and then as you get further down uh the supplies um those are the things your uh if your children are in elementary schools that's what they use uh every day in the classroom they're consumable uh for
013the most part but also uh textbooks are in there um things uh other supplies like electricity is considered a supply uh believe it or not um things that also for our athletic teams uniforms and all that all uh in supplies uh right now our our program improvement line is for technology um some of the computers that we want to have you in your children's hands that's where we put on more servers and things like that that we need in the schools work that's a improvement of a million one there and then finally we have some money for dues and fees and teacher training and those kind of things but so i i think that the point i'd like to leave you with is um a lot of this is uh hard to control it in
014the short run but there are areas uh where we can make changes uh fairly quickly and change priorities and and things like that so um if you want to go to the next slide grace there with those two uh concepts that um this is what we're trying to do we're trying to make our budget transparent um make it uh fair from school to school to school uh stable and and timely and number six there when i mentioned uh some of the improvements we try and line up uh what we're doing with the goals that are set down for the district the strategies and things of that nature so uh maybe the next slide gray sets uh there should be one on the timeline isn't there somewhere there it is okay that's better than looking at
015a picture of me right um so uh let i'll just walk through here but let me the important thing is where you you can um i think make a difference you see uh in the bottom left there uh that's what we're doing all day today uh trying to put the finishing touches on a preliminary budget um that the superintendent and his cabinet can look at uh get ready to send to the board that's right around the corner that'll start next week and then uh before the middle of february there in the upper left that spending plan will be presented to the board of education they'll take a look at it but that's a point where i think you can um make a difference if there's uh things in the superintendent's budget that you support um
016it's our board likes to hear uh from you as they make decisions um there if you have other ideas you can email uh the board they'll be read at the board meetings or you can speak uh to them and and that's a good time because what happens is the superintendent's budget becomes the board budget at a certain point um we have it down there um the middle of february uh it's their budget so if there's things that are important to you that's a good time uh to let everybody know and uh so we send it to the um the city council and as i uh mentioned they control they decide the level um and that's a good time to be heard if if uh we think that they're not gonna accept it uh as is
017and um you know city councils uh they like to tinker a little bit to put it mildly but that would be also a good time to be heard if if you support something or want a budget to go through as presented um you can be heard at those meetings too um so that's that's the um that's a summary of it i we could take some questions now or and whatever um whatever you think should come next okay great thank you so much john i think that was really informative for our families that are on um our meeting tonight and giving them an understanding of how this whole process plays out i'd like to welcome those new folks that have joined us in the last couple of minutes while that presentation took place and so we'd
018like to hear from you now um you know what's your hopes and dreams for your children and how might this budget um reflect some of those and so if you can all stay on zoom we won't have anybody that's um creating feedback and then um at the bottom of your screen you should have a raised hand feature that's part of the reactions and you can just press that and then we'll call on you and um if you can keep your suggestions under about 45 seconds that will be helpful in that way everyone that's here can um get in so go ahead i see our first family the ron rontos up there go ahead hello welcome welcome thank you so we wanted to chime in here for the budget because um we want to make sure
019that there are items in the budget that help all learners you know we understand that the achievement gap is one of the goal you know closing the achievement gap but we want to make sure it's closed in the right way not by letting um the kids who are at grade level just stagnate there and and um and bring and bring everybody else up we want to make sure that all the children um in their their programs to make sure that children of all levels excel and that the you know the funding is in that way equitable across all students in all uh you know student students who need support even if they are at grade level or above so one of the um you know danbury public schools our vision is to aspire to advance
020all learners to their highest potential so what we really want our district to look for like steven said is one of our priorities to be increasing the acceleration for all students um you know we need to make sure what we are doing for the students who already can access the curriculum to advance those students just as well as the students who are are not accessing the curriculum just yet because personally we have students in all three grades in all three schools elementary middle and high school and we found that that is sorely lacking across all three school levels and maybe that's a place where it fits into the program improvement category john that you were talking about which is only 0.8 i mean it's a minuscule fraction the bus company is 10 million out of
021district support for special ed 4 million i mean those dwarf anything that you know program improvement expenses uh that are in there so maybe a little more funding for those kind of things would be appropriate and by doing that hopefully we can get more um the budget can go directly to servicing students in our district thank you for your thoughts those are wonderful thank you another family got some new families on here don't be shy we can wait go ahead and i'm oh god i'm sorry that once is family i i'm just wondering if uh mom or dad any had any specific recommendations in terms of the type of supports you'd like to see in schools go ahead you can yeah go ahead and unmute there we go um we'll look i just put you
022on the spot no no it's um it's perfectly fine i guess specifically across all three um you know all three school types elementary middle and in high school having more um more enrichment activities when i say in richmond i meant an academic enrichment without looking for more sports or in another art class um we we want the kids to who can and want to be challenged to be able to be um and not have uh as teachers what teachers keep telling us is that they are spread too thin um and they they have to take care of you know their their attention and their um ability to handle um you know bringing everybody together um is spreading them too thin so support for the teachers to let them um support the kids who who need
023more of a challenge we understand you know in the middle school like there's the eighth grade advanced math and then in high school there are the honors and ap courses but you know even starting at the elementary level and middle school just more opportunities for these students who are excelling and who are meeting the standards already what are we doing for these kids to um further excel their education and not just you know doing the bare minimum because they get it and they get it easy and quickly we need to really strengthen and challenge those students okay thank thank you thank you for finding that additional clarification i appreciate it absolutely minnie you're up next where'd you go okay okay hi well good evening so um one of the questions i joined late i had
024technical issues i guess but um i did miss out um on the first part but my question was i we all know there was learning losses that did happen simply because we were in a pandemic i know there's monies put away for that um how um how are you addressing that kevin do you want to go ahead and take that one right so i i think i can start with how we've invested our monies um the from the american relief um [Music] fund monies so we invested considerably in student support specialists across our schools which was providing intervention throughout many of our schools across the district we we hired 15 14 or 15 additional elementary teachers across our schools to help reduce class size certainly it helped to reduce our numbers for social distancing but
025also you know helped improve class size across the schools as well [Music] the same for the the same is true of the high school we we hired 15 additional teachers actually 15 plus additional teachers at the high school we went from a seven period day to an eight period day um again this helped reduce class by class size by three or four students per class this is not by any means is this not to minimize the fact that our school is still overcrowded um but the investments uh were made nonetheless and then finally uh we had considerable counselors and pupil support staff um also we invested in uh with these monies to help us provide you know additional social promotional support across the system so the the investments were considerable and part of our effort
026over these next few years will be to make sure we don't lose this additional staff and investments that we made um and continue to advocate for a budget where we can keep those those staff because the the impact is going to be over several years it's not just going to be over one or two years thank you kevin thank you thank you thank you next up we have mr blanco if you'd like to unmute yourself and if you want to show your camera there you are yep you thank you uh well first um i want to just thank you for doing this uh you know one of the great things that i think about the uh pandemic has been this opening up of technology and making it so that more of the community can be
027um involved in in these processes um so that being said i just have a couple of concerns the first one actually kevin kind of already addressed which is you know i know we've uh received a lot of money because of the pandemic emergency funding that came through my concern is how do we sustain that going forward so you know great investments were made in you know support specialists like you said i think the idea of opening up the kindergarten building was a tremendous idea and a great one and one that hopefully you know carries forward but sustainability is you know partially going to be dependent on the funding and you know that funding was temporary and it's going to run out um relatively quickly um so my concern is one how are we planning to
028you know maintain these programs going forward um and then secondly just along the same lines as the initial comments about uh enrichment programs um gifted and talented programs and and things like that uh that can benefit our students in a general in in broad way but not just academically i mean uh the academic piece is great but i do think that you know arts programs and and things like that um to supplement what's already happening in the in the school buildings uh are great for for the students as well and i would like to see us find more ways to invest in in that thank you great thank you mr blanco those are wonderful thoughts and minnie will go back to you you had your hand up again no that's a mistake sorry okay okay
029who else would like to raise their hand and give us some thoughts about our budget a couple of new folks on here an educator we can wait you know that good old wait time that we do go ahead mr mrs rontos i i just thought we'd share since no one else was raising their hand um but what kevin was saying about the money for staffing that we got for emergency funding with the interventionists and the counselors i definitely agree that we do need to find a way to hold on to that staff as well as find some money in the budget to allocate more funds to get more of those step both staff members my understanding at the high school hundreds of students are allocated to each counselor so um especially now you know with
030the pandemic and going forward we need more guidance counselors thank you for that thank [Music] you all right and mr blanco go ahead it's going to be generating ideas no just thinking of one other program that i would love to see continue um is the fact that all the students uh got chromebooks that they were able to take home um and you know developing more professional development opportunities for the faculty to be able to leverage that tool in the classrooms but also at home and then you know connected to that as much as possible to do things for the families in the district so that we can learn better how to use those tools and how to support our students in using those tools wonderful thank you and and i appreciate those points um we
031we are exploring ways to figure out how to do just those very things particularly ways to use technology to connect our parents um in a more efficient way and effective way with our parents and for some fluid conversations we want to capitalize on those gains that we've made and building partnerships with our parents are in a pandemic um and i i just want to echo your sentiments because i i feel like this is an aha moment for us um you know i'm hoping we're on the the back end of the pandemic right now but you know we made significant gains during the pandemic i mean we're reaching we've reached families in ways we've never reached them before um we're going to build on those partnerships um and the one-to-one device initiative is john will tell
032you we i think and hope i think we've secured a grant to bring in um additional laptops and chromebooks into the school community um and this is an investment uh we are committed to um there are other investments that need to be made if we're going to get better um so i i appreciate that recommendation as well right so we have a question that's come in on our google forms and it says how can parents advocate for increasing the funding we receive per child put that out there to anyone that has any thoughts on that i'll read it again how can we how can parents advocate for increasing the funding that we receive per child john i think john i think john pointed out some ways on how families can do that earlier um i
033i my connection is unstable so i'll get out the way and let the experts speak to it okay go ahead john um and i i just a clarifying point are they speaking about the per pupil allocation that we've given to our schools to make uh site-based decisions or the um the per pupil amount we get as a district as a whole they'd be um i think different answers depending um oh i guess we don't know since it came in on email right yeah so let's let's address both i think it's the second one grace is giving me a uh it's number two or the agreeing that's addressable the the person didn't specify so i think that's a great idea sure so the uh per pupil allocation or base allocation um this is uh really the
034first year um we're we're trying to make um put the decisions uh closer to the students closer to the teachers having um really empowering our principals more than they have been before part of it is you know this central office has other things they really need to be thinking about you you heard about the uh how do we sustain these things going forward that's what we need to spend our time on here and what we've done is we've um we've looked pretty carefully at the amount and we think it um it provides not only for uh the existing program that we have next year but also uh gives the principals some flexibility uh if things change and you know we're still uh eight months away from when school starts so they'll be able to react
035and and assist their teachers um and it's a little more i th it is more than they've had before um particularly at the uh the high school level so i think i would ask for some uh patience this year um if we see it's it's not enough for not doing uh what its objective is uh we'd be the first ones to change it and i would say um to specifically answer the question um work through your principle at your school and um you know we need to hear from them too so uh together if you know there's an idea uh we'd like to hear it um the overall uh per pupil spending um that's what we need to um talk to the city of council about that's it's important that they hear what's on your
036minds too um for the same reason um this these new things that are that are really making a difference that we need to sustain they're funded with with federal dollars as the superintendent pointed out but they're not going to last so the idea would be to gradually increase the school budget not in a large amount one year but gradually over time so um maybe a little more than the inflationary increases that we'd be inclined to get to do better we need more so i think those would that's how i would answer that question great john can you elaborate a little bit more on um the uh what parents can do at a state level to advocate it might be a parent education piece that we need to think about bringing the connecticut finance project in
037um to speak at a higher level with our families here tonight um as to what they can do but can you think of some off-the-cuff things that um parents can do at a state level to help advocate to bring more money back into denver yeah so um the the state budget you know which includes uh money for education the money that we get um it's the way it works is the governor will propose something uh but then our our state representatives really have a can make a difference so whether it's our uh our state rep or the state senator here um just emailing them or calling them and saying they support something uh or you you think uh we'd like to get more money they they can be very very effective uh and lobby for
038our cause so i i think that's that's what i would do as a parent um let them hear from me i don't know uh kevin if you if you think there are other ways or that's there's a better way than that because it is uh state money the federal money is kind of a one-time deal uh that came with the uh because of the pandemic but uh on a regular basis um you know education is a state function um not a federal function or entirely a local function so i think i'd look in that direction kevin did you want to comment on that no no and i'm okay okay all right i'm having a hard time okay all right let's go back over to the rontos i think they have an idea or a thought
039on this go ahead but i wanted to respond to john's point about the funding being you know on a state level because my understanding that danbury gets either at the bottom or the lowest per student funding in the state of connecticut i mean you know again maybe that's not exactly right but i think you know we can't say that we receive um our share of the funding per student given the growth in danbury over the last few years and we need um whether it's the board of ed or john i'm not sure you know how you integrate into this whole thing but we need some guidance and leadership you guys you know send us stuff let's start let's start organizing so we can get you know to the state level and bring like you said
040bring more money home for our students so we can get these programs and support that we need whether like we said whether it's academic or artistic you know we need um funds here in danbury for our kids and uh we need some leadership so i don't know who needs to start that it's a board of ed thing or it's a um you know it's a another group but we need to do it the uh funding f um the the per pupil amount that you're speaking about it's called the uh net current expenditures per pupil that's the one uh we're all we all talk about all the time it's supposed to uh equalize uh and put every school district kind of on the same accounting basis so they can compare but what it does is it
041it tends um the smaller districts uh generally have a higher per pupil because there are certain things that you have to do no matter how big you are and you don't have as many uh pupils to spread that cost over so uh and on that on the inverse the larger districts like ourselves uh are spreading some of the you know for example there's um one business manager one athletic director one high school principal uh spread over uh in our case almost or 12 000 pupils so the amount per pupil um the the larger cities uh and towns are generally towards the bottom of that but you're you're absolutely right um we uh we need to bring that up and i think uh some of these ideas that we've talked about uh for example the improvements
042uh some of the new things um that's where we really need your help uh convincing um you know the budget makers the city council that it's important and it's time and uh it's money well spent so um i know i said it before uh but i think letting the city council also here helps us a lot great thank you john did we have somebody else that raised their hand nope i don't see anybody okay so we'll probably come back to that thought in a minute but um in the meantime we have another question that has come in um on our on the sheets that people were able to submit what exactly does the money per pupil pay for and does that change the way title one funds are allocated and spent um okay so i'll
043take that one um the chart the page that you saw with the line items i know it was kind of a boring slide um so with what the state will do is they'll say uh every city in town is a little different in terms of who pays for what um for example some schools may for pay for crossing guards in another city the uh their police department employees or um nurses and some places they're city employees some places are not so what the state will put out some guidelines and they'll say okay at the end of the year what did you spend and by the way if you had some things that your city did um we want you to add that or subtract it or if you got federal monies you should add or
044subtract it so in the end that per pupil is really the instructional cost um it takes out uh for example if we had bonds uh to pay for the uh the career academy that that wouldn't count it's really your your operating budget uh per pupil that that you have there um that does not affect um the amount of federal money that you get um those most of our our federal monies that we get year in and year out are entitlements that means that everybody is entitled uh to a certain amount of that federal money um there are formulas that are based on your demographics your size uh but uh i think many of you probably heard of the title one uh program that it helps teaching um mathematics science uh english in certain schools uh
045all the cities and towns get that whether you're bridgeport or darien or anywhere else but some get more than others but the point being that those formulas are not dependent on your your school budget and and almost all of our our grants are that way there's some for special education and other purposes however there also are um other grants competitive grants uh based on uh how how you're going to spend the money uh who you are that kind of things we uh we anytime there's a competitive grant that we think we can uh we have a chance for we're applying for it and we have a bunch of those it's it's not as much money but you know every penny uh helps so um i i think that answers it that's what the per pupil
046is it doesn't affect our entitlements right and and and i will i will just say that regarding title one uh specifically anyway um that allocation is determined by the the percentage of students who are eligible for free or reduced launch and to john's point that does not have an impact on the uh per pupil expenditure it's separate it's you know federal monies available made available by the federal government to our school district and the schools are eligible again based on the percentage of students eligible for free reduced lunch and comes to the districts as a supplement to those schools great so that's all the questions that we have that came in um from the general public i'd like to route it back to anyone here on tonight's meeting that would like to make a comment
047or share with something oh grace just sent me we have one on how much of the budget is put towards mask protective equipment and code related needs um okay i'll answer that one um so we we've gotten three really three um federal grants uh they're managed down through the states uh you probably most of you may have heard the name of the cares act that came around what came out really right after our first lockdown in march of 2020. that is was to buy a lot of ppe if you needed to to buy some of the uh student chromebooks and things like that uh and then we got a a second rank uh you'll hear us calling them essergrants uh educational something something something um we got a 11 million dollar grant for that that's
048spread over uh two years and um much of that uh is used for those kind of things as well as uh some of the items that um the superintendent mentioned and then there's a third grant also called esser they call it sr3 and that can be used for those kind of things the the school operating budget isn't being used for those kind of things um but quite frankly we we don't need to because we're we're getting all this uh additional money for that as are uh other schools other cities and towns same thing right thank you for answering that so i'll give it one more round if anybody else has any other thoughts or questions no so i'd like to thank my team grace estella from our morris street frc and carmen for our parent
049educator at morris street frc for working so hard to get families here and to help put this together and the powerpoints and get everybody on board and i'll put in our addresses our email addresses where folks can contact us or send suggestions and kevin i'll turn it back over to you if you'd like to finish up the night and so i i would like to thank everyone um i'd like to start with the team the staff uh for for helping get us through these evenings uh and and trying to elicit feedback from our families i mean community members regarding uh what they feel are some priorities and how we should be prioritizing our budget um to to help improve outcomes for our kids um and then um and and and secondly um i just want
050to thank everyone for their participation these last few days i know we have a couple of families who were here previously i want to thank you and then i know we have some new family members here this evening and i want to thank you we will make every effort to make sure that your priorities are you'll be able to see your priorities in the budget that will be presented to the board in the community um grace and anne are recording um all of the comments and the team and i will be looking at looking at those recommendations by you and finding ways to incorporate them in the budget recommendations and so we will from from this meeting on we will be moving really fast we saw a timeline posted earlier we'll be looking to submit
051our budget to um to the city of danbury no later by no later than valentine's day and recording stopped and then we and then officially i believe it's in late march and when the city will approve or or not approve of our budget so we're looking forward to the process over the next couple of weeks and months we'll be looking forward to further educating the school community about the budget and and how you can help and so um your advocacy i believe is also important whether it's with our local board of ed or on city council as well um and and i i think it shows and i think again the gains that we've made the connections that we've made during the pandemic um i feel like we can continue to gain the support that
052we need um to get the budget um that that the city deserves uh so thanks again for everyone for joining and we will see you soon uh we will have a whole bunch of meetings next week um titled finance um on monday and tuesday the 31st and the first uh so thanks again for joining us tonight you