001so here in connecticut um unlike in some other states are um our money comes from our our city or our top our city and um in that regard it's really the it's the city council that sets the tax rate and they determine how much money we're going to have along with some state money that comes in but it's uh it's what's called being fiscally dependent uh we depend on the city for our funding and what what a board of education does is they adopt and set a operating budget as opposed to capital spending now capital spending uh the city's in charge of i use the term there uh it's really the bricks and mortar uh the big things for example the career academy that's coming up uh that's something the city uh provides but the
002um the board of education itself does uh its operating budget we could call it the school budget and that's for the 12-month period that begins uh july 1st our our financial year uh goes from july 1st uh to june 30. so if we look at the next slide okay this is a little snapshot of our our budget this year and um it i think one of the most important points to make is that um almost all of our budget or the lion's share uh is salary and and benefits the um and you know i say to people sometimes if you think about it when you were in school and you were in the classroom uh what was in there that cost the most money and that almost the only thing was the teachers so there's
003um you know almost uh 58 of our budget is is for staff and the benefits that go along with that you know many of you probably know in local governments including schools salaries and benefits are are negotiated uh with our unions at the bargaining table it's a mandatory topic so uh you know what the kind of health insurance we might offer or uh other benefits those are kind of fixed too in the short one as union contracts are set for maybe three year periods it's hard to change things up unless you sit at the bargaining table uh but we also have a uh the next category down another almost five percent uh comes from uh we call them purchase professional services but in there you'd find um just to give you a couple of examples
004uh most of the tutors that we use for special education are in that line um you'd also find some of our legal expenses and technology services and and things of that nature they're in this what we call the 300 lines uh the next line down the purchase professional property services um there you would find i just want to make sure you some good examples uh some of the repairs we make maintenance contracts um even things like taking our uh refuse away and [Music] things like that just to keep our our buildings running uh okay uh every day uh and then you'll see a couple other big lines that come up the the other purchase services eleven and a half percent uh that's where we put our transportation contract for our school buses that's a five-year
005contract that we signed up with our bus company that's in there also as many of you know some of our special education youngsters are placed in out-of-district schools those amounts are in there as well as um you know for any students that might attend one of the states um faux ag programs in high school uh the tuition for that is also in that line uh supplies uh are exactly what you think they might be uh they could be instructional supplies and teachers use in the classrooms or uh textbooks if we replace textbooks you'd find them in the supplies but also things like electricity the state would like us to call that a supply these are all uh categories that the state of connecticut asks that we use and and talk about a certain way so
006the fuel to heat the buildings or propane that goes in our school buses i mentioned electricity uh even the supplies that we use uh in our high school sports program uh uniforms and balls and bats and all that uh come out of that line uh we have a line for program improvement uh you can see it's um almost one percent um and that's um that's actually where we put um equipment and copier leases uh things of that nature um that's where we put our uh mandated adulthead program uh appears in that line and then finally uh at the bottom dues fees uh staff development staff development that's a training for our teachers uh that's also in that line so that gives you kind of a uh a snapshot of about uh how much we spend
007uh not how much that's how much we're budgeted uh to spend this year in the different categories so um you know the question is you know we want to hear from you um what what should we uh what would you like to see us do uh it would be in in one of these categories but let me first um just go through very quickly uh the calendar for putting it all together for next year and to show you a couple of periods where i think you can make a difference where it's probably uh most important um to speak up and and let us know what's uh what's on your minds uh so and if you go to the next slide well that the the budget calendar uh you can see we've already started it's a
008it's a long process uh before christmas we sent uh instructions to our principals and program leaders uh giving them uh some amounts of money that uh we'd like to see them decide uh how it can be best spent uh those decisions are all due back uh later this month so um certainly speak to your your principals in your schools uh if you think there's something um in particular they uh they uh ought to know or you'd like them to hear um some of the money some of these decisions are coming up uh this year uh right from the principles so it's a it's a good time now uh to talk with them um and then you'll see uh we're right now we're we're projecting all our wages and salaries uh for existing staff of the
009people that we have now i mentioned you're on union contracts and benefits and things like that not a lot of input you can have there or on the next part down uh some of our fixed costs i mentioned what those are uh but here we are tonight um at our first of two forums and um so if you have somebody we're going to hear from you uh in a few minutes uh but we haven't yet put the budget together so this is very timely um as we're getting everything back if there's something we should add or or think about this is the perfect time to let us know because next week we start to meet with i call them the preparers the principals of the pro program leaders and we'll ask them what's in your
010plan what is it you want to do with the money we've allocated to you um and so that's when we really begin to put together what what we'll call the superintendent's budget at that point so if you go to the next slide well i think continue uh we're gonna have another uh forum uh january 27th and then it's after that that we complete uh the superintendent's budget and that's uh that's a budget that then goes to the the board of education the uh you can see it right there uh early february we'll be preparing it so once again this is this is the right time to hear from you and uh what our board of ed will do they have as you know they have different committees they have a finance committee that will get
011a good look at this probably the the first close look at it once it's presented to the board and then later on next month uh the work the full board of education uh will take up the budget they'll adopt a budget but in that in that period in february that's a good good time too to let us know what you think it could be uh to put to support something that the superintendent has already put in or if there's something you think should be in it isn't uh that's the time to uh to let us know we want to hear from you uh because in late february uh the board will adopt the budget at that point it goes from being the superintendent's budget to the board's budget and that's what goes over uh to
012the city uh we're targeting march 1st at that point so that the next slide just a little bit about um the different parts i i mentioned them i won't go uh won't repeat what i said earlier but our uh we've we've changed our budget process around a little bit this year and uh based on enrollment projections uh the the number of uh students we think will be in our schools in in september or late august elementary principles we'll be getting for expected pupils uh middle school students uh middle school to get 75 and the high school 85. uh as you know the middle schools and high schools are a little more uh complicated to run there's more electives more things going on uh they're just more expensive to run there you see those different parts
013i won't go into those again we may at the bottom there we may have some one-time special needs things like maybe there's a a kiln in an art room that needs to be replaced or a copier machine some of the i'll say the bigger ticket items that you need to do it wouldn't be fair to try and take them out of a per pupil allocation because that would take away most of the money that the principal might have so those are the uh concepts if we could just maybe there's one more slide to kind of set the stage here these are the component parts you you just saw um just to repeat there's the the salaries and wages that come from the union contracts the base allocations that's what we're calling those per pupil amounts
014they're for consumable things learning materials i talked about the fixed cost some of the improvements uh those will be things that uh either come right from our strategic plan or uh perhaps from the board and superintendent goals uh that are set down if they do require some some financing they'll get added in and then you see there at the end the one-time occurrences that i just uh talked about so um hopefully this gives you a kind of a working uh base we can have a good discussion uh as well as i i pointed out some places where i think uh hearing from you would be the most uh effective and i think where you can influence the process the most so uh questions on the process the timing [Music] what we're doing [Music] i know
015it went kind of fast but get to where we could talk a little bit john i think that was a great presentation to really set the foundation of what we're doing or what you're all doing on uh crafting this budget and so now what we'd like to do is hear from all of you that that are in our audience um members of our schools you're the important families that can help us um direct how we're going to craft this budget so i am going to set a couple of quick guidelines to this part of the program um i'd like your suggestions and we certainly value them we'd like to keep them to at least just 30 seconds so that we can get through everyone um that would like to share so on the bottom of
016your screen under reactions you should have a little um hand wave if you'd like to put your hand up i'll call on you and please feel free to um give us your suggestions you can also just put your hand up to the screen and i can acknowledge you um like that as well just to let you know we are recording this tonight hatters tv is also running this live um for those folks that wanted to watch it and not be part of the zoom meeting and that we will be tracking all of your suggestions on a chart that we'll be sharing as well so i'll start off with um oscar fuller and if everyone else can mute themselves so we don't get any uh feedback that would be great so oscar would like to hear
017from you uh just a very quick question uh how does uh our per student expenditure compare to other school districts around the state great question and john or kevin or ed if you'd like to take that i could do um it it doesn't um rate very well right now um the last time i looked uh we were number 169 out of 169 uh cities and towns the corsat spending figure the state does does it a certain way you don't just take the budget divided by your number of students but it is it is a uniformed way uh that every every school system uh follows [Music] thank you for that question that was good for someone to ask that i'd also like to introduce to part of our finance team our deputy fiscal officer eddie miranda
018is also with us tonight so just wanted to introduce the team i think it's important that people put a face uh with a name so another question from our group there he is good and another question from our group or another thought of how the money should be spent okay juanita harris go ahead thank you and um i just want to piggyback on the first question um i just want a little bit of clarification with the um giving of monies per pupil elementary level middle school high school we've experienced historically over the years that we have numbers that go up and down as students are enrolled in our school system and certain months during the year we do have a large number of students that come in how is that money distributed at that time
019as those numbers creep up or decrease john can you take that well that's an excellent point um [Music] timing is hard you know as i mentioned our our school year starts july 1st um as you saw we you know our board will work on its final budget in february so that's a full you know six or seven months before the students start arriving and and even when they uh they do begin to arrive in august and september it's really october 1st is the date we take our official count for the state of connecticut counting how many students we have and what grades and things like that and you know by october a lot of plans are in place you know if you're a teacher and you're you're getting ready for your your class to come
020in uh in the fall you're going to be ordering uh for them in this in the summertime if not a little earlier so when we do get unexpected changes in in a class size or something like that we we do have uh some money uh to help um with those changes not a lot um we gonna try and stick with it but i i think if it were um a dramatic change i i don't i don't think we'd be taking money away from a school we'd probably look to see if there's something else we could do uh maybe curtail some other budget or maybe there's a budget that we realize is is more than we need at that point and try and pull from some other place the district to help with those uh fluctuations
021uh this is the first year we we've done the per pupil uh so it probably will take a year to two to get get it really uh going well at least that that's our initial thoughts great thank you juanita for your question um we'll go to janice next uh hi can you just explain what does that per pupil go toward is that for supplies per pupil or i'm just not fully understanding that thank you and thanks for doing this okay so i'll call it um per pupil or or base allocation i like to describe it this way it's for the current programs and services next year but there's some uh discretion that the principal has um [Music] you know they they're if there were a change in the program or additional services uh to come
022if you saw from my uh i know i went kind of fast but we would budget for those centrally either as an initiative um one of the goals or uh maybe even a special need so um it's really to give the principal uh the ability to make decisions close to where they need to happen those are the best decisions so that if a teacher needs something uh or something um is is different than we planned the principal can adjust for example if they had uh budgeted money for postage and uh and they have a new teacher in this school and and the new teacher wants to do something in their classroom that's a little different we don't want to discourage that the principal could move some money out of uh some other place and into
023that line it's designed to give as i said to give them to just have discretion but the current year program and put the decision closer to where it belongs the the uh the concept itself uh actually came from yukon many years ago a professor by the name of harry hartley designed it it's been used in many places i know trumbull has used it fairfield west hartford greenwich it's morphed a little bit from place to place but it seems to work uh principals like it and and it also um allows the the central office to concentrate on improving the schools and moving ahead and planning for next year so they're not um involved in kind of the i want to say routine decisions but the the things that our principals are very capable of making thank
024you great thank you janice we're going to go to uh kevin for a second go ahead kevin thank you ann uh so i just wanted to interject quickly um good evening everyone um again juanita was good to see your name on the screen i hope all is well in retirement um i i just wanted to to offer this to the question that uh juanita harris acts earlier to your question because and i know juanita has experiences firsthand as a counselor at a high school we experience um a significant number of new students typically in january and february this time of year um it it's unbudgeted i just want to be clear um our um our budget is locked in um well before as john had alluded to well before um january we began to see
025these increases in enrollment but from november 1st after our enrollment is locked in budget is already locked in um it's it's not uncommon that we may get hundreds of kids after november first number one which is no different this year i believe we have a net difference of about 300 students since october 31st and we will continue to get more um in january because we continue to get an influx of new students this time of year so so specifically to that question our budget is locked in for the 21 22 school year um and to the point that john was making certainly we will pull resources from other areas to meet to meet staffing needs if necessary it's not always the case um because we might be under subscribe in some classrooms and you know
026our principals and guidance counselors and um when i'm sure you've been part of this we find we find space in classrooms where we can uh may not be a an ideal fit at that time but that's what that's typically we've had to operate but that's but that is our reality as a district and unlike you know many of our neighboring districts we we continue to experience growth um while you know some of our neighboring districts are their enrollment is on the decline but that that is just kind of our reality here so just level set an opportunity for everyone as we understand the budget and some of our realities here in districts great thank you for clearing clarifying that i think that's really an important um piece of it so we'll go to uh rhoda
027please hi um writer uh first thank you for inviting everyone who's interested and who came tonight i am a teacher at morris street school i teach fourth grade i'm also a danbury resident my student my two children went through all danbury schools very proud of them but the past few years as everyone knows there are many children who have not made the progress that we would hope they would have and we don't have enough time during our school day to really do all the things with our students that i can so as a teacher i would suggest some after-school programs that go year-round not just start january february when some money looks like it's available and some of the after-school programs could be academic some of it could be social emotional academic a combination but
028there's just not enough time during the day and i think we need to plan this at least for elementary school and start in the beginning of the school year so maybe you can consider some of these kinds of programs and i'm not talking about elp that's completely different i'm talking about some kind of program that would not cost the families but it would help some of these students who have really fallen behind because of the situation we've been in so i hope you will think about that thank you for sharing that thank you and rashna i saw your hand up did you still want to say something yeah thank you so much uh good evening and thank you for the opportunity i'm just i'm just curious like uh last as compared to the last one
029or two years so uh what uh how what are the major challenges uh uh in the budget uh preparation this uh here uh because uh as uh mentioned in the first in the first or second slide the majority of uh uh the budget component goes to the staff salaries and benefits and i think it's um it's majorly for the current the current staff so because of the changing scenarios like um if as compared to the last year and there are more requirements for the teachers and they there are sometimes online classes also so will the development that will be requiring cost related to the staff development also and maybe some investment in technology as well so uh is this uh majorly different from the last year or is this a major challenge also i'm just
030curious about that thank you i'm going to take a step at least a couple parts better um [Music] you know i don't want i i don't know if it's that much different uh from what we had a year ago but uh certainly uh social emotional learning is very high on our list and that's an area for if you talk to teachers um i think they'll tell you that it's that has changed uh quite a bit uh but also um you know the career academy um the matrix at the summit uh that's very very important uh to us it's it's it's two years away uh but that that really has to continue you heard the superintendent talk about the enrollment growth that we just continue to get and um as that gets closer to the high
031school level um that that's going to be a very important project so kevin if you want to add to those but okay yeah all right so um raj that's good good good to see good to see you again um this evening um i you know another challenge for us um that we haven't yet discussed yet um is our reality with the federal funds that we have coming into district uh to john's point we have um paid for some of these priorities um specifically or um bringing in staff to support social emotional providing social emotional support in our schools um so we've hired additional counselors we've hired additional people personnel staffs psychologists social workers etc in a district two deans to dean's academic deans at the high school as well however we we've used federal funds
032to pay for these positions and um on top of that we're opening up a new school in 24 25 and we have that we have to provide staffing for a high school that right now we don't have the funding for of course that's not next year but it's the year after um and so some of our many challenges um are all rolled into one um it's one uh beginning to you know we we talked about a plan i've talked about a plan through attrition we will fold many of these latest hires into the system through attrition and so as folks leave us or retire we will fold those folks into the general budget versus the federal grants that are being paid out of now but this does not address um the idea of opening up
033a new building four thousand students um actually thirteen hundred students in total um and having staffing to support um that the 912 and 6-8 program um so and don't get me wrong there there are plenty of more priorities and we're hoping to learn of more priorities in this forum this evening um but but those are some of our biggest challenges um on top of the ones john just mentioned um and i'll stop talking because people like chrissy have they great so chrissy you're up go ahead hello again um okay so i guess i kind of just wanted to piggyback off of what uh rhoda was saying there with uh programs um i think you know in addition to after school programs i actually think like during the school day programs um would be of value
034um you know like the last three to four years uh field trips haven't happened things like that um you know and i just think that there's a lot of social emotional value to that um it really helps the kids connect school with fun positive things you know i mean the teachers are great they do a great job of trying to make learning fun but there's just something different about being able to go to the zoo and enjoy a trip like that that you don't realize that you're learning that they're missing out on um because of our current covet situation so i guess i just i was wondering if maybe kind of bringing bringing those experiences to them would help sort of enhance that or um give some of that value back great thank you for
035adding that that's some good thinking there absolutely someone else somebody we haven't heard from somebody new to our group what are your thoughts what what is that innovative thinking that you have going on you know what what was are what are some of your thoughts if you think of like well what if they did this what if they tried that what if they um you know thought outside the box gotta have a few of those thoughts out there you could raise their hand and or just start to talk about what some of those thoughts might be um and this is juanita again yes go ahead go ahead and i just again you know just throwing out a couple of ideas and i'm thinking and hopefully uh kevin might be able to help me with this
036and i think i see another high school counselor online um we are under the um mandate for a certain number of credits for graduation and um i'm not sure but i think that we will have um a large number of students who will not meet um the number of credits needed to graduate within the four-year span um just because of the pandemic perhaps because of the influx of numbers that came in this year and not having the classes um for the students to be enrolled in so we may i'm not sure down the line we may have a large number of students who are behind in their credits so i'm just thinking uh similar to like your online community college classes perhaps we might think about um some online night classes for credit for some
037of our students that would be done virtually remotely and online so that's just an idea that i'm tossing out there great thank you for that other thoughts go ahead kevin hi no i i'll just say juanita thank you for that question and for the families who are not aware um there's an increase in graduation credits i believe we moved from 20 to 25. it is the 1920 uh freshman class that is now required to graduate with 25 credits um i i will say and this is one of the budget dilemmas that we have this year and moving forward um currently our high school is offering eight eight classes uh which gives students more opportunities at um obtaining 25 credits for graduation uh previously um students were being offered seven classes um but of course eight
038classes comes at a cost um and certainly does impact our budget um and so as we're going through this process this is something we will be making the board aware and our school community aware of as well and i'm sorry to interrupt kevin kevin can you just um briefly give um some insight into federal funding versus city council funding sure sure so so the the major the major federal revenue um that the district is benefiting from right now is the cares act uh which was the initial uh relief fund monies um and then what we've oftentimes referred to is so two and so three and so those last two grants for 25 million for so3 which is certainly sizable and esti-2 grant was at 11 million so the district was awarded approximately 38 million dollars
039to be spent over three years at the time of the award of those grants we had hired several positions we had budgeted for several positions and equipment and ppe experiences for ppe equipment to make sure we satisfy the social distancing guidelines and so so for example and i'll just say this quickly the leasing agreement in brookfield is one of those commitments we made we committed to close to a million dollars in furniture across the district to improve social distance in district wide um and we use those federal monies from example cares essa 2 and s3 for some of those things thanks for that question great from our general budget in which we budgeted um in which you know john is kind of walking through a little bit earlier janice you're up yes hi um one
040other thought i mean this wasn't why i got on tonight but we're talking about outside the box ideas one thing i had thought of back you know when i was more involved with one of the um parent-teacher organizations i was involved in was the idea of possibly doing some kind of night classes or even day classes for parents that were nice for parents who for whom english is a second language so english english classes for parents because like i used to get you know one of my frustrations was i'm looking at a room going there were very few spanish only speaking parents i'm like these people don't love their children less than i love my children it's a communication issue and like the more parents that we can have be involved in the district the
041more you know the more we can pressure the city council to give us the money that we need to provide everything that we need for our kids and i just think just including more families is you know in any way that we can obviously we do that at a district level by sending out everything in english spanish and portuguese so just if there's ways to help people kind of assimilate and learn english i think that would be a great thing great thank you for that suggestion and we'll go to patty go ahead patty you're muted patty wait okay goodnight everybody just uh one of my suggestions as a parent if if i have a change maybe they need uh having any programs uh for parents like uh lei serraz or el pat well i told
042you about the part and that program has helped me a lot understand how the important is the parent um be next to the the student and help to the teacher because i know a lot of a lot of job that teacher do it but they also needed the support about the parents for the children for the kids and to help in the house and a lot of parents don't think about if i read the book and the night for the kids is a lot of help and help to the teachers too and these programs like laceraz or pedo another program they help a lot understand us that's very important the parents um help to the teachers and for the for growing up the kids to learning more better great good all good suggestions patty thank
043you and chrissy up again sorry um yeah actually in keeping with the idea of like an esl class uh in the evenings i i actually again i know this would be a big ask but um uh learning a second language at the elementary level um you know i know i think ais already has uh something like that um with that especially in the community that we live in i think would be extremely valuable and that communication does go both ways so and then as you guys have said before you know we get people that kind of come into our community in 12th grade with two months left you know so realistically i think if our our kids had a better foundation of even spanish in particular spanish portuguese it would i think help all the
044way around bridging that gap because then their peers can even help help them assimilate and incorporate thank you kristen we do have um our we race which is our adult esl classes and i know they just did registration for those um right before the break and then right after the break and i do believe those classes are filled and so as an ongoing course for adults those classes always fill up we do have some other parent opportunities parent c is coming up um we'll have some form of a family university or a family camp type thing um coming up in the future too so we encourage you all to take um advantage of those things as well so great a couple more ideas from folks we haven't heard from this is great go ahead rhoda
045so i'll piggyback on some ideas that other people had um we do have summer school at least in the elementary school for selected students students who are at whatever the benchmark level is decided why can't we open that up to any student who would like to come to summer school um that means they would get breakfast they would get lunch and they would have a few hours of academics and every student in elementary no matter what level you're at could always use some more academics in the summertime [Music] all right thank you for sharing that idea that makes a lot of sense and patty yeah hi good evening uh my name is patricia chukong i work as a family and so for marriage primary school i would like to search just like we were talking
046about like the issues to communicate with parents it's the language right there is like a lot of parents who want to speak spanish and they have like they have been having a lot of trouble uh enable to you know to communicate with the teachers or sometimes they feel afraid to call the school so i i know there is if like my suggestion is possible like like right now the people are focused a lot in kids and the students right in our children but what about with the parents like if there will be any chance to support the parents like english class i mean classes for parents who speak spanish like i know a long time ago i don't know they used to have some classes and that was the first class that i take in
047this country it was morsel street so they used to support parents but right now i don't know like i know there is some parents that they are asking if there i know where if there is any any class like they can take but i don't i don't have the answer i don't know if there is any school who are providing like esl class for the parents that's my question and my suggestion if it will be possible thank you all right so we're coming up on our hour i want to make sure if we haven't um heard from someone that has an idea please share it with us if anybody else has a thought there is two other opportunities that i'll share with you tomorrow evening we have another chat chats with kevin which is an
048open two-way dialogue um with kevin to talk about um issues in the district and then next thursday night we do have another one of these listening forums for our families so if you um come up with some suggestions you can shoot myself or uh kevin or john an email i'll put the email addresses in the um chat for you as well so there's always a way open door to communicate with us but i see that um alan kovacs has raised his hand alan go ahead hi anne how are you good how are you good thank you great um yeah i mean i hear these ideas i think there are you know a lot of a lot of good ideas out there i started i started looking at you know where we came from from from
0492010 at the high school level up until today and i was re very concerned that you know we haven't made really significant progress on our test scores our graduation rate um those kind of things and so i started thinking you know what what could we do um to help those numbers and you know my thought here is you know i'd like to see a higher proportion of our budget being spent directly on classroom expenses things like teachers guidance counselors nurses assistants supplies things like that you know when i hear that we have funding where we're hiring um these positions in and then we're going to wait for attrition and then integrate these positions into attrition i i don't think that's going to help us i think we need to step change and you know actually
050um fund some of these so that we're not flat year over year um you know it's no no surprise that you know student achievement is linked to to how we spend our money and i think it might be worthwhile to take a look at how we spent our money in the past and why it hasn't produced the results that we um are expecting so just just my ideas on on you know funding classroom expenses um to try and move some of those numbers kevin or john would you like to react to that at all right so so i i i will start and just and just one just often and thank you for the question and the recommendations um i think some of some of the investments that we are making um will help improve
051graduation rates um and and i and and i i feel confident that it will you know just in terms of a strategy and engage about engaging our parents and making sure they're they're they're more included as part of this process schoology is one of the investments that we are making to better inform our families of how their nine through 12 students that kids are doing in the system find ways to build better connections with the community um and so some of the things when i say community not just the parent community but also our school community and so some of our plans with um partnering strategically partnering with uh various um work groups to provide relevant work experiences for kids i think is gonna really help us in that regard um i think so some
052of the efforts that we're gonna make with personalized student learning is part of our academy work i think is going to motivate and inspire kids in ways we haven't been able to do before um and and really i think i think we learned a valuable lesson this past summer uh many folks are probably not aware um many of our students in six eight last year we had them engage in a project-based learning experience over the summer and these are our students who were who experienced who failed two or more classes at the middle school level um we specifically um assigned them projects similarly to some of the things that go on at westside middle school um and you would have thought we had um you would have thought we had all of our students in
053ap courses and you know everyone at the end of the summer um through math through literacy um standards uh throughout throughout the summer worked on all these standards but at the end ultimately had to produce a project that had to work and had to function at a high level and so our our plan as part of our academy work is provide these relevant inspiring type engaging curriculum experiences uh which i really think is going to help help our overall graduation rates uh but to your point mr kovacs i i think there's we also need we do need to be a little bit more strategic in providing the kind of support um at the high school level and i think that's going to happen as part of our planning and opening up this new school um
054which i think we're going to have to be really mindful of as we move forward um and not just you know just find ways just to staff the building we need to make sure that they adequate staff at danbury high school and then also at the end very career academy as well so so thank you for the questions and um it has been noted i will certainly be circling back on those recommendations and all of them that that i've heard this evening great so are there any last thoughts so like i said a couple of minutes ago um i put in our addresses our email addresses feel free to reach out to any of us uh come on board tomorrow night you have to go through a registration process um like you did for tonight
055so go back to your email and register again if you'd like to attend chats with kevin tomorrow night or the budget forum next thursday night and thank you very much for coming on tonight so kevin or john any last thoughts all right i would also like to thank people for being active we all we always need your help so uh thank you john and i'll have kevin you close this out if you like and so and by the the way that other screen is assigned it looks like i've already closed out um but since you did call him john i i will i will just say thank you everyone for your participation this evening um this feedback um as i mentioned earlier will be recorded and will be recorded also in the next session as
056well the team and i will take these responses code them appropriately and then re-share them as part of our budget process so just want to thank you we we take you know the all of these all these suggestions are really important to us um and we appreciate your feedback this evening gives us a really good good idea on what's important to our families as part of the budgeting process um and i'm i'm hoping as part of our budget presentation so you see yourself in some of the recommendations and priorities so thank you for joining us great and with that we'll um conclude tonight's some listening forum everybody have a a good night stay safe and be careful in the morning thank you very much for attending you