001is to as we start every year in the committees is to select the care person and a vice chairperson for the committees um so with that i'll leave it open to the group to entertain your suggestions sorry i was just going to um make a motion that we uh nominate mr jannelli for the chairperson i will second that any other nominations and move nominations be closed well i thank you all for your trust again that being said uh hi mrs cooper um i'll take a vote anybody in favor hi hi hi thank you all right um secondly i'll ask for a motion to nominate a vice chair to the committee i'd like to nominate al russo i will second that i'm flattered all in favor get over yourself hi hi hi very good thank you
002all right al thank you very much i appreciate your effort from doing this and i appreciate everybody's faith and both myself for now um it's good so that and i guess a little highlight the workshop will start at six we'll have a presentation by um erica haynes einstein from the school project and then that should take about 45 minutes to one hour hopefully and then we'll just move right into the uh budget presentation with uh with courtney as i said before i thought would be so exciting and challenging this year i'd like to also as a committee i was thinking after we get through the budget process is is maybe we can get together and work with courtney to perhaps streamline the or to come up with different concepts to to present the financialism into
003our alice point the more the better we present these financials and the simpler we do it um the more people would be interested in this and we work together to put our thoughts together as layman present it to courtney and see what she thinks it may make the the budget presentation um at these board meetings a little bit more interesting rather than looking at summary or looking at 300 line numbers and you know and losing everybody in in the picture there so are you talking about board members only or are you talking about also stakeholders such as committee members if we could come up with ideas for next year as to projects that we can do to enhance the presentation of the financials maybe also you know find out from courtney now that we have
004a new accounting system as to what kind of additional reports we can get that perhaps or you know we couldn't get because it was labor intense uh things like that we if we can have a conversation with her to better uh better educate ourselves and make a better presentation for these numbers now that we have a better accounting system and to try to keep it you know more simplified so the numbers and meanings become meaningful again it also allows us as a committee to be more functional rather than you know to meet once a year for two or three weeks around budget season and then we go to sleep for you know nine months so uh you know with that in mind just come up with some ideas as as to what you think how
005we can improve the financial presentation of the statements or to request information uh that we don't have now i think the new accounting system they have allows the flexibility to sort a lot better whereas before it was very okay because we had to drill down and and dig into the numbers uh in order for her to find something so well i i think it's going to be most important going forward when we open up the new academy and have to ask for a lot more money oh definitely yeah and now you know as the budget grows you know we're going to be more responsible for these numbers and we'd like to know you know where we're spending it it's easy when you're looking at a you know 100 plus million dollars or 150 let's pick
006a number uh to get lost in the weeds there uh and maybe have some spending that that's not appropriate or we can look for some cost savings or cost cuts so i think it's a big time for us to start to to discipline ourselves in going ahead and what these numbers mean and how we can better present them so it's just you know just the thoughts that we could be more functional and more functionable and and uh play a better part in the presentation of the numbers all right with that uh mr janelle uh before we move forward uh if it's okay with everyone because this is a long night tonight so about 10 minutes to seven because we just take a break before we go into the total workshop if that's okay with everyone
007if everyone is good just move right into the workshop just let me know and we won't stop okay yeah i think we'll need a bathroom break about ten to seven or five to seven i think that's a good idea okay with that being said i'll ask for a motion to adjourn okay second second thank you all in favor will say hi i thank you for your attendance i thank you for the chairperson position uh and i'll see you in a few minutes thank you very much it's an introduction i see that uh erica is here i'm going to ask erica to quickly jump in she could start a presentation and before you start rfa test would you prefer the questions being held until the end or if you prefer them as your presentation is is
008going i'll leave that up to you the presenter sir so i will um the presentation tonight is a little different than what we've done in years past we've changed it and so i'll share that with you but i'll stop after the ecs formula and ask if you have any questions for that and then i want to cover some of these other formula types because there is there are proposals whether it's at your local level or at the state legislature that you may want to understand other school funding types so i want to just do some of that and i just want to say how good it is to see everybody's face i miss you all um so it's very nice to see you with that i will start i'm going to share my screen and
009i have sent kara the slide deck so she has that um for any distribution that you all would like to do um you have my contact information as always reach out with questions um you all know who we are but we started in 2015 and we are a non-partisan non-profit that is committed to helping folks navigate and understand um education funding and state finance issues we really strive to to help provide policy solutions to transparency issues and to data issues around state and school finance you can find us doing all of this and we will not weigh in on local issues as you all know or endorse or oppose local initiatives candidates referendums so we're going to get started just with a refresher here of funding sources for public education in connecticut and when you're
010looking at that dark blue bar that 6.6 billion dollars that comes from 169 communities determining what they're going to invest in in education from a local level that top gray bar is less than one half of a billion dollars from the federal government and i i say that um understanding that as always a half a billion dollars in my checking account would make a huge difference and yet in the scope of an 11.4 billion dollar annual budget for education in connecticut it is a small portion um and tonight we're talking about that orange bar the 4.3 billion dollars that the state allocates to education in connecticut so you know the the question that brings us here always is how does the state determine how much money each school district should get and i want to
011just remind you that right now we have more than 10 different funding formulas in connecticut and they are really parsed out by type of school so um first of all type matters is it a magnet school is it a vocational or agriscience school where it's located is a secondary concern and the third piece that will come up in some formulas is who is running the the school district um meaning is it run by a regional education service center or is it run by a district so we're going to talk about education cost sharing and the purpose of the formula is really to determine how much money the state is supposed to give each city in town to fund its schools it's important to understand how this comes to us right so in 1977 um in
012a supreme court case horton versus the state essentially lost and it was ruled that um any type of education funding system that allows property wealthy towns to spend more on education with less effort um impedes children's constitutional rights to an equal education so really this is this is the first piece of equity in education funding as we're seeing it where um prior to this ruling we were very reliant on property taxes and while it feels like we are reliant on property taxes still because we are the state component comes in and in 1988 they begin the education cost sharing grant which is supposed to make up the difference between what a community can afford to pay and the cost to run the public school system for that community so it starts with the foundation amount
013and this is determined by the legislature 11 525 um dollars is what the legislature has identified as the amount that it costs to educate a student in connecticut who has no additional learning needs and yet i'm going to tell you that it also incorporates the state's share of special education funding so um i i understand and i can't um help you clarify the difference in that that it that's what it costs to educate and oh by the way the state special ed is in there we will say though that we reverse engineered the formula and this comes in on the lower part of the second quartile when compared to other states and normalized for that special ed piece meaning that it's low average um and then what the state did and renewed and added to
014their commitments in 2017 was looking at the additional needs that students come to school with which place an additional cost on the district a cost burden and they look at three categories and the current ecs formula the first is a low income student weight this is for students who are living in economic disadvantage as measured by free and reduced price lunch we could have a whole other conversation about whether that that counts it right or not but um so 30 more above that 11 525 for students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch we also have a concentrated poverty metric and what this does and this is new in legislation started in 2018 is essentially if a district has more than 75 percent of its students who are enrolled in free and reduced price
015lunch the number above that gets an additional five percent weight above the the foundation amount um and it's not for all of the students in that district just those above that 75 threshold the number and then english learners um the state for the first time um said indeed it does cost districts more to educate english learning students um and so there's a foundation amount weight of 15 percent so let me show you what that looks like because i think this this kind of starts looking at equity amongst our students right and in understanding that um the general education student there is at 11 525. a student who is economically disadvantaged the state is calculating the cost of educating them at almost 15 dollars um an english learner that increases the foundation amount by one thousand
016seven hundred and twenty nine dollars so that this has an impact when we start not not thinking that all students come to school from the same place or needing the same supports it does have an impact i want to show you just a little bit and and so there are a few things for you to know one you will get a copy of this presentation and i will be happy to walk anyone through it again who might need more or have more questions um two yes so you'll have this copy and you will also have the link to all of the tools to look at these calculations on your own and bring them up and even compare them to other communities so this is the resident student count and this is what was used for
017the 2021 education cost sharing model the year that we're in and um the count for for danbury was 11 729 students and so what we're looking at over here is also the weighted count there's no additional weight so it's just that number um we can look at low income student count and that's six thousand two hundred and two students the weight adds an additional eighteen hundred and sixty-one students if you can think of those weights just adding up right that additional fifteen percent or um in this case 30 english learners you have 3328 and so at the end of the day you know that your student count in danbury is 11 729 students but the funding that you get is kind of based on all of those weights and if you were to look at
018that it essentially adds up to 14 089 students funded at 11 525. so essentially what they do is just kind of bucket all the weights and then measure that in terms of the foundation amount 11 525. so basically then the state's calculation if we accept that the foundation amount is indeed what it costs to educate general education students what they look at is say okay in danbury it's going to cost you 162 million 373 766 dollars to educate the students of danbury and now we have to get back to the purpose of the base aid ratio which is state has to figure out how much can you pay in danbury and how much does the state need to provide assistance and support so they do that by looking at the property wealth of the community
019and the income wealth of the community and it's a 70 30 split and essentially what you're looking at is how much money can this community raise in taxes and how much money can this community afford to spend in taxes and that's at a 70 30 split of property wealth measured by equalized net grand list per capita and income wealth in terms of median household income so we can look at this slide too and if we look here the equalized net grand list per capita in danbury was 126 677 dollars connecti connecticut's median is slightly higher than that at 138 000 almost 300 then they look at the median household income and in danbury that's sixty eight thousand sixty eight dollars and the median household income across the state is eighty five thousand two hundred and
020ninety six dollars so they walk away with that and they look at a couple of other things that go into this are you an alliance district yes you are and we'll talk about the public investment communities index rank in a minute the pick index um but but it doesn't um have an impact on your ecs the pick index doesn't and so they take those that foundation amount the total need student count basically how much is it going to cost to educate and they utilize that ratio of 34.77 to say well this is how much the grant from the state to danbury should be and i just want to talk a little bit about the pick index this is a tool that the office of policy and management at the state uses to calculate the economic
021health of a community and it's a it's a scale of zero to 500 the higher the score the um more economically distressed a community is um so the state said at the time that they created this new formula which was 2017 there were 19 communities above 300 and so they set that 300 as that threshold of economic distress and then they tiered the percentage points to add more you can think of this as the state putting their finger on the scale and the base aid ratio to direct more resources to the neediest communities so it's a scale of zero to 500 this is the test you don't want to do well on in in scope and scale understand that hartford hovers close to 500 in the 497 to 500 um score and i'm gonna slide
022back one score for a minute one slide for a minute your pick score is 246. um so and and your rank is 58th so in in that scope of things they're saying we have communities that are seeing more economic distress than danbury and so ultimately the number that we got to if you recall when we're looking at that um object of like how do we how do we figure out what the state needs to pay we get to where they should be which is they should be supporting you in the amount of 56 million 458 982 dollars that's what when we looked at the grant calculation you should be getting but we are in year three of a ten-year phase-in so you can see the phase-in grow and this year danbury should be getting 37
023million 698 thousand and it grows incrementally year over year and so next year you'll be getting this year you're getting two and a half million more than you got last year and you can see those incremental increases articulated i wanted to show you the flow of this which is the state sends education cost sharing dollars to the town in connecticut we have dependent school districts fiscally dependent um this this is less common um and usually school districts aren't independent the ecs grant money then goes to the town because as a board of ed you rely on the town you're dependent on the town the town takes their the ecs dollars and the local funding allocated and moves it to the school district and there are just a few notes about that local allocation right dr
024cell and you all are going to come up with the school district budget and essentially you know what your federal revenue is going to be you know what your state revenue is going to be and um that leaves that municipal piece right and if from a local contribution perspective the municipality says no dr sal and board of ed we are not giving you that much well you know you can't go to the federal government and get more and it it has not been working well to go to the state government and get more and so what happens is you all end up making cuts mr russo i'll get to you in one more slide i think and then i will get to you um i just want to acknowledge you so you know i'm i'm
025noticing and essentially the way that this happens is through property taxes um and one of the things you know is understanding that property taxes are about real property and personal property but that towns in connecticut can't tax and then again not all property in town is taxable so nonprofit organizations you have a university there you also have a wonderful hospital but those are tax exempt organizations and aren't paying property taxes so let me pop up here and stop the share and i want to facilitate a discussion about this and then we can talk about some of the other school types so mr russo fire away with your question please thank you hypothetically but the prospect charter school were to open in the city of danbury this coming year would the district receive less funding if
026danbury prospects started this year in in the 2021-22 school year so it opening this september um you would not but i say that with the caveat that the state is one year behind on butts and seats counts right so they measure the membership and and the enrollment count on october 1st but it's the year prior so you would have a hundred less students in your district that count would show up a year after that and you would not get the state dollars which are roughly three thousand dollars per student would not come to um to danbury public schools that said the municipal contribution cannot be lowered okay and uh would the phasing of the ecs ecs formula change from from having the charter school yes no it wouldn't okay thank you for your patience oh
027of course hi rachel hi erica how are you good how are you so good um so with the ecs um phase in that is based on does that change with enrollment numbers then or is that the phase-in is from old data correct or so the the phase in like when we give you the financial information on the phase in like you know if it were fully funded today you guys would get 56 million that will always that's a moving number every year because of student enrollment so you know when you get 600 students you weren't expecting over the summer that next year you'll see that count reflected but it doesn't change the timeline the the dollar amount is always going to be a moving target right up until the year before that final phase in
028but for danbury it should always increase right until because the state is still catching up and your enrollment is still growing so um there's no indication that that number like your your enrollment would have to decrease and um in the scope of say to to mr russo's point the charter school if the charter school starts at 100 kids um and what you're looking at is a student population of well above 11 000 it's it it's that very small amount of literally that 3 000 or so um depending on how that changes um times the number of students thank you mr janelly yes hi erica how are you good you look great it's good to see you thank you got a question on the timeline of the 56 million dollars the 56 million dollars we use
029the phrase if it represents a fully funded number based on is it 2017 informational prior year uh enrollment the prior year's enrollment so like for instance we can't project that full phase in you know we can only use the most recent data to make it going ahead to get the phase in in two years from now if our population increase let's assume that that number went to 60 million dollars would we forget the phasing would we be then looking to get 60 million dollars from the state or we fix that some historical number of 56 million no you're never locked into that historical number that is just giving you an update based on always the most recent data okay so then if we look at the timeline using the phase in we are fix that
030at this 56 million dollars based on some number of students for a period of 10 years but it doesn't take into account at the end of 10 years you know conceivably we could be at let's say 70 million dollars do we automatically get a bump at the end of 10 years from 56 million dollars to 70 and then that's what i'm not understanding because it seems like every year incrementally incrementally we're not being adjusted for any uh assuming we have an increase we're not being adjusted for any incremental increase in students relative to the dollars no you are the thing is everybody is always then showing you the the most new the the newest run of 10-year numbers so like for instance this year you're at that phase in but it's the whole thing is
031updated with the most current data okay so it'll be progressively going going up to the incremental increase over the period of 10 years correct all right correct can you are you allowed to offer any any advices to how we could get this incremental increase increase right i see the next year was a i think a 5 million dollar bump with my memory segment right on the slide what can we do to to request petition uh the state to to accelerate this for us it seems like you know we're being burdened or for you know for them trying to catch up some formula where they never funded before so there are a few things the the first thing um is that this year what we are seeing and experiencing with respect to the legislature is that
032there are two topics of conversation one is housing and the other is education and both are being viewed not solely but strongly through a racial justice lens what we also know is our our organization um has published a paper on the racial disparities in education funding in connecticut and just to be very clear there is a 639 million dollar funding gap between white students and students of color in connecticut um you are seeing legislation this year that is actually targeting all of this but through the ecs formula so there currently are two bills that have been proposed and we'll see where these move but um both look at increasing the weights particularly for english learners and for concentrated poverty and lowering the concentrated poverty threshold and then fully funding the ecs formula um beginning next
033year um so we actually think that's that's the best path right that um districts have experienced um so so many difficult difficulties and inequities in um covid right and just dealing with covet that at this point it's important to equip districts with the resources that they need not in 2028 but in but now um and so i think that these conversations that articulate the the urgency of full funding um in particular are important and they're they're important not just for danbury right um they're important statewide but these proposals that you're seeing um get you the dollars better understand who is in the district and um try try to be targeted around that so i think you know if you all still have your lobbyists um they need to be watching those initiatives because i think
034those are the ones that are actually moving in the education space so it appears to me that the thinking on the legislative side is getting to a point of being more realistic than something where you know one size fits all i mean to your point in taking care of the racial equality of districts yeah i mean you know when you think about um education funding within equity you have to think about equity as it relates to districts you all um don't have the same student body and deal with the same challenges that say um even hartford does we could compare you in hartford and say the dynamics are still different or in my community of windom and then students are are not all the same so i think you know it has come to a
035point in connecticut and nationally where some of this um discussion is starting to to take hold but i think in connecticut and one of the important things is getting the ecs formula phased in quicker is if i could say anything really important and it's important in part because we need to be honest with the history of the legislature fully funding ecs um and i don't have a recollection or a date as to when that would have been dr sal if you can think of a time i actually don't know that they've hit full funding and no they've never even achieved the 50 yeah you know it's it's you know in terms of their contribution uh it's it's weighing between 40 percent 45 percent um i i think for the board's information which is interesting to
036me is that there's only finite money in the whole pot and it goes to sped charters uh my magnet all of us this is where i think there's this i think you need to get some clarity when you put that first chart up there that's all the money spent on education now is there a separate entity for the other entities that are that are in there so i think it's important and amy i saw that you have a question or so i wish you guys yeah i think it's important for everybody to understand that that totality of education dollars that 11.4 billion dollars that's our tally afterwards but you know it's funny when i was i was just working on my annual budget for my own household right and like i'm thinking how much am
037i spending in medical how much am i spending for pets how much am i spending on education homeschooling my wonderful sixth grader all of those things but but that graph that we give you is actually backwards right it would be like if at the end of of 2020 i look back and i tell you how much so the way connecticut budgets is not by a kind of category right so they don't give 11.4 billion dollars to education and say this is what education is getting and you can figure out where you want to prioritize the dollars they are line item funded so um you know special ed is line item funded but will never change it can't go down it it won't go up um but whether it's construction whether it is um when they
038had transportation with you know magnets charters those are all line item identified and so you know the the best example as i watch this conversation in your community around the charter school is uh you know i i just put it in this kind of lens if charter schools were all shut down in this state tomorrow right and there are there are 10 000 students um going to going to charter schools and there are about 550 000 students in total in connecticut so the 10 000 students but if charter schools were shut down tomorrow that charter line item does not revert to education so what happens is it reverts to the general fund and then the legislature gets to decide where they want to allocate those dollars to so for us logically we would think allocating
039from education to education is just what happens um but it it doesn't and that isn't how it happens so for instance what happens on a line item in charters in a proposal whether it's the govern governors or the appropriations committee or something else does not create this seesaw effect with other school types um so i i think that's important to know it it you know for and i i respect that dialogue i think it's an important dialogue that you all are having and it's not an easy dialogue to talk about the vision of your community to talk about the vision of youth and education in your community um but i i do think it's important to know that you know if and the governor's budget comes out next week if he were to add dollars
040in his line item to charter schools you can oppose that and and if you oppose that that's you know absolutely oppose it but oppose it with the understanding that it is not a seesaw effect where if you oppose that school this other school or school type or education line item will get more i just think that's an important understanding amy hi erica good to see you um ask about if we expand the open choice would that affect our ecs funding so open choice is a little funky and we can talk about that i have that formula type so we can look at that a little bit um but open choice is interesting because if they were to expand and include danbury um because as you know and for those of you who don't know what
041open choice does is create an opportunity for students in a certain community to to move out to other communities it is legislatively only um enacted for norwich hartford bridgeport and new haven [Music] but the kicker is new london has never used it because open choice um goes through the regional education service center which for you guys i think is is that ed advance right yep um and so in new london their rest never got funded for open choice so they have no open choice students so even though by statute they're allowed to the rest gets the transportation funding to transport students and um and that that would be something that you would also have to lobby for when you're talking about open choice so there are a few more complexities with it amy and we
042can highlight that as we walk through it okay thank you yeah so erica i'm sorry i got my hand up but who's ever next i want to ask you here's a clarifying question that i think our board has uh always supported choice in terms of it's a public choice um the debate has been looking at the financials in terms of um what it means i i know we've had this conversation about it not being finite but that it's a line item and that lineup goes away could go to the streets and sanitation doesn't have to come to um education but where i'm getting i need some clarity on no matter what we do if it's the the because the effort is within the foundation level with idea then any money that we get is reflected
043for special ed in that amount but the real cost comes in for excess cost for us which has never been reimbursed to a district at 100 percent um the the weighting is very helpful to us regarding ell because um you know i always say it costs you know maybe almost one half times as much to educate a child with those kinds of needs when those are within the structure of the public school realm for reimbursement and it moves then those resources don't come back to the to the to the municipality would have to follow the money follows the child and there's where we're trying to get some clarity and right now we do provide transportation for all our non-pubs i think the board's been used to that although it you know add some to it
044we provide some nursing uh but in in in in the choice program we've been asking clarity on what's a reasonable cost that's what they use no one's really been able to talk to us about it and then how do the other services are supported and at what level and you know obviously if the youngster is not with you but in another school you got to provide it so those are the uncertainties that we're trying to get some clarity on only from the budgeting standpoint for us at least for me anyway when we look at these things the choice you know it is a public school it is it is what it is and it does open up a lot of opportunities it's sort of those um idiosyncrasies that i'm trying to get some clarity on
045you mean the least clear parts of it all you'd like clarity on well i mean that's what people have suspect about oh they're not going to get it they are going to get you know i i think shared services we understand but when they use the verbiage reasonable cost you know as determined by whom where you know all of that stuff that that's what it's at least i was trying to get some clarity on some of it so i'm not i'm not going to be able to provide as much clarity as i would wish and i have to be honest with you and that i wish i could as well and some of this is just an unknown um so there are some things that you know i think we can talk through a little
046first dr sal i just want to say you said you you believe it it costs about it uh one and a half times to educate a non-english speaking student and i had a conversation with dr estrella down in norwalk the other day and she was saying in new york they actually wait at one and a half times oh really yeah that would be nice to do for us spot on um so when we're talking about special ed when we're talking about transportation first of all there are some like built in you know areas that are opaque right what is reasonable reasonable services um and right from that that foundation there um it it begs a lot of questions i think from from our lens and i think there's a lot of work to be done
047special ed you have to understand is much like and i'm sure most of you do but it is much like the minimum budget requirement that municipalities have in connecticut where they cannot spend less this year than they did the year before on education in their community in connecticut has that same obligation to the federal government if you spend more in special ed you are locked in at that next higher rate so this explains just just to underpin it all um some of the consternation right that excess cost isn't reimbursed until four and a half times that it um is then reimbursed at something close to 70 cents on the dollar and um is not really supporting districts in a meaningful way and yet i said with a lot of confidence it would take a lot
048to get connecticut to start adding dollars to that bucket um there are there are districts and there are communities that do this better than others and some that just have had a terrible experience dr sal um so you know when i started having conversations particularly with to be clear people who were opposed to charter schools and for some of those additional cost reasons you know there were some communities where for instance transportation was really well aligned with the district right and you know it was done in a really thoughtful way that didn't create a significant cost burden on like well now we have to run 12 separate buses there are also communities in which the charter school works on an entirely separate schedule from the public school system so you know i can tell you
049that you know with confidence there are districts who do not feel like there is uh for transportation specifically uh uh much of a cost burden it's a negligible cost burden and there are districts who have had the experience that it's a significant one the second thing is with um special education because i think the thinking in uh reasonable what is reasonable is that you all are at this um ppt you all as you know you are really the ones who are running point on these students so that you can manage what's reasonable and somebody's saying let's send all of the kids to a high tuition school because it'd just be easier you're there to stop that from going off the rails but also i respect and understand that that sometimes it doesn't work that way
050um so i think what i can tell you coming out of this is that um the relationship between the district and a charter school can um actually create more success or it can it can be a frustrating you know struggle and i i appreciate both sides of that um and i i want to be very transparent um i think back in 2010 i was a charter school applicant um but in in my vision first of all i was applying for a local rather than a state charter and there is a difference but also i could not um have imagined doing a charter school without working with the district because they're all our kids right so i think um you know take that information for what you will um and hopefully use that it to inform
051you going forward um you know i think you know this is where we can get into i think it's always just important to think of the two sides of this and there are two sides of this and there is no clarity um i think from you know their their for charter school in particular there are um different reasons that people support or oppose a charter school and you know from a financial perspective from a policy space um it all depends right it all depends erica could i ask a question please sure gladys uh good to see you it's good seeing you uh just have a quick question uh concerning uh open choice what is the uh do you know the financial advantage to a district by moving to open choice and what would be the
052financial obligation for the school that's participating in open choice so and i'll i'll get to those slides momentarily because i think that's where we need to be um i'm not sure i mean hopefully the education funding system is designed so that there is never an financial advantage but there is always a break even um so we can look at what open choice does and doesn't do to create any challenges in a for a district but dr sal and i looked at open choice last year and really the the same the same pieces the transportation doesn't apply but special ed is still um a piece of open choice so we can look at that okay and hi kate canetta i want to give you a chance hi there thank you so much eric it's nice to
053see you good seeing you um it's been a few years i know i had a couple questions um and and there's sort of just more general ones that i need to make sure i understand um you mentioned that uh you know obviously for municipal um taxes you know there are certain properties that are tax exempt and i'm just wondering when you talk about the ecs property wealth the property wealth component of the formula if if that's if those hold true that you know that they don't factor in properties that can't be taxed yeah it does not factor in properties that can't be taxed okay great um and then i just want to also ask you about the state to city uh pathway for the the money now you you said something to the effect of
054we could not reduce the amount of education funding that we put in each year for for from the municipality correct okay is there any mechanism which ensures that whatever money comes down from the state which is marked for education and but then when it passes through the city that it it goes to education um and there and i'm asking this because um you know i'm just sort of trying to assess like obviously we could spend the same thing that we did last year in education here in danbury if we're getting a greater amount of ecs funding um you know because some of the weights change or if we're you know getting you know or that it's going up by that increment or um you know if other funding is coming through the state like i
055know that federal uh there's like the the second i can't remember what the name of it is you should give me thank you thanks dr um and i know that so i know that money is also going to be coming down from the state level and what i'm trying to just figure out if there's any way that we can kind of like track that process as it goes through the city you should absolutely be able to track that process and that in part and courtney certainly correct me if i'm wrong but an audit should also do that the uh the money from the feds comes categorical no but we're talking the state oh the state dollars is totally different yeah i did and i yes erica and kate and and i wasn't able to answer
056because i knew kate had called me earlier about this next like i was shocked but i had to think about it for a minute but it's so clear when you said it eric don there is a chart on the um city website that i can share with everybody about what's come to us from the state for what we call that traditional ecs base amount and then the alliance catch up from the ecs that's all involved in this formula that erica talked about so it's funding uh today's children with yesterday's dollars if you want to take you know it that way so to explain how just my understanding of what erica said you know there was a point where connecticut was having a really hard time and then some districts were growing and some were shrinking
057we're growing obviously and growing in need in terms of our l our lower income and our our sped population and so as that happened the state couldn't just take back all the money from those districts that were dropping and give it to the ones that were growing or they could have but they chose they chose not to and so they gave us this money ten years out and i think we're into the five year is that right three three we're only entering so every year we get maybe two seven it may be two eight and maybe two nine because because that formula as as erica said reassesses where we are relative to what they assumed was the need for esl in a growing enrollment population yeah but kate to your point there there is always
058this disparity between what the state is sending and what districts are getting and um depending on the district like districts will sometimes take out what you know if you are paying for services through them they will get some of that out so but but you should be able to still follow it all the way through and understand where where anything went okay and is that true also for um when you talk about special ed reimbursement you know that four and a half times you know that's 70 cents on the dollar past the four and a half times is there a mechanism for that as well or does that that comes categorically i mean it comes for special ed and and then it is um it's supposed to uh filter through to us but uh it
059really doesn't so what happens i can speak to that what happens is on all of our high cost special ed kids three times annually we submit in a report that basically is a line item by child on the cost of tuition the cost of transportation services and it basically costs out the amount of you know dollar value that we spend on that child um so anything related to educating that child tutor support services speech and language special education so forth and so we we enter that in initially on december 1st we then get an opportunity to revise it on march 1st we have to have all students in and accounted for by that march 1st deadline and then on june 1st is our final spend down for example a child that might be out of
060school for a couple of weeks due to a surgery or something the transportation costs may adjust down for instance so um you know we we project what it should be annually and then we adjust it the difference um in danbury is that that money so the 70 cents on a dollar that we get back um for the excess cost and we usually submit in a couple million dollars of cost of those high needs students we get that reimbursement goes directly to the city um and my understanding is that they allocate that in our general allocation and you can see that if and i can show you where you can see it in the kafir um you know it took me a little while to find all the the location of where the funds are but
061i'm happy to share the city's financial report with you so you can see how you know it's given to us and then how it's distributed because that is in the notes section in the financial report it's like buried so thanks one other comment that i just had sorry on special ed funding as you talked about um you needing us needing to prove that we spend more money on special education annually with a growing population we certainly don't have a hard time showing that um but there are multiple ways you can do local only state and local state funding so there there are four different ways and we do that um you know courtney and i work together when we apply for idea grant every year and we have to prove that the previous year we
062in fact did spend more than we did the fiscal year prior that's our effort that's called maintenance of that but i i will say that um to the board that money gets infused into the general fund then reallocated as kell said but the last two years with the help of board members and uh everyone we've been able to have some set aside which we could request which could help us kelly knows she gets all of a sudden july she's sitting here with three unknown transfer ins which really create a situation for us so we've had some relief but uh categorically um it's it's quite an effort to get that money into the district but that's where it goes so thank you kelly thank you so here what you're looking at is is a just a
063straight up chart explaining the the differences in funding so we can look here so the open choice state funding per pupil varies and this is what is going into a community so say ridge field took 10 kids from danbury this is what the range is on what they would get and really it's based on how many kids are they taking um they can't charge tuition and your ecs is split 50 goes to that district and 50 goes uh to you guys so um you would share that and that's in the li i apologize alliance formula that's the open choice yeah again separate um and you'll see here too i want to articulate the uh what's being proposed in danbury is a state charter school this is the funding they receive per pupil they cannot charge
064tuition and um the city does not or the community does not get education cost sharing so let me just show you in a little bit more detail and you'll get this powerpoint um with all of the details but um local districts are responsible for transportation and special education student learning need is not considered in this funding formula um and they cannot charge tuition so in our legislative proposal you will also see that the proposal and the two bills that are proposed right now propose collapsing all of these formulas so that all students are funded in the same manner with weighted funding um so that so that we all can have a conversation that doesn't involve 11 funding types um so this is the flow to the charter school it goes straight from the state to
065the charter school local charter schools just to be clear there's only one in the state of connecticut so don't worry about it because there isn't one even proposed or pending you'll have details on agriscience and the complexities of agriscience but here's open choice so that you can take a look at the complexities of the open choice dollar so the thing is um you're still responsible and i'm gonna actually stop the share and just um kind of finish with gladys's question you're all still responsible with open choice um actually you know what i want to i want to check on open choice and special education dr sal i'm i'm 99 positive that it falls back on the district but um i didn't hear the question i'm sorry open choice and special ed well that's that reasonable
066cost yeah and and that's what we you know no one's been able to answer that so let me let me do a little bit more digging and at least see what we can find experientially um cara you've been taking pictures too well yeah just like i like to have certain things um the can you go back to the slide about what the district is responsible for on the charter school yeah component and i i just have a question about esl services because for special education the district is responsible to provide the staffing to service students at the at another location as well as the busing but for esl you know we have we have there's legal requirements for bilingual services that we have to meet with our non-pups and so why would we be required
067to legally to to maintain the compliance um service provide the staffing for bilingual education at this site no and i will uh double check that in the morning and get that back to you but i am very confident that you are not responsible for the english learners essentially although it's kind of a weird blend of all of these formulas and all these responsibilities um in in this case that school is considered a separate school district and so when we look at multilingual learners and the responsibilities that actually moves to to them so let me let me confirm that for you and i will actually send an email back is that true for open choice as well i don't believe so but let me double check okay thank you um in most of the other districts
068right i mean it english learning is is almost twice as prevalent in danbury and wyndham as the other districts so let's just double check on that it could be a lot of that could be a lot of staffing yeah yeah erica i've got a question um the uh the terminology of the ecs money the 37 million dollars that you've mentioned does that include the component component of what we formally used to use referred to as the alliance money or is that uh just by itself and then on top of that there's alliance of grants included in other words as of a couple of years ago we used to get the city got the ecs money and the district got the alliance grant then last year i think they rolled it together it was called ecs
069the 37 million dollars what does that represent so so there's a funny thing um essentially where um this is this is just an interesting and again like looking at connecticut one of the things that happened was that if you look at alliance districts technically they don't get an ecs increase it all comes as an increase or it had all come through as an increase in alliance dollars um and there were reasons for that that um are are more to protect if there were say rescissions in the ecs grant or holdbacks or cuts of any kind it protected alliance districts in a little bit of a different way where that flow could still continue um so so it's kind of a messy yes and answer it doesn't help you but essentially is it is ecs and
070alliance okay thank you all right so right on target does anybody have any other questions for erica i don't know eric oh i'm sorry go ahead oh my god i just want to quickly say that we do have kids going to agroscience so do we have that we have that presentation right erica we can so i already sent that to kara so she can distribute that the other thing um i just did is put a link to what's called a link tree which is just really fun um and when you click on that it has a bunch of of links and it looks exactly like a tree um but but it gives you access to those tools that i use to show you the data points um so that gives you a little bit more
071access and then access to look at other communities as well um i'd be happy to though if anybody um wants a copy of the presentation you can reach out to me i know cara will get it to you and certainly if you want to walk through some of this or you want to reach out with more questions i'm here let me know you know i miss you all so thank you thank you very much we really appreciate it drive safely [Laughter] it's such a different thing not to have to drive you know almost two hours home dr sal this is great thank you again erica bye mrs cooper do you want to take a three or five minute break or just go right into the the budget part uh that was the suggestion if everybody's
072comfortable with that we could be back start our next meeting at 7 10. okay okay we take a few minutes break okay did we leave the meeting or just leave this on i would just leave it on and if you want to turn off your microphone and the video okay thank you um and i'll i'll try not to keep us up as late as the uh as the union negotiations so um so the first slide this is just a quick intro dr sal just asked me to talk to you briefly about this uh what we're calling cares to funding um we've had coronavirus relief funding we've had cares one funding and now our cares too we're really pleased um to get in there's a lot of restraints like dr sal mentioned it's not to be
073used to supplant operations and we'll kind of reiterate that as we talk through and i'm open to questions on that i'm going to talk about the current year so rich kind of wanted me to put in context because it was so unique that we braided that funding so i'm going to talk about the current year very briefly and then the upcoming year maintenance budget rich and i kind of put it side by side so you could see what happens when the money that we had this year kind of it goes away um and so just the takeaways i was hoping we would all walk away with our what's our base budget and maintenance needs what are dr selling cabinets district priorities and then what are our next steps for us to get your feedback um
074as a cabinet respond to any of your questions in this week so that we can set up a nice presentation that looks similar to what we did you know last year um which would be similar to this that we did last year but with our updated priorities and our updated information given what we know so with all that said just very quickly um so asked me to just walk you through this new coronavirus response and release supplemental appropriation um you know cssr the two funding was 492 million dollars for the whole country which um brought it up to 603 so before it increased what had formerly been about 100 million up to 600 um um and so the csde is holding back 10 percent of the funds just like they did originally so we expect
075to see a little bit potentially more funding and then the 90 that's the 10.1 that we're getting is that lea based funding they released it on january 29th and um the grant application is open on february 22nd um and um it'll be open for a good month they're going to work with us but sal's got us already you know starting to talk to you about it today so that we can get our plans in place it is not at all intended to supplant it's um intended to support um the activities that i'll describe in just a moment and um kara kevin kim and kelly as well as dr sal will work with you and our administrator community to understand how we're going to use the funds but essentially as we knew the first cares money
076which is called sr1 is ending december 30th 2022 so we have our plan in place for spending that down and then this ester 2 extends one whole other year beyond that and it's it's retroactive so things that were eligible that we already started to do we could utilize the funding to offset those activities and it goes into the future so it's pretty flexible and then very briefly the priorities are academic supports learning loss learning acceleration and recovery i describe it as being like very broad and also a little bit specific so it gives us a lot of um leeway um in terms of things that we might identify as being needed family and community connections um school safety social emotional well-being the whole student and staff so a lot of the things that we're doing
077in care is one but they've learned some lessons so based on those best practices they're identifying a little bit more broad use of the funding and the remote learning staff development bridging the digital divide for our students um courtney i think your slides if may not be advancing i don't know if you were presenting from a slide just now oh i was okay okay i just wasn't sure okay thank you i was karen thank you for telling me that that's can you see the what's next slide or no not well you know what i'll eat i'll email you all the slide show i'm not sure why it wasn't showing um um i can email it out to you but essentially it lets us do all the things that we did with the cares act one
078but in addition now we can do some also facility repairs and safety improvements if we if we saw fit to do that um okay you want to share it now courtney and i'll i can i can post it up if you can't no don't do it there you go i'll go right into the into the budget presentation since you know we're a little bit limited on time and um you know just know that if you have questions about the careers funding um there's some documentation about it i can answer questions and cabinet just got it you know this past friday so it's about 10.1 million for for danbury um and you can you see this slide what i'm showing now it's a bunch of numbers um can you see the no the number slide yes
079yes yes okay so i'll try not to be boring um it's a revenue and expense slide so this is looking at our current year and you'll probably remember from this summary way back when um when we asked for this much money and we only got this much we asked for 146 and we and so we did this braided thing that got us to 145 504. so i'm just reminding you here we are with this current year 145 million 504 000 and that's made up with that additional alliance increment which is something that erica just spoke to us about that's the funding that we get additional funding each year that care plans out for that has to meet certain requirements of closing the achievement gap and other details um we did use that to fund new
080things that we were going to do that also happened to be alliance eligible or meet those criteria and then we have cares money grant carryover funds these are all one-time funding the cares is going to expire in september and the carryover was because we underspent a few of our grants last year because of the nature of the pandemic and at the time we had what we thought a city fund balance of two million and then this is the city allocation the matrix development funds and that got us to the 145 million and this year all things being equal something that rich kind of asked me to do is say okay we're going to get another lens increment we don't yet know what that'll be i just held it flat but it'll be a little bit
081more the cares is not going to be available for the upcoming fiscal year with the exception of the 10.1 that we mentioned but i'm not accounting for that here because that's brand new and we'll talk about that outside of this process it'll be part of probably our braiding brave conversation like dr sal said after the february 14th deadline um and the grant carryover money we don't we don't have that this year that ends um so our available resources if the city were to just hold our budget flat would be 141 million when you're comparing apples to apples now does that make sense to everybody i know that's a little bit odd with it think about it the city fund balance went up because at the end of the day um you know when it's unaudited
082but this is basically around where we landed with what we had left over and the city put that in reserves for us about 2.6 million does that make sense so far there's some confusion i might i need to pause well courtney just got you know if there's hands up if not we always come back to it we can come back to it so and then it's a little bit of detail but then there's a projected expense or a budget and this is like our day you make that a little larger it might be helpful yeah yeah and then this is basically looking at like last year versus this year you know how we there's a lot that's behind this but this is just rolling it up for our salaries what we're projecting our retirement savings
083that you're used to seeing um our part-time salaries our benefits you know servicing fees repairs all the general categories the cost of doing business goes up we have contracts in place even when during the pandemic when we called all of our partners and said okay give us a break next year you know there's still an increased cost of doing business just like everywhere else and the way that i'm showing you this is last year if you remember these were all the new items that we funded like of the things that we asked for we were still able to do some amount of the school climate social emotional special ed curriculum program needs um you know the student support specialists and the esp requirements esl all of this stuff we did with that braided funding and
084you'll just kind of recognize it if i go back here and show you you know the school climate social emotional that's 485 000 and here's how we afforded it special ed that was 732 000 here's what it's for and here's what how we afforded it and this shows you what we originally requested and then what our proposal was for that year and what we how we ended up funding it and we're going to do the same thing this year um so you'll recognize these numbers now when i get down to the bottom there's some items that we spoke about before that carry forward from the grants that if we want to keep keep funding them we're going to have to account for them in our budget so the one-time things of funding that we used
085for for example student support specialists for some of two of our counselors um as well as i'm just going to scroll over because it's actually stored on the side of this document social workers and some of our teachers and substitute teachers we have to put that back in the budget because that funding goes away so i'm accounting for that so in the bottom line and then this is just showing how we're gonna we propose to the city to spend the reserves so the city allowed us to get up to our insurance corridor just max it out because you know the unpredictability of where we are with coronavirus we want to be really careful about funding the insurance um because you know and because we're self-insured and we just want to make sure that if there's
086any one-time fluctuations um we're accounting for them in holding aside a reserve technology it's a new reserve that the city council voted on letting us put forward so if there's any one-time technology products projects that we're doing that gina needs to do or software you know when you're doing the the training or the development that's set aside a special education reserve that kelly's been um needing for fluctuations that happen with the population in spite of um you know just because of the nature of special ed you could talk more about that and then just a general emergency contingency so that's that 2650 that you see up here this is just showing you on the budget and expense side how we're planning on spending that so what does that mean that means that once again we're
087at this magical kind of 10 percent number that we're asking for and that's made up of a carry forward budget of 7.5 which i'll explain why it's a high carry forward budget and then new asks of 6.484 so that totals 13.9 or about 10 over the base of these different funding sources um the carry forward maintenance you would normally think well it's probably about three percent right normally things increase every year by about two and a half or three percent but what's happening is because last year the city only funded us with if you'll remember the one one two seven five million um it left us short of being able to fund our you know base kind of like collective bargaining and bus increase and all the things that happened to increase the budget so
088each year they rely on us to go to alliance or the other funding streams to kind of take care of business it puts us further in the hole for the operations budget so we want to be really careful when we go to the city for the ask that not only do we need this and we'll get to you and explain why but we also need this because if this doesn't get funded we're going to be another three percent in the whole next year and it's just going to be that much harder for the city and for us to climb back from that and so so that's 10 and i'm going to go through the new asks but i'm just going to pause there and just ask if there's any questions on this first page of
089a lot of numbers courtney i have a question can you go back to the revenue side sure [Music] um jeez let me look the the the matrix thing is always it's becoming confusing to me i thought the matrix was a 10-year deal that the city had worked out with the the the corporation and that the 550 000 was to be given to the city for the impact that the matrix would have on education um did we ever get that money for the 550 for the 2021 year and what's happening for the year 2122 yeah thank you it's a it's a good question rich so um mayor bowen did commit to it and we do have great partners at the matrix we did not get it in 1920 i believe it had to do with the
090delay in the development that wasn't anticipated we do anticipate that we'll get it in and we do anticipate that it should be available to us for at least those years of the deal of the agreement the reason i didn't put it in here as available funding is because in an accounting sense in a normal sense if i had the revenue receivable i would have kind of a document stating what it was that i was getting and an agreement in writing the city is the receivable on their books so i'm not comfortable putting up the appropriation like we did in the past and leaving the hole in our budget you know and until we received the cash so it was just a decision there to leave that um you know you all can give me the
091feedback if you think we can we should put it back in but i just i don't have a document that supports the agreement so i just don't want to leave us at risk yeah i could understand you know you're not willing to put it in but conceivably if they didn't pay for 2021 would you be expecting 1.1 million dollars in 2022 and 21 22. um they said that that's not the way it was structured you know and again i'm not having a paper document to support it i don't know how do you know that they said they weren't going to do that um for the 19 20 years so we're just going to continue i think we better get clarity on it yeah that has been you know first they were uninsured unsure about uh
092the occupancy and the pandemic i think we better get clarity yeah then we'll ask the cabo uh regarding that and dave that's a lot of money and theoretically i think it's just a pass-through you know it's coming from one source directly you know to the city you know for earmarks for something so yeah and they didn't get it in the first year but in your typical world if they gave us an appropriation for it and we don't have the receivable we should still be able to spend the funding but you know i think we just need to put together a memorandum of understanding so that we can be clear in the budget yeah in addition to the accounting i think dr sallar something you should throw away with uh you know mayor cabo uh is
093you know what they look to deal with that money and how much they want to give it to us i mean a half a million dollars here and here you know and you double it has a nice impact on us particularly when the city gave us 1.2 last year yeah it certainly helped yeah thanks courtney thank you rich okay courtney then we have a discussion last year about that 550 000 so uh what is the discussion there did we get um a part of that last year or now because that number is still hanging around about that 550 000 it's still hanging around so we have it in our current budget of appropriation um i just we haven't we left in fy 19 which is the not our current year but last year we didn't
094receive it we yeah we put it up as an appropriation so in other words we said instead of 130 million our budget is 130 million 550 000 but we were they never gave us that money so even though we had the appropriation we didn't have the cash and it left us short now luckily we had a surplus last year um but this year i'm a little more concerned so we're really we're pushing sal and i should just have a conversation with joe and dave and get it in writing and then i'll be able to put it in and feel comfortable with sharing with you that we have that as a resource um but it's contingent on the city receiving payment which they haven't yet okay yeah thank you okay thank you and you'll just see
095also just to note that um sal was able to negotiate a good deal with sta when we were in our closure to carry forward a credit for this year which was nice for us this year but we don't have it next year because you know unless we do another negotiation with them okay i have a question sure rachel um and just to add to that the um i'm sorry to harp on the matrix funds but i remember asking mayor mark about it this time last year and the project hadn't been approved by zoning yet so i think it's just the delay now with the pandemic but you know don't quote me on that don't you know hold me to it but i know for last year it was you know just waiting for the um
096project approval um so i have a quick question about under new items what do you mean by maintenance budget with the carry oh sure sure so basically like this is there's some backup detail in here and again i'll shoot you out this whole spreadsheet but i wanted to be able to talk through it first um but essentially for a maintenance budget we're saying when you have your salaries there's bargaining agreements that you assume are going to happen so every year you know depending on you know how kim and and sal and my self negotiate it could be two percent it could be two and a half it could be three percent depending on how those bargain agreement agreements come out for the new ones and then we're committed to previous year ones you know because
097they're multi-year agreements for future growth in their contracts in addition their steps that they move up so on the salary side it's just the cost of you know bargaining and step increases um and similarly like i'll give you an example in the transportation budget uh i mean um contract when we negotiate that contract they negotiate into their contract like uh increase every year you know um it's kind of standard with the transportation contracts in connecticut maybe we can revisit that in this new world with an rfp but so for example they get three percent increase on their costs every year the same thing with a lot of our um you know service agreements and things like that some things are held flat and some people have agreed as we've negotiated during the pandemic and said
098listen can you can you do us a favor we're continuing to do business with you can you keep flat and they have so this just reflects that yeah rachel we defined the the maintenance as just as we were you know the cost of just opening the doors without any you know wishlist for us to to move ahead so it's the same basically the same staff it doesn't include any increase in staff relative to growth or anything like that it's just the staff and the incremental increases so as if we did nothing and and had no additional uh no additional money it might be that's just that to open the doors on the existing uh components and the existing staff we have now yeah yeah yeah it's exactly and why is is it such a high
099percent it's because you really have to kind of go back two years because the city really didn't fund us last year and we did all the shifting to the one-time funding sources so really we're kind of catching up for that okay and um can you tell us how much is in the reserve for all of those accounts correct currently oh um there's no reserve right now for technology the special ed is also new and the emergency contingency is new i can get back to you with the insurance reserves i might even have it in the back up here there's so many documents there um no it's not in this particular so i will get back to you this gets us up to we have a um partner that works with us um to do an
100assessment on on our insurance costs you know that we negot we work with um and they recommend a percentage it's called a corridor that you fund which is a percent of your overall you know previous year's expense with a growth factor to set aside for risk and you don't have to you have to meet a certain minimum you don't have to meet that maximum this is just getting us up to the maximum because you know it's prudent to do that and it helps us to budget for our health insurance more appropriately thank you yeah especially in a self-insured world you know you want to kind of take care of that so so but yeah i think we're probably up to about four million in reserves oh i but don't quote me i'll i'll get you
101at one time they were saying you have to have about four months right so oh so that'd be a lot more than four million yeah yeah right so so you know but but there is a standard they they've asked us to maintain yeah we've been able to put so much in there each year yeah i kind of remember 5 million but that was probably a few years ago oh so it's got to be a lot higher than that so again don't quote me i'll get you the number i just know we got up to the max with this amount of what we could do it might have been seven million but i think we could check that yeah yeah it's like broken into two it's like ibnr which is the incur but not reimbursed cost
102so it just means you're setting up for future risk and then in addition this what they call the corridor that gets you it's like 25 of your total you know yeah it's four months it's probably like 25 of your total bill so we're probably up to 10 million now i would say maybe i don't know so these reserves are funds that are really expenditures on the board of edge part that are then given to the city correct they hold them aside correct yeah yeah we transferred over to the city and they have an account that they identify for for us that holds these funds and we can request them if we were to need them is the emergency contingency is that broad base to be used for whatever we want or is there limits i
103mean are there restrictions as to what you can do no there's no restrictions on that except for that it be one time um and initially we were going to use that for um ppe and desk shields and all of those things but then that crf and what's what's called the crew advice relief funds became available from the state so the city allowed us to just keep that as a category so it could be a building emergency it could be you know anything that's one time in nature that we would need to take care of we can ask them for that funds so courtney i i'm just trying to rick as remember this i think even though whatever it is that we want to do they still he still has to get approval by the council
104correct correct yeah yeah but i i watched that council meeting and they were pretty amenable but i just so the board knows that it's somebody could say okay but it does go it it does have the light of day is what i'm saying yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not just anything we're not buying uh i don't know bubble gum with it yeah okay um so would you like to move on to the details of the new funding yeah i think that's important the other stuff as i said would be like it's kind of yeah and the new it's this 6.484 here um and it's not really new in that you've seen some a lot of these things before as they'll said so i'm going to make this bigger and we're breaking it out in those
105kind of categories and i'm going to ask my colleagues to help me talk through because they know what these are much better than i do but the first category is increased k-12 enrollment and it totals about and twelve thousand and i'm just going to clarify that this is a special ed and so for elementary it's for six teachers and i'm gonna have kevin talk to this um rationale why we thought that we'd put aside six teachers kevin if you don't mind sure good evening everyone so uh for elementary and high school i'll speak to those two yeah uh for one and sal spoke to some some of these concerns earlier uh one we were down about 130 140 kindergarten students this year um and we're certainly expecting our typical enrollment numbers if not more for
106kindergarten for the 21 22 school year um and you know we're still waiting and then we did open up kindergarten registration but we're certainly waiting to see what the impact is going to be uh for the 21 20 22 school year um we have we we did not lose kindergarten teachers last year so you know to be transparent about that we did not reduce sections necessarily um and so you know hopefully hopefully we will um come even from this but we quite frankly we're really concerned about a significant bump at the kindergarten level um and you know with 140 students across the system being moved up it's not necessarily concentrated in two or three schools it's kind of spread across the district which means we can't necessarily reduce staffing at the first grade level so
107that is to be determined um we will have some kindergarten numbers hopefully the next couple of months that will give us a better sense of what that growth is going to look like but we're certainly anticipating it as other schools as we understand are across the state and just to clarify a lot of families one of the reasons why the kindergarten numbers were down a lot of families chose to keep their students home this year um you know for remote learning you know part of the unknown is will they reappear as kindergarten students or elect to come back as first grade students so those are some things that we will learn over the next few months um again as part of our continuing high school growth and also increase in graduation requirements um we you
108may have you may recall you saw some of these requests last year i mean that is an additional business teacher for the uh business finance um finance graduation requirement in addition to health these studies were all these are both additions to the graduation requirements and the social studies teacher was also requested from the school and so that's where you see those nine additional ftes for high school and elementary and i believe kelly is going to speak to the special ed piece sure so the special education teacher request is for four ftes and that is very similar in pattern to what kevin just explained for general education uh the first is as you guys know we've had a large preschool incoming cohort and that means they are matriculating to kindergarten um so we are anticipating the
109need for additional staffing there and then at the secondary level with the increase in graduation requirements the expansion um potentially of servicing students until age 22 we will also need additional support at the high school level as well so it'll kind of support at the two bookends the incoming kindergarteners kindergarten first grade depending on which grade they matriculate into and then at the high school level as well and the next cat so that's about that's 910k and then the next category is school climate and some of these are familiar to you from the past we're uh requesting 940 000 and um kevin do you mind talking through the school climate piece or dr charles you'd like to answer yeah yeah sure i i can would that decide you want me to take these two yeah
110go okay so we have um in the request this year we are requesting an assistant principal for shelter rock in stadley elementary school as well as ellsworth you again you might recall seeing these requests for the 2021 school year i recall i believe is my first or second year in district um dr sal talked about kind of a standard uh for when it's time to consider an assistant principal in the building um at the elementary level and that number is typically 500 for school districts we have shelter rock and sadly both and over 500 students in each building in ellsworth right now around 470 and given that they are growing at a rate higher than any other elementary school in the district and quite frankly we are anticipating a bump um you know as per
111um as per the demographic demographic study that we had done uh we we are requesting three assistant principals for those three elementary schools in addition um and and to support the social emotional lacrosse across all of our schools we are looking at creating a school climate specialist at the elementary schools wilson which will kind of serve as a restorative position to help to address address the varying concerns that might come to the principal's office um this person would be skilled enough to you know restoratively get this child back in class um you know reach out to the families um refer them to a social worker if appropriate um they wouldn't this would not be this would not require a dis disciplinary response if so you know the principal certainly would have to be involved but
112that's what this climate specialist essentially their role would be and so we are looking at this type of position throughout all of our elementary schools to support the principal and to address those very needs and the social emotional concerns that we've continued to talk about and so similarly for the middle school a climate specialist to support the middle school principals at the at the three buildings in addition uh we currently have a principal lee at our elementary school and we feel like it would be appropriate to have a principal lead at the middle school to also help with um to help with uh i'm sorry corey according no it's okay i made the mistake of of trying to follow why you're moving around which is not really necessary i apologize okay but but it's really
113uh in an attempt to try to um restore as you can see the language here restore previous funding for middle school coordination but it's really about having an opportunity to um have coordination amongst the middle school principals and allow for them to have the ongoing dialogue that they need and and try to make sure someone's compensated for leading those discussions and then last but not least with the high school um you have seen this before and so we feel like it's really important to have a school dean climate dean at the high school um to help with academic and social emotional concerns that might you know take place at the building this will also lighten the load a little bit on the assistant principles as well and and and often times in schools and we're
114not we haven't talked about we haven't decided specifically where they would land but oftentimes these positions um the ninth grade is oftentimes the grade level that experiences the most need and so that's probably where our dean will spend the majority of their time um you know for the rest of the school we can have our climate specialists similar to the ones that we have talked about for the elementary school again this is this would be a group of people who would have the skills um to address you know restoratively get kids back in the classroom and address those social emotional needs that we've been talking about over the last couple of years and then last but not least uh we have parent liaisons amazing ones um at morris elementary school and we want to duplicate
115that model um at our high school and frankly we you know we've been talking about what this could look like district wide but the high school you know with over 3 000 students really should have these type of resources in their building to reach out to families and students when they're not coming to school when we have concerns about engagement you know right now we don't have these positions in place and it's unreasonable quite frankly to have social workers knocking on all the doors giving the numbers you know over 3 000 students in the building i think that's it for me kevin i got a question the climate specialist but are there special or do they have to have any specific training or academic credentials to fit that role so i i believe in in
116kim i don't want to infringe upon you know any negotiation or i don't know if this is a position that's already existing in the contract but i believe this group similar to our power line paraprofessionals it's on par with paraprofessionals in terms of um academic you know academic college credits so i believe it's a two-year degree or at least 60 credits to be eligible for this type of position thank you you know i mean just the board knows what we came through two years ago one of the things that the findings that we had definitely was that um getting to youngsters in a timely fashion uh and we really think that putting this team together we'd have the ability now you met me have your assistant principals dealing with all the other kinds of things
117and and difficult um disciplinary kinds of situation but some of that other stuff that just allows to permeate creates conflict and issues and we really think by putting the dean in putting the support specialists in and also getting the outreach workers that we could create a synergism that's going to get out and hopefully get ahead of a lot of these things uh i'm very i was very concerned with the high school and the number it's only growing as you all know right going back there so i really uh think this is something that's it's really needed particularly at that high school and the outreach workers uh as has been very successful moving out and getting to parents putting parents in line with support in the community so it's a it's a 360 kind of uh
118support for a family not only dealing with the youngsters behavior but supporting um the family and that would be the model that i would like to endorse and see us move towards because it has helped us at the elementary thank you can i ask a quick question as well please go okay um kevin i just wanted to ask you real quick um you know from your perspective when you're looking at this you know these additional supports we're trying to put in i mean i think part of my concern is that we've known for that we're kind of behind as far as the socio-emotional supports we need you know to to help our students um and i recognize that we're trying to play this game of catch-up you know from your perspective do you think that
119this is going to be enough support you know for our students or would you anticipate continuing to grow this over the next few years or you know i'm just trying to you know get a sense of like you know if that's something that you would you would want to be expanding or if this is sort of like where you think things are just going to land if we were able to do it so yeah okay thank you thanks to that question so so one i think you're going to find as we go through the the next few categories um that this is kind of coupled with you know an effort to increase school counselors um at our middle at our secondary level you know and continue to increase and and include more social workers and
120psychologists in our schools across the levels um i i am a big proponent of climate specialists um in that type of position um i think we will find um i think our principles are fine i think our teachers will find and into sal's point dr sal's point it it it creates an opportunity for us to respond to behaviors in real time um and so you know if if you speak to our middle schools or secondary principles even elementary for that matter you know when we have um a a case a one of our children who are in crisis it takes up you know it can take up half the day for you know for for our kid for our family and the staff member um and so when we have these climate specialists and we
121have someone who you know has the skill set to address those behaviors you know they would be trained in going back to mr janelly's questions about training um you know certainly we would want this group trained and the same training that our support folks went through with the restorative practice training um you know certainly i think i believe kelly does uh you know kind of uh you know where i don't know if i think it's kelly's group that does it that does training with our um with our support staff to talk about de-escalating skills so like all those things would certainly be part of it um to answer this is my long way of saying i feel like this would be just kind of opening the door for addressing uh the social emotional concerns we
122talked about i ideally i think we would you know have more guidance counselors in our buildings um and we would have more social workers in our buildings and frankly this is our way of a less expensive way to to try to find more skilled people to address behaviors in our schools um and and again i i think as a as a cabinet and as you know administrators in the district as we're making these recommendations um and after you know so many years knowing that seeing that we can't get the assistant principles as an example in elementary schools well the climate specialist can help you know and so if i'm a principal at one of the elementary schools and i have a kid in crisis one of my kids are in crisis i'm i'm alone right
123and so this means i can't i can't be available for teachers i can't be available for other parents it's just me and that child potentially um and i i think this would be a great resource for our buildings um kate um and and but this is coupled with other things but this is not a standalone you know social emotional support um so okay thank you for that clarification i appreciate that especially because you know i'm i'm looking at this um and you know i what i hear from you while you're talking about this is that you're you're doing the you know you guys are doing your absolute best in terms of the planning to uh use our money wisely um which i know has been a complaint um i've heard from folks um before but
124it seems to me like you're you re we we all recognize that there's there are things that are happening in our district and you know based on um you know the response to previous requests you know you're sort of going back and you're finding a more you know a more efficient way for the district just to really address these underlying issues so uh i just want to say i appreciate that thank you yeah thank you kate to your point kevin i think you've explained just incredibly great the the i'm going to use the word the impact of what the funding for at least this category is courtney and i have talked about a maybe a subsequent um a meeting to address the impact of what we're looking at on these new issues because i think
125the verbiage and the understanding as to as you've explained here is very very important so that people understand what it is that we're looking to try to do you know as opposed to just schlep it off as preventive maintenance you know which is a very rough way of saying if you just want to slash money it's preventive maintenance however the way you phrase it it's totally different so i think in another presentation the the significance and the meaning of what we're looking to do and the impact it has on on our students and our education is something that we've got to put put across to make people understand why we need these funds and to enrich to your body i appreciate it yeah and and that as part of what we're going to take away
126from here and rich and also kate has asked as part of the finance committee reps to us to do is once we get get this into this nice powerpoint presentation uh that we're going to present to the board and also take out the community and say well what would happen if we don't get these funds so they've asked us to also look at so so what does it mean if we don't have these for our school community so we can we can do that as well exactly and it's it's equally as important that the public understand it in our presentation to the the city government you know they have to be aware as the escape put it the catch-up that we're trying to do and the increased importance as to what the effect of these
127particular elements are on education if we don't get it you know conceivably what impact it has and so embedded in the climate is social emotional and kelly does have a multi-year approach um that i just asked if you could talk about these uh this piece kelly sure one quick question for kevin kevin uh climate specialist it sounds a lot like guidance counselor are you saying that our guidance counselors are overburdened and we need to increase them also uh well i'll say yes and this way the guidance counselors maybe i can run for mayor and all of them would definitely vote for me uh but but but mr russo the truth is they are overworked uh you know we had knee ass come in and do a study with the district a couple of years ago
128uh we learned you know from that from that from the nes visit um that that our count that we were on demand in our counseling counseling ranks which is why in the next section you're going to hear you know kelly continue to recommend that we continue to add school counselors you know to the high schools i believe their ratios are over three well over years ago as an assistant principal i worked in norwalk high school and they were you know comfortably at i should say comfortably but they were they're you know 225 250 per um and you know there's there's a reason why you know districts like norwalk are outperforming us um we we need to make sure the counselors have a reasonable case load so they can meet with students and families and talk
129about planning and you know and continue to work with students to make sure their grades are where they should be um and i think this is also the reason why you know it's like you know we continue to have leaks and we try to patch from left to right and so you know because dan can't get his guidance counselors he continues to ask for dean every year um and i think it's important for us as a district to make sure that we can address these social emotional concerns um and and and miss russ i don't know if this is what you're asking also but this the school climate specialists will help you know some of those challenges that our schools are having uh you know they they may help you know some of these issues
130not go to an overburdened social worker office because in real time the climate specialist could be available for students and families overburdened assistant principals because the climate specialist obviously under the direction of the administration in the building you know can help support um and you know restoratively restoratively get kids back in class and you know that's another thing we our kids perform well i think we've demonstrated over the years that when kids are in school that we do well but we need our high school kids our middle school kids in classrooms in order to benefit from the instruction and the climate specialists will be positioned well to make sure we keep kids in school and in class very well stated sir thank you and thank you sir okay um i will kind of piggyback on
131uh what kevin had just added i'll start with the school counselors uh mr russo as you brought up our school counselors certainly need more support the recommended national guidelines from asca are 250 students per school counselor and we are well over at our middle and high school levels um and so um in order to further support our students and their families we need to add additional school counselors um and that was also highlighted in our neask accreditation as an area of significant need and so we are proposing over multiple years to add to the secondary level so for next year to start by adding two school counselors to danbury high school and one to the middle school and then a similar recommendation would come in years to come to add additional school counseling support to
132both the high school as well as the middle school level the board was very supportive last year and adding two additional positions which started this process to start to reduce some counselor caseloads in certain areas one of them in the general ed uh population the other one to provide additional support to special education um so this would be three additional school counselors at the six through twelve level um in addition another area of social emotional support that we need is in relationship to pembroke which most of you are aware pembroke houses one of our special education programs for students primarily on the autism spectrum although there are a variety of different children with needs there and their number of students has grown substantially over the last handful of years we have the largest number of
133special education students at the elementary level at pembroke elementary school it's currently over 120 students which is a significant portion of the population and for that reason we do need additional support services there for the special education students as well as to support support with the general ed students and supporting their social emotional needs so we are proposing an additional uh either school counselor or social worker to be added to that school building um to support in those areas thank you kelly yeah okay and i'm just gonna glance down at the bottom line and go back up to the details so as we're talking through just from to be mindful this is the 6.84 and it's about 80 head count um you know so i just want to be mindful of the overall need that
134we're expressing here and so i'm going to move into the area of curricular programming and support which is um cara casimiro dr casmiro's expertise but first i'm just going to ask if kim because kim worked through this with kara and gina and although it's a curricular support it's it's because of our new world it's reporting into our new director of information technology gina jasmine um and it's a way to use existing resources she really did a good look at her organizational chart and re-prioritized a lot of the positions there to support our new world kim do you mind just talking briefly about what's going on there and how that's going to help enhance the curricular programming and then care can go into the detail sure so so some of what we're talking about about reorganizing
135technology comes at the point in time in the calendar now where we're turning to negotiate the contract with um the secretary's union who embodies the technology people so part of gina's planning with me over time has been in anticipation of those negotiations that are going to start in the next six weeks or so so some of this is kind of forward planning but what's been great about gina's vision from hersey is that we have taken a tremendous amount of new assets so all of those new laptops that we've deployed all of the things like the hot spots and the wiring in the buildings to make sure that everybody could log on at the same time all of the troubleshooting and all the problems that would come along with that that include maintaining a help desk
136that's going to actually help our staff to be able to use all of this equipment some teachers are going to have multiple screens so that they can toggle back and forth with kids who are remote and kids are in person all of that is a combination of both hard assets infrastructure and soft assets or people so this first line that you see here is part of a much this is sort of shorthand for a much larger plan that gina's got that will start to grow over time the technology asset kind of maintenance and supervision piece um you might remember that we have sort of a student data wing and a hardware wing of our technology asset and gina sits on top of both of those the other thing she's trying to do is over time
137build in sufficient um kind of liaison so someone who can bridge the gap between the technology and the educational software that we're buying so that's another piece of that so what you see here is kind of the beginning of the rollout of that plan that will continue um hopefully over two three and even a five-year plan of growth thank you and then um just briefly kevin this is the k-12 applied arts um health and special area lead um is that you talking about that and then cara gets to this big piece here or how are we dividing up that part i apologize i don't recall no that's okay yeah i apologize you're all it's okay yeah just hold on here yeah i'll try to i'll try to move through all these um so i put
138your um language up there's um under humanities and support there's some components that we'll also get to for you because that's what i've got your literacy coach if you want to talk about it now or there i just wanted to show you that's where it's perfect okay okay um so we'll just go in a linear fashion and we'll we'll get there when we get there so the cape um so as you know we have uh curriculum administrators for our areas like stem and humanities and then um esl and world language um we have um at one point had a k-12 fine and applied arts um curriculum administrator um but we did lose that during one of our budget cycles and that was several years ago and we've been um limping along ever since we've had
139some great people who have all been working hard but that broader centralized visionary planning and coordination really needs to be had um and when we got our nest report we had some um some some concerns about the curriculum development in the fine and applied arts uh needing to be updated and refreshed and coordinated and so um we definitely it's time to bring back um this position so that would be a fine and applied arts curriculum administrator and for special areas so that's a pretty broad bucket there's a lot of different um courses that fall into that this will be particularly helpful as well as we move forward with vision planning for academies and all the different themes that will uh fall into there and and the uh and the careers and the integrated curricular work
140that's going to need to happen so this is going to be a key position as we as we roll forward um last year we did include some student support specialists if you remember in the budget last year they have been phenomenal the timing of hiring them has been crucial given what's going on and they have been actively running all of those uh intervention groups across the k-5 spectrum we'd like to continue to grow that out and to add 13 interventionists to work with them to coordinate intervention in the srbi process happening in the k5 buildings um they come at a they're around 10 000 a piece actually this should be about i think 130 courtney um i think we tagged them around 10 000. yup just look i'm just noticed that now um i only
141had 12 because one moved over but that's not true so okay that's okay yeah i just noticed it um and they work for about 10 months and they are 100 uh you know non-union employees so they are very valuable in our intervention planning and programming and so we hope to add that particularly as we know that we're going to need a little bit more support in that area going into next year there's about 70 000 in there for some additional supervision over the over the summer we are in the process of planning out summer school and the scope of what that could look like given a couple different scenarios and so that is for um some anticipated supervisory additions that we'll need as far as the curriculum goes about 31 000 we have several areas
142that just need refreshing um but also in those fine and applied art areas that we spoke of so we definitely need to get moving in there we've also have some revisions in our esl programming as you know we've implemented the el achieve program k5 that is going really well so we'll be adding um some additional uh rolling that up and we'll be going to be starting to revise our middle school programming as well so there's some curriculum development money in there it's professional resources those are things like uh training related to some of the programming that we have as we bring on things like kits for interventionists and programming that we need to shore up some of our learning loss there'll be specific training and and programming and kits that we'll need to support that
143learning curricular resources are sort of your hard goods your consumables your supplies um last year we were really hoping to make a huge dent in our library if you remember in our initial ask last year and with sort of everything that was going on that fell to the wayside a bit and we were only able to order very small amounts um so we're really hoping to replace our libraries i apologize for my dogs making an entrance um and our phonics program which we have rolled out this year in the pandemic virtually um has been going really well and we would like to purchase decodable readers to continue to support that so those are kind of two big um hard replacements uh that are needed we also gave away um quite a bit of materials in
144this environment in the sense that we sent home individual books to students math manipulatives and things like that um so that students had materials at home and so as much as our students i'm sure will be trying to bring those back into our schools we we know that many of those will will not return so some of those are to replace um some of the resources that were distributed hardware and software those are things like dot cameras different different types of technology that's need to replace um stem discovery tech book is a is a large component of this this line item as well and that's to continue to roll forward our science curriculum uh that we're implementing in the k5 and there's also some software music curriculum there as well and that is mostly as
145a result of our partnership with um save the music which has been wonderful but we are keeping up with all that needs to happen there to continue to grow that program out um let's see well cara had her staff identified this is like 1.2 as i'm highlighting just on these categories what was new versus ongoing which meaning you know when you look at the curricular budget compared to other districts and just like even in general like what we had in our identified as four curriculum in our budget she really advocated to set it aside because typically we would kind of like find the money at the end of the year which is not a way that we want to operate yeah we do and i and i appreciate the way that we've been able to
146do this particular planning because it gets down to the details there's things that we need on a regular basis and then you know as we try to bring new programs down and as we just try to refresh things and and bring in new resources um it may be the same program but better resources to support it um you know we were able to break it out into these in these categories here so happy to answer any questions if you have those otherwise i can move down the list any questions on the curriculum piece and seeing seeing them we're really happy to have a gusto here to talk about the sll request which um you know august i've just we've summarized it a little bit uh but this is your your ask for 915k if you
147could go through overall that the need and talk through the vision here sure well the first line item it's the easiest one because um it's not a new item it's just restoring what we used to have if you remember we had three psyop coaches at the middle school we are down to one uh two positions were eliminated during um difficult times so now we are asking for restoring the three full-time positions i would like to highlight the fact that it's pretty much known throughout the district that our psyop coaches instructional coaches have been playing a crucial role especially during this learning environment they they are our worker bees they they do everything every teacher every everybody uh wants a little bit of each one of them and we unfortunately cannot clone them so last year
148we expanded a little bit at the um elementary level i think now is it's time to restore uh those workers at the at the middle school so this is not new it's restoring what we used to have everything else well the second one the certified special student assessor comes strictly from a compliance requirement from the home language survey guidelines clearly indicate the need for an l specialist our reception center as you know has been commanded and now the central registration is a safe haven a one-stop shop for all the new um families coming to danbury with their children to register for school so the esl component is definitely the core the majority of the work performed on a daily basis at the center so this is a basically a compliance um issue we we need
149to comply with the guidelines that clearly indicate the need for an esl specialist if you remember the last time a few years ago i i shared with you the um the title three compliance review our esl reception center was um one of their commendations so we we are really proud of of having become a model for for the entire state and then everything else works from compliance legal compliance and also we are way beyond the compliance status in terms of needs we are now looking at student-to-teacher ratio um you know kevin mentioned the the fact that norwalk is outperforming as i'm not sure if that's the case in esl but um i wouldn't be surprised because they're looking at a student-to-teacher ratio way down way below what we have in mind so again these new
150positions are required by law by connecticut bilingual law every school any school identifying 20 or more english learners who speak the same language is required to offer a bilingual education program in that language so our schools are all required to implement bilingual programs across the board k-12 this is just trying to bring some common sense to what we have determined as the achievable and realistic student-to-teacher ratio that's possible again compared to other school districts we we are still way above everybody else as usual but we are moving in the right direction uh we are way down from in some cases one to over 100 students in some schools to something close to one to 65 that's the goal the third item the parity between esl um programs at the rogerspark in in broadview this is
151something we contemplated last year but for obvious reasons we stopped short from doing it we didn't think it was appropriate we're moving ahead again it's a compliance issue both both middle schools are required to offer bilingual programs we have been housing bilingual programs at rogers park now i think we need definitely to implement them at the at broadview because we have so many students it's not manageable it's not appropriate not pedagogically right so in addition to the compliance issue there's the pedagogic uh pedagogic um argument to be made um [Music] dr casamir alluded to the elder chief that's the bottom line item professional resources and then the curriculum development we are expanding next year the elder chief which is a new english language development program that we started for in grades k through two this
152year it's it's it's giving us tremendous uh results again especially during a distance learning environment where we are um definitely seeing kids using a language much more at the higher level than they used to before so that's a natural expansion of the program moving up to grades three and four and five and then exploring the possibility of starting looking ahead to uh to the expansion um in terms of moving to the middle school as well so again in in a nutshell i would say that as usual from my perspective we're looking at compliance legal compliance review and and we are looking now at also a decent acceptable student-to-teacher ratio to see if we can address their needs in an adequate and and fair way gusto mr genelli had commented on impact just just give us
153i know you can go on for nine hours on this but just give us give the board the flavor of of this systemically how this is going to impact teaching and learning and academic success for kids yeah um well you all know that um our ells have had some um challenges throughout the years and and we are now um in what i believe is the the optimum track we are providing explicit direct instruction to these youngsters um and they are taking advantage we are seeing improvement um for many years we have seen what we call long-term else students who have been considered and labeled as as english learners for many many years and the reason was uh you know you know in all honesty because we were short in terms of staffing we were not
154um able to provide what we consider adequate language support services so we are now moving in the right direction we are also looking at something that is good for all students uh whatever we do from an esl perspective is good for all students it's it's good teaching plus as i usually um characterize these approaches and that plus is the language component the focus on language explicit uh direct instruction that is provided to these youngsters so that we can accelerate we cannot uh perform miracles but at least we can based on research we can accelerate their english language acquisition so that they can become successful within the regular classroom environment and we are providing a dual approach um implementation let's say uh direct explicit instruction and then the psyop coaching component and this is paying off
155across the across the board and and again this is good teaching for all students and it's essential for ells but it's also um very useful for all for all uh students that's why we are seeing the need for these instructional psyop instructional coaches because everybody's benefiting from their know-how and from their ongoing job embedded support thank you courtney can i just ask a question for clarification on the el achieve uh under the curricular re because it's a curricular resource that the the rollout of those materials is a bit more than that i know that we talked about i know that i know it's somewhere i'm just one on this sheet where do you where do we have that captured is that in the curricular resources so the way that we've done it and we can
156we can change this when we talk about the braided funding or or however we we like to do it right now this is just the incremental additional cost so because we have the el achieve funded and alliance in what i call like last year's cary ford alliance budget i'm not showing it here but it does exist it exists on augusta's uh very detailed document of all his names exists under the alliance funding okay okay so um the the next category is humanities arts and literacy um i'm so sorry oh i'm sorry yeah sure of course i was just wondering if i could ask um uh a couple questions about that at the elf funding um thank you so much for for the update on where things are at um and and i certainly especially appreciate
157um your emphasis on the psyop positions um and i know so so it looks like you know we're trying to put two additional psyop coaches in which is going to bring us up to where we were but obviously we've seen a huge increase in the number of el students coming into our districts so where we were is probably not going to be adequate for where we need to be if you you know we're talking about um you know trying to to come to a more um and i recognize we're we're just you know we're looking at this from a um a cost savings standpoint to some degree but i i want to kind of get a sense from you as to how many psyop coaches you think really we need district-wide if we're going to
158move the needle on uh you know the the goals that we have for our el students you're putting me on the spot i mean i'm sorry well um i i i would tell you uh that we we have made significant progress at the elementary level right now because of the implementation of the i'll achieve with with the board support and and central office support we have um hired a couple of additional psyop coaches at the elementary level we now have four coaches which is a little more manageable than before we had nothing so uh each psyop coach is assigned to three schools three four schools so obviously would i like to have one psyop per school of course but okay it that's that's the long long term goal right right uh the same thing for
159the middle schools and i i appreciate your um you know highlighting the fact that this is not new it's just restoring so again if we uh get disapproved we will go back to having one coach per school per middle school which is again much better then at the high school um we haven't mentioned that but a few years ago a couple years three years ago we had two coaches and we are down to one so hopefully next year we will ask another one at the high school so little steps you know okay but i think i think i think we we're moving we're moving um to to uh to a point where we are start starting to feel more comfortable okay thank you i mean i guess what i'm trying to to get a sense
160from because you were you were very good at um you know sort of pinpointing the the student teacher ratio looking for like a one to six you know a 65 to one ratio for um you know the teachers themselves and so i just was sort of trying to get a sense from you is to you know are we talking one per building that would be you know best are we talking about like maybe multiple psyop coaches per building um you know in an ideal world i recognize we're not there but i but i just want to kind of get a sense of you know what level of support they have to provide you know because like when we talk about counselors for example when we talk about what is an acceptable workload for them it's
161certainly less than the total student population of a school so again again we contrary to other school districts across connecticut we have been increasing our student population and particularly our ell student population right yeah so again coming down from one to over 100 teacher to student ratio down to 1 to 65 it's it's already a significant progress when i mentioned before uh using kevin's uh comparison with norwalk norwalk for example is looking at a one to fifty we are looking at one to sixty five so right there you see that there's no there's need for improvement again if we keep moving at the same rate we are going especially during the last two three years we'll get there but we definitely need to to hire additional teachers esl bilingual teachers and definitely additional psyop coaches
162it's a it's a it's a process it's a it's a process and i'm sure that with your support we'll get there every year if we if we can hire a few additional ftes every year we will we're getting better we're getting better and and okay thank you you're welcome thank you augusto uh-huh you're welcome thank you that was really great okay and then humidities are in literacy we've got 315 of an ask this includes um some specials teachers so about 3.5 at the middle school and high school combined and so i'll just have kevin briefly talked about that and then the humanities literacy coach i apologize that wasn't up with the curriculum care and then we'll get to that thank you courtney so the three the three specials one music one art and one pe
163teacher that you see here um are are are aligned with the potential growth at the elementary schools so we are projecting that we would need at least one additional special teacher um and so if we get to the point where we have more students in our elementary grades particularly the k-1 grade levels which could mean additional sections um we are anticipating that we would need at least one additional specialist teacher in these areas um in fact in fact our i believe it's our meet yes it's the music and art um this year we we needed to we in both areas we hired a 0.4 position and so part of that request is to make them full-time not only to address any potential growth but it's just actually the growth that we have now um so
164we really need the 1.0 just to in each area to hold firm and then if we don't have any significant bumps we will be okay if we have any significant bumps in enrollment we may need to revisit the the special areas um and then the special teachers the specials are used for um our prep periods for our teachers um which permits them to meet and do that things of that they have to in terms of teaching and learning and and and instruction for uh meeting purposes and as kevin says we've been able to spread them out among the elementaries but i think the point he just made if we do receive more students we're going to have to figure out how to uh increase it because not only we have to service the youngsters but
165they do provide the backup service for planning periods for our teachers at the elementary so that's why they were they've been bumped up we'll have to watch that closely as kevin just mentioned and currently our specialist teachers are shared in some of our schools we have a music teacher at danbury high school i believe there's two of them [Music] we need to upgrade the the position at the high school so it would be a 0.5 and so that this way they would no longer be shared between the high school and the middle school they will remain at the high school give us an opportunity to continue to grow that program at the high school um and that's why that 1.0 music is there because that's um compensating for the 0.5 that they're going to be
166losing at the middle school so just a quick sum of 0.5 increase for danbury high school that gives us an opportunity to continue to grow offerings um at the high school and then that is reflected in a 1.0 for k-8 because they're going to be losing a 0.5 person to the high school full-time in this in this um in this recommendation so 1.0 music 1.0 art 1.0 pe and then a 0.5 actually music for the high school thank you kevin okay any questions on that be amazing okay okay and then cara the nice rounding out for the curricular part for the humanities literacy coach so so this is a literacy coach for to service the three middle schools um and we have had this in the budget in the past it never seems to quite
167make it uh very far but it certainly is needed this is one literacy coach to service the three schools and again you know more so than ever small group instruction and intervention is going to be key to um helping to shore up some of the learning loss and to accelerate um students as they move through the middle school so um we are hoping to this this position is key because it helps to teach teachers how to do that work best um and so we're hoping that that uh that that we can um get that back into the budget uh for for next year and then just uh for just to kind of continue on so that we um i'll i'll just pop down to summer school he's gonna pop around a little bit and then
168wrap up wrap up that piece that's all tied together and that's just 250 000 uh is the ask above our typical summer school um expenditures uh and we are again working on for what that what that plan looks like but that's sort of a ballpark um uh tbd on our expected expenditures in that area considering that we were likely to spend more and expand on our our former offerings yeah and that includes the special ed component and it's also kelly mentioned um you know we're gonna probably need to who knows what this new variant's gonna look like and so you know we're just holding inside a placeholder that will likely need to continue to distance the children in this in the schools so there'll be additional you know operational costs and busing costs as well
169as the academic costs for expanding to the students last year were able to invite many more students because it was virtual and it worked out well so but the community conditions will will dictate um what our plan is as we get closer to the summer and so it's a good subway into the pupil services and support kelly um for these additional items about 424 000 um and if you could just talk about these needs yeah so um i think uh we've talked about the speech and language pathologist many times before so very similar to the conversation related to our school counselors the need to reduce their case sizes and their case loads so we can provide adequate services to our students still exist we have added approximately two slps our speech and language pathologist over
170the last three school years which has very much helped uh with us providing the appropriate services to kids that is needed and so while we're still seeing some increased enrollment at the pre-k level in particular we do need um an additional slp to sure up um and make be able to make sure that we maintain the appropriate caseloads that we've been able to create over the last few years so that is the reason for the request for one additional speech and language pathologist the other area and again relates primarily to preschool is that we we are seeing increased enrollment pre-k in the early elementary levels and earlier on many of our students require support in the area of occupational therapy or physical therapy those are services that are provided to help students to access their
171academics and again the case loads have slowly been creeping up in those areas uh hence the request for an additional support person these are two different certifications and positions so it'll look more like a 0.5.5 or 0.6.4 but overall will be one additional full-time equivalent to support in that area next is uh the assistant director for special ed and pupil services this was a request that was made last year and due to the need to reduce the budget there is a need to more adequately support the 1700 or nearly 1700 special education students and numerous support staff that work in the department to be able to monitor provide appropriate supervision of staff professional development liaison with families create the strong programming that we've been able to to maintain students and district and an additional support
172personnel in that area would surely help to be able to ensure that we're able to provide services that our students require and provide that appropriate level of monitoring and professional development for our staff then you have the school nurses i think this line probably speaks for itself particularly this year i cannot say enough things about our nurses they have been absolutely phenomenal this year um cathy o'dowd in addition you've heard her at all of our board meetings and other community forums and they need additional support this they needed support before covid and certainly in these times they need support um so this would provide you know one one additional nurse uh to be utilized district-wide particularly when we have an absence or an outage or we need more uh support at the parochial schools we
173are obligated to provide support in those environments um as well as to support our ever-growing high school population where the nursing support services have not been adequate and so that this was something also highlighted in addition to our actual facility at the high school as a need at that level in the niask report and so that would be two nurses district-wide and then lastly as all of you are aware we have opened a new preschool site so we are now currently operating at two different locations and we need a school secretary for the building that we just opened right now it is operating without um which means that the administrator for special education as well as some of the support personnel are kind of fulfilling that secretarial role and duty um and so we are
174requesting an additional school secretary for the preschool in particular so i think that speaks to those areas but if there's any questions i'd be happy to answer them okay yeah sorry i just have a quick question um and this goes to the this actually goes back to the summer school piece when we're talking about the additional funding coming down um we're not factoring that in here if when and if we make the application for these funds from the state because we do have to apply to receive those funds if i understand correctly that will cover especially students as well as standard standard uh students is that okay yeah yeah it's it's it's really nice and we actually it's uh alex was on the title one um um um rules of distribution rules so we do
175actually have the funds i mean we have to make the application but the funds are available to us they're not going to be redistributed they're earmarked for us yeah and so does that play into uh the the attempted sorry the line item for the the nurses as well because that's an expansion that we that may be related to our increasing needs because of covet or you know like sort of standards changing as we go forward because of coverage okay one of the things we need to be careful is this this month this what we're seeing in front of you here is what we're going to need to sustain and go over no matter what happens with the grant and i was going to speak at the end of this so but i'll do it now
176um i think this the eastern ii money as long as it's related explicitly to uh i'm going to call it mitigation of academic loss and also of dealing with the coronavirus of which uh and social emotional support we will be able to braid funds to um to um to run programs but my worry and to worry is that with the city looks at this as a way of getting into the budget when these get into the budget and their one-time infusions it causes us as you know it will double and triple the amount of money that we're going to need down the road so i'm asking for this up front now you know down the road can we use that money for that yes but it needs to not to be um supplanting what we're
177doing and that's my worry so yes some loss part of it nurses part of it even technology part of it facilities improved ventilation part of it but again some of these are a one-time cost and that one-time cost will come back um to to to hurt us if we don't embed it into the operational so that's that's the challenge with the money i think i mentioned tonight to the board and all of this can potentially be used and i i will say right now um i i prefer not waiting i think our kids need help and if we can implement some things sooner rather than later we will attempt to do that um but if you would take the care's money away i'd say to you between the psyop folks the nurses these are all
178things that ought to be operational yeah yeah that that really clarifies thanks dr salan and and you know that's sort of why i asked the question was to just sort of assess that a little bit because i you know um part of my concern is that you know and courtney mentioned this at the beginning of the presentation because the way that the the municipal funding was managed last budget cycle you know we're further in a hole than we normally would be um and to count on this one-time funding again you know that is one-time funding it's it's you know it's not there for positions it's there for you know maybe building repairs is a one-time event you know that they that it could cover and not make a huge impact for us but my concern
179is that um you know folks are going to see that money that's been earmarked um you know for for the for us as you know okay this is fixing your problem and if if we don't work on that municipal funding stream then the positions that have to be paid for every year are just not going to be we're not going to be able to maintain them yeah and that's the last thing that we want is to be able to build that good synergy and not have it available and not be able to extend it yeah thank you yeah and so the an easy part for me to talk about is just a few little operations items so bus with the enrollment growth i mean we're already behind with the buses that we need we're already
180overcrowded um so you know asked me to put in one bus um a temporary rental line for the facility um for the reservation staff they're going to be housed over at um right up from bbac on beaver brook um so this is until i called it osbourne i shouldn't have called it osborne i think it's the ellsworth construction we'll talk about that tomorrow night at the facility meeting um i will change that and then um furniture and supply so we're always behind in furniture supplies i put that in the budget given that we're looking at a potential you know uptick in the in the little kids and we kind of want to reassess what's safe for furniture so small amount in there for furniture supplies and network maintenance this is a big ask um this
181is because our network is um you know defunct the contract runs out we need to upgrade and move the servers from the high school to beaver brook and come into the 21st century with that and so this is the ask for us to be able to do that um and so that total there for operations is about 695 k and that brings us to a total um ask of new items or items that are restored typically through the asl that's a couple buses yeah um it's actually not just one bus it's a couple buses so i was asking you my text he's correct um and so that's about 80 head count and 6.5 million for our i call it new but not new it's restoring some old things that we had that worked well that
182we want to do and and just continue like like um augusto mentioned you know the good work that we had in the past um seeing what we need to do curricularly and all the good explanations in the climate that kevin gave you as well that we should be doing for the district so i i'll be really brief um i just wanted to go over two more tabs i know there's a hundred tabs on here but very briefly this is what you're used to seeing this all ties out to the other numbers but it's just showing it to you in a slightly different way i'm gonna send this along to you this is the base budget for personnel with the increase and then showing you all the new items you'll recognize the 6.5 number and folks
183were asking well how did you get to that um growth budget well this will show you how if you're interested so for example if you look at the employee benefits this is our current budget it's saying if we grow social security by three percent which is just the historical trend if we grow our health and dental insurance by 4.8 which is the historical trend and the workers comp by 3 so for example that's what this is showing you and then that gets out to that nine point nine percent um increase and then i'm not going to go through this because i know this makes people cross-eyed but this was last year how we talked about that complicated braided funding i'm just going to send it back to you again and if you're interested in looking
184it over and asking questions about it please please feel free to do so this just shows you how we did it and then i'm suggesting that we build it again like this so as we work through we'll build up a powerpoint presentation that will be presented to the board next week rich generally has suggested if we need another finance committee between now and then we're happy to set that up and or if you have questions for me or any cabinet members on anything we talked about we'll be open at the end here today to do so but also throughout this week as we build out in this powerpoint presentation and this is what we'll visit when we get what we get from the city how are we going to braid together the funding to do
185what we need to do i i'd prefer not to talk about it as braided funding this year because really as dr cell said we got to pull this out and it's a total separate planning document and and cara and kevin and sal and our team are meeting on that starting on friday to start to talk with administrators oh even tomorrow i think um tomorrow and then again on friday about uh planning out for their cares money and so i welcome you to look at it i can send along the documents for the categories that the um federal government and the state of connecticut outlined for the cares money and so with that i'll pause whether i see kate has a question thank you for the presentation and everybody for their uh their contribution speaking that
186this is so voluminous um i i think to the board members my suggestion would be is to digest and look at these spreadsheets that's courtney sending um any questions you have relevant to to the presentation email courtney dr salman gladys your your questions on it and he'll get back to you i'm also going to as courtney uh mentioned uh ask if it's okay with uh gladys and dr sal that temporarily as a date we meet again on tuesday of next week before the board meeting to go through this presentation so it's refined a little bit more again some of my concerns are dwelling down on on the impact um there's information that came up relative to a restorative type of costs and and other other costs that are mandatory such as the nias and as
187augusta were saying so i think if this information is is brought out we can identify those those items and those costs as to what's absolutely necessary and what's your story and then basically you know we could get down to that that six million or seven million dollar new ask maybe if you drill down there might be a lesser number um so that would be my proposal whether gladys and dr sal agree on on next tuesdays and leave it up to them and whether it be a finance meeting or a workshop i'll leave it up to them as well to to decide but we're trying to as i said put this together as as we did last year so you could see the flow keep the same continuity and the rhythm in there uh and then
188hopefully by next year we can have more information on that uh 10.1 million dollars so that again i think that is a very important subject so that somebody doesn't look at this and say okay they're asking for 14 million dollars they got 10 million dollars in the state you know all you had to do was fund them four million dollars and as sal mentioned that being the case that means next year you know we're 10 million dollars in the hole so it it it's a lot of explaining a lot of education for a lot of technical stuff which i think is important and i think the time is necessary so that we're all comfortable with what's being prevented so again we could advocate for this as well and to the general public and to uh
189the parents and as well as to the city government we'll get back to you on on a another uh you know another presentation on tuesday for that sounds great okay do you have a question yeah i i do have one more question and rich i rick i i certainly don't want to um uh take up too much more time because i know we're getting close on nine o'clock here and everybody's been very patient um the other area i just want to bring up um and ask about and i'm not sure if you know if i missed something anywhere in here please correct me one of the issues we've been talking about is minority teacher recruitment bilingual teacher recruitment and you know i know that there are a number of different ways that were working on
190that issue um my sense is that it would be helpful if we had funds specifically set aside for that initiative and i don't see them outlined here so i just want to ask um you know if if that's something that we are working on i've certainly heard from a lot of people about it so yeah yeah um i i can speak to that okay every year we do have a budget we have a marketing budget that we use to do things like um expand the places where we go to do recruiting that kind of thing but where we're seeing the most bang for our buck has been with these homegrown programs that we we've been using so you've heard us come and talk to you a lot about um using the kids that go through
191kind of the teacher prep and into wescon and then filter back in through our um through our hiring and also this new alignment with nyu so all of that is already built into the current budget um the other thing that's kind of come out um in the last couple of days is there's some grant money out there so we're looking at um doing some funding that way also to kind of shore up the the teacher recruitment piece um but i'll tell you one of the things when we were looking at the numbers just this week is that our new what i would call our new class so we bring in if you call it about 115 teachers which is where we were as of november we were running it um just under 14 percent of
192latin latina latinx staffing in that pool and another four to five percent of other teachers of color so our numbers are they're about where they've been but they're running ahead of the state numbers so we're kind of happy with what we're seeing obviously we can do more and that's what we'll look at this grant money and our harnessing kind of our existing marketing money but it's less a matter of having the money built into the budget than it is finding the places where we're able to kind of recruit and do that sure so can you can you talk about the grants a little bit kim and just give me a sense of what what they how they make a decision about who they're going to award that to right it literally just came across my
193desk and cara casemero i know you forwarded it to me as well and i i know kevin popped it out as well so we actually have just started looking at it okay we have in the last couple of years though i want to say it was maybe two years ago that we also were able to get some state department of ed money filtered our way for the minority recruitment project as well so um i guess i say i i proffer it by way of saying that i don't think it takes a lot of money for us to really put a good um expansion into the efforts that we've already put in um and we're also working a lot with our existing staff like for example our paras and tutors to see if we can't urge
194them into the teaching ranks by getting some additional schooling so there's those kinds of pieces in the work so um i think that you know there's certainly a lot of priorities in this budget but i'm pretty comfortable with the money we've got that we can continue to kind of do our three to four to five year plan on how we're going to continue to bolster those numbers okay i mean it sounds like the numbers are increasing which is great to hear yeah um you know and that's that's really the goal so i just want to make sure we continue to you know do that the best way because those teachers are in demand everywhere i mean that's the that's exactly right and there are a lot fewer people going into teaching so i think that
195you know it's you're you're you're trying to play this game of like how do we make our space more attractive for others um and that's something that you know i've i've done a little bit of looking around online and you know some of the things that we could be doing you know offering certain incentives for for teachers that move to our district um you know those i'm not sure how those can show up in a budget whether it's here or whether it's at the city level so and don't forget a lot of those things have to be bargained yeah right so any kind of disparate pay or incentives are going to have to be bargained as well so there's definitely lots of layers to that but great comment thank you kim appreciate it yep kate
196the grant is called minority teacher recruitment graham thank you kevin i did catch that in the chat there i appreciate it okay that's a very it's exactly your question the name of the grant we and just so everyone knows we had actually applied for the grant last year um actually two years ago and last year uh two years ago um i'm sorry just before the pandemic that we were going we had an opportunity to join a job fair um and that job fair actually ended up not happening because of the pandemic and then last year we had applied um also and i'm sorry two years ago we are recipient of the grant it's five thousand dollar grant it's certainly not a lot of money but you know it certainly was some monies that were afforded
197um and then we headed up and i think we have received maybe 2 500 or 3 000 and then year two we applied again um and then we were told that they were looking to grant those monies to districts that were not our recipient years prior um but they did make us aware that they were looking to hold a this is at advance ed advance was looking i believe it was that advanced because the um was the rest and ed advance was looking to host a minority teacher fair uh which certainly we would have been a participant in um but it ended up not happening and so i'm hoping you know that that is something that will happen this year and certainly we will have a table um and you know be be one of
198the districts that will be looking to recruit thank you karen okay uh future and rich has just reminded me that we do have a placeholder here for a multi-year budget we did not get to it today which includes the growth that kelly talked about when um uh her special ed teachers and in the counselors and in the climate specialist that kevin spoke about as well as enrollment projected needs we sal has me also working with rebecca um and if you'll recall she was a partner with glenn yackel to do the demographic assessment so um you know pandemic we're just a little bit lagged on that but i hope she'll have something for us next week that we can share with the board that will help for future planning as well um [Music] and so all
199of that said are there any additions i want to thank everybody so much because this was such a collaborative night and it felt really good for me to hear from everybody in more detail about the good work that they're doing and they're putting forward so i want to thank all my colleagues and and thank the board for bearing with us for this long time um are there any final questions i have a couple of quick things sure um so i sent you an email about um the cares funding and the sr um funding that's not and you know you can get back to me whenever about that um we have to discuss it right now but last year's budget um there was you created something you know after the whole braiding thing that was new
200to us last year you had created i think i think we just called it like an index for the future like what was next year going to look like after all yeah yeah okay i couldn't remember but that made sense to me last year and that it doesn't really fit with this yeah yeah yeah so i mean and maybe i just have to go back and remind myself but if you have that somewhere and you're sending us things and also um could we get the our usual budget binder yes yes certainly um and so budget binder because the detail is in there and i know that people like to see the detail the powerpoint and the cliff so the clip i should be able to send out by i would say thursday i just have
201to review it over with dr sal now that there's new info the budget binder i'm hoping to have two by wednesday and the powerpoint will definitely have by wednesday next week for the board meeting um and so for tuesday's presentation i'll have a draft of the powerpoint for those of us that would like to come attend we'll be able to have you know feedback on and be able to see a preview of the powerpoint um does that sound good well we're voting on wednesday now yes so would you like the binder earlier clear okay i can get the binder cube by friday so you'd have it over the weekend yeah um and so the powerpoint i won't have the presentation until next week because i need to i mean it's we're essentially just dusting off
202um last year's presentation and updating it with current information because it's everything we're familiar with um and so um we that won't take us long but i probably wouldn't provide that in advance of the of next week's meeting i'd have that for next week and a draft on tuesday but i can certainly get you the binder by friday oh yeah yeah and look i'll get you the cliff this week also the cliff document if you'll call that was saying if we had five million dollars that we were spending on cares and at the time we didn't have corona of irish relief funds but cares act and the alliance carryover and the one-time the reserves from the city um what would we still need from the city to maintain um that funding and that was about
203a million dollars um and so that was um saying that we were going to shift all the existing things that we could into alliance for this year um and so yeah i'll just dust that off but i've got to review that with cabinet before i send that out to everybody yeah good point okay any other questions are you anticipating another meeting yes i will on a court meeting yes i i would like what on tuesday i think it's important that we polish this up and go through you know some more issues to refine it whether you want to do it as as a workshop or a finance meeting i'll leave it up to you my preference would be as a workshop because it just saves us a lot of time at board meetings and i
204think the input of the entire board going through this is important as we get everybody's questions at the same time uh just a quick quick uh question for courtney you're sending out the presentation to everyone tomorrow am i correct or carol whoever does this you're sending that presentation that you just did tonight tomorrow yes that's right i can send it out to you tonight i'm just going to pdf and send it over so the first i guess five tabs of this document i'll be sending along and then it sounds like richo follow up about um next tuesday all right that would be my suggestion i'll leave it up to gladys and to dr sal you know and and whether it's i'll finance or workshop the prep my preference would be a workshop next tuesday if
205we could do it at six o'clock that'd be fine um that's fine with your committee members that you have here and the members that are here if it's okay we'll move forward with it you know is everybody in agreement with okay with me yeah well if everybody just wants to signify by saying aye that that's good okay so we'll schedule a workshop board workshop over the budget at six o'clock yep yes okay okay thank you so much for everybody courtney thank you thank you courtney uh excellent job thank you thank you okay thank you everybody for your patience thank you