001anyway yes we can hear you - I can't hear anyone of course Gladys Cooper yeah I'm sorry I'm a little out over here just a Fritton Rachel Zaleski Kate caneta present Gladys Cooper present Lauren Daly Joe DaSilva Carol I know she's here your honor you can see that's all yeah um Katherine Hutchins here Richard Ginelli yeah Alan Russa Ami's Bellino here tonight it's we then take place do the workshop in two parts we're going to start off with the discussion about the budget and I'm gonna turn it over to mrs. Ginelli dr. Tsao and Courtney thank you thank you just for those that not part of the Finance Committee in a previous previous presentation my own comment is and also for the new board members that this budget is a unique budget in that it's
002not normally the way we are appropriating now funds for the budget historically the city of Danbury gives us an appropriation and then we allocate those monies to various expenses as we see necessary this particular year in addition to the city's appropriation and I'm assuming because of the virus in addition to the low figure we got from the city there are other sources of revenue that has been I guess legally allowed us to be used that in the past we weren't able to use these sources such as one is a carryover of monies that were not spent this year in our budget that historically has been you spend it where you lose it and two there is a cash act funding from the government that's been given to us because that a virus situation courtney has
003put together a very detailed budget I think simplified very very nicely for something that's extremely complex and she will take you through the steps in showing you where the allocation of these various resources are and what's been utilized to be spent against them and I think you'll find it extremely extremely interesting it was a very complicated budget to put together but the presentation I think makes it very very clear and simple based on the reaction that we had from those who attended the Finance Committee so with that I'll pass it over the Courtney thank you very much Courtney can you give me a second please yeah yeah yeah so thank you for having the meeting it was a great idea I know Courtney reached out to a few members if they had questions I think
004some of the most of them are answered but of course any more will go down I just want to make a statement to the board I think Richard alluded to a the return on investment the information that we got from Chris I think that one thing with the board's help we've managed to use limited resources in ways to achieve our goals this budget will not reduce individuals which I am ecstatic about but it does create some movements for and and and those movements will continue to reinforce the work that we're doing although we can use the money differently the board's got to remember that the Alliance money was very explicit about closing the gap this is not something that could be used in a way that would not add to that value to that those
005goals it took some work to do it I commend Courtney for braiding these things and following up and making it happen the city has been helpful the city has been helpful for us tremendously dave has stepped up I'll make the statement publicly the mayor said look well do we need to make this thing happen and there's some reserves Courtney will talk to you about input I would not be able to say that everybody gives me but I don't think everybody is going to be happy I'm not entirely happy with the budget but I did I think what it does is a poor it needs to be concerned about it's going to treat youngsters fairly it's going to give them more direct services and it's going to attempt to redirect some of the practices that are
006going on in the buildings that may not be the most efficient I just think you know sometimes necessities a mother of all invention this allowed us to do some deep thinking so with that I'll turn it over Courtney but I do want you to know that it's been a yeoman effort night thank a cabinet and rich for your help with the coordinating and shepherding through this process so Courtney can you go thank you okay thank you dr. salia and I want to echo that just tremendous thank you to rich and also to Rachel for asking clarifying questions into cabinet and you know everyone forgiving me the feedback from the last meeting for those of you that were on the Finance Committee attending two weeks ago I apologize it's going to be redundant I wanted to
007be sure to be clear to the folks that weren't there we got the feedback that the presentation helps to understand or clarify so I hope even you'll even take in a little bit more and it'll be helpful and you'll have additional questions and our goal is to be very transparent in the budget process as well as in the budget itself so without further that I'm just we go right into the presentation just bear with me this part is a little new to me okay can everybody see that yeah I see right yes yes okay so um basically broadly speaking what does the budget do so it adjusts the base budget by when I talk about the base budget I mean if last year's budget was $100 we'd expect next year's budget to be $100 except
008for the adjustments that we're making so here it adjusts what I would call the base budget by 1.8 million due to an sta credit and insurance savings that were accounting for with the reserve and I'll get into that when we go into the detail budget but you know one of the things that we were able to do was when we negotiated with our transportation provider for the closure period we realized that we didn't need to retain all the savings for this year and they were able to give us a credit into this next year's budget we also through Rich's help identified a way to account for what we what we were calling the cliff I mean I don't want to call it a cliff because that's not I don't think I have to think of
009a better word for it but you know the risk that we have to shore up and account for so the budget book the SDI budget will go back up again and I will show you later on how we account for that in this budget as well it invests about 8.9 million in new initiatives and I know everybody was shocked and said well how can you do that if the city is only giving us 1.2 million I hope after the presentation you'll you'll see what what we're proposing and that's why we had to use this bridge and approaching that as a way to show you the budget it meets the needs of distance learning some nice requirements for faculty technology provides for some special emotional supports for faculty and students as well as it funds the
010budget maintenance required to move forward and a big piece is the Student Support Specialists also that we'll get to in the budget and that Karen will be able to speak to overall the the model that we were putting forward it braids the funding to continue operations and fund our required activities and it reprioritize --is the alliance funds and it uses a multi-year approach with the liens as I said rich really helped us think through a lot of our baby portion of our money and we'll talk to you about that as one-time funding and it's because of the nature of Co vid we have some additional opportunities of one-time funding but we had to use a multi-year approach with alliance because we know that that's projected to be a new amount next year and will grow
011again the following year so I'll explain a little bit more about that as we get into the detail and and I'll pause at certain points for questions because this is a workshop so I want to encourage people you know at certain points to be able to ask their questions if you can save them and then I'll pause and we can we can move forward it sets up a reserve for unpredictability we've done this Jo set this up he set this in place already we have a relationship with the city to do this the mechanism to do it we need the board approval to do it but we've done this with our insurances and with technology we're newly adding the reserved for special ed tuition and for emergency purposes that shouldn't lead kovat it should meet
012emergency purposes it does provide emergency related funding through a reserve and Kerr's funding of 1.3 million and 800,000 for social-emotional and curriculum so those are addressing some of the unique needs of next year so what are the new funding sources we'll just keep talking with you about it as of the year goes on because there's we have guidance from the state about it the last time we spoke we weren't certain about what methodology we would be allocated this first bucket that I'm highlighting here it's it's the federal cares act funding the education portion that we're talking about here is the Elementary and Secondary Stabilization Fund recovery funds so it should say our F but and initially there was question as to whether or not how it would be allocated it would be allocated based on
013enrollment and the private schools would get some funding but we out be allocated based on our title one which benefits you know damn very better and that damn bears it city but the public schools better because you know the title one funding methodology is based on need so the state decided to go with the title one methodology which gives us about two point two eight six million it's about eighty four percent of our title one allocation is how it was explained to us by the Kathy Dempsey the CFO at the state and there's a chance that that could change in the federal legislation because there's a conflict between the way that's being spoken about by the Education Department and how the legislation is written so Connecticut's interpreted this way there's a risk it's about two
014hundred thousand dollars we've set up escrow for that because of that that potential risk that they're saying you might halfway through the year it could change so but what does this fund it's pretty broad even down to you can see it listed out here but even down to the protect protection of educator jobs so we can use it for existing positions we can purchase education technology training and PD and we'll show you in the budget when I get to that shortly how we're proposing to use the Karis funding and the grant carryover this is also as rich alluded to earlier is new normally we can carry over depending on the grant source about anywhere between ten to fifteen percent of a grant or nothing at all but this year the state has made an exception
015for our titles Alliance and the IDE a grant that we can carry over a full bounce the unspent funds so for us this year it's gonna be about two point two six eight million and that'll be important when I show you that the funding screen next as well city fund balance dr. Sal mentioned so we we did not spend our full city budget this year because of savings on transportation and the energy we weren't using subs all the things we've spoken about before it's about two million dollars we're going to put that aside for some unknowns you know insure up our reserves because we don't want to put that one-time money into an ongoing so for insurances for special ed technology and emergencies destiny has allowed us to do that so you're familiar with this
016you know I shared this a few times now with the board so this is showing our original request here was 146 250 for the mayor in the city are giving us 136 236 here's how it breaks out the thing that changed and the thing that paused us I'm voting on the budget in the most recent board meeting was this the matrix money it's no longer in last year's funds so we had didn't remove it from here the base and we had to remove it from last use of it decrease their city fund balance because we didn't get the matrix money this year we do anticipate that we'll get it next year and we're planning on it in the budget for next year and the mirrors agreed that it's a high likelihood and that we could
017we could account for it in the budget the other funds that you see over here Alliance this is our general increase that's remained steady over the years to give up to two point seven in addition to the 12 point change that we already have and then the cares money we mentioned the new federal this is the grant carryover and the city fund balance so the reason we're showing this braided approach is because you know in order for us to do any of the initiatives we need to do we wanted to show you you know the resources that we have available are about one hundred and forty five million now of that about six point five is one-time money and that's going to be important when we talk about it you know in the in the
018budget document so I'll just take us right to that can you all see the budget document now yes okay it did share okay great again I do apologize that it's detailed um but I did think it was the right approach because I think the board needs to see the information um so I just want to walk through and I've done this for folks that were at the Finance Committee so bear with me the top section you just saw this is 146 to 54 when it was a original BOE request and this is the current city funding so 146 down to 36 to 36 8 portney haha surely I don't think I'm looking at the right I don't think I see the right document no we don't I apologise thing that happened to me last time
019to let me reach it how does that mean how do you see oh yes okay always seen our numbers I'm dreaming that's what you need the numbers yeah I'm sorry again it's so detailed okay so I'll go back over the first column is the original budget request you'll recognize our number we had a 136 986 we had a one point two seven three that the city mid-year added and we had 10 more million that we were asking for for this total amount this year you can see that now that base has removed the 550 because it's only 130 for the city gave us one two five and we've got an extra 550 that we're anticipating to get we're calling it matrix it's also the summit project what I think matrice is a developer so the
020risk is to the board if we don't get it so we're going to be falling they'll put them there and making sure that that's the counted borne that we do achieve that money this year we have a good relationship there so okay so that's 136 236 Alliance money we talked about and the way that this works is that I'm showing you the budget on the top so the the resource load available and then down below I'm showing you how we spend it this section is talking about what I'm calling the base so it's just the carry forward and and then the next section is the new request so it's summarizing what we're asking the board to do newly and we laid it out in the categories that you saw before like what did we originally
021asked for and what are we doing now and then that gets us to a total that balances and the overall city budget is going up here you can see from 134 for 36 to 135 686 0.92% you know a lot lower than what we asked for so we've had to be a little bit creative with how we utilize the funds okay so I'm going to pause are there questions about the overall structure of the deck or any questions so far that folks have for Courtney I have one on the matrix funding sure we were assured all last year that the matrix funding was coming and it didn't unsurprisingly because they cut the developers about ready to do that yet that's right Shirin says if anything we have from the city exam birth at the matrix
022Williams actually coming this year because again it's dependent upon a third party doing something and yeah it is the last year and the city didn't make up the fact that we didn't get it even though they promised it to us what assurances do we have that the developer going to actually do what they need to do to trigger that way this year it's any right yeah I mean exactly right yeah we were under the impression that the revenue risk land side side of the city and it was actually on our side so we did have to make those adjustments but but the mayor is pretty confident that this is going to come in so he did tell us the same level of confidence we had last year that it was coming in right well I
023was a hero said as Jim that's exactly right as the money came in we were told if it when it comes in and get passes through if it doesn't come in next year we have nothing to be passed through yeah and we are counting on it to balance our budget so it's something we're gonna have to monitor very very closely right so we Joe the answer is it doesn't come they probably won't get it Yeah right so the assurances are worthless because this is about a third party and we've heard of nothing from the city on the teeth yeah the only thing was if they give it to the city city of no burden Courtney is something wrong with them yeah I couldn't hear you I think you might have had an internet connection there
024thank you we're still if we're still having a challenge of time if you want to write it out in the chat box I could read it if there's another comment question Jo shall we move on or we're going to get the amount or half of that amount we're due to get the 550 did you say yes the five hundred six thousand we're supposed to get the full amount when quite a few people they didn't seem to know what I was talking about but anyway that was come in come in this year when it comes if it comes next year we'll get the full amount that's correct and we're supposed to continue to get it your years after so we're counting on it for a multi-year the checks in the mail the budget the proposed budget
025neck's million two hundred and thirty six thousand dollars this is you know we're spending 146 million based on the various revenue sources but if nothing else happened the city gave us no increase next year they'd obligated to give us the hundred and thirty six million so that's our 136 that's what we're for the way that we're interpreting it yeah okay and so if you look over here these are the budget account codes so salaries so the way that it works is our original BOE request was 76 to 40 this is what I call the base budget and then we also asked for down below you'll see maintenance and the restoration of the one to 73 so on the base budget we asked for an additional amount for contract increases of 2.7 which gets us for
026all of our actually mandated Collective Bargaining increases the steps are accounted for here so this doesn't account for any of the new things this is just the roll forward amount here or less we were talking about before and you'll look okay it's a wait a minute we asked for 76 but now you're down to 74 but we the base is up to seven seventy five eight ninety when you consider Alliance and the grant carryover money so there's a certain portion of what we are doing in our base that we're basically shifting because their gap closing activities and we can we can categorize them under Alliance and there's a there's a number of things also that we're accounting for the grant carryover so you can see that our actual you know base only goes down by
027350 this is the difference and the 350 is because we classing some of those things that were not appropriately classed back to federal one and and so forth and so on so this line shows a difference because from our original ask because we felt that we have a lot more people retiring for every person that retires we count on about thirty five thousand dollars of savings because they're coming in at a lower salary just because their retirees have been with us a long time they have longevity and initially we were counting on 20 and now it's only about ten that were because people are just not retiring at the rate we anticipated because of the uncertainty with the economy and everything and just uncertainty in general and that could change and we'll revisit that with
028you if that does change but that's what we see today custodial salaries part-time that overtime so it this just keeps it the same it just shifts some things into cares and ESS are the one of the big changes is the insurance adjustment here basically we have been seeing that trend upward in insurance for a few years and because of last year you all lived with it there was a big anomaly a big blip and the insurance that happened last year we accounted for that in the budget this year I'm just right sizing it and saying based on our actual assessment we've worked with our Gallagher the company that works with us on our insurances we're seeing that last year was just truly an anomaly and and so we're actually see some savings on the insurance
029next year or even accounting for the increases associated with COBIT so briefly I'll explain that it's just saying comparing not this year's spending but this year's budget to next year's budget will be seeing we need we can do a reduction to the budget overall spending is still going to go up on the on the benefits and insurances it's just not going to go up as much as we thought it was going to and the and then everything else is the same except for here we'll get down to sta this is the adjustment I talked about this is just saying all things being equal we are getting those savings on the contracts that we've agreed to with SDF 441 K in the maintenance portion I account for the fact that we also have to increase by
030the contracted rate of three percent and so an additional enrollment is accounted for as well down below which I'll get to everything else is staying you know flat but we're shifting some of the supplies into cares yes SR I'm grant carryover and then we get to the new pieces I call this the new requests which was part of what we spoke with you about which seems like the eons ago back in january/february but school climate social-emotional originally we were asking for an investment of two million now our proposal is about four hundred eighty five thousand and that includes funding for I'm just gonna have to change that includes funding for two safety advocates and I've had a question about this I'm not sure if you saw my email out basically it if you looked at
031the safety advocates we had last year we had seven we're bringing that number up to 11 the reason we only needed to to do that was because we hired some this year mid-year already when we realized that we had some funding in the budget to do that so because of the safety issues we brought some on board a little early so the net impact of the budget changes to people but were actually going from 7 to 11 so really adding a total of four and we also want to revisit that because what we want to see what the high school is going to look like well as we figure out what the plans look like for next year whether or not everybody's gonna be oh no you thought I guess or what what what its
032gonna look like in terms of number of kids it also funds a district-wide school psychologist a BCB a crisis counselor team social-emotional professional development and two counselors at DHS and we delayed the elementary assistant principal and climate specialist positions and again I mentioned we reduced the need for safety advocates due to the fact that we hired some this year in addition there was some funding that we were asking for to be able to draw down more of a state grant and I'm a technology side we think that we can take care of that with a different grant so we remove that out of the budget and I'm just gonna pause and see I guess if anybody has a question or I actually to have Kelly talk a little bit about the district-wide school psychologist BCBA
033crisis counselor and the social-emotional investments that we're making Cal so one of the things in our reopening plan and we're still at the initial stages of that um is that we know the social emotional needs of our students and staff are going to be significant and above what we've seen in the past so this would be a team of individuals in addition to the existing supports that are currently in building that could help district-wide with behaviors crises intervention and any emotional supports that either Sapperstein Kelly you know I think this is a good upper I'm sorry yeah I'm off to do good opportunity and there's been a recent court case I just want to at least aware have the board aware what is happening with that and that's been a lot of time on it
034cuz it's very well sure you want to mention that um so as recently as last week I don't recall the day um we Reese I think it was Wednesday we received information that there was a special hearing decision regarding a group of students that were aging out so they age right now that you receive special education services until in Connecticut is age 21 um so the way it works is the year in which you turn 21 you finish out the remainder school year through June 30th so you know some students get the benefit of an extra month or two where others could get an extra you know eight or nine months depending on where their birthday falls in the calendar the decision has come about saying that Connecticut State statute is in conflict with the
035federal law for the individuals with Disabilities Education Act and they the hearing decision did say that Connecticut that these children in particular are entitled to education up until age 22 so that could mean that some of the students currently in our district we have 14 that are aging out at age 21 um could return back to us for another year for some of those students they would continue in current existing programs it would increase their uptick the enrollment slightly above what we were expecting um but we would be able to manage for other students they are potentially students you know that are out of district placed or so on and so forth and could have a fiscal implication above and beyond what you see in this existing budget so the reason why we're kind of
036waiting is that our legal counsel which is Shipman and Goodwin for special ed services as well is currently interpreting that guidance to kind of advise districts on next steps as far as what that means so we are kind of sitting tight and waiting on you know to what extent and how will this roll out across the state of Connecticut Danbury is not alone I've spoken to all the local directors and we're all anguish anxiously awaiting kind of next steps the State Department of Ed has also let us know that they may need to revise some of their guidance to us and so that they're currently working with legal counsel to kind of figure out next step so I'm hoping that in the next couple of weeks I will have a further update to kind of
037gameplan and roll out but I am already working with my team on a plan should these students you know return to us for next year what that would mean and you know I really couldn't say until we get further guidance whether or not it will be all it'll be a portion um we just are not sure at this time thank you in reduce that we do have we'll get to later on it's not necessarily was intent it wasn't intended for this purpose but we do have a reserve set up and we'll get to that that could account comedy some of that need I hope was to have that be one-time emergency needs but I'm so okay before you continue uh-huh how is a district-wide psychologist going to serve our 12,000 students um so the purpose
038of it would be to have a highly trained psychologist with an area of expertise in crisis intervention work alongside our behaviorist which is our BCBA to work with teams to develop on plans so it would support the team in the school building so for example to push into a school building in which there's a school psychologist or social worker already working with a child but struggling with that student and provide additional strategies and resources and time to support that team so it would be a system of kind of like referrals that we would we would work to let those teams know in which areas do we need to push in some additional support to briefly get students back on on track and then move forward on for example in the rollout we are anticipating some
039of our self-contained programs so students with more significant disabilities as well as some of our students with emotional behavioral needs that have you know that tend to respond to disruption you know it with even it's it tends to I'm interfere with their ability to access their education more so than a typical child and so we would start with having a higher level of support in those programs to make sure that they get up and running and so that students can meet with success very you know very quickly and then utilize that support to kind of spread into different buildings where there is a need okay thank you okay yes yes so um Kelly doctorate south so the district-wide school psychologist and the the BCBA crisis counseling team this is not new right this is or
040this no so we currently have three be CPAs in the district they support all of programs from pre-school all the way up through high school and they are very carefully kind of selected what schools and programs and buildings that they work in to math to maximize their support and services so this this would build on that model and partner them with the school psychologist do to kind of the unusual nature of the time that we're in we know that students are going to need support above and beyond what some of you know some of the supports that we we currently have an existing fix in existence I apologize in our buildings that we need to kind of layer in that additional person on the ditch training so the school psychologist will come in with more
041of a crises management background then a Juris the BCBA comes in with the behavior modification to be able to put in plans for students work with families refer them to outside resources if needed and to support the school team to successfully reintegrate those students I mean I mean one of the things and just just from thousand miles up it's kind of like a hub hub and spoke kind of a model she has a small cadre of a hub team that spokes out to all of the schools and bring Kelly brings them together and then infuse you know either implementation plans advice parent meetings with them so you know you could always use more but I think if that hub-and-spoke kind of a system we've been using because it resources quite frankly I mean we would
042love to add additional pupil services support to every building and in this budget that's not a it's not a reality um and so I think that this is the best way we can maximize and support all schools across the district and build on the BC BI system that is currently in place as we've done with 3b cities okay and I just want to okay I'm sorry Tony can you hear me yes we can hear you Cathy this crisis management person would that be to identify problems or they happen or would they so it be identifying show what exactly it's their job description I guess I'm getting food so two things we would first defy and returning to school certain pockets of students and programs that we know need additional support we've stayed highly connected with
043all of our students during this distance learning we are keenly aware of some of the social emotional needs that are in place and so we will you know kind of front-load those programs that require an additional level of support then what we will do is utilize a referral system within districts with that buildings can reach out to this team to say listen we have you know either building principal we have this program that needs some additional support this resource or an individual student or family and again we will send the team to there - quite an additional level of support yeah okay and I I just want to be clear because I think it may be it was not entirely clear when this this when I'm talking about this in what it includes and what
044we delayed it just means from the original request so this whole section called new new request is all additive so it's what we're doing to enhance what we currently have if that wasn't clear so okay the next one is a special education sorry right here special education and teaching supports we're looking for the 732 K and that's gonna fit fun three special education preschool teachers and one speech-language pathologist as well as the staff for the new Granville special at preschool and that includes one teacher and an inner stand a security safety advocate we're delaying an assistant director from what we originally asked for one of the speech-language pathologists are reading consultant two of the original request for special ed teachers and we're going to be sharing a custodian for the Grandville site which is going
045to be named soon so we won't have to call it Granville anymore but we're going to be sharing a custodian there with the Sacred Heart site likely one way to redeploy so that's the difference you see there ESL ll programming we're asking for 475 in this budget and it's all being funded out of alliance its funding for 5.4 new ESL l teachers an additional one additional sigh up coach we're delaying the implementation of the sll program at Rogers Park which which would have required you know for splitting it into two two sites which is the goal would have required resources that we don't don't have this year the goal is still to do that but it not for this year and it's a delayed implementation of instructional pairs of the middle schools we also just
046budgeted for an additional three es ll staff this year with those enrollment expansion funds that are going to carry over into next year's budget so if you looked you're over here it's a pretty big commitment to expanding the ESL ll teachers a year over a year okay this should read I'm just gonna fix it right now cuz someone pointed out to me and I apologize I didn't fix it enrollment of graduation requirements so it's it's funding hundreds of cak for new high school teachers to meet the credit requirements and two point three middle school teachers and one in school pair at the middle school we're reducing it from the original request of fourteen teachers mainly because we reassess the needs of the elementary school and we're also delaying the implementation of a reach expansion that
047we were hoping to do this year or delaying that so just for the board I mean this is really cutting it close we're taking advantage of folks that we've had it but the new graduation requirements specifically with health education for students if delays it just forces kids that to move up and take it a different time so we have to watch it real close but right now that's what we have on the docket to move forward to meet those needs as best as possible so we'll have to watch you closely for technology yep I'm sorry just a and if this isn't the right time to ask this question but no I'm saying the words merely reassessing needs the elementary school there is no question 14,000 teachers what degree budget adjustments affect the number of elementary
048school teachers in class size I thought as you're getting bigger and we're supposed to socially distance those two things seem somewhat opposite and impossible to juxtapose or am I wrong no so this this budget um takes into account all the staffing that we have is rolling forward and it's gonna be the staffing that we need and we can afford with the enrollment growth that we projected at the high school you know some of it was funded this year and some of it is being funded for the increased graduation requirements and there's a small increase to the middle school everything that we have to do associated with social distancing is set aside as a separate bucket that we'll get to but it's not in this part of the budget because it's still unknown so we had
049to kind of park it as a big bucket so if for example one of the strategies is to split classes and you need a pair in one of the classes or whatever the that looks like that's part doing a different funding stream because it's not yet clear how that's gonna be handled with ourselves do you want to say anything more about that yeah it changes every day yeah and I think Jo whether it's 20 kids 22 you know it's it's it's you know class sizes in general we're getting larger just as a general statement and we're kind of we're also have problems with space you know we have kind of like the perfect storm what his court just said until they tell us you know I'd hate to go down this too but I had
050them going I think I mentioned how many move desks around and what we could do we think 12 to 13 is a lot of kids so it's going to be a twofer no matter what I do if it's 30 or 24 we still need two classrooms and teachers so the money Courtney's talking about the question is whether it's going to be enough depending with the state makes us do we'd have to go and dip into that to help supervise those other classes if that's what it comes down to of course we need the space as well as the staffing short thank you yeah which which brings me up back up to the budget cos thank you for I skipped two things because the way this is rolling I apologize I'm going to go back to
051the it's really important for us to point out because there is some money part in our curriculum public needs and resources budget that could be flexible for some of those things that you brought up Joe that we might need to do so here you can see that you know our original ask was 576 it's it's about 598 there's no major change we're reprioritize them to support distance learning technology and supports were software curriculum development manipulatives and a portion of that we've left a broad category because we could also use it for some of that other support that we might need if we need additional staff and resources to meet whatever distancing needs we have to accommodate in addition we're we're also putting in funds for Student Support Specialists and s RBI and some funding to
052meet the knee ask requirements it was formally planned in alliance so you don't see any city funding here but it includes Student Support Specialists teacher technology and curriculum development the current year included an addition of a high school and a bilingual counselor so we wanted to just point that out to you although the budget doesn't reflect it as a new need it is in the budget and then I'm just gonna scroll down I apologize it's a little awkward but we did enrollment right technology we were initially planning on 150,000 to funds additional portion of the lease but we can prepay two years of the technology Lisa can you speak a little louder oh sorry please yeah I apologize can you hear me better now yes okay um technology we initially planned about 150,000 in next
053year's budget we prepaid two years of the lease so we have some savings in the next year and the following year budget out of the surplus we had this year in addition the maintenance budget you know the reason you see it just broken out into two pieces here is because originally we included the one 273 and what we were talking about is me and then so I'm just showing it to you in the original way but basically we need 3 million dollars to set aside to fund contractual increases for benefits we mentioned before transportation special ed facility related it includes an increase for special ed tutors this is all the things that we are doing today that we would need to roll forward even though we're going to be modifying some of the things we
054do next year based on based on the state guidance and what our individual plans are for Danbury but this gets us to carry all of our staff forward and all of our assumptions about our bus and everything else this is just showing you the enrollment add-ons that we're just accounting for that in the budget it included three hundred and thirty thousand for teaching two hundred and fifteen thousand free ESL bilingual features three hundred thousand for sped tutors four hundred in ten thousand for transportation and fifteen thousand for appointment that was because we had that big bump up in enrollment last year that we needed to get funds for you know the city didn't really restore that directly per se but we have to account for that in the expense so so that's your total like
055additional what I'm calling new projects or new things that are above and beyond what I call the base budget and it's about eight point nine million which is what I'm highlighting right here then you get down to something I think is really great that we're doing in spite of having a challenging budget season because of kovat we had some savings this year so this is the reserves we're going to forward about hopefully 1.2 million into the insurance reserve and what that does is it funds people asked questions about this I just want to be clear we hold in reserve what's called IBNR it's incurred but not reimbursed we're required to hold aside a certain amount in reserve for things that could hit us in the future related to insurances it means the cost has been
056incurred but it hasn't hit us as a bill yet and we have that amount set aside with the city in addition we can fund up to 125 percent called corridor for for one-time insurance needs and next year might be in here that looks like that we could have something anomalous that could happen because of the unpredictable nature of kovetz so I think it's prudent to do that and because it's the city balance normally the city would probably take back those funds or they might allow us to we wouldn't have this bit of a big of a balance but I'm calling city fund balance so it's a good opportunity for us to increase that reserve but not place it in a base budget where it could be risky because it's only one time technology we're increasing
057our reserve by one hundred and fifty K that's for a one-time type projects it's not for something I'm going but we can use it for something that's a one-time like software purchase where it's not the maintenance but it's the purchase of the technology special ed education reserve Kelly mentioned a risk you know that we're going to be clarifying soon in the budget so that would be one thing that we can use and we hope to grow the special education reserve it's really good the city of great to do that with us for the first time and we also are setting up an emergency contingency fund of 540 K for some of the unknowns that might happen next year the city's agreed to that as well so that's about two million dollars in addition from the
058cares money we've set aside eight hundred thousand dollars for medical PPE bus and other things that could come up that we don't yet know or have defined yet we have a list of all the possibilities Kevin's leading the re-entry plan and sort of really operationalizing every aspect of what could occur and we're quantifying all of those things and so we think based on our you know today that we'll probably need about Andrew Kay to handle those you know scenarios so I'll pause there because that's love information do we have additional questions before I go to the next schedule Courtney I know I've asked you this before and I appreciate the information that you gave me earlier today I just have a heart I guess I'm a very visual person I the year-over-year is what gets
059me yeah you know what we get in our binder back in January is very different from you know what was given out at the Finance Committee meeting versus and even what you gave me today is differ from that so I really don't have anything to compare I want to compare year to year yeah is it possible to provide the board with an updated budget by line item yes yes but what I sent you earlier today if that wasn't what you were looking for because that shows this year's budget compared to next year's proposed by the object category well you know now I did have to show down below the line let me see if I can pull it up here mm-hmm below the line these I don't yet know where they'll be at the reserves
060are not not to be allocated it's not going to be in the budget but I'm showing here but the tech distance learning and yes curriculum this piece I can show you the details of it but I don't yet know what object categories it will hit until we do the final planning for it because this is the kind of code unknown related piece and there's medical PPE and bussing because it's a little amorphous this million dollars it was hard for me to schedule out but I'm able to show you sort of what this year was this is the current proposal for city all of those funding sources and the total I guess what I'm asking is do you need additional detail behind this so that you see all the line line items or just something the
061same as what we had at the Finance Committee uh-huh at the oh when we originally rolled out the budget to you right sure yeah yeah I could do that okay okay are there in Rachel I know you had you had one or two other questions I don't know if we got to answer I think about the SRB I and about counselors all right yes wondering how many we currently have and you know from again year to year like how many how many counselors at the high school do we currently have and how many do we expect to have next year I can answer that at the high school and we currently have 12 counselors that includes 11 counselors and then one department head of school counseling for a total of 12 I'm in in this
062budget there is the addition of another counselor position which would bring us up to 13 mm HM and the that's I can't remember what my other question was so it was got the SR the SIOP coach Rachel I think so how many of those do we currently have so right now hi it's Kara right now we have three at the elementary one at the middle school and one at the high school and so the the ask this year the original ask was to add an additional two when an elementary one at middle school and so we ended up with just one adding one in four k 5 + k 5 is the area and the you know the rationale for that is that we are unrolling out the e L achieve program which is the
063systemic eld program for ESL students and so that's what we would need the additional support and and things like the delaying implementation of L at Rogers Park our principals brought into those conversations as to you know how we decide one verse over Parra's or you know how you pick and choose well I mean we have discussions with them it depends on how we're going about it I mean we don't it's not lately gone everybody doesn't like the way we do it there are those larger places that want more and it's really hard for us to come down on exactly what everybody wants but they're involved in helping us figure things out when it does come to fruition yes but I can say that at this point everybody is well we haven't shared a lot of
064it because we didn't know as exactly what what venue we're going down but if we make a choice where for example this year you hadn't accepted a high number of kids over Rogers Park that we had hire additional staff we worked with dr. Zelena to do that and that's how that would roll out but that they do participate on on that portion of it and that's how you did ask them to prioritize so when we were there part of the process in submitting their priorities no that's true too right and then dialogue and in the press thank you forgot because it's been such a long drawn-out right thank you you never make everybody happy right no I know marriage you know what I guess I'm saying that you mean when we had that initial shot
065over the bow Thank You Courtney we said that administrators look guys you know what what do you gotta have that you can't live without I mean basically and I think Kevin and they they put some things sword and we were turning mindful of trying to give him that and I think the board that's been on for a while has heard from our teachers who need some hands-on folks to help us with kids for so many of them so you know we've had to reallocate and rebalance and things to do that and I think that in itself was the highest priority I can tell you particularly k5 and at the middle school give us some folks with hands on so that's a week that's what we did and then we worked our way back down to
066try to make the bottom line work Wow as I went as we tried to close the gap question sure um if I had this right uh-huh our contractual increases this year just what we're obligated by existing contracts to do is 2.7 and the budget increase we're getting from the city is 1.2 so we're a million five short of meeting our our existing obligations that we did not one thing new based on the budget the city of Danbury is proposed it's actually more than that because that's just the staff in contract increases so we talked about the mate and it's carry forward budget I would I would say it's closer to four and change almost five million dollars because it includes all the bussing and so if what we call our turn the lights on number
067if nothing else were to change we need about five million dollars so that's right yeah thank you yeah I'm sorry one more thing sure just I know I've mentioned this to you before but the the sca adjustment being the only kind of adjustment with schools being closed for three months mmm is that correct so now how do I explain that because that is complicated it this is saying that everything would if pretending Coco had never happened which it definitely is happening then what would we need to roll the budget for next year the the savings this year you're seeing as part of the city fund balance so this is proposed for next year's budget it's two million dollars because of all the ups and downs mainly because of Kovach closure that's why we're seeing that
068City fund balance so the only impact to next year's budget that's going to be like a decrease related to kovat is because of SGA we front-load of those savings but actually the transportation costs are going up because in addition when you look at the maintenance budget down below this is accounting for a 3% increase to the to the to the transportation you know so we're counting for the contractual increases we're saying all things being equal our busing would still need to be the same for next year and then we're gonna whatever we're gonna do is going to either have to fit within that or the city's gonna have I mean the state is gonna have to come up with more money for busing because it's just not going to be possible yeah thank you I
069forgot yeah it's it's weird with what a great crazy year yeah okay so when we talk about this so one of the really important things that rich brought up is okay braiding but but how what does that do for you next year and so all of these funds that I'm highlighting here are one-time funds so that total is six point five four five million when you add these three things together so this is what rich is calling the cliff and I'm calling planning for future contingencies and it's the six five four one-time money but with ongoing there's some ongoing expenses so we need to account for that and I'll just say that more carefully like in a budget world if if our operational budget is $100 then it's a hundred this year and next year
070and the year after that until something changes so we call that the base fund and it's kind of ongoing expenses when you have a one-time funding stream usually you just like to buy one-time thing so you buy you buy you know what you know some fixtures you buy books you buy things that you know are one-time mate in nature so we broke out the one-time funds of six point five and we said okay about one point six of that is one-time expense and about one point nine is one time because it's just increasing the reserve so it allows us a little bit more confidence and fiscal prudence but then you have ongoing expenses in there of 2.8 million I'm breaking them out here so you can see what those are these are all the things
071that make up that ongoing expense of 2.8 million but we're saying that portion of that can be shifted to next year's Alliance increase so all things being equal if the city was still in dire straits and the state still in dire straits we can still pretty likely count on getting another 2.7 million of Alliance money of which some of these things we're doing next year could be shifted into a lion so I'm showing here of that ongoing expense about 1.8 could be funded with Alliance and that would leave us with a million dollars that we need to fund next year's priorities for this year's priorities for next year so when I say this year I'm talking about the upcoming fiscal year 2021 and then 21 22 we need another million the mayor is aware of
072that he's supportive of this approach to the extent that we're able to next year you know he's committing to helping us with this budget so the future is uncertain but this is a certainty something that we know and it's a risk that rich wanted the board to be aware of when we thought it was important to share with everybody I don't know does anybody have questions on this I've got a quick question Cortney sure thank you for breaking all that down and especially on the one-time funds that that sort of paints a clearer picture of what we're doing as far as you know the multi-year budget here the matrix money that we were talking about before is that a one-time or is that multi a I always confuse that it's supposed to be multi it's
073supposed to be an ongoing commitment it's not just a one time I think I heard K ten years then that's what I think they threw out last year I don't think we should count the first year we can get input sure should we did using this year oh yeah I'm on it to pay for our brand valise you know so and and dr. sell had those discussions with the mayor so we hope to have it I got it so we'll say that thank you yeah I actually have a follow-up on case question what impact is not getting that 550 this year having this year's budget and which yeah and this is why we had to pause and reach out to you guys again to the board again it decreased the amount we had available for
074reserves really you weren't using any it decreased the city bundle we're in a unique year in that we had excess money this year right because our opponent yeah and so because of that it all of our city fund balance this year is being used just for reserves right we're not committing to anything above and beyond this so were we to get the extra 550 this year we would have put a bigger insurance was it herbicide so had we gotten a 550 the fund balance would be 2 4 instead of one-niners yeah and if you look at the old document you'd see that yeah okay thank you yeah so any other questions I know this is all kind of a lot of information to take again and I'm wondering if folks want to pause for a
075minute and if there's anything else you'd like to know before we you know before we and if and and if it not right now if something occurs to you over the next few days please you can feel free to reach out to me or any of cabinet with any questions you have why don't we move on court well you know that's all I had doctor cell and you know I also had showed like a summary of the old hold right and versus the new plan which I can send to anybody but I think I think it's it's kind of a lot of info you don't know if it's I did send it to Joe and I sent a portion to Rachel if folks want want that information I'm happy to email that to you as
076well why don't you send that to the whole board said okay okay I guess that's just want to thank Courtney for an unbelievable excellent job entity to the board members this has been horrendous work in progress putting this project together it's putting it together and then the unanswered question until we came up with the terminology for it I call that a cliff is how do you spend you know basically nine million dollars when you're only given you know 1.1 and a half million dollars so I said we're gonna have to come up with a clearer schedule that demonstrates to the board you know how this is done which i think is extremely important schedule to accompany this particular presentation but for a person coming on board for the first year to be inundated with a
077challenge at a virus and then you put together a budget which is different than any budget we put together before congratulations to Courtney I hope you appreciate and still want to stay with her he can take any other position there because I think you've done a phenomenal phenomenal job so thank you thank you rich I mean it was cabinet really in your help so thank you all very much Thank You Courtney Thank You Courtney thank you we'll move to the to the executive session so what I understand we have to go to that email and then yeah okay email leave this meeting go to the email sign on for the executive session okay are we gonna do that right away you want to take like a five to ten minute break or no break okay
078it's a no it's 8:05 so by 8:10 you