001I would like to call this special meeting. We'll do that again. I would like to call this special meeting of the board of education to order. The next special meeting of the board of education is on Thursday, February 5th at 700 p.m. for the chairperson's report tonight. Um, I'd like to thank everyone for being here tonight for the board of education's public hearing on the superintendent's proposed fiscal 27 budget. I want to thank Dr. Burn and the administration for their work developing the fiscal 27 budget. The board and administration share a common goal of delivering a fiscally responsible fiscal 27 budget aligned with and supporting our district's strategic priorities. The board looks forward to hearing tonight from members of our community who will have the opportunity to speak and share specific feedback on the proposed
002budget. Thank you to those of you who have already shared feedback and comments with the board. We appreciate your thoughtful questions and input as we evaluate our budget priorities and look forward to hearing further community input this evening during our public hearing. At the conclusion of the public hearing tonight, the board will have the opportunity for further discussion of the budget. For those of you who are interested in giving public comment tonight, there's the signup sheet over there on the um right near the door. So, please sign up with your name um and we will go in order um per the signup sheet. As I hope you have all seen during the the board's budget meetings over the past month, the board is committed to providing the best possible education for our students and shares
003the community's desire to prioritize student needs and programming in alignment with our strategic goals. I would also like to specifically thank the RTM Finance and Budget Committee, RTM Education Committee, Board of Finance, and RTM members for continuing to invest in our schools. Your your past support has allowed us to provide our students with the high quality curriculum instruction and extra extracurricular programming [snorts] that have sustained deren school's reputation for excellence in education. Thank you for your ongoing support. Um, now we are going to move on to the presentation of the fiscal 27 superintendent's proposed budgets budget which will be followed by the public hearing. Dr. Burn. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone and welcome. So tonight's presentation will just be a short review of what we've been speaking about for the past
004several months. Um, I hope that the community feels informed about what we developed in this budget this year. I want to thank the board of education for their rich participation in the process for allowing us to try something new. Uh, and I think lead to some very constructive conversations at the table here. Uh, I'd also like to thank our other town boards for their um support and comments and feedback and willingness to try this new process. So, as I shared at the outset of the budget process, we we have designed a budget proposal based on where we intend to go with our students, how we want to get to achieving those lofty goals of the vision of the graduate, how we want to create the programs and the opportunities for all of our students every
005day in all of our schools. And we've done that uh as we've built this budget in a very disciplined manner looking at program class size infrastructure and our contractual obligations knowing that every button we push on one side of the machine has a reaction on the other side of the machine. I was having a conversation with a friend today. I talked about the George Michael sports machine. That great old sports show that used to run on Fox at 10:00 on Sunday nights. And that machine, he'd punch a bunch of buttons and things would pop out. That's exactly what the budget is. We have inputs and we have outputs. And our output is our students success and our wonderful outcomes that we hope to achieve in building a budget that gets us there. So, we introduced
00610 operating standards this year and we demonstrated across all of these presentations over the last few weeks how each of those standards are addressed across each of the departments [clears throat] and the components of this budget. So just to review where we started in this conversation, our current budget, the fiscal year 26 budget is 125,760,223. We are proposing for fiscal 27 a 130,640,433 budget which is an increase of 3.88%. As part of that, we have a number of personnel additions. On the instructional side, we're adding uh we hope to add five instructional coaches at the elementary level, one teacher at Henley School due to enrollment, one teacher at home school due to enrollment, one special education teacher at Middle Sex due to need, 1.2 2 psychologist at ELP due to need. On the non-instructional side,
007we're looking to add a public information coordinator at 1.0 FTE. Uh we have some grant compression [snorts] in keeping the valuable component of wellness coordinator. That's the equivalent of a.33 FTE. And we have two additional student transportation drivers as part of our special education transportation. We also have a number of personnel reductions based on either enrollment shifts or need. At Middle [clears throat] Sex, there's a reduction of one world language teacher. At Darianne High School, there's a reduction of a 6 mathematics teacher. At Darienne High School, there's a reduction of a 0.4 4 world language teacher and at Darian High School there's a reduction of a 0.2 English teacher. On the non-instructional side due to our uh switching to partnering with security consultant who will provide on-site uh an on-site coordinator of security in addition
008to the entire organization for our training and uh preparation with staff. We are reducing the existing current director of security position. It will have no impact on how we keep our building secure other than it will enable us to have a higher level of training and a full organization of support. Just quickly showing this original presentation, slide 12, which is a snapshot slide that shows you all of the additions and reductions within all of the RC's, which was a new slide this year. We received some positive feedback, just to be able to have a a handy reference of where the changes are and why. And as we look at just a summary page of of what the budget drivers are that are helping us to land at 3.88 in salaries, we are seeing a 2.6
009uh% growth enrollment growth of 0.25%. Our operating budget is a reduction of 65%. Our fixed equipment and revenue is a change of 0.88 and our new initiatives is a change an increase of 0.80 bringing the total to 3.88 and this is just another slide showing all the RC's and the changes accordingly which again lead us to that same 388. We do have one additional piece of information to discuss tonight before we move to capital and that is uh with the board's uh approval uh the district we had move forward with an early retirement incentive program offer to our teachers um and we did receive a significant amount of interest um which for us will provide some opportunities for new employees. While we certainly thank our folks who have given years of service to the district,
010um it will provide us some opportunities for new staff and there are some budget implications. So, Mr. Rud, if you could help on that. >> Uh so, as Dr. Burn mentioned, uh we did through uh early retirement incentive uh we received 12 teachers who elected to take that incentive. Um, this incentive will allow us to reduce the fiscical year 27 budget by $460,511, bringing the increase down from 3.88 to 3.51. Uh, the line items within the budget that would be affected, it would be uh an increased turnover savings, which is a credit of about $411,000, a reduction in health insurance by about $43,000. Uh, for those who follow the teacher contract, new employees are going to prior authorization, and so this accelerates that a little bit. and then some savings and payroll taxes of just
011over $6,000. Uh so again, with that approved uh early retirement incentive, uh we would make the budget 130,179,922 or 3.51%. >> And lastly, we have our slate of capital improvement projects. I would like to thank all those in the community and from our town boards and the board of education who participated in the uh facilities tour. It feels like that was a really long time. I think that was the first snow of the season and now the snow won't disappear. Um but um as Rich said during his uh presentation last week, uh much of this 1.9 million is being invested in asphalt and black top for parking lots. Uh we have the black top and oval [clears throat] at the high school. Uh we have some uh a few projects over at Henley projects at
012homes Royal central office here uh and across the district for a total of 1.915550. Um you do not see anything for Middle Sex Middle School. Just as a reminder, we are uh we'll be coming back to the board this spring with EDS specs based on the valuation of that facility that has been in process since last summer. So, this is a new slide to the presentation updated with the most current dates of the meetings on the the town's docket for the coming months. We have this coming Thursday uh will be a special meeting of the board of education um with the hope that the board will be voting on the proposed budget and then you'll see the dates February 23rd straight through March uh May 11th which is the RTM date that we hope to
013see the budget approved. U we did get some feedback um throughout the process. People did use our our new email addresses and reached out to us directly. So, we appreciate that input from the community. And there we have it. >> Thank you, Dr. Burn. Uh, we will now move on to the public hearing on the fiscal 27 superintendent's proposed budget. As I had said before, members of the community wishing to speak at tonight's public hearing on the fiscal 27 superintendent's proposed budget will you will please need to use the signup sheet near the entrance and wait to be recognized by the board chair. Once recognized, please approach the podium. Please give your name, the name of the organization if applicable, and your town of residence. And note that you will have three up to three
014minutes to speak. Copies of your comments can be left for the board on the table beside the podium or emailed to the board chair for distribution to the entire board of education. Uh we'll now start with public comment with Curtis Butler. Please come to the podium. Thank you very much. Curtis Butler, 137 Hollow Tree Ridge Road. I'm a member of the RTM and also the education committee on the RTM and I wanted to share some observations because our last education meeting included some very indepth description of this proposed budget and we are very um honored to have your chairperson Robin Nelson, Dr. Burn, and Katie Lublin all in attendance helping clarify a lot of details. And I mentioned at the time, and I thought it was worth sharing with this board, but also with the
015public, how impressed I was and am by the the set of new eyes, the different approach that this budget is receiving. It's not just I've been in this town since 2013 and I'm the RTM the whole time. And I have to say, having studied the budgets and observed all the the go between between the board of education, the administration, and all of the political bodies in town, I have to say I've never been more impressed by the quality of the budget, but also by the originality of it. In this way, we're not just thinking what do we need to add. Dr. Berna and his team have done an incredible job of stepping back and saying, "What do we need to take another look at? What are we doing right and what aren't we doing as
016well as we could regardless of how well this school district is perceived? For example, testing and the use of data. Are we really delivering the best we can, particularly for our young children in the elementary schools, for example?" and let's take a step back and analyze that data properly. We are in the data age, right? It's time the town of Deren caught up with that, too. So, I'm just just completely impressed and I congratulate the board of ed um for having the wisdom of hiring Dr. to burn for this role because in in my few um engagements and the opportunities I've had to hear him speak about his role, the effort he's putting into that role and his original ideas, I'm just extremely impressed. I also want to add um in the 13 years that
017we have lived here, our family has been um a very important beneficiary of the special special education services of this school district. And I know there's a lot of noise that that happens around special ed in general and where are these increases coming from and why are so many children getting support. I will say this, we could not be happier with the commitment of this special education department to our daughter who has significant needs. And we we just the collaborative nature of the approach they have taken with our family is not seen everywhere and we really appreciate that and I think it has to be stated it has to be pointed out that there are people like our family who really believe in what we're doing here. >> So thank you very much. >> Thank
018you. Uh, next person up for public comment is um Jan Raymond. Thank you. My name is Jan Raymond and I live at 11 Waverly Road. And I almost don't need to be here because Curtis B just said almost everything that I want to say. Uh I there are a couple things that I would like to add. I served on the board of education here um in the '9s and since the 90s I have been following the budget process as closely as I or almost as closely as I did when I was on the board of education and now I've been on the education committee of the RTM for several years. So I've been following it that way too. I've never seen a budget like this. I've never seen a budget process like this. I have
019never seen the kind of thinking as Curtis said that takes a look at things in a different way. Other budget processes that I have witnessed are sort of going from where we were last year to where we are this year to where we are this year. Not taking a look at the whole system, all the different programs and figuring out okay how can we look at this in a new way and what can we join here and what should be separated over there. and it's been really exciting to watch. But um the other thing that has never happened before and Curtis mentioned this. I've been on the education committee a long time ago and now again in all my years in that no superintendent, no board of education has ever said, "Let us meet with
020the education committee because you are the RTM and the information that you're going to get is going to be different than the information that we're going to get as a board and as a superintendent. and the fact that this group has wanted the input from a larger public. I've never seen anything like that before and it's been exciting and I hope it's been helpful to you. But I it sends a message to the community that says we are part of the community. We want you as the commi part of the community to be part of us and it's not just the parents. you're speaking to everybody and getting input from everybody and that's a really important and exciting thing. And as someone with no kids in the schools and somebody that's been around forever, um
021I it's true. I went to Henry school. [laughter] [gasps] Um anyway, the whole set setup and the whole way that you've reached out, the whole way you've wanted our input, the whole way that you've put together this budget process, I think is very exciting. And I have to say the fact every time you call for public comment, and I'm sitting at home watching, I think, okay, here we go. because this is the first year that I have ever watched a budget where there hasn't at almost every meeting been groups of people that have come to complain about one thing or the other or say I don't understand it. That's not happened here. And to me that says a lot about all of you and and the budget. I can't wait to be on the RTM
022floor and vote for it. >> Thank you. Uh, the next person who has signed up is Crystal Hill, CDSP. Good evening, Crystal Hill, uh, CDSP co-chair, 300 Brookside Road. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of both the CDSP executive board and also PTA PTO leadership at each school, uh, some of whom are w are in the audience this evening. First, we would like to thank the administration and this board for what parents have widely viewed as a thoughtful, efficient, and well-run budget process this year. Families especially appreciated the structure of three focused budget meetings. Compared to prior years, this approach made the process easier to follow with more concise meetings and clear focused presentations. The slide decks were straightforward and informative, making complex budget topics more accessible to our broader broader community. Parents also found the
023weekly budget updates in the superintendent's communications extremely helpful. These updates reinforced the transparency and allowed families to stay informed on budget developments weekly. PTO leaders heard consistent feedback that this structure helped parents remain engaged without feeling overwhelmed by this process. So, thank you all again. Second, we want to voice our support for the budget as proposed by Dr. Burn and encourage the board to approve this budget on Thursday evening. We believe this budget prioritizes students, staff, and high the highquality education that we and Darianne expect while also remaining financially responsible. Specifically, we support the addition of five elementary instructional coaches. These positions will directly support teachers professional learning and instructional quality while also helping reduce the need for frequent early release dates, an ongoing challenge for family schedules and child care. School administrators across levels
024express support to our PTO leadership and excitement about the opportunities that this will provide. We believe this initiative benefits staff, families, and most importantly our students. We also support the addition of the communications coordinator position. Clear, timely, and transparent communication is essential year round, and families rely on district communications to understand decisions, timelines, and expectations. We believe this role will strengthen both internal and external communication bene benefiting families and staff. I did want to note one area of ongoing parent concern related to budget decisions that were actually made last year and that was is specifically the reduction in elementary instructional aids. While parents understand the importance of evaluating this change after a full school year of implementation, many remain concerned about its potential impact on classrooms and they hope that the administration will conduct a
025thorough review at the end of this year and before the next budget cycle. We've delivered this feedback to Dr. Burn separately, but we want to ensure that the board is also aware that this is a concern we did hear repeatedly. In closing, we strongly support the proposed budget and appreciate the collaboration, transparency, and efficiency demonstrated throughout this process. Thank you for the opportunity to share this parent feedback tonight. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to make public comment? Please come to the podium. My name is Paul Hendrickson. I'm a resident of Derenne, 97 White Street. I've lived in Derenne since 1962 off and on. I'm the beneficiary of uh graduating from Darienne High as is my brother, sister, brother-in-law, son, niece, and two nephews. Alto together about a hundred years in the
026Darian school system. and all of us have been relatively successful. I may not rival Miss Raymond's uh record of uh serving. But uh I have served on the board of finance off and on since 1997. I support the budget. I appreciate the transparency. I applaud the board's efforts in searching out and hiring Dr. Burn. The last 17 years, uh, I served as a business manager in four different districts, recently retiring. At first blush, I would have to rate him close to number one, if not number one. that >> and I appreciate his congeniality, his professionalism, and his forthrightness and his engagement in the community, especially being so new to the community. And I I just thought of something sitting down when I worked for IBM, one of my bosses said, "Paul, when you buy cheap,
027you get cheap." and this this budget hits the sweet spot. I support it wholeheartedly. You have been more than transparent. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> You can please come up to the podium if you'd like to make public comment. Thank you. >> Yes. Uh good evening. I'm Peter Orfonos, 67 Raymond Street, and on the RTM Finance and Budget Committee. Um, and there isn't too much more to say after all the people have proceeded uh preceded me this evening. Uh, I don't have Jan's or Paul's tenure here in the town, but uh oh uh it's one of the reasons why my wife and I decided to move here 28 years ago. Uh we have a daughter went through Darian High uh and had a great experience there. Um but going back to my
028experience both as an RTM member for the last five to six years and as an u um an advocate um for public education in general. What I see here is coherence in this entire process. That's I think the best word that captures everything. Um I uh uh think that the the new program at the elementary school to combine uh oversight of students progress with data is to build a stronger platform is is very good. I also love the coaching program but most especially part of that is having the coaches not part of the teacher evaluation process. I think that will build trust and much more trust uh between the teachers and their coaches and help them move along. Uh but I think again uh the process is great. It's a great uh uh the process
029is great but it's also great progress from where we've been in the past. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Would anyone else like to make public comment? >> All right, seeing none, uh we will move on to the next agenda item. And thank you everyone for your comments tonight. Um, we're going to move on to further discussion by the board on the budget. Um, I'd like to open it up for board questions and thank you everyone for attending tonight to give public comment. Does anyone on the board have any questions? I did want to reference the fact that Dr. Burn mentioned the early retirement program um, and the the savings that would acrue toward the fiscal 27 budget. Um, so to the extent that board members agree with that change, then we could
030end up reducing the fiscal 27 proposed budget as it currently stands by the amount that was referenced um, >> 35. >> It would it would end up being a 3.51% increase um, with with that change. So if we have consensus from the board for that, then they can make that change prior to our vote on Thursday. Do we as a board feel that that would be an appropriate change to make? Okay. Um, so we will make that change for Thursday's budget when we will hold the vote on Thursday. Are there any other comments from the board about anything that we have discussed prior to this on the budget or concerns? Okay. Hearing none, uh we will make uh we'll move on to we actually have public comment at the end of the meeting, but I
031given the fact that we just held that, is there anyone else who would like to make any comment before we adjourn? Okay, seeing none, may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting tonight? That's Dave second in by