001We're live. >> Today is Thursday, January 8th, 2026. I would like to call this special meeting of the board of education to order. The next regular meeting of the board of education is on Tuesday, January 13th at 7:30 p.m. Uh I'll start with the chairperson's report. Unfortunately, Robin, our chair, is uh at a family emergency. Uh hopefully everything's going well with Robin. So she's not able to be here in person, but she is dialed in on the phone. Um so you're stuck with me tonight. Uh I will do my best to read uh the chair report that she provided. Uh excuse any stumbles as I go through her narrative here. Uh good evening and thank you for being here tonight as the board of education begins the important task of re of reviewing and deliberating
002on the superintendent's proposed fiscal 2027 budget. I want to begin by thanking Dr. Burn and the administration for their work developing the fiscal 27 budget, which Dr. Burn will introduce tonight. 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. To help achieve that goal, a new budget development process has been designed this year to shift the administration and board of education focus to strategic alignment with our goals and educational programming. The board and administration met with town officials and community groups this fall to explain the new process and share how we believe it will create a streamlined and effective budget development process this year. I would like to highlight a few of the changes to this year's budget process. First,
003tonight's presentation of the superintendent's proposed budget will be followed by board discussion and questions on tonight's budget presentation. And there will be an opportunity as usual for public comment at the end. Another change this year is we will not hold a super Saturday budget review meeting where we review all the RC's. In place of that one-day meeting, which is typically an all-day meeting over the weekend, uh we will hold three board budget meetings over the next three weeks covering selected groups of budget RC's. The schedule is as follows. On January 13th, we will cover schools and curriculum and instruction. On January 20th, we will cover special education and athletics. On January 27th, we will cover operations and the capital budget. During these budget meetings, our administration will give detailed budget presentations covering their specific areas.
004These presentations will be followed by board questions and discussion, and of course, there will be opportunity for public comment at the end. The formal board of education public hearing will be on February 3rd during which community members will have the opportunity to speak and share specific feedback on the proposed budget. We encourage everyone to attend the public hearing and welcome your feedback on the budget. For those who are unable to attend the public hearing, the board also welcomes emails to the board in which you can share your thoughts. At the conclusion of the public hearing on February 3rd, the board will have the opportunity for further discussion of the budget. The board will vote on the superintendent's proposed fiscal 27 budget on Thursday, February 5th, and will formally submit the board of education's fiscal 27
005budget to the board of finance at the board of finance meeting held on March 3rd. The board is committed to providing the best possible education for our students and shares the community's desire to prioritize student needs and programming in alignment with our strategic goals. The board looks forward to collaborating with the superintendent and district administration, town-eleed officials, and the RTM in bringing forward a fiscally responsible 2027 budget that meets the needs of our students and is financially responsible to our taxpayers. Thank you for your ongoing support. Um, with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Burn for presentation of uh the superintendent's proposed budget for 2026 2027. >> Thank you very much, Greg. Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for being here. Uh before I begin, I would like to say while it's called
006the superintendent's proposed budget, this budget is a reflection of lots of hard work by lots of people, many who are in the room. It is a reflection of the deep discussions we've had as a central administrative team as well as a district leadership team over the past few months because as uh as the board knows, uh we started working on the budget the week I started uh in Deranne. So, I I'm really confident that the process we have engaged in will meet those lofty goals that Greg spoke to in the chair report. Um, this is a fiscally responsible budget that is driven by student need and in alignment with our strategic plan and our strategic priorities. That being said, our process as we've designed it will speak to uh much of this discussion which will
007be I think somewhat different will be focused on what it is that we will be doing with the funding that we're requesting from the board and from the community. Um, I would like to, as Greg mentioned, I want to thank all those town officials and community group representatives for meeting with us uh this fall, giving feedback on the process, and really making some suggestions that have been incorporated in this uh proposed budget. So, that being said, uh we will move on and begin. And and this uh is something I know the board has heard a lot from me. uh when we think about the work that we're doing, when we think about the budgets we are preparing, when we think about the programs we are initiating, we are always thinking with the end in mind.
008It's like backwards planning um with um program planning and budget planning. We're thinking about those skills and attributes of the vision of the graduate that we wish to achieve in helping to develop in our kids. but at the same time while focusing on the achievement of excellence, not perfection, but excellence and great academic opportunity for our kids. So, when we think about what goes into uh the school budget, um I've talked about this a bit and when we did the fiscal forecast a few months ago, I talked about the pillars of the budget and the main components that make up this budget. Of course, it's our program, it's our class size, it's our infrastructure, it's our contractual obligations. And those pillars support that vision of the graduate and the work that helps us to get
009our students to that place. As I introduced early in the fall when we talked about the process, I talked about us really being disciplined in our process, thoughtful in our process, and having standards that we follow as we develop this budget. And what you'll see over the next few weeks, while this budget tonight incorporates all of these standards, when each presenter is up, you're going to see that not all of the standards are necessarily reflected in that particular budget. But all of these standards have been guides for us as we develop the budget in its entirety. And what I will say, and I I said this back in uh October when we talked about the process, and I should have mentioned this earlier, the budget we're presenting tonight is our recommended budget. So, at no
010point during this process, unless there is some seismic change that we're not aware of between now and February 3rd, what you see is what we're recommending right now. So, there will not be any surprises as we move through this process or significant change. So our budget proposal for the coming year is a increase over the current 125 million budget to 130,640433 and that's an increase of 3.88%. And if we look back for the past five budget cycles, our current budget, you see that there has been growth of course. Um, and I think it's a really important piece to uh recognize and call out the efficiencies and work of the board and the district on the return that goes back to the town at the end of the year. when we think uh one of the
011questions that I'm often asked is how do we compare to our peers? And while I'm not a huge fan of comparisons, I think it is a benchmark that we should take a look at. And as you see, um we are right there at 26,242 per pupil expenditure. Um and you have the rest of our DUR and that is below the average of 27,952. Um, and we're almost essentially the same as our neighbors in New Kanan. I talked about that pillar of enrollment. Um, we had the demographic presentation a few weeks ago and as we pick that apart and look at the projections for next year, our elementary enrollment, there will be some growth. I believe our total is about 38 kids um at the elementary level and you see that across the five schools where
012that growth will be and we'll come back to that in terms of what that means um in terms of staffing and at the middle school as expected from the demographic study we're looking at a net loss of eight students a reduction of eight and at the high school a reduction of 48 and I often say this um I think demographers often their tool that they use the most is a magic eight-ball uh because they're not always completely accurate. There are a lot of things in communities like Darianne that we cannot project. Um but we owe it we go with these numbers that they give us and we will monitor them carefully and I know um class size and the number of sections is something that is always an important conversation at this table and in
013the community and as we did this year we monitored carefully and made adjustments as necessary and we'll do that again moving forward. But um if you look it's an overall uh increase at elementary of 38 students. You've got the decrease of 56 at the secondary level for a net decrease of about 18 students, which in the world of uh school enrollments is basically a flat enrollment for the coming year. In order to support that enrollment group, we are proposing a number of personnel additions. I've spoken about the need for instructional support uh for our teachers and bringing elementary instructional coaches. Much like in the business world, executive coaching is the most effective way to move someone's practice in the classroom. Instructional coaching is the most effective way to move a teacher's practice. And as um
014Dennis queued up for me at the last meeting, programs are not going to be what moves the needle for our kids. It's teacher knowledge and skill that's going to move the needle for our kids. And the best way to do that is through a coaching model. So, we are proposing the addition of five elementary instructional coaches that will work across all of our schools. Based on enrollment, Henley will need an additional elementary teacher. Homes will need an additional elementary teacher. based on case loads and uh IEP driven needs, Middle Sex will need an additional special special education teacher. And again, based on need and IEPs, the ELP program has a need for an additional 0.2 um psychologist at on the nonstructional side. At the district level, I'm proposing that we have a public information coordinator
015in the district. I still uh as we go further along in the process, if it is approved, we will do the exploration of whether or not that's a contract with an agency or whether it's the hiring of a person to be here full-time as an employee of the school district. That will be an exploration further on. But in a district of our size with the kind of communication that we should be delivering to our community, I believe that that's an essential position that will help us uh and help our community understand and increase transparency within our schools. Uh this isn't necessarily a new position, but it's a new addition to our budget in terms of FTEES, but the wellness coordinator at the wellness center at the high school has been supported with a grant and
016the grant was a phased out period. So there's an additional we will be absorbing the cost of that coordinator position which is the equivalent of a.33 uh full-time equivalent and based on need for special education transportation we have a need for two additional transportation drivers as I committed to the board early on in the process. um we do not just go through the process and look at adding. We look at where are those um positions and opportunities that enrollment may actually drive the need to have fewer people in positions. And as you'll see here on the instructional side, there is these are our personnel reductions. There is a 1.0 0 reduction of a middle school world language teacher, a 6 reduction of a high school math teacher, a point4 reduction of a high school world
017language teacher, and a 0.2 reduction of a high school English teacher. These will have no impact on program. These are positions and parts of positions that are eliminated due to decrease in enrollment. And on the non-instructional side, we are reducing the director of security position. And I want to be very clear that this is not reducing having a coordinator or director of security on site. Our recommendation is that we contract with an agency and that agency as part of it would be providing a full-time on-site security director for us. In addition, what it will enable is we'd have the resources of the entire company for training purposes for our teachers and staff and administration throughout the district. So what we've been asking one individual person to try and do which is impossible in the director
018of security role we will have an entire organization behind that person on site and we will have trainers and training that comes in as part of that contract. So, this I've been really happy to hear that this has become the uh new favorite slide for a lot of people and this this slide was something we put together. Um, and Cass and I and Rich were working on this over the break. What we wanted to create was a simple way to see where within the RC's are there changes, where are their increases, where are their decreases. So you literally can take a look across all of the RC's and line by line it'll tell you where there are increases and it will illustrate where there are decreases and what those are for. So for example, yonder
019bags at the high school is a reduction of $32,000. Obviously we know that last year was a purchase of them for the first time. So there was a sign significant expense on that. Uh, I'm not going to go line by line through this, but I thought for both the community and for the board, this is a really good reference tool to take a look and see. And frankly, I think it's an important one to look at because our our group that's sitting in the audience here tonight, our administrative team, you can see that they were looking across all of their expenditures. So, when you see um a reduction of $49 in software, that's because Colleen in the visual and performing arts did a really good job with her sharpened pencil looking at all of the
020items in her responsibility center. So, [clears throat] somewhere in October uh when we did the fiscal forecast, this is a breakdown of basically where all the dollars go to get you to the 3.88%. So, as the board approved earlier as the DRTM, the DEA contract is growing by about 2.7 million or 2.18% of the growth uh relates to the teacher contract. Uh the DAA contract is growing by about 220,000 and so those two will actually get us to about 2.52%. We have non-certified contracts. We do have some that are unsettled including the secretaries, the paraprofessionals, and the nurses where we have a set aside included. Um but those contracts uh bring us to 3.15%. Uh we did budget turnover and salary savings. We are assuming 35 teachers turnover and 15 par professionals. That's a credit
021to the budget of almost $800,000 which brings us back down to that 2.5%. ESY will have a few more days in the following June which will add about 88,000 and as Dr. Burn mentioned the wellness coordinator grant is ending at the end of the current year and so bringing that into the budget gets us 2.6%. So 2.6% of the growth of the budget are just those items. We have enrollment and staffing changes. Uh the elementary enrollment at Hinley and Holmes uh require another uh teacher at each school. Uh that's another.13% on the budget. The world language changes at the middle school based on enrollment uh reduces the budget by 0.05. The high school enrollment changes uh bring the budget down by by 002. The additional uh special education teacher at the middle school brings it
022up by another.06. The two drivers that are needed for outplacements uh bring it up by another. 08. and then the benefits for those staff as well. So that's another quarter of a point on the budget. >> Rich, if I could just interject. Um I had a good question that was asked of me earlier and I did confirm with Rich. Someone asked me what the percentage of the budget is due to staffing and health benefit costs and we're at right about 79% for the combination of both of those things. So when we think about the big picture of the whole budget and all of the different line items in all of the different RC's, it's really important for us to keep in mind that 79% of that is locked into two items regarding staffing and health
023benefits. Uh moving on to operating teen talk, you'll recall the middle school is partially funded by a grant. So that's moving into the operating budget and that plus the contractual increase at the high school is adding 0.05. We do have a new unfunded mandate next year that we'll have to begin composting at the schools. So, it's another almost $30,000. Uh the athletic trainers are a contracted service and that's going up 10,000. The Fitch lease 4,200. The DEA contract did call for an increase in tuition reimbursement. Uh one of the big drivers that is helping us reduce the budget is special education this year where we have a net decrease in out of district tuition contracted services net of ECR of almost $840,000. And then software increases for the software that we have every year, including
024things like Aspen and Munis and SNAP um and Frontline. That's another $31,000. And then the other is uh accumulative items across a number of the RC's um including the $49 that Dr. Burn mentioned, but it's primarily textbooks in RC19 that are driving down uh that amount. And so you'll see the operating costs are going down by over $800,000. If we move to fixed costs, uh transportation is going up 287,000. There is a 7% contractual increase with the per student. Um utilities are going up $244,000. It's primarily electricity. If you recall during the uh some of the finance committees, we talked about the increase in the supplier rate. And we've seen the supplier rate in Connecticut go up about 30% over the last few years. And so the bulk of that increase is uh driven by
025that. Um we did get some good news with uh pension costs for non-certified staff. uh the pension fund is funded at 106% uh which means it has more assets available than needed and so that's a reduction of fund funding needed uh in the board's budget and so that coupled with OPEB and uh payroll taxes is a net reduction of $400,000. Uh benefits is going up by a little over $700 uh,000. We'll probably talk about this a lot during the operations portion, but we are recommending going to a self-insured model um which is a change from what the district has had for a number of years where we've been fully insured. And so a self-insured model is the district will be paying claims directly as opposed to prepaying um insurance costs upfront through a package through
026Anthem. And so we will have a third party administrator who will actually process the claims. We're not going to be processing the claims in the business office, but we'll be paying individual claims and we'll be taking out insurance policies uh to protect us against uh catastrophic claims. And so a self-insured model will provide individual stop-loss insurance of 250,000, which means for any individual, the most that we'll pay is 250,000. Anything above that, that insurance policy that we'll buy will kick in and cover that. We're also going to have aggregate uh stop-loss insurance. And so, uh, that insurance provides a 20% corridor, meaning the maximum exposure we have is 20% of expected claims. And so, we'll talk a little bit more about that. But then our current policies, which are workers comp, property insurance, liability insurance
027is another $33,000. Um, another large increase is technology equipment. You've uh called in the last couple of boards board budget cycles, we had some deferred technology. And so, that is bringing some of those technology purchases forward. And then revenue excluding ECR is growing by about 139,000 and that's primarily ELP tuition uh rental of fields and renting of buildings. And so that's about 888% of the budget. Dr. Burn talked about this a little bit uh a while ago. Uh but there are some new initiatives in the budget including the public information coordinator, um five elementary instructional coaches, the security redesign, and then the benefits associated with those positions. We have a couple of new software item requests uh mostly regarding AI, but that's about a million dollar increase or8% of the budget. And so those new
028initiatives are largely offset by those operating reductions we talked about earlier. So if you pull all those things together, you'll see that the budget is uh growing by 3.88% or just over $5 million from the current budget uh that's been approved. The next slide just shows all the RC's and essentially where you're seeing the biggest growth and obviously you'll see curriculum is the highest at 18% and that is those five additional instructional coaches uh that are recommended and then technology is 13% and that again is really uh the technology equipment which includes Chromebooks, laptops for teachers uh uh and a replacement cycle for the Chromebooks. And then moving forward to capital, and this isn't the first time you've seen the capital budget, uh the total is a little over $1.9 million. About 60% of that
029$1.9 million request is for paving. Paving at the high school, paving at Henley Homes, uh and Royal. Uh there are some vehicle replacements. Obviously, we would need two more Suburbans that we talked about for those drivers. If those positions are approved, we will have to go to P&Z and amend the special permit have. Um and then there's some smaller increases in school security for radio replacements. uh ballards and um camera and infrastructure replacement. >> So as we move forward the next step in the process once we wrap this up and begin our conversation for today um next Tuesday um Dr. Fedigan will present the curriculum instruction budget and we'll be drilling down further. So this is your big picture the entire budget and then over the next few meetings we'll take individual chunks. So looking
030at curriculum and instruction in the schools at the next meeting. Then at the following meeting um we will look at special education and also at athletics. Then we will be looking at operations. So that being said um we did want to put some information out there. So, as Greg mentioned in the chair report, we do welcome comments, feedback, questions from the community, and there are a variety of ways you could do that and people you can send it to. You can always email the board of education at darenne board of education at darenps.org. Me at eburn darianps.org, rich at rut darenps.org, org. And if you can't remember any of those, we've added an easy one this year. Budget feedback at darmpps.org. Certainly love to talk more, hear some questions, feedbacks, thoughts. As I said, it's
031uh we we feel like we've we've created a really good programdriven budget that meets the needs of our students while recognizing the need for fiscal responsibility for the community. >> Thank you for the presentation. I think it's it's awesome. Uh you guys did a great job. As a finance nerd myself, I also am on the bandwagon for page 12 uh that I think others liked. just very succinct in terms of being able to digest it. Um I have a couple things and then I'll we'll go around the horn. Um first is do you have any sense you know the 3.88% for me when I open up the budget was was um very encouraging. Uh I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a much higher number. So I was yeah that was very favorable compared to
032what we've seen in past years. Do you have any sense of how that compares to where our peers are coming out at least at this point so far this year? >> Yeah, so I've been talking with our neighboring superintendents within the Dur and beyond. Um right now uh Wilton is a bit below us. Uh and the closest one after Wilton is New Kanan. That's a little bit higher than us there. Wilton's at about 35 36 >> I think they're 398 and then Weston was 392. >> Um those are the two that are out publicly. I think Westport comes out next week. Um, and Wilton will come out later. >> And and what superintendents have shared with me is those are really the only ones that will be below us. Everyone's above us. One or two
033that are in the high threes, low fours, but there's a lot of fives out there. >> Got it. Okay. That's that's also encouraging. Um, just two a couple things that I had um as we were going through. I know we have talked about the elementary instructional coaches as a group uh 5ft FTE editions. It would be great to just get additional insight there from you. I know Amy may also have some from her experience just to hear from you guys uh and for the public to hear as well. >> Yeah, that will be a big part of the conversation next week when Amy presents but um and with the research that supports the model. So, we will definitely be bringing that great >> to the board and community. >> Great. Um, and then the other
034thing that I think will be an important topic to understand is I I saw in the budget that there's self- insurance that we're thinking through. Um, just understanding the thought process there. I know we've I think I've asked about it for the past couple years. It's something that I'm very familiar with, but just understanding how that's going to be managed. There's some intricacies in terms of how self insurance works. I think that'll be really helpful to get into those details as well. Um, with that, I'll open it up to other board members questions or things to discuss. >> Dennis, >> just to kind of follow up on uh the instructional coaches, if we could just get a roles and responsibility and how we're going to define success as as well as the the um public
035information uh coordinator, if we could have the same type of thing. >> Sure. Bill, >> I want to say thanks uh first to the staff particularly uh I know a lot of work went into it and it's very well thought out, well presented. Thank you uh Dr. Burn and particularly Rich. Thank you just outstanding work. I thought also the budget was very reasonable and well thought out. Um, I very much concur with the public uh information coordinator position overdue and given the needs of our community, it's money well spent. Uh, I would mention that I'm al I'm a fan from previous life of continuing education and uh very receptive to any uh proposals you may have for that going forward as well. And as far as the uh elementary instructional coaches, um I I I
036see the the the need for them that you've articulated and I just look forward to um some way to measure the results. I think as Dennis alluded to, particularly if we maybe increasing the percentage of students reading at or above grade level or other subjects, um improve test scores. I think that'll go a long way. So, all right. Thank you. Anyone else? >> I'll just share that usually coming into January, I'm full of angst and nerves and I this is delightful. [laughter] >> Thank you for for making the the just the initial number reasonable and the process reasonable and um I'm excited about the next few months. >> Thank you. >> Others >> um Greg I I can speak. Can you hear me? Okay. >> Yep. Go ahead. Um, so and sorry I could not
037be there in person, but I I thank you again to Dr. Burn and to the administration because I think this budget is extremely well prepared, well presented, and well thought out. And it's obvious as you go through RC by RC the thought that went into it in terms of not only allowing us to find efficiencies, but also to be able to fund new initiatives that are very important to our district that really align with our strategic goals. and the instructional coaches are a huge part of that as well with our our goals of improving the K through three literacy etc. Um so I was very excited about that. I I do also agree with the move at least from what I've seen so far to go to the self- insurance route. But on that when
038we get to that um discussion about operations, it would be really helpful to also understand a little bit more how the reserves would work um from year to year and and how that works because this is essentially more of like a balance sheet kind of an account. So, I'd love to get a little more detail about that because claims tend to have a lag and in ensuring that the um district is protected against loss in future years, it's important to be able to make sure we have established um reserves. So, I'm I'm just interested in learning how that works for school districts in particular. Thank you. >> David, do you have something? >> We're just going around. I was going to say this is a fantastic start to the process. Thank you very much. And
039in all the years I've seen budgets come, I've never seen this much alignment between these, you know, administration and the board's desire um to really focus on teaching learning. So, thank you. >> Excellent. Other comments, thoughts, Joanna? >> Um I also want to say thank you. Um you've lived up to your name of Dr. no surprises. So, I think we all really appreciate that. Um, and I I worry that my thoughts are a little too specific, so I'm going to wait to ask depending on the night which your presentations are. >> Great. Anything else? Okay. So, we will go to public comment. >> Good evening. [clears throat] If you would like to participate in public comment, please approach the podium and wait to be recognized. Once recognized, please state your name and address for the
040record and your town, sorry, in your town of residence. Once you've been recognized, you'll have up to three minutes to comment. >> Okay. No public comment. I see. >> Uh, with that, may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting?