EL Board of Finance Public Hearing

001Sound check one two. Cell check one two. That's one ex good. Now let's go. Okay. Check. So, excuse me everyone. For those of you that wanted to sign up um to speak, there will be two signup sheets. One for people that are eligible to vote in town on the budget and one for students. So just um that way um you know make sure you're signing I'm at eight students, but I just want everyone to realize that the board of finance does have a meeting after after this meeting is concluded. So um you know we will we will see how many people are voting. We would uh or excuse me are looking to speak. We would ask that people keep their comments to 2 minutes or less. And um you know but it'll have to be

002at our discretion on how many more uh we can have speak if if uh if it comes too late. Excuse me. I would like to welcome you to the East Lime Board of Finance public hearing. Um today is Monday, April 28th. The time is a little bit after 7. We're trying to uh get started. Um so I would like to call this um public hearing to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. At this point, I would also like to ask for a moment of silence. Um, one of the former East Slime High School principles passed away just recently. His name was Larry

003Roberts and from what I understand, he was well loved by um the students and the faculty alike. So, with that, if we could have a moment of silence. Thank you. Next on the agenda is comments by our first selectman, Dan Cunningham. Okay. Well, I guess that works. So, uh, good evening everyone. I want to welcome the board of finance members, board of selectman members, board of education members, and the interested uh, students and residents here tonight. We appreciate your attendance and your interest in the budget. I want to thank the board of finance for for their diligence. I want to thank the chairperson Denise Hall for her leadership through this process. The board of selectmen for their attention and attendance at many long meetings, budget meetings. Uh the board of education and the superintendent of

004schools, Jeff Newton, who started this process really at the end of uh August, uh early fall is when they start their process. and we start a little bit later in November for the town government. And I want to thank our finance director, Kevin Jet, whose many hours of hard work and concern for the process were critical to our mission and to get us here tonight. many midnight calls from Kevin while we were working on the budget and uh it seemed like he had boundless energy and uh he attended all of the concerns of the board of finance, board of selectmen and the department heads. You know, I could say this is a tough budget year, but they're all tough budget years. The board of finance has had the difficult and crucial responsibility of reconciling the

005needs of town government, the board of education, and the taxpayers as well. All of this is done in the face of diminishing help from the state of Connecticut, evaporating federal grants, and an environment of everinccreasing demands for unfunded mandates on both the board of education and town government. It's really become a hostile environment in which we work. Despite these difficult challenges, we continue to strive for improvements in the budget and the process. Uh we want to do things that'll benefit the town in future future budget years. Uh, our themes in the past have been focusing on needs over wants, of maintaining what we have, trying not to expand our footprint or our infrastructure beyond what we can reasonably hope to maintain and take care of. And now in this budget season, we've really tried to

006add a focus of strategic planning and we've tried to incorporate that into uh the various aspects of the budget as we move forward. So let me let me turn now uh to the presentation and if we'll if you can go through this with me we'll we'll start with explaining how the budget process itself works. So, usually in late November and December, um the department heads submit their initial requests to the first selectman's office. We then we have meetings. I meet with finance director Kevin Jet and the department heads. We sit down and they have their initial de I want to say demands but their their idea of what they need for their budget for a particular year for the coming year. and we sit down, we go over those needs with them and we try

007to figure out where we can eliminate some of the line items, reduce line items, come up with what they can live with, what they feel they can deliver the services that they are tasked to deliver to the town and at the same time uh trying to keep the budget in check. After conversations with the department heads, I come up uh with my usually reductions to the budget. Occasionally, we increase a line item, but normally it's reducing the budget and trying to distill out uh those things that maybe aren't absolutely necessary that we can live without. At that point, the first selectman delivers the budget and presents it to the board of selectmen. And then at the board of selectment level, we go through the same process but with the whole board all over again. We'll

008have department heads come in. They'll explain their portion of the budget to the board of selectmen. They'll go through that same process of justifying all the line items, why they need what they need. And then the board of selectmen after hearing from all of the department heads occasionally there's you know some budgets that are so u concise that maybe they don't have to appear and we can just rely on what they presented in the budget package to us. But then the board of selectman will deliberate and then they'll make usually further reductions. Occasionally again they'll increase an item. They might disagree with a cut that I've made and reinstate it or change it. But eventually we get to a point where we present that budget to the board of finance. Board of finance gets our

009budget and again they go through that process of they will uh meet with department heads. Department heads will make a presentation to the board of finance in the similar way that they made the presentation to the board of selectment. At the end of the day, at the end of deliberations, um the board of finance will make their adjustments again, usually reductions, and then they'll present that as they are tonight after their reductions. We talked I I I said briefly that one of the new u areas that we're really trying to focus on is strategic planning. And one of those uh instances is the capital improvement committee. So this year what we did was um we formed a committee members of the board of finance, some members of the board of selectmen, um board of education

010members, um some some people citizens that aren't on any commissions. and we got on a bus and we took a tour of the various facilities throughout the town and we got to see, you know, what the department heads would say, look, you know, we need a new tractor or we need a new pickup truck, we need a new uh a piece of equipment for airating the the ball fields and we got to see actually what they had and it was very it's the first time this has been done. was very very helpful because when we got into projecting the what we call the capital plan which is separate from the budget but what that is that's a plan of how we're going to spend money over the next 10 years and projecting that we were

011able to relate it back to oh yeah this is what they were talking about they needed this new uh air raator for the for the ball fields so yeah we I remember we saw the one that they had and was falling apart and they couldn't get parts for it anymore yeah this is something we really need to keep in the budget took a lot of time to go through that process, but we did it. We all got on a bus, we rode together and it was a great experience and gave us insight as to the needs for the various departments in town. So, uh I was very happy that to see that we were able to start moving in that direction and that's something we'll do every year. Um again, it's the idea of planning

012strategically for the future rather than just being reactionary all the time. We're going to see that uh that idea in other places here. Okay. So, let's talk about budget initiatives. One of the things we're trying to do this year is to hire a 12th firefighter. So, we last year we formed our a new the East Fire Service and there are three shifts of four firefighters. So, that's 12 to for a 24-hour day. And so, right now, we have 11. And uh to make it work uh more smoothly, we really need to have that 12 firefighters so that we have 12 firefighters to cover the uh three three shifts at four per shift. So, we're hoping we will keep that in the budget and we'll get that strategic planning. the overall plan looking down the road

013and looking to the future. We're hoping that we will be able to eventually have 18 firefighters and that would be six firefighters per shift. So 18 per day and we would have two firefighters at each fire station. There's a there's three fire stations in town and ideally we would like to have two at each fire station 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. and that would give us a very high level of protection in this town. So, that's what we're working towards. Another thing that changed this year was uh we had um I had several contracts to renegotiate that hadn't been done and uh really came due during my term. And so, we renegotiated the the fire service contract. We also renegotiated the Eastline Ambulance Fund. We have a separate

014contract with them. they are now a fully a separate entity. They always have been a separate entity, but now they are completely separate from the town. And so, uh, and why that's important is their mission is to have, uh, four EMTs on duty, um, 24/7. Um, the, uh, they they have one crew on 24 hours a day and they have another crew that's on for 16 hours a day. But the uh the idea is to have separate EMTs that are able to respond to an EMT call and then our firefighters are at the station ready to go and fight a fire. They're not tied up riding on an ambulance. They'll be down at L&M hospital. That doesn't happen anymore. Our firefighters are here. They're in town. They've got their apparatus ready to go and they're

015not riding on an ambulance somewhere. That changed this year and I'm really happy about that. I think it's a huge improvement to the town. It really allows us strategically to move forward. We are requesting a rescue boat in the capital budget capital plan. This year, you may recall there have been two instances where the firefighters had to go out and make a rescue. One was around December 20th. We had a fellow in a sailboat off of Black Point and it was the middle of the night and the boat was sinking and we had 2:00 in the morning they had to go out and make a rescue. Uh they other towns uh that we had asked help from they weren't willing to put their boat in the water and uh and understandably it was a terrible

016night. The wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour and it was very treacherous out there. But uh they got him off the boat. uh Coast Guard helped and they assisted and saved the man's life along with this cat as I understand. But we need that capability. And then there was another time last summer there were some young women. They were swimming in uh uh the river, you know, middle of the night and uh one got lost and they had to start an a rescue effort and everybody ended up okay. But again, we're in a coastal town. We need to have a a a fire rescue boat capability. So that's in our budget for this year. Enhancing services to the community. This year we created a fair rent commission. And you know that doesn't happen

017without money. It takes money to to run a commission. They have to have a small budget. But we felt it was uh essential for our community to have the option and the uh overview of a fair rent commission. And there are people that that was very important to them and it it benefited to them and it's fair-minded. It's fair to landlords and to tenants. We also increase senior bus service. That's essential. You have elderly people that ride that bus to get to medical appointments, to be able to go shopping. You know, not everybody has access to an automobile or a family member that can drive them or are comfortable or can afford to hire an Uber driver to come and and pick you up. So, that uh senior bus service is very important to a

018large portion of our community and we've tried to address that and accommodate that. Same thing for the expansion of the youth and family services. You know, that's another layer of protection for residents, people with children that maybe need some counseling services or guidance. It's one more place they can turn. It's another area to uh receive guidance. And then of course, we make contributions to nonprofits, uh small stipens really, but we have some wonderful organizations that provide services that we can't provide. Karen Share, Blue Door to name a couple and there's a host of others that do wonderful work for our town and we try to support them. Cyber security and communications infrastructure. You know, last couple weeks ago I went to a tabletop scenario was over at Campnet and it had to do with a

019cyber security attack on a municipality. And what it was is um in this scenario, they attacked the sewer system and they were flooding the town in the middle of the winter with sewage that was flooding and then it started a fire and were all these things that you know we had to try to deal with um in this uh kind of makebelieve scenario. But the point is that municipalities are weak when it comes to cyber security. They're an easy target and they can be a target for malware or ransomware. They can get into our systems and try to disrupt our sewage or water treatment. So, it's a very important thing to try to beef up and make it stronger. So, again, looking forward strategically thinking, we're trying to improve the software and the protections that

020we have in our cyber security. And along with that, what kind of goes with that is communications, putting up better towers, better positioning of of communications for our fire service and our police service, so we can make it easier for them to talk to each other and communicate during a real life uh situation like we had right out here a couple weeks ago, the gas man that that ruptured. So, that's where communication is absolut absolutely essential and those are some things we're we're trying to work on. The other thing is a coastal resiliency fund. Well, what's that? Well, maybe a couple years ago, you remember a wall got washed out at Makook's and um that's co we need we needed money to fix the wall. Had we had a coastal resiliency fund and maybe couldn't

021have paid for the whole thing, but it would have been someplace to start to repair the damage. We live in a time of more frequent storms, less uh reliance perhaps on FEMA with the way things are going. So we have to have our own resources. The other important aspect of that is that when we go to borrow money, we go to bond money out. Uh the bond agencies, the rating agencies, they look at whether or not coastal communities like Niantic or East Lime have a coastal resiliency fund. And if they don't have it, you're not as good a risk. And so they're not as willing to want to lend you money or if they do lend you money, it's at a higher rate. So very important that we have a coastal resiliency fund. Again, it's

022some forward thinking, a way to make things better in the future. All right. The uh the budget is higher than any of us would like it to be. What's the reason for that? Well, part of it is increased health insurance costs that went up 9%. Increased electric costs. I'm sure everyone here that pays an electric bill is not happy about the public benefit charge that they see tacked on to their bill. In our case, I think it was over a million dollar. Was it a million dollars, Kevin, that extra it cost us this year? Yeah. For that fund. I mean, you know, maybe for you and me, it's 80 bucks or 100 bucks for for that extra charge for the town. That's a lot of money. And I just I had to pick up the

023mail today and there was a stack of bills from Eversource. It must have been this tall. I mean, every every generator that we have, every every device that we have, um, they have separate bills. So, we pay a lot of money for electricity. So, that was a big hit that we took. Increased pension contributions. So in the past or right now it's 700,000 that we have to contribute to the pension fund. Now we're very well situated compared to other municipalities because um our pension board in the town we've been very diligent in funding that pension liability year after year after year. State of Connecticut wasn't so good at doing that. They had a big problem. They they're getting it resolved. They had unfunded pensions. Other municipalities are nowhere near where we are. We are in

024very good shape on our pension, but that's because we've made the sacrifice of contributing as we should every year. This year it's going up to $1.1 million. And as the actuaries, you know, people are healthier, living longer, actuaries figure out what our potential liability is 15, 10, 20 years down the road. And I'm glad everybody's healthier. That's a wonderful thing. But it increases the liability. And so we are accommodating that. There are other drivers with I don't want to get too technical here, but uh we have to keep pace with what our pension liability is. Increased software costs. We just talked about cyber security. All the software to make things work keeps going up and up and up. Um you can't buy software anymore. You have to buy a license. Remember the days you could

025go buy uh Microsoft and you'd pay a couple hundred bucks and pop it in your computer and it'd be good for a few years. Well, now all you buy is a license agreement. And every year you have to renew that license agreement. Same thing for the town. All the computers that we have, probably every student here has a has a a computer. They all have license agreements. It's a lot of money and we have to stay on top of it. Let's see. Inflationary pressures. We know about that. We're all uh subject to that. But we do collaborate with different departments in the town. We try to find ways to combine resources and make it a little more palatable. So let's look at the major budget review. And if you look at the um the column

026that says department head, so that 99,150,000 that's at the beginning of the process when the department heads come in to see me and we start talking about the budget. We started off this year at 99,150,000. You can see that I reduced it. Board of selectman redu reduced it further. And then finally it gets to the board of finance and we see a resulting $3 million reduction. So as we sit here tonight, that budget is 96,21,396. That's an increase of 5.6% from the previous budget. So that's my overview. I went on a little longer than I had intended, but I wanted to give you as much background as I could. So thank you for your attention. There's want to go to the next slide. Next on the agenda is our board of education presentation. Um our

027superintendent, Jeff Newton, I'm sure you all know. and Grant is switching over to your presentation. Thank you, Mrs. Hall. Um, first, while uh Mr. Place is switching over presentations, um, as our first selectman said, our process with the budget starts uh very early in the fall. uh it uh it gets out of the gate uh in uh that September time frame and a lot of work and a lot of effort goes into that. That starts in the classroom uh that starts in the schools building those budgets. I know our teachers, uh, all of our, uh, staff members, uh, everybody across, uh, the district looks hard at, uh, you know, what they need, uh, and that allows us to move forward by bringing budgets together at the school level and then up to, uh, ultimately central

028office where we, uh, we fine-tune and, uh, and put the final touches on uh, a budget, uh, a proposed budget that goes to the board of education. So, I want to thank because many of you are here tonight. So, thank you for your work uh, and all of that. We appreciate that each and every year. Also, uh, when it comes up to central office, uh, our our team works very diligently, uh, to scrutinize every line item. Um, and that's our our central office team, all of our our principles, administrators, and specifically our finance director, Mariana Stevens. Mariana, thank you for your work and effort. We appreciate that very much. And last, I just want to thank the board of education too for all of their effort. They are in full support of uh our school

029district and uh everything we value uh as a uh as a community for our kids. So, if we can go to our first uh our first slide um Grant, thank you. Um just a quick quickly a few accolades. Uh there are so many uh you could fit them on multiple slides, but just in the past year some things that you know we're we're very proud of. We had shared this with uh through some of our presentations. Uh our district does some amazing things. Uh our staff bring forward amazing things. Composting program here at the high school. Narcissist Green, one of our uh business teachers brought that forward. Got it off the ground. An amazing job with something of that nature. Um we have community and peer mentoring programs. Uh the growth that's happened this year

030has been fantastic. We have a story walk at Flanders School thanks to the librarian uh at Flanders and our principal there. uh ECC state team champions. Uh we have uh our music pro US bands, ELHS national champion in US bands. Uh East Lime High School ranked 10th best high school in Connecticut by Money Inc. So kudos for the work that you did there as well. So just a small picture of the great things that are happening across the East Line Public Schools. We work very hard to save dollars and share services and mitigate costs. Uh and that's done through a variety of methods. Uh we share utilities with the town. We we go out to bid with the town for to get a better rate on utilities. We share a mail courier. Um we share

031nursing a nursing supervisor with Waterford and sub nurses. We started that this year. That's gone very well. It's in an effort uh to utilize resources in a most productive way. uh financial software the munis program Mrs. Stevens Mr. Jet, they share the financial software between the town uh and the board of education. We've tried to work towards regional course sharing and collaborative efforts as well. Uh anybody here at the high school knows about uh our EMT course uh and the work that's been done there. Old Lime students and Waterford students come here uh to do that course. And next year we're looking to send East Lime students to Waterford for part of their automotive program. Not to mention we work with Ferman's garage through our path pathways program. So, there's a lot of great things

032that are happening as it pertains to some shared services. And I don't know if everybody knew uh in Salem uh both our uh or our food service director, our security director uh as well as our uh director of facilities all cover Salem school. So, there's a shared service there as well. They provide those services. We provide those services to Salem. So, we continue to look for opportunities like that that save us dollars and bring forth joint efforts. So, with the budget process, uh, as our first selectman kind of talks about the town's budget process here in East Lime, we have here at the, uh, in the district, we have, uh, two workshops that start off in November and December, which really get us going, um, after putting everything together in that September, October time frame.

033I bring forward the proposed budget to the board of education this year. It had gone just rolling everything over back in November from an 8.26 26 down to a 6.99 which was presented to the board of education. Board of education uh adopted a 6.72%age increase which went to the uh board of selectman and then the board of finance. So that's where uh what was the board of eds adopted budget was board of finance uh has reduced um as of right now uh 1,500,000 uh 150,000 of that is in insurance saving savings. So, uh, we are grappling with 1,350,000. Um, that reduction, uh, brings forth rather than a proposed 64,57,400 budget, it brings it down to a 62,557,400 school district budget. So, rather than a 6.72, uh, you saw in one of Mr. Cunningham's slides, the

034proposed, uh, uh, education budget is 4.22 at the current moment. What does that do to some of our schools and some of our programs and staffing? Uh impacts. When you go from 6.72 down to 4.22, uh we have that's a lot of money. We have an impact on instructional resources, supplies, professional development uh is going to decrease or could decrease enrichment opportunities, reduced field trips, program services, assemblies, uh equipment, uh classroom, athletics, facilities. We've looked across all areas working with the board of education. Uh we asked each school, each department, that includes uh the athletic department, facilities, uh for a uh roughly a 20% reduction to help offset, you know, some of these potential costs. Um software as well, central office, Mrs. Piano, our assistant lieutenant, uh oversees all of our software. So, we've had

035reductions uh there as well, proposed reductions. So, that added up to $128,199, which we talked about with the board of education at their most recent uh meeting. As it pertains to staffing, um when big dollars are at play, you have to look where big dollars are and oftentimes that is in our FTEES. Uh unfortunately, and let me preface, you know, our goal in all of this at the end of the day as a superintendent for the district, for me, and for and our board of education is to save jobs. We might lose positions, but we want to do everything we can to save people's jobs. That's what's most uh what's most important uh in the end. Um looking at 7.0 FTE reductions uh at the high school and three at the elementary level. Uh some

036of that, you know, through attrition. um that's not seven people or 10 people I would say between the high school and elementary losing their job. We're working that that number uh specifically of what positions potentially might be cut versus you know again individuals losing their jobs. And then additionally um four pair educators the board of ed had already reduced five pair educator positions. This is an additional four. So that would be nine par educator position reductions. uh an elementary library secretary, a reduction of three of our uh elementary and one high school secretaries going from 12 months down to 10 months. Uh also a reduction in some sub subcom coverage dollars uh as well. Those reductions obviously uh would result in some higher class sizes as noted uh on the far right. Cost drivers. It's

037important for everybody uh to understand that in any operating budget, any district uh in any town, when you roll over uh the budget to the new year, um you have major cost drivers. Uh the two big ones are always salaries and benefits. Um those are at the top of the list. When you look at our salaries and benefits up there, that equates out to, you know, almost a little over $3 million just rolling over uh for contractual obligations. uh you know in benefits we always hope that benefits would come in at a lower percent increase this current year it came in at a 2% which was fantastic as it was noted earlier uh Mrs. Hall mentioned that it came in at 9% or Mr. uh Cunningham might have mentioned that it came in at 9%.

038So that's a significant difference for our district uh 1% is $75,000. So you can do uh you can do the math there. So right out of the gate $3 million salaries and employee benefits. Then take tuition was another big cost driver for us. Um special education uh services um and some tuition dollars there. Um $557,530 budgeted for next year due to some services we need to provide for students. Uh and then transportation's $366,8. So, in our overall budget of whatever it will end up being, uh between that 60 uh and $64 million uh point, a roughly $600,000 is uh to to do the math is a percentage uh of of an increase. So, you can see that all adds up uh to uh to quite a you know, a higher percentage than the 4.22. Lastly,

039I'll just note that it's important to continue to reiterate that uh our school districts are based off of fixed costs. 97% of our operating budget is contracts. It's it's fixed costs. It's salaries. Um but those are contractually driven. Whether it be custodians, secretaries, pair professionals, teachers, administrators, those are all contracts. Uh transportation uh as well. That's a contract. So, uh, everything is driven by contracts. We have a small sliver of 3.2% where you have, you know, some play and that has been hit already with an additional, as I noted earlier, $128,199. So, I'll leave it uh at that and uh I just want to thank everybody again for being out here and uh in support of our school district. Thank you. Good evening and welcome again. Thank you all for being here. My name is

040Denise Hall. I chair the board of finance and um up uh at the front of the room here with me is the rest of the board of finance. We have Paul Maxfield, John Birmingham, Lauren McNamera, Richard Steel, and um Dr. Scott McAllister. So, um I want to start off with thank you again to all of you for all of your hard work and also with um the folks at uh the board of ed that have helped us and of course Kevin Jery who we spend an awful lot of time with. So um you've heard a lot about the process. So um this is sort of what were our agenda on what I'm going to speak about this evening. I'll try not to be repetitive if something was already covered by um Mr. Newton or Mr.

041Cunningham. So, as you heard, after the board of selectmen went through their process and after the board of ed went through their process, it then um came to the board of finance. We in turn held eight meetings uh working with all of the department heads as well as um the board of ed to really go through their budget. Um, at the end of the day, we proposed that the town operation budget increase by 2,196,000 and that the board of ed budget increase by 2.5 million. So, I point this out because, you know, we keep hearing we're cutting a budget, but we're not. We're increasing both the town budget and the board of ed budget. It may just not be as much as everybody would like. Um, after we get through with tonight's meeting, the board

042of finance will adjourn and hold a special meeting where we will um then formalize what the final budget will be that will then go to referendum. Um well, first it'll go to the town meeting on May 12th, which then um will go to the referendum where all who are eligible to vote on the budget can then vote. So, um I guess the first thing I since we have so many students here, it's great to be able to explain a little bit about town government. Um the board of selectmen are more like the policy makers. They're like the board of a corporation. They decide the direction and where the town is going. In the same way that the board of ed um has responsibility for making those policy decisions for the schools, the board of finance

043um when we get those budgets, it's our job to figure out how are we going to pay for this? Um, can the town afford this? How is this going to impact our residents and the mill rate? Um, and once we come up with that, then how do we pay for it? Is this something that will be paid for in our current operations budget or is this something that um maybe has a much longer active um or life to it? So, if something is going to last for 20 years, maybe we pay for that by issuing a 20-year bond. Um, so that's sort of our role trying to figure out how um how we're going to pay for it. So, the first thing we want to do is make sure that we are presenting a fiscally

044responsible budget to taxpayers. And by doing that, you know, we're we're we're looking not only at families with students in the schools, but we're looking at people who are retired and are on fixed income and are they going to be able to continue to um live here if the taxes become something that's beyond their means. Um it's our goal to um be fiscally responsible because we want to be able to get an increase to our credit rating. Um we have a pretty good credit rating, but every time um we get an increase in that credit rating, that means that our borrowing costs are lower. And so if we can save money over time by having a lower borrowing cost, that really helps the town's budget overall. And so as we view every action that we

045take, I'm always keeping it in the back of my mind, how are the credit agencies going to view that? And as um as our first selectment mentioned, establishing that coastal resiliency fund is something that they've really honed in on. The other thing we're working on is establishing what we call an OPED trust, which is the other postemployment benefits. So, um what happens when we have a retiree, they um have health benefits until they reach um Medicare age. And right now we are just paying as we go. Um but the credit agencies would like us to look at that. Um we have a liability over $6.5 million liability that we should be setting money aside for. So by establishing that OPED trust that allows the town to invest those funds in the same way that we

046would invest pension funds which in essence matches our asset with our liability as opposed to just being in the town's general fund and those dollars can only be invested in short-term um instruments like CDs or treasury bills. So we look at all these different ways with um we can try to improve our credit. Um reducing the amount of debt we have on the books is another important I look at the fiscal indicators for all the towns in Connecticut. And one of the areas that we stand out in a negative way is by the amount of bonded debt we have on the books. So, um, with Kevin Jer's, um, guidance, what we are trying to do now is instead of bonding for so much, which increases our overall cost, we're trying to build up a cash

047capital account so that we could start paying for things with cash today instead of borrowing, which greatly increases our um our overall expense of doing something. So historically we have been bonding paving the roads and if we could move away from bonding that and just paying as we go with our cash capital that will reduce the overall cost of um paving all of our roads. The other thing that we um try to do that the rating agencies like to see is a healthy undesated fund balance. Um lots of times people refer to this as a rainy day fund and this is money that is set aside to make sure we're ready to handle something that could be unexpected. you know, whether it was the storm Sandy of years ago or flooding in town, you know,

048having a very healthy reserve so that we're able to meet those um extraordinary events that could come our way. So um we have a fund balance policy and what we are trying to do is make sure we set aside 17% of the general fund in this undesated fund. So um we're also trying to look at ways that we could increase revenue. So the majority of revenue, municipal revenue in the state of Connecticut comes from property taxes. Uh we look for are there other ways that we can gen generate revenue. One of the things is by different um things like charges for services. Like our fire marshall could, you know, if he had greater resources, he could conduct all of the annual um inspections of all the different buildings in town, but without resources, he can't

049do that. So, we don't have um we're not able to generate additional revenue from that. So that's sort of a balancing act. At at some point you could say it's worth hiring another person just to do inspections and that person would pay for themselves with the added revenue. Um we looked at building permits this year. There's been a tremendous amount of of building in town. If you looked at what we charge for different building permits, it was much lower than surrounding towns. And so our building department has, you know, put forward increases in in that. Uh the other thing that we're doing is very actively managing our investment income. When when people pay their taxes twice a year, all that money comes in to the town and then it gets um slowly reduced as we're

050paying salaries and and all that type of thing. So we do have the opportunity to invest those funds on a short term. Sometimes it's overnight, sometimes it's one week, one month, 3 months. But by looking for the best rates all the time um and making sure we can generate additional investment income, that really helps. [Music] Um as we've um heard, you know, there's definitely some budget challenges. As I've said, we need um we need to reduce the amount of debt we have outstanding because we have we have to pay them back with interest. There's, you know, that's one of the line items. There's nothing we can do to change how much we're paying on our debt unless it's to issue less debt. Um as we mentioned, the the pension funding is something that uh we

051also have to do. We are in very good shape. As Mr. Cunningham said our pension is 93% funded as of um 2024 but if we look even beyond next year 1.1 by 2027 uh we are going to have to put up close to $2 million each year and it continues to grow. So that that is something we need to stay on top of. Um, and one of the ways we even think about that is more and more people are interested in defined contribution programs as opposed to defined benefit. So, you know, years ago, people might have joined the town and stayed here, you know, working here for 45 years and then retired with a set pension, a defined benefit pension. But as as um the world changes, lots of times people are moving, you know,

052they may stay in one job for four or five years and then move on. And to them, a defined contribution where they're putting money into a 401k type of product is something that's more portable for them. And so they might find that and for the town that's helpful because um you know you don't have that pension um that you have to set aside money for. You're really just contributing each year a certain amount. Um also as as uh Mr. Cunningham pointed out we you know we are underfunded in a lot of different ways. I don't know if any of you saw in the Connecticut Connecticut examiner or in the Harford current I wrote a letter to the editor to talk about our pilot grant that is grossly underfunded. So pilot stands for payment in lie

053of taxes. The town of East Lime has property that is owned by the state of Connecticut. We have York Correctional Center. We have Campnet. Um there's a we have Rocky Neck State Park. Those are all different state-owned properties. If those were properties held by, you know, private individuals, businesses, corporations, or whatever, our assessor looked at that and said, "Boy, we would be collecting, you know, almost you 3.8 million in taxes on those properties." So the pilot grant from the state of Connecticut is supposed to reimburse us for that lost revenue. Instead, we get from the state 700,000. If we if we got that grant fully funded, we'd be looking at a mill rate increase of 1.7 as opposed to what we're looking at today. So, those are the things that we're trying to advocate for.

054Um, I'm sure Mr. Newton could talk about the ECS grants that are underfunded, the excess cost that's underfunded. So, those are those are things that we have to keep pushing our legislatures to try to fully fund those so that we can reduce property taxes. Connecticut has the third highest property taxes in the country. We we need to address that. Um you know, our other you know, we've had quite a quite a few legal fees um this year. Those are unexpected. Um hopefully with any luck, we will be um getting back to our normal amount of legal fees that we pay each year. So, um, talking about our our fiscal health, uh, our fund balance, as we talked about before, um, where we're striving for that 17% as of June 30th, 2024, we had a 21%

055fund balance, but we are expecting that that's going to drop by um, down to 18.9 this year and next year uh, as we roll forward, unless things um play out differently, we're already going to be dropping below where our target is. So, I hate to see that. I really want to maintain that 17%. So, this year, um our bonding request is going to be 6.5 million. We have outstanding uh notes which are um debt that's either 10year maturity or less. um is over 19 million and our bonds are over almost 57 million. So total debt that the town owns is $82.5 million and that um is not including what the water and sewer they have um over 10 million and they've got some projects coming up that uh are going to require even um more

056debt. So, and it's that debt that really is um how we end up paying for our aging infrastructure. So, we um again Dan talked about the CIP committee. I really was um very very encouraged with the way that committee worked out. We um you know, we met together. We cooperated with each other. We looked at ways that the town and the board, you know, whether it's something as simple as where's everybody parking all of their trucks and equipment and is there a way to instead of saying the board will park their trucks here and the town will park their trucks there, what is the most logical place for those trucks to be and and let's, you know, reorganize things like that. So all different ways to try to, you know, be more efficient with everything.

057So, um I think that that will be a committee that continues and um hopefully uh plays out again over the years. One of the one of the things that was originally on the CIP was for a um a whole new building project at the senior center. So the senior center, the library, um the youth center over there all kind of came together with their wish list of things and um they were looking at a project of close to n $19 million. So when you see the one-year CIP later, you'll see a reduction of almost $19 million. the committee decided that that should be something that goes to a town referendum on its own. That it shouldn't just be uh the board saying, "Okay, let's let's spend $19 million." As we worked through that process, we

058um Dan also spoke with our legislators to see if there was any potential opportunity to have it statef funded. So we are you know pursuing that and we'll see that in a c in a two or threeyear cip that will show that we are very serious about doing this um especially if we can get then state funding. So, you know, in in past years, we haven't really delved into our whole thought process when we determined what the increase to the board of ed budget should be, but clearly it was something that um got a lot of attention from people as evidenced by by the people here tonight. So, we thought it would be helpful to kind of go through what we were thinking about. So um again of that uh you know we had the

059150,000 in savings. So it was technically a million 350 of the overall increase that um that they were looking for. So right now the board of ed in this budget has a $2.5 million increase. So we and the board of finance cannot tell the board of ed how to spend their money. that is completely in their purview. Alls we do is go through the budget and try to you know look at ways to say is there something more that they can be saving. So as part of that um meeting with the board of ed and going through their budget, we asked a lot of questions. Um we asked questions in that meeting. We had follow-up questions that we emailed to the superintendent and um Eric Bowman, the board of ed chair. We went through a

060lot of stuff and and they answered. Um, so we looked at class sizes at the high school and based upon the information that was given to us, as you can see, English a little over 14 students on average, math, science, and social studies around 15 students, world language almost 14 students, and AP classes with 10 students. And we looked at information from other towns and generally speaking the surrounding towns in these classes have class sizes between 20 and 22 students. So you know with that we were saying wow these class sizes are really small and those are kind of reflective of what you might see in a private school. So I I I think that that was one of the reasons we thought if class sizes were similar to what they are in surrounding towns

061then there could be a savings there. The other thing we asked for was information about how the student population has changed over the years and how has our staff um changed over the years. So in the high school, it's dropped by 135 students over the past five years, while staffing has increased by one. We said if there had been a proportionate decrease in staff compared to the um decrease in students, you would have expected that there would be potentially 14 fewer staff members at the high school. So we see other students or other school districts more actively manage that studentto staff ratio. I think Islam has, you know, as very, as Jeff pointed out, you know, the most important thing has been don't let anyone lose their job. But at some point, we have to

062make sure that we're being um fiscally responsible and as it affects the whole town. The other thing that um we noticed was that there were 15 teacher coach positions that were added during the co years. Those positions were paid for by um COVID money, the different grants. And throughout the process, we were, you know, constantly reinforcing the idea that when the grant goes away, then that position should go away, too. Um we can't just keep all of these positions that um no longer have the funding. That being said, if these were really um successful programs, it's completely in the board of ed's um purview to say, "No, this is really working. This is really helping our students." In that case, I'd say, "Sure, go." But what are you doing to offset that expense? It just

063can't keep growing and growing without that grant money. So, seven of those positions um are still on staff. So, so everything didn't go away. Um you know, we would hope that they would find some other way to pay for if those things are if that particular program is very successful. I think as we went line item through line item, we also noticed that there were things that um I think the professional development budget went up by a very large percentage and part of that was explained by there had been um things that were paid for with grant money that's no longer paid for with the grants. The grants are gone from the the federal government. So those are the things that we really looked at and again um you know we just do a lot

064of research. I looked and saw there's a school in Madison. Their high school is called Daniel Hand High School and this shows that their enrollment has dropped pretty much each year. But as their enrollment has dropped, they've also had a difference a drop in the full-time equivalents. So, they're very actively managing that ratio. Um and that's what we see in other districts. So we also asked are there any metrics that show how well our students are performing here in East Lime. And so this is a graph that shows there's a thing called an accountability index which is um uh created by the state of connect Connecticut department of education and it measures a whole lot of things you know test scores um but six or seven other factors I can go into um later but

065what this shows is what are the outcomes and what are the per pupil expenditures. So if you can see this east lime is in the quadrant that has high outcomes but it also has high cost. So then I looked so excuse me if you could please um keep it down. So another thing that we looked at was you know where would we be if we could come closer say to a town like Rocky Hill. So Rocky Hill, as you can see, has a very similar outcome. So a high outcome, but they're able to achieve that at roughly 20,000 per student versus our $23,245 per student. So at the high school, we have approximately $890 students. this um if we just looked at if we were able to drop that cost per student by $2,000, you

066you'd be saving $2.5 million right there. So, you know, those these are some of the things that we looked at to say there there's got to be another way. There's got to be a different way to find these savings, reduce the student cost, but still achieve those high outcomes. Um, you know, as some people have pointed out, and I agree completely, having a great school system impacts all of our home values. Um, and I think that that's very much something that the board of finance understands. But I think what that previous chart showed us was that it doesn't always mean that more money spent means a better outcome. Frankly, one of the things that I think makes the huge difference in East Lime is we've got families that are so invested in making sure that

067their children are getting great um education here and they're involved in their students. And I I absolutely want to applaud all of you for being here tonight. this really is an, you know, evidence that you take this seriously and you want to advocate for your children. And I I I concur that that's that's wonderful and I think that's one of the reasons why East Slime schools are so um successful. Unfortunately, we have the really tough job of also looking out for the rest of the constituents in in East Lime and and um and that's what we are trying to do and find a a place where um you know we're not going to make everybody happy. That's for sure. But if everyone's just a little upset, maybe that's where we need to be. Um, you

068know, I also I one of the questions we had asked of the board of ed was if everything just rolls over, where would we be next year? And that budget would be even bigger. and having those, you know, six, seven% increases every year is just not sustainable for the town. So maybe we need to think about different things, different ways of doing things. um you know and maybe it's it's something a little drastic this year if if um if it means a few staff members but maybe as you're thinking about what happens next year then you know that we'll have to look at that. So, and you know, I know that's very difficult to hear and and I'm sorry, nobody likes to do that. We certainly don't want to say that either. But again, it's

069not up to the board of finance to determine how the board of ed does this. Uh we we don't we're not the ones saying, "Oh, you need to cut this position or that position." This is, you know, the responsibility of the board of ed. It's our responsibility to try to say, you know, what can the town afford in the way of the increases? So, um, you know, a $2.5 million increase to the budget, uh, is, you know, up to the board of ed to decide how to do that. Um, I I know it's difficult to hear. I've certainly I've been laid off at work before. I think anybody who's been in the public sector, the private sector knows that, you know, that's something that happens in life. And there's anyhow could could we have quiet,

070please? So, this is where this is our proposed revenues for the year. As you can see, um the majority of it, uh will come from taxes. The other is licenses, charges for service, investment, earnings. So that is our total revenue budget. Um uh 6.19% increase. Here's our proposed expenditures for the year. Um general government, um public safety, public works. As you can see, that all adds up to um a 6.19% increase in expenditures. The impact on the mill rate would be 1.55 mills increase or a 5.88% increase in um in taxes. We also try to provide a um a look at what would that do based upon the value of your property. Um the assessed property is 70% of the value of the property. So depending upon the value, if it's a, you know, I

071think the typical East Slime property may be between the 350 400,000. So that will be, you know, $400 increase a year. As you go up to, you know, more likely a commercial property, um, could see those increases. Um, and we'll I'm going to just move through this because that's a little bit repetitive from what um Dan said, but we did uh go through all of those different sites and I think it was um a very valuable process that we will continue. And so for the current year capital project summary, these are the different um areas that will have things that are in the one-year CIP. So that could be everything from um you know the the different um vehicles to uh public works equipment things like that. So we're looking at a little over 7

072and a half million in the one-year CIP. we have to put out a um a 10-year CIP um per state regulations. And so this is what we're looking for. Um so a total of 109 million uh that are that's in our 10-year CIP for all the different projects that were identified during this process. So everything um that we've walked through tonight is on our town website under the board of finance. You can see all of these numbers. You can honestly I all of our meetings are also recorded and the videos are online. Uh, I have to say that we did not I don't think we had more than two people attend any of our board of finance meetings going through the budget. Um, you know, it I welcome people. I don't know whether you're all

073just watching them from home, but your input is important and um, you know, this is we're there. We have monthly meetings. Anyone is welcome to come to speak to anything that comes under the purview of the board of finance or anything that's on our agenda. So, we welcome people to come to the meeting. And um you know, again, I thank everyone for being here tonight when um what we're going to do next is open it up for public comments. So, we'll start off with I think they're up on the table on that. So, um, we're going to grab the signup sheets. We are going to start with, um, the people that are eligible to vote on the budget. I think it's very important that we all hear their comments and then as time permits uh

074we will go on to the list that um of the students that are not eligible to vote. So there are two um microphones up here when I call your name. Um, if you'd like to come up, state your name, your address, and if you could um keep the comments to two minutes, that would be very helpful as we um, as I said, we will adjourn from this to, um, go ahead and have our meeting. So, first on the uh, list is Lucy Schuman. Thank you for your service. I came to town 1981 as the assistant principal hired as the assistant at this high school when the numbers were twice as what they were when the classroom sizes were what we were talking about in other towns. The good news is we have lower classroom sizes.

075We still have a great faculty and staff. Um, but I will say this, according to Forbes magazine, Connecticut has one of the greatest income disparities of all of the 50 states. Big income differences between the halves and the have nots. In our very own town, if you talk to Karen and Sherry, you look at their data. Three years ago, they gave away 43,000 pounds of food. Then it was 47. Now they're tracking to go over 50 in this town. Thousands of pounds of food to people who actually need it. So I just asking for the board of finance to look at data. I'm a big data person. When I looked at the presentation just at the board of ed for instance, I just did arithmetic and I looked at high school and elementary reductions. A

076total of 10 people. add those salaries up and it would imply that each of those people are making 90,000 plus. I know that's not true. You're not going to lay off the top of the scale. You're going to lay off the bottom of the scale if you have to lay off. That just makes no sense to me. For me, I'm passionate about the schools I gave my whole entire career to this school system. I'm still passionate about it. I love living in this town. I love seeing the people and talking to the people. We get good value for our dollar, but we need accurate data so people like you can make real decisions, okay, based on it information. Thank you. Lucy, thank you very much for your comments. Just to be clear, that includes benefits.

077Just so you know, that's why it's a higher number. A family benefits 30 30,000. So I I couldn't hear what you said. I'm sorry. There's both. Yes. But some of some don't, some do. But not everybody has benefits. Some are family, some are individual, summer. So just that's the number. Uh thank you. Next is Jackie Misella. It's me. Hi, Jackie Menzella. I work at Eastline Middle School. I live at 11 Spring Street in Niantic. And I wanted to come up this evening to um just share some good news. And thank you for all that you do. I appreciate this is not an easy thing for you, but um uh I recently was on the five of five at on the Eastan Middle School twice as a um writing advisor for one of the clubs after

078school. Once was because of our newsletter that fifth and sixth graders wrote that uh encompassed all the things that they do at our school. And just this week, I was back on again and one of my fifth graders um in my writing club won a first place in a writing competition through book creators. Um this wouldn't have happened if we don't have a collaboration between what happens in the classroom with this particular student had Miss Danish who's a fifth grade language arts teacher and afterchool clubs. I noticed that the afterchool clubs are one of the things that are being considered in the middle school to be uh cut. Um this upsets me because these are the places where students who have um less connections to school might find a place where they belong. For in

079my case, it's the writers. There's also the students who are in the science club and the math club who go on to go on big competitions. Um there are kids who are in Minecraft who don't identify with others in the school and these are things that we really shouldn't be giving up. And what I noticed also which kind of upset me was that the the athletics were still there. Now as a language arts teacher there's a little bias there obviously but um I also know that the athletics cost a lot of money. There's a there's the, you know, the athletic director and all his secretary and the uh the assistant athletic director in the middle school, the coaches, the custodians, the security. Um there's a lot of things, the buses that go in into that.

080Um and to be on those teams, there are tryyouts and there are halves and have nots. It's not really fair is where I'm going. She's moving me on over here. Um, and I would really just like for you to consider to supporting the academic after schools. If you can't do that, then it really should be all or nothing because we need the money in the classrooms most. So, um, please the the bias between the different afterchool clubs is what bothers me. So, thank you. So next is Pat Hesnney. Good evening. My name is Pat Hesnne and I'm president of the board of ed secretarial union. Um, thank you for listening to us tonight. Um I'm just here to talk about the budget reductions and resulting in the elimination and reduction of staff positions and the

081impact it will have on the students. All staff reductions with teachers, paraprofessionals, the elementary library aid and the reduction of 12-month secretaries to 10 months are harmful to the students of East Lime. Class sizes and student supports matters to student learning. One of the positions to be eliminated is a um elementary library position. The library assistants do more than just shel books. If the position of the library assistant was cut from the budget, elementary librarians would not be able to prepare implement the curriculum for the students in the way is intended to be done. There are numerous tasks that the library uh assistant does. Uh she mends books, saving money to the district. Um retrieves books from missing students. Uh saving money in the budget. Additional positions to be reduced are three 12 month um

082administrative assistants to 10 months. There'll be no one in the schools in the summertime and two of the elementary schools. And there's a reduction in the high school. Parents come in in the summertime. They have students new to the district coming in. These students are anxious. They need support. They need tours of the school. They need to know where they're going. Uh teachers supplies are ordered in the summer. There'll be no one there to receive them. Staff won't have their supplies at the start of the school year. Summer school is in the schools and elementary schools. Um and parks and recck are there. There'll be no staff in the front office to assist them. I could go on and on with these duties, but we only have a minute. So, I'll end there. Sorry, Pat.

083Did you um I didn't get your address. It's not on here. I'm president of the secretarial union. Uh you don't live in East Lime. Oh. Um Superintendent Newton has been very prudent steward of the board of ed budget and we're asking that you support the superintendent, the board of ed, the students, the families, and the staff by reinstating funds to the proposed budget. It takes a village to raise students and they deserve to be raised by their village. Thank you for your time. Uh, next is Elizabeth Dow. Hi, my name is Elizabeth Dow. I live at 66 East Padagans and Niantic. Thank you to the board of finance for all of the effort you put in to this. I am one of those two people who you said came to some of the meetings. Um

084I've also been to a couple of board of ed meetings recently and I can assure you I will be coming to more board of finance meetings and more board of ed meetings because clearly there are a lot of issues um that a lot of people are working very hard on. Among the people working very hard on the board of ed budget are the board of ed and Jeff Newton and the department heads and the principles and the teachers and they have been working on this all year long. They have formed a reasonable budget based on their constraints. They have so many constraints. Jeff pointed them out between the health care costs that you the board of finance and the board of selectivemen you know about these um the transportation costs going up. There are so

085many things that are out of their control, but there's a lot that's in their control. And I think they've done their darnest to put forth a reasonable budget given the circumstances. And I beg I implore the board of finance on behalf of our children who are going to lose out on programs and needed services that remain from COVID and classes that they need. STEM classes, afterchool clubs, library services, so much that matters to our children that helps decrease the disparities um that income inequality uh uh causes. Um the schools are a way to to make that equal again. And I urge the board of finance to restore the 1.5 million to the budget and let the voters decide. Thank you. Next is aiming order. So is Amy here still? Oh, good evening. Amy Frier, 91

086Holmes Road. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here as both a parent in the district and an educator in a neighboring community. I not only understand the numbers on a budget sheet, but the real impact these numbers have. I just was here to share my views on the magnitude of what this cuts do to children. In regards to the proposed reduction to the school level supports, these are not extras. They are foundational elements of a safe, engaging, and effective learning community. But as we're almost all here is the loss of positions. seven at the high school, three at the elementary school, including a second grade teacher at Flanders, four PAR educators, two flexible substitute roles, one library secretary, and three additional secretary positions. In regards to the second grade cut at Flanders,

087we are looking at class sizes ranging between 20 and 22 children. I don't know if you've been in an elementary school classroom, but that's a lot of little faces staring at you, needing your attention. the students needs aren't getting less, they're getting greater. These cuts also include extracurricular opportunities. These are the areas where kids shine. Those kids that aren't athletics into athletics, these kids that are not scholars, these are the time that these create leaders and these kids shine. Without that, many of those kids will not get those opportunities. I want to be clear that the board of education, the school administration, and the teachers are united in this opposition to these cuts. That kind of alignment is powerful and rare. It reflects the seriousness of what is at stake. This is not a disagreement

088over priorities. It's a shared concern over the damage these reductions will do. Thank you. So, I get that everybody wants to applaud, but I I would ask that maybe we can hold it to the end because alls it's doing is going to decrease the amount of time we have to listen to people. So, I just want to be able to keep things moving along. So, next is um so they 250 Upper Patagans Road. It looks like a Hello. My name is Genevie Pudo. I live at 250 Upper Padaganset Road. I am the vice president of the secretarial union. I am requesting that you reconsider the reductions to the board of education budget. These reductions will reduce staff, harm student learning, and decrease staff morale. In my in my union alone, the elementary library aid position

089would be eliminated along with three 12-month administrative assistant positions being reduced to 10 months. This would leave two elementary schools completely empty in the summer. These reductions will impact student and parent access. Students will not have supplies at the start of school. Librarians will be shelving books instead of teaching students. There will be no one to answer questions, no one to do paperwork um for the upcoming school year. These are just a couple of the examples of the duties that will be unmanaged. Please consider reinstating um the board of education budget. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next is Retha Savannah Dan on Malard Circles. Sorry if I butchered that. Hi, I'm Gita Sivanandum. I live at um Fort Mallet Circle and I'm here I'm going to speak for myself because I am the

090library secretary who is going to lose the position and also I'm going to speak for as a mother deeply concerned for all of our children. The library is so much more than a place to check out books. It is a safe haven for so many kids. It is a place where students, especially those who are struggling, find a sense of calm and belonging. There have been countless days where a student was upset, overwhelmed, and even ready to give up and came to the li into the library because I know those students and I took the time to rebuild the relationship with them. I was able to step in. I listened to them. I calm them down and I help them to find their footing again so they can return to the class to continue their

091learning. Without that support, many students would have lost valuable learning time and in some case their day would be unraveled. But the emotional support is just one part of what I do. Every day I assist students and staff members in finding the materials they need. Whether it's a book for a research project, a resource to spark a reluctant reader's interest, or simply a quiet place to work, I catalog new books to keep our library current and organized. I spent hours repairing the damaged books just in one school that I work. I have modified and repaired over 900 books just in this academic year. Breathing new life into them, giving new life to the books so that our district doesn't have to spend precious funds replacing them. Every tape, every spine repair, every label saves our

092school money that they can use somewhere else. Without a library secretary, these small but critical task helping students, supporting teachers, maintaining and preserving resource will fall through the cracks. And it doesn't stop with the library. We are talking about losing 10 teachers, four pareducators and the vital middle school clubs and the secretaries. The clubs especially the very place where kids find their voices, their passions, their confidence. We are talking about cutting supplies, instruction materials and support system that make real learning possible. Middle school especially is a critical time because I have a kid there. That's a place emotionally, socially and academically they are struggling. Clubs are not just nice to have. They are often where kids who feel lost find a reason to stay engaged. As a parent, I worry deeply about what kind of

093environment we are creating if we move forward with these cuts. Larger. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for the um Kyle Bton on five Rockall Street. K Kyle Dowin, five Rock Wall Street. Sure. Um, after that, Ryan and Emily Schrader, then Lynn Sullivan, then Timothy Dow. Go ahead. Kyle Dton, five Rockwell Street. Um, I'm also a business owner in town. I've spoke at a bunch of these different meetings before. I've attended your board of ed meet, uh, board of finance meetings. Um, and I think that there's some fundamental problems with the way that this whole process is happening in town, the way it's worked because I just watched that presentation where you talk about synergy and getting everyone together and that is not the case. The board of education is considered as it

094its own entity. It's kept on its own and it is not in the same as with the rest of the town. The licenses, all the different things that you can share. Years a I'm going back at about 5 years ago. We took all the um fields that the board of education has and those came off of the park parks and recck budget and went on to the board of education budget budget. We've also done things like change the snow plowing. Now the board of education owns a mason dump, several tractors, pickup trucks, and all the things that they have to maintain. They also do all the own fertilizing on their fields. And that fertilizing could be done by parks and wreck with the license that they have instead of having to outsource it. So as

095much as you're talking about synergy, the board of education sits on its own. Um, you talked about Rocky Hill and the methodology on how you came to the budget decrease, which you say is an increase, but proportionately for a budget that's 70% of the town's value, the increase is less than the other portion of the town. So, it's not really an increase. Rocky Hill and the towns that were in that lower quadrant are very likely getting outside funding from government grants and things because of the the population that is in those towns. If you looked at the other towns that were in our quadrant, they're all similar in demographics to us. I also have done some quick mathematics and I spoke at numerous meetings about the influence of the affordable housing that's come into town

096to the point that now the town of East Lime has put a applied for a moratorum on affordable housing. If you could wrap it up please. I will. Harvest Glenn is 25 homes in the upper section and brings in $275,000 in revenue. Just doing some basic math. North Bridebrook apartments are 38 units and only bring in $167,000. Rocky Neck, the new development that's affordable housing is 52 units and only brings in $130,000 in revenue. So, if you're looking at the grand list all the time, you want to make a town where all the houses want to be a Harvest Glenn if you can raise your income. Yeah. Ryan Shrader, 15 Applewood Common. Uh, so I have four children in our schools. Um, I'm also president of the new East Lime Education Foundation, which is launching

097our first classroom projects this fall. Um, I'm also a former board of education member, so I support our schools and I've put in the work to back it up. Um, as a former BOE member, I've seen firsthand how carefully the district manages every dollar. Um, Superintendent Newton does not does not pad his budget. There's no extra in there to absorb cuts. Every reduction means a real loss of services to our students. This year, the board of ed requested a 6.99% increase, a lean budget reflecting what's truly needed. The town, by comparison, requested a 12% increase, adding a whole list of extra services. This committee cut 375,000 from the town budget while slashing 1.5 million from our schools, resulting in cuts to services. So, the schools are funding extra services on the town's behalf. Um Denise,

098I know you said that this isn't a cut, it's a reduction of the increase. I feel that's disingenuous. It true in financial terms, but it's truly a cut to services. Um I hear a lot this board express you a lot of statistics about um a kind of a focus on long-term planning and strategic planning. Um but on the BOE side, it feels very short term. Um I feel that a bunch of those graphs are sort of cherrypicked. Um, you know, you you compared individual classes versus averages of other towns. Um, you know, you mentioned class size compared to other towns. Yet on the accountability graph, those towns didn't appear. Um, this board is not composed of educators. Your analysis doesn't seem credible, and I don't think you fully understand the impact. Um, you know, a

099budget is a statement of values, and what message are we sending our children in their community tonight? I'm not questioning the needs uh the town's need for additional improvements, but I just don't think this budget is consistent. We're um we're favoring the town at the expense of our schools. And um I believe these cuts are irresponsible and will be devastating to our schools. Um and East Slime is we've always invested in our schools. Families move here because of them. And our our schools drive property values, our local economy. If we short change our schools, we short change every family, business, homeowner in East Lime and undermine our schools, undermines our community. Okay? So, I urge you to reconsider these cuts as you did in 2019, which I believe was the last time you got us

100response like this and restore the funding to our schools that are our schools need and our town deserves, and let the voters decide at referendum. Thank you. And just and just just to respond um the information from those graphics um were provided to us by the um superintendent. So and they were our uh DRG district reference group in the matrix. So it wasn't me cherrypicking. It was we requested information. Yeah. what was presented was not allation, right? Thank you. So, I mean I thank you for clarifying. We we can email that to everybody. Hi, my name is Emily Schrader, 15 Applewood Common. I am the president of the Lily B. Hannes PTA and I have four children in this school system. My oldest has been in the East Lime schools for nine years and my

101youngest will graduate in 13 years. So, I am deeply invested in the future of our schools and town. Let me be clear. Thriving schools are the heartbeat of a vibrant community. Great schools protect property values and ensure a strong future for East Lime. To the board of finance, I recognize that budget season is never easy. But you were elected by the people of East Lime to do what is best for East Lime. And we are here today to tell you that cutting the board of education's proposed budget by $1.5 million is not fiscal responsibility. It is fiscal shortsightedness. I'll say that one more time. It's not fiscal responsibility. It's fiscal short-sightedness. Let's be clear. The town's budget is poised to grow over 10% while drastic cuts are being made to the board of education's budget.

102The town will get new new equipment and enhanced services while our children face larger class sizes and lost opportunities. And let's not pretend our administration is playing games. These devastating cuts are the best of all bad options and every one of them will be felt by Islam families. And as far as the legal fees go, our children should not be paying for the mistakes of the misbehaving adults in this town. Board of Finance, this is your chance to do right by East Lime. restore the education budget and let the voters decide at referendum. Thank you. Hi, uh Tim Dad 66 East Pat against it. Uh also a science teacher here at the high school. Also one of the two who came and watched your meetings. So thank you. Um I I know you've worked hard

103on this. Um, I've watched this whole process and I know we're just in a really tough situation as a town budget-wise. We know who's at fault for this. It's spiraling inflation. It's unfunded mandates. And it wasn't wrong for you guys to ask the board of ed to find out what a million and a half dollars in cuts would do. But they found out. They they went to department chairs. They went to principles. And it's pretty devastating in terms of what I know as a science teacher. We're talking about losing flagship classes. classes that could be like biotech or um marine biology, too. These kids plan their whole high school career to take classes like that. They're the things that really give EAN kids a heads up. Um I'm also concerned about what staffing is going

104to be like in the future in these buildings. Um I agree with uh Select Cunningham that we need to have a plan for the future, but this is the second time in three years we've been facing major pink slips. um why would people come work in this district? Like we're kind of lying to teachers when we hire them that they have a future here. And that's something we really have to be careful of. So, you know, it just doesn't make sense to me at a time when student mental health needs are on the rise. Cutting pair of professionals. We need every one of those. We could have increasing counselor ratios. Like a counselor is supposed to help kids get into college and stuff, but if a kid has fallen apart, they spend their whole afternoon

105on that kid. They call DCF, they call the state, they try to find resources. We need these people in our buildings. And if we're going to have to turn around and rehire people three years from now, who are we going to get when we sent these people away? Finally, as far as that graph of our dirt goes, I'm proud of that. That had us winning. We are doing a good job as a district. And to hear, as a parent of two young children, to hear that, oh, we've got to just take an axe and cut some of this stuff. We We're not going to end up as Rocky Hill, we're going to end up as New Milford. I I want my kids to have what these kids have had. These kids have had good opportunities

106and they're good kids. My kids deserve that, too. So, I'm just going to read a few more names um coming up. So, um it's I believe that's Sarah. I'm Lynn. Yeah, Lynn Sullivan. Okay. Sorry, Lynn. uh Sullivan then um Sarah Nazaro, Shannon Smalls, 17 Harvest Glenn, uh Carara Coven Gabbard, Jessica Newman after that. Thanks. Hi, I'm Lynn Sullivan. I live at 8 85 East Pataganset Road. Eastlam teachers have been asked to cut costs year after year and we have made many sacrifices. Now we are being told to cut $1.5 million. This loss of personnel will cut us down to the bone. When I started at Niantic Center School, I was a half-time special education teacher with a full-time case load of students. I did this for two years, and I did this because I care

107about kids. Now, as a classroom teacher, I save public schools money by doing things like cutting all of my erasers into three parts, making two-sided copies, and using the pencils with the teeth marks in them. Teachers and students can make do with a surprisingly small amount of material things. But what's the cost when humans are the target of reduction? Several East Line Public School employees are currently less than full-time as a money-saving measure. Within the last few years, we have lost many excellent people because of this. One person we just lost was an expert in servicing our most complex students with IEPs and they had to leave for a full-time job in a different district. So, we let go of an expert for money. In short, decisions which are made for monetary reasons in education

108do not amount to monetary results. Monetary decisions in education result in human tolls. Tolls which are taken from our most vulnerable and youngest humans. If not children, what should we devote our care to? I can tell you right now that teachers are not in this business of education because we wish to become rich. We are in education because we care deeply about children and we want to make a difference in their lives. By cutting the funding for Eastland Public Schools, we are saying as a community that we do not care about children and we are not willing to invest in our future. I understand that the board of finance is in a difficult position. It's your job to balance the books. But I implore you to think about the little faces of four-year-olds who will

109be affected by monetary decisions in the form of less support. Please make the decisions you know that are right in your heart and continue to give the children the support they need to thrive. Thank you. I'm Shannon Small. I live at 17 Harvest Glenn. Um I am a surgeon at Lawrence and Memorial and we just moved here in December. Um my husband and I brought our two young children. We have a five and six-year-old from Long Island to Connecticut because of education and the concern we had for raising our children in the current climate. We chose East Lime and we did our homework because of the schools. I'm going to repeat that. It it was not facilities. It was not, you know, how pretty the town was. It was because of the school system and

110the fact that we felt we could rely on the district to provide a good public education for our children. Um, two of my partners live in East Lime. We are here because of what we were told we would get from this district. My six-year-old loves library day. He loves coming home and he has plenty of books. We are fortunate. He has plenty of books at home. He doesn't want those books. He wants the library books because of the conversations he has, because his friends love going to the library. Um, if you want future doctors, it starts in the elementary school. It starts with STEM classes. It starts with instilling in them a love for science and reading and math. And I I cannot stress enough because we're dealing with this on a national level how

111important this is to our kids. This is so shortsighted. I I'm sorry. I know I'm new to this district, but my husband and I care very deeply and we plan on being here. We bought the house in Harvest Glenn because we plan on raising our kids and seeing them graduate from this high school. So, I would just beg you to reconsider it. It's critically important. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Sarah Nazaro, 15 Mayfield Terrace. Um, first certainly thank you for all of your work and care. Um, it's an incredible job. So, thank you. I speak to you today as an alum back in 2000. What's up? Uh, a teacher, a teacher at ELHS and a mother of two that, uh, one of them is 13 and three. Uh my parents, my mom's here in

112the bag, uh chose to move here in 1990. I was privileged that they made this decision and they moved here for the school system, not for the beach, not for anything else, but for the schools. And I've had all the privilege in the world. Every goal I set my mind to, I achieved, right? Everything I have ever wanted. And I truly certainly my parents, but it is because the teachers that I had in this system, all of them. Um, and the schools are the reason that I now own a house here. My mother is still living and paying taxes here in this town all these years later. She runs a daycare in town. So, talk about from the very smallest, right? My brother and I both teach at East Lime High School. We traveled the

113world. We lived in many places, but we returned here because we have children and they we want them to be here. Um, first electron Cunningham mentioned the significant serious challenges of our time and they are significant and I respect the budgetary outline that's laid out tonight. But our greatest need in this very strange time is investment in young minds. It has to be that we have to spend our money here. And this happens with excellent teachers. What's up? um an office with excellent teachers and small class sizes. We don't need notes, post-it notes or paper, but we need teachers, right? What those slides don't show are the very high needs of our students right now. Uh the mental health needs are significant. The needs of our gifted and talented students are significant and ser we

114are absolutely still managing postcoid ramifications. Please know that those class sizes are totally misleading. Many teachers at the high school, many many are managing large class sizes. I'm talking 12. ACCP has an average of 19. AP Lit has an average of 22. Of course, we have small class sizes to manage our neediest students. Of course, we do. And I think those are super important. I teach a class with 10 students in it. And I need five of me to be in that room truly. So, we need those small and large classes. If you could wrap that up, please. Absolutely. Thanks. Um the point is it may be very easy to look at the impressive ESL High School reading scores, the graduates we turn out, but that does not happen without all the small moments that

115no one sees. It's Pam Novak 20some years ago working one-on-one with me. It's Emily Urcher right now. She left the high school. She left She left for a small amount of time. She was out and her students suffer. her students needed her. She runs a club. I'll wrap it up. Yes. Uh there's so many teachers, right? But really, um we will probably these teachers here will probably rise and meet all the same goals, but it will be at the cost of our mental health. It will be at the cost of us and our lives. So, I ask that you please consider less cuts. Uh, as a voter and a taxpayer, I am willing to pay more if it means we are raising healthy, curious little humans and supporting amazing teachers mental health. Thank you. Thank

116you, my name is Jessica Newman, 21 Sappia Drive in Niantic. I am here today as the proud mother of a Niantic Center school second grader with autism. I stand before you to bring light to the critical need um education services, excuse me, for education services in our district. Services that our children rely on to thrive in their educational journey. These are also services that are at risk with this proposed budget cut. As we gather here today to discuss the budget for upcoming school year, I must urge you to consider the urgent needs of our students in our community. Many of our children, like my son, relies on essential services. our certified teaching staff, our para education, para educators, and many other staff members that help them develop crucial skills for communication, social interactions, and daily

117living. Unfortunately, access to these services is becoming increasingly challenging. Currently, we face a weightless cat catastrophe just outside our school system. Many families, including mine, have found themselves on long wait lists for vital therapies like speech, OT, and more. For instance, my own daughter, who will be entering kindergarten next year, has been on a wait list for speech therapy for close to a year. This is an ongoing wait for a family eager to see our child thrive. While we wait, the opportunity for early intervention and support through our school system remains out of reach. This is not just a personal story. It is a stark reality that many families in our district face. We all now know that early intervention can significantly improve outcomes for children with autism and other developmental challenges. These services offered

118through the school can bridge the gap and provide our children with the foundation they need to succeed academically and socially. I believe that every child deserves the right to access the services they need to flourish. As we shape the budget for the next school year, I implore you to prioritize funding that not only supports our schools as a whole, but also our most valuable students, vulnerable students, and the resources they depend on. By investing in our programs, you are not only supporting our children, you are creating a ripple effect that benefits our entire community. We have the power to ensure that every child, regardless of their challenges, has access to the support they need to fulfill their potential. In closing, let us remember that our school should be be a beacon of hope and opportunity

119for all students. By enhancing our services and addressing the urgent needs of our children, we can build a more inclusive and supportive school environment. Together, we can make a difference, and it starts with the choices we make today. Thank you. Hello. Um um Caracovach Kaborti uh 51 Lovers Lane. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As a proud Islam graduate and now parent, I've dedicated my career to supporting students and education. I know firsthand the difference that caring, consistent educators make in a child's development. I want to begin by expressing my heartfelt gratitude to the Islam educators who were instrumental in my education and to those who currently and will in the future educate my son. Your work matters deeply and your impact lasts far beyond the classroom. Thank you. In fact, just today

120I ran into Mrs. Jacobson, my kindergarten teacher from 1992. Um I remember her and her letter people vividly. Um, I'm sure many of you in this room remember her, too. Can you imagine if her position had been cut during her tenure? It's a reminder that every position and every educator matters. While I do not support cuts to any educator positions, I want to be a voice for a department that is often one considered last. Physical education is not just about sports. It's about teaching students lifelong habits to support their physical and mental well-being. Our students deserve access to the full range of learning experiences, including those that take place in the gym, where they build not just stronger bodies, but stronger minds and character. At a time when youth mental health concerns, obesity rates, and

121screen time are all on the rise, physical education remains one of the few structured opportunities we have to actively address these issues. PE teachers are trained professionals who do far more than run games. They teach teamwork, resilience, leadership, and self-confidence. These are essential life skills that extend far beyond the gym. When we reduce positions, we disrupt consistency, relationships, and the quality of instruction. Students thrive when they have stable, dedicated educators who know their names, understand their needs, and build strong routines. Though the cuts are listed by school level, their impact is districtwide. For example, if a high school PE position is eliminated, the PE teacher at Lily Behannes will be displaced and part-time positions eliminated. Those decisions ripple through our schools and affect far more than just one building. If you could wrap it up,

122please. Mhm. This kind of shuffling is not in the best interest of our students. Investing in PE is investing in the whole child. Let's not cut corners when it comes to health and future of our students. Please let these words speak not only for physical education, but also for all of the educators whose positions may be on the line. Consider not only what we stand to lose, but more importantly, what we must protect. Let's continue to be a district that values the whole child, that invests in wellness, and that understands the true purpose of education. Thank you for your time, your dedication to East Lime, and for ensuring that all citizens will have a voice in what they value in our town by casting their votes at the budget referendum. Thank you. Thank you. So,

123we have Ashley, Ashley Walsh, Rebecca, and then Jamie. Hi, my name is Ashley Walsh. I live on 43 Masttoay Road. Um, we too moved here for the schools after doing our homework. I'm actually from Rhode Island and we ended up moving into the state for the schools. Um, first I wanted to thank Denise for her letter regarding the pilot program. I do think that is some funding we need to look into in the future. Secondly, I want to acknowledge the students who are the ones that are going to be impacted and do not have a vote. Also, um I did see that Rocky Hill was on that graph. Um but it's not in the top 10 schools. And eight of those eight of the other top 10 high schools in Connecticut are all in Fairfield

124County. There's only one that's not besides us. Um, lastly, I just want to say that we expect taxes to increase. We don't live in Connecticut because the taxes are cheap. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Jamie Bar Shelburn. I live at 31 Malini Drive. I um am here tonight as a board member and a parent and a mother and not an educator because I don't have that gift. Um but I have been a board of ed member since 2007. I have seen a lot of budget cuts. I've seen a lot of superintendent. I've seen a lot of administrations. Um I just want to kind of clarify that Jeff and his administration does not just roll over a budget. Um, he works at zero every year. His staff goes to zero and they build up.

125It's not a rollover budget as we've had in the past. He works from the bottom up. So, there will be no roll over ever. Um, this cut that I'm seeing from the board of finance is the worst I've ever seen. um it is detrimental to our students, our staff, our town, um the future of the world because what we're doing is we're doing a disservice to our children. Um I agree with everything that's been said tonight, so I'm not going to reiterate it. I'm going to try to save everyone their time, but I would like to go back to the Rocky Hill number. Rocky Hills mill rate is 35.92. Um if I wanted a mill rate of 35.92, I'd move to Rocky Hill, but I don't. I want the mill rate that we have of

12628. Isn't that the proposed 28.2? I prefer that over 35.92. Um, and I'd like to talk about Madison, which was also up on the board. Uh, Madison, um, their budget is dropping because they're closing se they're going from seven schools to four schools. Um, and they have aged out a bunch of their 22-year-old special needs students, which we all know special needs drives up costs, and that is the reason why the Madison budget is dropping. So, just a few things for the side. And Jamie, I just want to say I I did not say that um Jeff does a rollover budget. I said if you were to what it what it would look like. So, I wasn't suggesting that was the case. Hi, my name's Rebecca Karen. I reside at three Aberdine Court in East

127Lime. I stand here before you as the wife of a proud Navy veteran who after 21 years of service retired and after moving coast to coast to coast to coast to other countries, we could not wait to move to East Line and establish a forever home. And we came upon that decision because of the school systems and the school district. And I don't want to stand here and reiterate things that have already been said, but I do want to point out I don't want to diminish anybody's financial concerns or worries because we all have them. But my question is where is the proof? Where is the evidence other than anecdotally to show that funding the proposed board of eds budget will severely or even marginally compromise the quality of life for anyone in this town.

128The words too effect too expensive or can't afford is quite frankly nothing more than the ro response of people who don't want to fund additional and necessary resources. But I also want to thank you everybody here for showing my children how to galvanize and motivate people to come out and advocate for things that are important to them. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Rebecca Ingmanson, 13 Brookfield Drive. Um, I am a parent in the district. I'm also a 20-year um, veteran teacher in Connecticut. Um, I I've been to the board of ed meeting. I went to the board of ed meeting last week and I'm very impressed with the board and um, they worked really hard on this and they are, in my opinion, from what I heard them say, they are upset about what

129they have been tasked with and it's not fair to them. they've worked hard. Um, and I'm also troubled by what I hear tonight from from this audience here. Um, because I hear you guys talk about um the needs to increase money and I get that, but you talked about making things run more smoothly by adding a firefighter. um you know it would make Flanders run more smoothly next year. Keeping those second graders, the 43 second graders, getting them that that third teacher so that their class sizes can remain the same as all the other elementary classes in the district. Right? If you if you take away that teacher, you're going to bump them up and all the other classes will be within board of ed guidelines but not that second grade classroom. That would make

130them run smoother. You also talked about essential bus services for seniors. You know what's essential at uh the high school here? Having that extra guidance counselor to meet with all those students who need help picking their classes so that they can have the career of their choice so they can get into the schools that they want to do to do the extra things they want to do. So, it's important to talk about essentials at your level, but there's also essentials at our level in our schools. Um I've heard you guys talk about the discussion of increased costs, insurance, pension, etc. Um, but I didn't hear you talk about reducing staff at the town offices to help reduce those costs. Um, I heard you talk about increases to software. Um, and I know that the board

131of ed was asked to look at red reductions to software and they did, but I didn't hear you talk about reducing software costs on your end. So there that's the pieces that are troubling to me. like they're doing the work to make reductions because you've asked them to, but I didn't hear you present the reductions your you on your end. Um, I also see that you've gone line item through I line item through the board of ed's budget and then you flippantly get up here and suggest that we reduce a few staff members and that it might hurt a little. But I didn't hear you talk about reducing staff members at the town level or reducing that. And so it's a little frustrating to hear those conversations, the flippant conversations about people's livelihood when that

132wasn't really presented here on your level. Um I I hear you guys talk about increasing mill rates and um the costs. Uh yet you're suggesting a $250,000 boat plus maintenance costs in at the cost of a teacher or at the cost of things for a school. Um many many teachers. Yes. So my point here is that you seem to have spent a lot of time nitpicking the board of edge budget, but I have not seen you show the nitpicking that you've done to your end. And that is frustrating to me as a mother and a town member. So thank you for listening. That's my Thank you. Um, maybe Dan, Dan, do you want to respond to some of the cuts that we did? So, so I I do just want to point out that there

133were cuts made to the town um budget and to people and not filling positions that were asked for. So, yes, that has happened. And yes, if um we did go line item by line item through every single department budget at the town. And if you wanted to listen. Um hello Estan Garcia and Winston Road. Uh I am a member of the board of education, also the parent of uh first grader and a fifth grader. Uh I'm not going to re I I'm going to go off script. I had a whole thing, but for the interest of time, I'm just going to hit some of the points that uh that were mentioned uh on the presentation about the comparison to Madison and Rocky uh Rocky Hill. Uh so uh that was you know the accountability index

134uh very important you know thing to look at. Uh but if we look at the accountability accountability index for Madison and for both Rocky Hill, if you see the trend for the last few years, Madison went from a 92% u 92.5 uh accountability index and because of the cut budget cost and the reductions that they have right now they're at 77. So you see that trend. Same thing with Rocky Hill uh they downward trend. So what that tells us is you know like yes they rightsize the classes make cuts but at the expense of outcomes. So that's very important. So that's one point you know it took me two minutes to research that. So you say that you know there was some information that was presented to you while you know all the information is

135out there available. So we also have to be strategic in our thinking and investing for our schools and see cut budget cuts today what that would mean for three four five years down the road knowing that there's a lot of need that came out of COVID those needs are still there those kids my my my kindergart my my fifth grader was in kindergarten with COVID happened so those are lasting effects that he's going to need extra support throughout the years uh to be able to get on par and be a future surgeon business owner, you know, as many or educator as many of the people have spoken here today. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jeff. Um, Vive Purohit 48 Heritage Road and I'm a current board of head member. Um, I and my family moved

136here about 18 approximately 19 years ago now. And one of the reasons why I moved here was for the school systems and my son has graduated. He's a soph sophomore in college. Uh, and I'm very proud of what the East Lime um school system offered him and he was able to pursue his dreams. Um, I'm also proud that um, we have a ranking or we are in the top 10 of schools in Connecticut. Well, we should look at that ranking and figure out a way of maintaining that ranking and maintaining what services we have rather than looking at that ranking and say, well, maybe we can drop down a few points. That should not be the objective. Um, I mean, there are several things uh that I'd like to talk about, but I'm I'm being

137given two minutes. Um I applaud the u the the board of finance for asking the right question but I don't think we are going going about it in the right way. I just take the example of the focus on the class size and AP AP classes. My son took AP classes here. If I have to take those AP classes um I don't know if his teacher one one of one of his teachers Mrs. Buckley who taught him AP Lang. I would drop that class in a in a month. That's a hard class. So for us to say that, oh, we need 20 kids in all these AP classes. That's a little bit absurd. And you you are comparing it with the AP classes with other towns. I don't know what rigor you are looking at

138between the classes. Not AP all AP classes are the same. AP music theory, that's a hard class for anybody who doesn't understand music. You can't expect 30 kids to take AP music theory because not everybody is inclined towards AP you know music and if you are saying that because we have less students so we are not going to offer it are you saying that nobody who should have a dream of pursuing a career in music we can't have that kind of a mindset if we want to maintain our ranking and maintain our schools with that point I will say this education is not an on-off system you can't turn that switch on and off and expect everything to be maintained. There has to be investment for the future. That being said, I would strongly recommend

139I mean I'd strongly ask the board of finance to reconsider the cuts they are asking the the board of ed to do. Thank you. Thank you. So then we have Jerry Barrett, Rita Guiles, Glover, Susan Gonzalez, Nathan Butler. Sure. Um I think it's Jerry Barrett. Go ahead. Good evening. Hi, my name is Rita Keelis Glover. I live in 15 Marywood Lane. I am the proud parent of a junior Tristan here at East Slime High School and an eighth grader at Colton at the middle school. I'm also an educator. Uh currently the East Slime Middle School PTA president and a very proud East Lime graduate. My husband, also a professional educator, an East Lime graduate, chose to return and raise our family here because of the strength of this school system, because of these teachers, these

140administrators, and all of their love and support that they give the children. I am also a director of curriculum instruction and assessment in another district. And so I know truly firsthand the real impact that these budget cuts will have and how devastating it is when resources and opportunities for students are lost. Every proposed cut has been concerned. We've heard from librarians, teachers, pair professionals, everyone. For the purpose of my pre profession that I currently do and I know firsthand, I'd like to focus on high school and I'd like you to really think about that impact. the proposed 1.5 million cut to the board of education, eliminating seven teaching positions, even a guidance counselor. Why would we change anything in a school that is already ranked number 10? These cuts absolutely will mean fewer course offerings.

141Students will be unable to take electives they need for college and career exploration. These cuts will absolutely mean larger class sizes. I'm not sure, well, I do understand about high school scheduling and how you got your numbers, but please know that currently my son has at least 20 students in every one of his classes. These are in core subjects like math, science, English, social studies, PE, all of it. These cuts will impact activities, clubs, and sports. As was mentioned in um Mr. Newton's uh letter, many of these teachers are serving dual roles because that's what teachers do. They are constantly serving multiple roles. So, as you cut more, you were putting more on these teachers that they already have. And sadly, this also means that they are the students in these schools are going to

142have less trusted adults. Less adults that they can build relationships that the the kids need to feel connected to school and invested in our future. If you could once these positions are gone, they're nearly impossible to reinstate. They don't just impact next year. They damage the future strength of East Line for years to come. I have seen the firsthand the impact of the variety of class offerings have on our students. My son's growth from his freshman year to his junior year has been remarkable and I attribute this to the variety in the depth of the courses with wonderful teachers and administrators who have guide him through this. Our students deserve a full educational experience. Support the 6.72% board, please. This request is not a luxury. It is a necessity to protect the quality of our

143education. Susan Gonzalez. I know. I know. You don't know me. Sus Susan had to step outside to take a phone call. My name is Anthony Gres. I'm a 51 Grouse circle. I'm not on your list. Okay. But I am a voter. Um, I am a professor at an uppery liberal arts college down the road called Connecticut College. I'm a public school graduate. I believe in public schools. My public school was not as cool as East Lime. By far, by far. I'm a firstg college student. I am a lifelong learner and I'm an educator. I firmly believe everything that's so where did you go one of the last speakers you have to set strong foundations for education you have a rough job here it's a tough job you have my my empathy and yet we know

144that budgets are moral documents we know that you can't turn education on and off and expect when we need to can turn it back on for it to where it was one last antidote. I teach very privileged students at Connecticut College on average but through the New London scholars program I'm very fortunate to reu receive students from New London from Williams school from East Lime and I can say this without a doubt that when East Lime sends it students and they join my class these students perform better than 50% of the incoming freshmen at Connecticut College. They're high school seniors. They're prepared. They can write better than me and my sophomores. And after just a couple weeks, they can apply critical analytic skills that are sometimes better than my seniors. We do a good job

145here. I know you know this. And there's a dialectic here. These cuts are going to hurt us in the future. Enrollments are going to tick back up. We've seen the numbers. They're projected. It's going to take a little while. Please find a way to reduce the severity of this cut so we can keep these strong foundations. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Nathan Butler. I live at 54 Charter Oak in East Lime. My wife, who you saw leave a little bit ago, I had to go watch my two young East uh Flanders uh students. Uh my high school babysitter had to go to sleep. I like some other people here. I retired from the army. The army would have transferred me just about anywhere. I lived in Georgia, Alabama. Between the two, I could have

146gone almost anywhere. Like some other people and most, I came here as a transplant from New Hampshire. Why? because I did my research. The Islam school district is one of the best and I it's better, you know, one of the best in the north for sure. I had a whole page here. I'm going to skip it. Everyone has done a great job. I thank every board member here and their specific boards and the staff. You have a hard job and I respect you all for stepping up to the plate to do it because I know not everyone will. I am disheartened by one of the statements you had up on your slides talking about money and how much more more money spent is not you know that doesn't gonna isn't going to say that students

147are going to hire at a at a higher outcome or have better services or or or better lives outlihood as an outcome based person you got to start planning step one is what do you want your outcome to be and then you got to go from there I appreciate superintendent for coming to our school for the PTA meeting My wife, by the way, we've only lived here for a couple years. She's the president of the PTA. Her first job was the president incumbent. I'm sort of the co-president because I volunteer every time we have an event as I'm sure many other parents do. My kids love books. I recently gave a whole stack of books to the East Lime Library or not to the East Library to the Flers Library. Why? My kids would rather

148come to the East Lime Library or Flanders Library to get a book because of what their services that are there and offered as I'm sure in the other two uh elementary schools as well. The disservice is disheartening. Put the money back. I urge you and let the town vote on it. I'm a voter here just like everybody else. Put it back to a vote and let us decide. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to call a few more names first. Then um we have WE Raycraft, uh Rachel Lancing, Merrill Dartis. I just wanted to take two minutes as a town employee because there hasn't been any town support even though I want you all to know I applaud you all. I think your efforts are incredible and I totally agree 100% with you all.

149Okay. I raised three daughters in the town of East Lime. They all went through the school system. Fantastic school system. But when they graduated, I stayed here. Our family stayed here to support future students of the Eastland Public School System. We didn't move out of town for cheaper taxes. We didn't move out of town for our own benefit. We stayed here to support this community. My husband has a business in this town. I think you all probably know, you've seen a float or two of his. But what I really am trying to get across right now is to the taxpayers that don't have children in school that think that this budget is too high. We have fallen on very unfortunate circumstances, political wars, whatever, call it whatever you might. We are in the in the

150in the thick of it. What I'm asking those of you that are thinking about turning this budget down is to think again and support these children today because we supported yours. Thank you. Merryill the Carolis Nine Pleasant Drive. I stand before you today wearing three hats. As a high school special education teacher, a mother of three, and a concerned community member, I am here to cons to express my deep and urgent concerns regarding the proposed budget cuts that threaten the very foundation of our students educational experience. As a special educator, I see firsthand the daily challenges faced by students with disabilities and the incredible impact that adequate resources, staffing, and support services have on their ability to succeed. Special education is not a luxury. It is a legal and moral obligation to provide every child

151with the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. When we talk about budget cuts, we are not just talking about numbers on a page. We are talking about real children whose needs are complex and whose futures depend on our commitment to their education. Cutting school supplies is unjust. While we may live in an affluent community, many students still face significant socioeconomic challenges. Teachers are forced to dip into their own pockets to provide essential supplies for their classrooms. This is not just unacceptable. It is a disservice to our children and a stark reminder that our educators are not compensated fairly for the crucial work they do. Next, the proposed cuts to the pathways program are detrimental. As a special educator, I know how vital transitional programs are for students with disabilities who often require individuals planning individualized

152planning and support to move successfully from high school to adulthood. By eliminating programs such as these, we are setting them up for failure, sending them off into a world without a clear understanding of their potential careers and the self- advocacy skills they need. All students deserve the robust transitional education, and the loss of these programs could have lasting repercussions, especially for those who rely on them most. Field trips are not a luxury that can be easily cut. For many of our students, especially those with special needs, these experiences are their only opportunities for enrichment outside of the classroom. Field trips provide essential social, emotional, and experiential learning that cannot be replicated by textbooks alone. By taking away field trips, we are shrinking their world and denying them the chance to create meaningful memories with their

153peers and their teachers. The decision to cut essential instructional software is equally alarming. Our youngest students, including those with learning differences, will enter a workforce increasingly dominated by technology. Yet, we are poised to deprive them of resources that they need to thrive. I really need to finish. I'm sorry. I have that experience here. This will hinder their ability to learn and adapt and ever an ever evol evolving landscape. Moreover, the removal of our athletic trainer position threatens the well-being of our student athletes. This role is vital for ensuring their physical health and safety. Injuries can derail not just athletic careers, but scholarship opportunities that could change lives. I promise I'm almost done. Now, let's talk about the proposed proposed staff cuts. Seven positions at the high school level may not directly affect special education, but

154the ripple effect will be felt by our most vulnerable students. Increasing class sizes will make it nearly impossible to provide differentiated instruction. Our students will fall through the cracks and their futures will be jeopardized. As a special educator, I rely on collaboration with general education teachers, paraprofessionals, and support staff to meet the des diverse needs of my students. When staff are cut, this collaborative network is weakened and the students with disabilities are the first to feel the impact. Finally, consider the four paraprofessional positions that are being eliminated simply because they were never filled. This is not just a budget issue, it is a moral failing. Our paraprofessionals are essential to supporting our most vulnerable students. Cutting these roles will overburden our special education teachers and contribute to a cycle of high turnover in these critical

155positions. The shortage of special education staff is already a nationwide concern, and these cuts will only worsen the situation, making it harder to provide the legally mandated services our students require. We cannot normalize these cuts. We must advocate for our students, our teachers, and our community. The education and well-being of every child, especially those with greatest speech, should be our top priority. We have you to listen to our voices and understand the real consequences. Thank you for your time. Hi, my name is EM Raycraft. I live at 19 Upper Walnut Hill Road. I want to thank to the boards of finance, selectmen, and education who have worked diligently and thoughtfully to deliberate regarding the town budget. I have not attended, but I have watched the hours and hours of deliberation and understand that these budget

156cuts were not made um lightly. However, if the priorities are needs over wants and maintaining what we have, those ideas are diametrically in opposition with the board of education reduction that is presented here tonight. Maintaining what we have is not limited to town vehicles and software to maintain value and high level of education, maintain staff levels and maintain morale. These are all very much related. We made a commitment with contractual salary increases. And now the message is that we cannot afford it. Our previous commitments and standards wants and not needs. And why should what we people had in the past why should we be pulling that l that ladder up? Staffing cannot be as dynamic as implied. They're not just numbers on a piece of paper. And we can't treat people like we put water

157in a bathtub to be drained and filled at ease. These decisions will have impact and reverberate throughout the district. There are no just paras or just secretaries and this will be the new baseline for years forward. I thank you for giving us the forum to share our input and I thank you for considering the input that you're receiving tonight. Thank you. So, Rebecca, Karen, Alexander, you Non or Nila Khazar. Hi. Um, my name is Rachel Binoco Lansing. Um, I live at 13 Maplewood Drive. Thank you all very much for your time. Um, I know we all have a lot to say. Um, I'm a proud product of the Eastline public school system. I now have two daughters, one in third grade at Lily Be Hannes, who's way up way past her bedtime. Uh, and another

158who will start kindergarten in the fall. I'm here to plead with you all to um reconsider the cuts to the superintendent's proposed budget. Uh, I'm here because public education is a vitally important part of our town's budget for all of us, not just for families with students. I know that's a concern of yours. The benefits of a well-unded public education system are felt by the whole community. When it came time for my family to purchase a home, we chose East Slime, specifically because of the reputation of our schools. Anecdotally, many of my neighbors did the same. We are the taxpayers. We are contributing to rising property values. We are providing a workforce for our local economy. It's my hope that my children will one day do the same and choose to move here and continue

159to contribute meaningfully to our community. An educated populace is beneficial to everyone. Study from the American Economic Review demonstrates education is one of the most effective tools for reducing crime and lowering costs associated with law enforcement and incarceration. A town that values this is one that cares about public safety. And I believe we do. The staff and faculty who would lose their jobs as a result of these cuts are vital, irreplaceable members of our community. They've changed my family's life. I've been trying to speak to the universal benefits of well-funded schools, but I want to speak about my prof my personal experience for just a moment. My daughter Cecilia uh is neurode divergent, deals with ADHD and other learning challenges. She attended kindergarten at a public school in Jersey City where we lived at the

160time. Her class was 25 students. The teacher had no paraprofessional help. The school psychologist was stretched so thin across the district she couldn't meet with us for three months. Despite the best efforts of the teachers and the administrators there, my kid was in crisis. Coming to East Lime was like seeing the clouds clear away after a storm. The support she's been given at school has been remarkable, and I've watched her flourish there. I want to make sure we continue to be a place where students who need support services can receive them in the same robust way we have for years to come. It's meant everything to my family, and it's why we continue to live in this town, and we will continue to support the schools for the rest of our lives. Thank you. Hi,

161my name is Nyla Casure. Um I live at 50 South Edgewood Road in Niantic. Good evening. Thank you for being here. Um again, I'm Nyla Caser and I'm proud to serve as the vice president of the East Lime uh middle school PTA. I have also been an educator in Connecticut for 20 plus years. Um, I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of obviously our students, families, educators, and to advocate for the future of our schools. Obviously, we recognize the challenges that you face, but cuts of this magnitude will have devastating, and I repeat, devastating consequences for our students, our staff, and the overall quality of education in East Lime. Eliminating the positions that we're talking about will not simply tighten our belt. It will fundamentally change the educational experience we provide. Class sizes will grow.

162Personalized attention, it's going to shrink. Extracurricular programs are going to suffer. And critical support services will disappear. Our students are going to feel these impacts every single day. Our teachers and staff are not just educators. I believe somebody else said this exact same thing. They are mentors. They are role models. They are lifelines for our children. Reducing their numbers jeopardizes not just academic growth, but emotional and social development as well. These individuals that we're talking about cutting, they lead the clubs. They're the ones who coach the teams. They create the vibrant culture that makes East Vine Schools a home for learning, not just a place of instruction. Furthermore, larger class sizes and fewer support staff will put us additional strain on the teachers who do remain. Burnout, I know what it's like, is already a

163concern nationwide. It is an overburden of our educators further, and we risk losing the very talent and dedication that makes our schools strong. We are proud of the excellence East Lime schools represent. But excellence cannot be maintained under the cuts that is this deep. Once the programs are dismantled and the staff are let go, it is incredibly difficult and expensive to try to rebuild them. We owe it to our students to protect the quality of their education, not diminish it. I urge you, reconsider the depth of these reductions. Our schools are the heart of our community. Strong schools mean stronger property values. Somebody else said it earlier, too. Greater civic man engagement and a brighter future of East Lime. Investment in education is an investment in our town's future. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my

164name is Lindsay Sun. I live at 7 Hippie Court and here's my son, Alexander Shu. And he has something to say to the board of finance. Do you want to say that? Hi, my name is Alexander and I'm in first grade at Lily B. Haynes Elementary School. I heard that some people might take money from our school and that makes me sad. We could lose things like supplies for art, music, or help from teachers. I don't want my friends or my little brother to miss out the good things I have now. I also don't want the kids next year to lose something forever, like when they took away Spanish and never brought it back. School helped us learn and grow and kind. Please don't take money away. It really matters to us. Thank you. Thank

165you. Jessica Blahett, [Music] Leanne Spino. No. Um, Bonnie Dumbrossski. Okay. Hi, I'm Olivia Blabbed at 30 Lake AB. Jessica is my wife. Um, I'm going to speak as me first and Jess next. 15 years ago, when Jess and I were planning our future as naive 19year-olds, we were we were sure it would end and we would start and end in Niantic. We bought Jessica's childhood home with the intention of it being our forever home. Starting a family, which was a journey in it of itself, was next on our list. Long story short, my wife now walks to her job with our daughter all the way to school, one block, gathering two to three other elementary school students along the way. That's the dream. The dream that I've had for my kids and my wife before

166they even existed. Good evening. My name is Jessica Blahett. I teach physical education at Niantic Center. And with these cuts, I will not just lose my job, but my dream. This school is a part of my family's story. My grandfather walked these halls. Years later, he organized the children's theater there, a program that shaped the lives of countless students. When he passed away, former students, grown adults, traveled back to honor him, sharing how that experience changed their lives. That is the kind of impact that one person rooted deeply in a community can make. I was proud to walk those halls as a student, too. Now, my own children do the same. The school isn't just where I work. It is a promise that I have carried forward to give my students not just a lesson

167from a book, but experiences that stay with them for a lifetime. Budget cuts are painful and I understand that. But this school's heart is its people. People who believe in it with everything they have. Please let me to continue to be one of them. And thank you. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Sarah. Okay. Okay. Hi, Leanne Spino. Seahas, 17 Plum. Hell. All right. So, I'mma read half my speech and then scrap half my speech because I don't want to beat the the dead horse here. Um, so my family moved to East Lime in summer of 2022. I work in Rhode Island. My husband works in New Haven. And so we decided we could live anywhere in the middle, anywhere. Um, we picked East Lime. And we picked East Lime without ever setting foot in East Lime.

168I literally never walked into this town until I viewed my home. I put an offer in on that day. I did not explore the rest of the town. I went home and our offer was accepted. It was solely based on the school district. Only the school district. Since moving here, we've been grateful to become part of the community. Our daughter is a first grader at Lily Be Hannes. I got a three almost four-year-old that's going to be entering kindergarten soon. We're here for the long haul. So, uh, so this matters. Um, so look, now I scrap the speech. Y'all got a hard job. I get it. You see the big picture stuff. A lot of us are talking about the board of education budget. You're trying to find a compromise. You don't control the cuts

169that the board of education makes. I get it, right? That's hard. That said, your voters are here and your voters are telling you what they want and I urge you to listen to your voters. We understand that a cut of this magnitude, and it is a cut. I know you can't frame it as a cut cuz that's doesn't look good, but like if costs increase and you don't increase the budget enough to to cover that, it's a cut, right? Um and if you do that, it has a slow erosion effect of the reason why people like my family moved here and a lot of our families it seems like from tonight. All right. So, I urge you to reconsider. I urge you to put money back into the budget and then let your voters decide

170what they want to do. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Bonnie Dumbrossski. I live at 103 Walnut Hill Road. Uh, I'm here tonight to ask that you reconsider the $1.5 million cut to the proposed board of ed budget and instead reinstate at least half, 750,000, so that voters can decide for themselves what's affordable and appropriate for the town budget. We all know taxes are going up this year because of increases in both the town government and the board of ed budgets. That's a reality and it's fair for taxpayers to be asking hard questions. But a $ one and a half million dollar cut from education puts an outsized burden on our schools, our teachers, and our students. We often hear at least twice tonight that the board of finance doesn't decide how education dollars

171are spent, that it's up to the board of ed, but with a cut this large, let's be honest, you do shape those decisions. You may not choose the line items, but you know what a reduction of this size means. Two observations from the presentation. One, in responding to the graph of the Daniel Hand School that manages their staff to student ratios, is there a graph of how they manage their staff morale? Secondly, I love that the board of finance and first selectman took a bus around town to get to know the details of town departments. Will there be a bus to the schools to spend a day in our schools? What's scary? I did the math this weekend and based on the projected mill rate increase to 27.9, the 1.5 million reduction translates to about

172$12 a month for the average taxpayer. Reinstating half, 750,000 would mean just $6 more per month in additional tax. That's a $150 a week, less than a cup of coffee to preserve teaching jobs and educational quality in our town. Reinstating $750,000 doesn't lock us into spending more. It simply puts the question to the voters. This isn't about spending recklessly. It's about giving voters the respect to weigh in. Because once those teaching positions are gone, the impact on kids will be very real. I ask you to please reinstate 750,000. So, Andrea Montavani. And yes, we did view um East Lime High School, but it was towards the end of the last budget year, but this was considered to be one of the um biggest sources of wants and needs. So, yes, we did do that. All

173right. Hi, I'm Andrea Montavani. Um I live at 43 C View Avenue in Niantic and I come with a lot of validity. We come from a family of educators. My husband's an educator here in E Slime. He is a PE teacher which directly these cuts will affect his department. I'm an administrator and a fellow district in our DUR and um and so I'm an assistant principal. So sorry, I will apologize right now. I have not attended the board of finance meetings or the board of education here, but I've done my notes. I've read because I'm I'm attending the ones in my own district. So, unfortunately, this is something that's happening across all districts, but I feel I had a speech ready, but I feel like everyone's kind of said it already. You know, they've done

174your job for you tonight. You've had every single person telling you to put the money back into the budget and let the taxpayers decide. That gave you made your job a lot easier. It's really disheartening that we are in a field that in my 18 years I've had to pick it three times. I've had to take pay cuts three times. I've had to come here in 2019 and once again instead of being at home with my daughters. What other profession can you say that? That there we're always fighting for our careers to stay in place. That we're always fighting for respect. And it's it's disheartening. Teacher appreciation is right around the corner. this is not how we want to get it started by saying that we are going to be cutting 1.5 from the budget

175and unfortunately some things that you were saying like professional development it's imperative but also a mandate from the state right now the state of Connecticut is ma mandating the right to read no money given to us but we have to pay hundreds of thousand dollars for new literacy and training for our teachers restorative practices more training for our teachers purposeful play in kindergarten and preschool mandated and some other grades it's optional. Those are all mandates from the state of Connecticut that are not funded, but we have to figure out how. But there's ways that we can do it. It's called equity. Equity across all of our departments and I just feel like the department that got the l the lack of equity is the education department. When I was going through line by line, some

176things that I thought were just very interesting. Our department in education had to cut personnel and we're having to cut supplies and equipment, but other departments, they're increasing them. They're adding to them or they're keeping them status quo. Office furniture, $15,000. Um, paving 900. That's great. Yes, maybe I could go around a couple potholes. Maybe we can cut that in half and not pave everything this year and go maybe 450 this year, 450 next year. Um, storage shed for somebody 8 $8,500. Teachers are always trying to figure out storage. So, is that really a necessity? Overtime. Every teacher in this room does not get paid overtime. They do that on their own. Overtime for the finance department, $14,915. The assessor's office with many offices supplies 8,000 and office supplies. We have a teacher cutting her

177erasers into three. Park wreck department overtime 23,000. That's an increase from last year. Oh, I still have time. I didn't stop you. Um road signage $19,000. That is crazy. Let's just keep the signs we have. Maybe we could put some new in next year. traffic calming. And Mr. Selectman, with all due respect, our department over here went digitally with their platform, with their mailings, everything like that. Your department this year is projected to have 25,000 in postage. Let's start using technology and go green instead of mailing all of that out like they are doing with our report cards and all of our um different sign um flyers. I think your job is easy right now. It's we took a hard job you had and made it easy. Everybody in this room, everyone that left, everyone

178that spoke told you what we would like and get leave it up to us. Put the money back in and let us as voters make that choice. Is there a Michael Bormick? Hello. Uh, Michael McCormack of Temp Brookfield Drive. Uh, I wrote a lot. I stopped writing and started thinking and realized that everything I was going to say has already been said. But what wasn't really made clear, I think, was, you know, the sheer magnitude of the number of people here who came here uh because of the schools. The number of people who are here because their parents came here because of the schools. Uh I'm one of those people. I came here uh because I brought my family here. We moved here because of your schools. My parents I grew up in Stonington. You

179know, I could have gone. They actually have a higher uh accountability number. We could have gone there. My parents would have been happy. But we decided to come here because you have a outstanding school district. And you know the cuts you're planning are going to impact the entire town. And it's not just you know education for the kids. It's also, you know, people's homes, their home values are going to drop because who's going to want to come to the school districts that's starting to downsize. You know, I we have the number 10. We're number 10 according to whatever that list was. Why aren't we number two? You know, I understand we don't have that kind of money, but we shouldn't be going out of our way to make these kind of cuts when everyone in

180this room is here because they want to support our schools. I mean, how many of you are here because your parents brought you to East Line because of the schools or because you are parents who are here for the schools? I mean, really, how many of you? Everyone here, I guarantee you that at least even even people on your board of finance, I would guarantee you went through East Line Public Schools and then went on to, you know, get higher education. I'm I myself, I went on through higher education because of I was able to go through a good school district and the resources that I had, I want my kids to have, as I'm sure you would all want your children to have good resources. So I I'm pleading with you why why make

181cuts this large? So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. I'll spread. Hi, my name is Fred Alpartter. I live at 20 Church Lane. You know, I've seen an awful lot of young people stand up here this evening and since I'm almost 70, almost everybody's younger, you know. So sorry Dan, but you know I moved to East Lime 10 years ago. My kids have been out of school for a long time. But one of the reasons I moved here was because of the school system and the fact that when I get to sell my house that there'll be a demand for it because of the schools in this system. And you know I live on a fixed income. I see my pay raises every year or whatever the government decides to give

182me in social security. I don't see my pensions go up. I don't see uh well lately I've seen my investments do quite a quite the opposite. So um so every month I do look at my budget and what's going up and what's what's staying the same. Certainly don't see anything going down. But from a from a grandpa perspective, I have to say that educating our youth is the duty of all of us, even when we no longer have kids in school. Because when I had when I had kids in school, I said, "Well, gee whiz, I've got three kids in school and my taxes are this, but my education for those three children is up here. So, it's going to take a long time for me to pay that debt back to the rest of

183the people that now have kids in school. So, I have to agree wholeheartedly from a, you know, here's one of the senior citizens in town that you're trying to save, you know, taxes so that you don't force me to move somewhere else. And you know, I think is is are do we need a a fire boat? Well, maybe. Do we need to go out and rescue people on the end of December when they're out in the sound when they shouldn't be? Well, I don't necessarily think so. We have a Coast Guard. Let them do it. And you know, certainly when my house catches fire, I'd like to know the fire department is there. But is the need for to educate our children any less important than having another firefighter on staff? And I'm not sure

184of that. So I would wholeheartedly ask the board of finance to please restore the money to the budget and let people like me decide is this young man's education more important than you know than something else in the budget, you know, are those teachers. So, I'd like to say put the money back and let me, one of those voters with the gray hair, help decide whether we say yes or no. on that same note from a different generation. But um I don't Your name? My name's Deborah and I'm not a parent and I won't be. I work at Electric Boat. I came to the area because of my husband at the time's job in the Navy and I bought not just in this area but in East Lime because of the rising property values because

185of the education and investing in the future and I'm part of the village and I'm here to say that it's it needs to go to the voters to decide that it's worth investing in our students and in our town's future and in our real estate values. That's why people come. My name is Deborah Stewart Van Orordan and I live at 21 Hillwood Drive. Thank you. Hey, I'm Matt Sardo. I live at 15 Upper Kensington Drive. We moved here 2022. I have three daughters. Uh Honey and Tessa are going to be going into second grade next year at Flanders. and their class is going to be affected by the cuts. Um, and I also, one of the things I do since I moved here and I'm a nerd, I take my kids down to town hall.

186They've been to Dan's office a few times, but we drop off our property taxes to the office and I explain to them this is what your money goes for for your schools. And the thing that was kind of really concerning to me is we were talking about the town's credit score verse education in our kids. And if it's credit score verse kids, I'm voting for kids. And there's there's money in the budget. If you look at the slides, there's money. There's the $1.5 million is there. It's sitting there. You guys have to decide how to get it to the board of education because there is definitely we saw a lot of crazy slides about different schools and I'm not gonna talk about Rocky Neck again, but that's they're ranked 46th. Uh but there's money in

187the budget that can go and fill the gap. And uh yeah, I have three daughters in the school. I love East Lime. I coach softball for kids. So, let's make it happen. So, at this point, are there any other um voters in town that wanted to speak that Okay. Yeah. I just there's a couple names that I don't have checked off, so I thought they might have left the room and come back. I just want to make sure everyone has a chance. Hi. Um, and sorry. Yeah, I'm feeling like crap tonight. I was going to leave when I ran out of tissues. I ran out of tissues a long time ago. Uh, Brian Zonsticker, 8 Cill Road. That actually that address only exists and didn't exist few months ago. Um, actually is a direct result

188of investment in our public school system and our school district. Um and you know so many people definitely said all the the main uh sorry uh things that uh I wanted to cover tonight. Um so I won't uh just rehash things but but I would like to re um reframe something in a different way which is um you'll notice that yeah like you said you guys have a fiscal responsibility to to the town to the constituents that put you in the seats you're sitting in. Um, as we made the point, even if you're just looking at numbers and statistics, um, I I even even I thank the uh the the elderly gentleman who does not have kids currently in school, but recognizing that the in the the investment in in education in our town and

189everything we do starts at the beginning, right? And that's where the education is. So one again it's fiscally irresponsible to pretend like these are um short-sighted uh cuts and certainly we can you know argue the merits of what is what what we are moving from one bucket to another but even from just a pure datadriven financial perspective I have you been getting copious amounts of phone calls and letters and speeches and things from from all the people telling you to yeah cut that that 1 5 million. I I don't know. But I I would just ask you again if you're just making a uh you know informed decision, uh do it based on information and and your constituents. Um and and the last thing that I'd like to say is, you know, there's always this

190kind of, you know, I remember standing here doing this a couple years ago when we were going through this. um that they have this tendency to to to to kind of make it sound like it's either the people who are doing it for the kids or people who have kids in town or, you know, the people who pay taxes who who don't have kids in town. I think we've really got to get away from this narrative that it's somehow they're like mutually exclusive or anything. I mean, we've talked a lot about, you know, investments and what it pays off in and all that, but but that's that's been shown time and time again. I think maybe, you know, if you treat it like a village um more even in the messaging and all that that

191it would help people um also collaboratively um deal with these things as a town instead of, you know, continuing to press this, you know, this this terrible theme we have in in general right now and the time we live in of of being more divisive and, you know, putting people to sides and then making them, you know, choose which tribe feels like it fits better. Um, so th those are the two things I'd really just encourage you to to do. And um, yeah, we're we're all here suffering maybe a little more than we intended to tonight, but um, it's also hopefully for for the right reasons and that we'll all sleep better tomorrow because of it. Thank you. Um so with the students um first on the list here Aby. Oh hello I am Harper

192uh 719 road. I'm a proud member of the Breakers and former Sea Dog, a member of East Line Middle School, and an eighth grader going to high school. So, in a year, this will directly affect me. And I have respect for the board and all their decisions, knowing that you're a very important part of the town and make huge decisions for us and really impact the entire uh society and community. But this isn't the best idea ever. I'm going to be blunt. Um, listen, I have had so many lovely teachers in my years in this school district and I cannot even fathom what my life would be like right now if I didn't have any of them. What would be like if any of them had even been cut. I couldn't I can't imagine that.

193And I don't want to know. My brother used to be in high school and I know that if he was here right now and still in the district, he would be severely like he also would be disappointed if he saw that some of his teachers were going to be cut. He was also just like me. He loved learning. We both love learning and seeing that some of the teachers are going to be cut. That's it's not a So, thank you Sarah Cesco, 25 Willow Lane. Um, thank you all. I know you have a very hard job. It's not easy. Um, but I sat through a zoning meeting the other day where property values were discussed and came up multiple times and it's this common theme about property values. And everybody has the same goal here.

194We want to educate our kids. We want to be a lovely town and we want to be that town that everybody comes to. And when we make choices like this to take all of this money out of our budget, it's directly in opposition of what we all want. And I'm here to ask you all to please put all of the money back in. Not half of it, all of it. Because our kids deserve it and our town deserves it. And I heard someone speak earlier about the four parah positions and that bothered me so much because my son is special needs and I can't tell you how many paras he has gone through because they do not make a lot of money and if you cut four paras you're not cutting a lot out of

195the budget and you're taking away four positions that are so needed in that opportunity to fill those four positions to give teachers a take to give kids better instruction and to keep the day moving along. So, I just ask you to please put all the money back in. Do it for our town, property values, education, whatever. Put it all back in. Thank you. Thank you. Um, my name's Anvine Ngra and I'm a freshman at East High School. And today, not only am I speaking for myself, but also for the vast majority of staff and students who will be severely impacted by this budget cut. Due to the $150 million funding cut, many of our teachers, people who guide us, challenge us, and support us, will be losing their positions. And because of that, next year,

196numerous classes and electives we are looking forward to taking, the ones that we are passionate about and wish to pursue, are being taken away. We are being asked to do more with less with less. Fewer choices, bigger classes, fewer teachers, and fewer opportunities to figure out who we are and who we want to become. Removing important classes like AP courses significantly affect a student's competitiveness in college admissions. These courses help us build vital skills that help us strive after high school. They let us dive deeper into subjects that we're passionate about and ensured that we have a deep understanding of the subject. Some scholarships specifically look for AP coursework because it indicates a serious academic commitment. Real world examples underscores the negative effects of such budget cuts. In 2008, Ensen High School in Cali faced

197the elimination of numerous AP classes in the layup of about 46 teachers due to the budget constraints. Similarly, Riverpoint Academy in Washington, a STEM focused high school, was permanently closed following an 11.3 million budget cut, depriving students of specialized educational opportunities. The long-term effects of these actions cuts of these cuts will extend beyond academic setbacks. Students will find themselves less prepared for college level work and result in increased dropout rates and limited career prospects. The community as a whole will suffer from less educated workforce negatively impacting local businesses and the structure of our community. That's why it's so important for decision makers to think of the the long-term effects of cutting the budget as well as to look for alternative solutions that will prioritize the educational needs and futures successes of us students. Thank you.

198Thank you. Hi, my name is Maya Dquella, 46 Rathlin Hill Road. Um I'm a senior here at East Lime High School and um I just want to take a minute to just um observe that these are not just positions you are cutting. These are people these are people who have dedicated over 10 years to this school system. People who have dedicated their time to educate me and people who I know would do this job for free if it meant helping their students. Um, I would like to express my own gratitude for the public education I've received here at East Lime High School. Um, going to college next year, I am saving thousands of dollars through credits I have earned in my AP and ECE classes, classes which your budget is cutting. That money I am

199saving is helping my family afford to put me through college. If you want to talk about how great Elim High School is in the education program, I need you to put your money where your mouth is. You are not just cutting our teachers, you are cutting our opportunities. It is also evident that a community's values can be seen through how they spend their money. So, I pose a question. What does cutting spending on education say about this community? And do you think that represents us well? I think not. Hi, my name is Virginia Bowler. I'm also a senior here. I live at 80 Emerald Glenn Lane in Salem. I would not be here today if it weren't for the wonderful teachers here at East Lime High School. Like literally, in 2018, my family moved specifically

200to East Lime for the education system. When you look up, is East Lime High School a good school? The first website pops up and says that 80% of students and parents agree that the teachers give engaging lessons. 82% of students and parents agree that the teachers genuinely care about the students. 82% of students and parents agree that the teachers adequately lead and control the classroom. Even better is the 11:1 student teacher ratio ensuring a quality education for every single student. These teachers are not dollar signs. They are human beings with souls filled with passion and great skills that they are willing to pass on to every student that walks through the doors of this building. I think the question you should be asking yourselves is how much do you value the next generation's education? Thank

201you. Hello, my name is Theodore Francis. I live at 39 Pagansit Drive in East Lime. Uh I am a current senior at East Lime High School. I have an individualized education plan, a special education plan because among other things, I am autistic. Um a similar student to me a decade or two ago might not have been considered in need of an IEP and that student would have likely flunked out of high school. The sole reason for my passing both sophomore and junior year year rests in the team of people who worked with me. Case workers, psychologists, social workers, my neuroscychiatric testing provided by the school. All of this on top of the classroom teachers who believed in me so hard that I started believing in myself too. At this point, I'm a straight A student

202with five AP classes, two ECE classes, and two three river three river classes. And I've taken through a partnership with the high school. I am a far more expensive student than my doppelganger from 20 years ago. Not because the needs of students have really increased, but because we are meeting more people's needs. Meeting needs is expensive. You can ask my casework. You can ask Miss Rose, Miss McCannernney, Miss Buckley, Mr. Bersron, Mr. Willis, Mr. King, Fra Hanley, Miss Singer, my inschool health center therapist, my neurosych who definitely has a name, and all of the background staff required for special needs students who I don't even know to appreciate. Each and everyone is integral. and ask them whether Theodore Francis would be where Theodore Francis would be without that team. I can only speak to what

203I've experienced. I'm a successful student, but a very expensive one. These are the kind of cuts that will result in students like me slipping through the cracks. I just recently began paying taxes, and there is nothing I want my my tax dollars to go more towards than education. Thank you. Hello, my name is Emma Frisbee and I am a sophomore at Islam High School. I am the Connecticut Poetry Out Loud State Champion as well as the Connecticut National History Day State Champion. I represented Connecticut at for both of these competitions in Washington DC. The reason why I mention that is because all of the clubs and all of the experiences that are available to students like me are run by teachers who are donating their free time to help to helping students like myself. So

204when you cut teachers from our high school, that has a direct impact on the faculty's ability to help students like myself. So, yes, I understand that numbers matter, budgets have to balance, but I'm here to remind you that behind every single number is a human being, a teacher who stayed after class to help me understand a tough assignment, who noticed I was struggling and asked if I was okay, who saw potential in me when I didn't see it in myself. Cutting these positions isn't just taking away a paycheck. It's taking away mentors, role models, and the true heart of our school. If we lose them, we lose the people who believe in us, who shape us, and who stand up for us, for me every single day. So tonight, I'm standing up for them just

205as they would for me. And I hope you will, too. Thank you. My name is Anita Bazu. I live at Borwin Circle. Hello everyone. I would like to thank you for your ongoing work and commitment to the residents of our town. We appreciate it. As a resident, I have been a part of the East Lime School District for 12 years. And today I stand here to ask you all to restore the critical funding to our schools. That 10th place ranking that cites that 10th place that 10th place ranking of our high school cites the quote dedication of staff and faculty to students end quote and our diverse curriculum which are both at risk. With these drastic changes, the district is preparing for reductions in staff and offered courses which would be devastating. Please hear and

206listen when I say teachers personally give feedback and motivate us. I would not be able to understand a range of content in my classes despite the unlimited information of the internet without our many qualified and supportive teachers, our absolute greatest resource. Every teacher brings their own unique light to our schools through academics and student groups for each of our 13 years here. Those teachers at the high school at risk include Miss Archer, who organizes the women's empowerment club, which works to make period products available in bathrooms. She also teaches our Yukon ECE 107 English class, which may not be able to meet student demand next year. Mr. Maddox has been the junior class adviser for the last three years and has helped us through events, fundraisers, and more. Many students seek to take his AP

207research course to earn their prestigious AP capstone diploma. Miss Thompson, one of our two female PE and health teachers, is a constant role model due to her authenticity and openness. Every teacher brings life and happiness into our schools. We cannot measure their legacy in numbers. The student body would be deeply saddened to see any of them leave. This is a difficult situation. There will not be a perfect situation that satisfies every interest. But I implore you to consider the priceless effect of our teachers on our education, which will determine the collective future of our students, our teachers, and our town. As an organization of learning, I think our board of education and school faculty are pretty smart and know what they're doing with their proposed spending. So to the board of finance, I urge you

208to restore critical funding to our schools and invest in our future. And to the board of education members present, I urge you to consider alternative solutions to reductions. Thank you for your time, patience, and respect. So, we do have a hard stop at 10:30. So, if everybody could be as concise as possible um because we do have a meeting to uh adjourn to after this. So, hello. My name is Darcy Neowski. I live at 103 Walnut Hill Road. I'm a high school freshman and a part of the school senate. I'm here tonight on behalf of my classmates since we along with our teachers and staff will be directly impacted by the decisions you make tonight. One of the most significant impacts of the proposed cut is that seven teachers at the high school may lose

209their jobs or at a minimum those positions will be lost. One of those atrisisk teachers is in the physical education department and she taught my freshman wellness class earlier this year. When I walked into her class on the first day of school, I was immediately greeted by her smiling face at 7:30 a.m. Though we had to talk about STDs, nutrition, substance abuse, and other challenging but important topics, she always found a way to keep us engaged and teach the material in a way that is relevant to us teenagers. No teacher deserves to be cut, especially after the countless amount of hours they put into our learning. But it would be especially devastating to lose this teacher who made such a difference in my first semester as a freshman. I've also been told that some of

210the other teachers at risk are also club sponsors or coaches. I'm involved in two sports and a couple of clubs. The learning and growth that takes place within a sport or a club cannot be underestimated. Whenever there's a conflict at home or school, our parents and teachers say, "How can we compromise or how can we meet in the middle?" Like my mom and other people said, I know it's not import I know it's not up to this board to decide how the budget is spent. That is the job of the board of education, but please reconsider how much money they have to work with so students continue can continue to have opportunities and hardworking teachers don't lose their jobs. I would respectfully request that this board consider reinstating at least half of the cut to

211the proposed budget so the impacts of these cuts are minimized. I understand that balancing the needs of the town budget is complicated and there are tough decisions that have to be be made, but let's meet in the middle. Thank you. My name is Auggie Bryant. I live at 95 Walnut Hill Road. Um, I've been in this I'm a sophomore. I've been in the school system for about 11 years now. My grandparents work for this school. My mom works for this school. My uncle works in the town. I'm I'm familiar with this town. My dad was in the military. I wasn't born here. Uh the first couple years of my life weren't here. We moved here for the school system. This that was a major role in what we moved here. And I'm going to be

212frank to to put it cold hard truth. The suggested changes implemented by the budget cuts will ultimately reduce the quality of education that students are able to receive. Um, I know one of the things that stuck out to me was the reduction of class size. I was looking at the numbers you guys had up there. I think Miss Nazara pointed on this. From my experience, those numbers are not accurate to my class sizes. My class sizes are in the 20s, lower 20s, 23, 22 students, maybe 18. The lowest class size I have is the one that is most accurate to that. There are 12 students in my math class. When I saw that number, I was like, "That is insanely low." I told all my friends about that number. They were like, "That is insanely

213low." And that's the number that you guys are projecting. And I just I'm not 100% sure those are accurate. Um, and the same goes for my friends. I was talking to my friend. She said too, her class sizes are not what they are. They're like in the 20s, lower 20s, 23, maybe 18. Um, and just the increase in class sizes, it's shown in many studies that higher class sizes is worse for students education and lower class sizes are going to be better. You get a more personal experience. You get more time to spend talking on subjects. You get if it's you're not fully understanding something, you get to talk with the teacher more independently and better understand that subject. Another thing that I noticed was a lot of the electives and classes were losing that

214one that one of my favorite things about East Lime High School when I signed up and I was like, "Wow, that is really cool is the number of electives they offered." I've always been a person who has an interest in a wide range of subjects. Um, also, could you wrap it up? Yes. Thanks. One of the classes I'm taking now, biotech, when I heard that that was closing, I was I was very disappointed. It's science is you're working in labs. You're working, you're doing research. It's not like sitting and looking at notes. But most general classes you're going to get, you're sitting and looking at notes. And the labs offered in bio classes, well, you do get some in the general classes. It's not many. And biotech was something that really opened up to me

215that field as something I want to do. I had a friend, we did a lab. I'm wrapping up, I promise. Um, DNA electropheresis looking at cancer patients. We spent I think like three four days on that in bio class, a whole unit in biotech. And just from those three four days, she was like, "Wow, that lab was really cool. I might want to go into the medical field." She had never said that before. She had never thought of that before. So having the opportunity for those classes is great to expand on the amount of fields available for students to think about. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Ayla Peterson. Um, I live at Sixbrook Road and I am a senior here at East Lime High School. I am one of the many students

216who moved here from another district, in fact, another state at one point. um were in that district every single morning on the announcements. At the end they said, "And remember to graduate because graduation is important." Here at East Lime High School, we do a lot more than just graduate. I am walking out of these doors with 12 college credits. And I would like to thank the teachers that made that happen, Mr. Hernandez, Mrs. Buckley, um and I think Mrs. Trestler has left the building at this point. Um, but the passion that I feel for education would not be as strong as it is without these teachers. Cutting this budget is detrimental to so many students. There are AP courses, there are ECE classes, there are honors courses. Even classes that don't have college credit on

217the line are important such like um Mrs. Archer is at risk of being cut and she has inspired so many people in this school. The time in which she was gone was so hard for so many. And every single day that I walk past her room, there are so many people in there talking to her, asking her questions. Teachers are so important to students. They are not just a few cuts. They are people. They are important. It is the responsibility of the board to guarantee the highest quality of education for those in the East Lime community. I hope this board understands that by losing teachers, students will lose opportunities that they may not have anywhere else. I implore you to reconsider the cuts to the budget because following through would mean that the quality of

218education here plummets and future students lose the opportunity to succeed at the level that past and present students have. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sophia Sage Lane. I am a freshman at East Lime High School. I don't have a direct say in the decisions made by the board of finance because I'm not old enough to vote. However, I live with the consequences of those decisions every single day. Tonight, I'm here because the proposed $ 1.5 million cut to our education budget would have a profound and painful impact not just on my experience, but on the experiences of every student at East High School. So far, my high school experience has been great. I love that most of my class sizes are small. I love that I have the opportunity to build meaningful relationships with

219my teachers. I love having a wide range of electives that allow me to explore my interests. Every day I look forward to going to school. However, if this budget cut passes, many of the things I love about my education would change for the worse. I believe that the best learning occurs in classrooms where students and teachers know, respect, and care for each other. If cuts are made, one of my favorite teachers may not be at the high school next year. Every other day, I look forward to walking into his class, and on the days in between, I look forward to high-fiving him in the halls. I can't imagine not seeing him next year. It's predicted that at least one teacher from every core subject will be laid off. That would result in larger class sizes

220and more stress on the teachers who remain, which could lead to reduced opportunities for meaningful teacher student relationships. Small classes that encourage connection and engagement would disappear and our hardworking teachers would risk burnout. I recently met with my guidance counselor and we planned out my sophomore, junior, and senior year courses. It's possible that some electives, classes I've looked forward to taking since middle school, will no longer be offered. This year, I'm taking creative writing, a class I had no idea I would love so much. And now I'm planning, assuming it is still offered, to take creative writing, too. In addition to electives, accelerated classes such as AP and dual enrollment early college experience could be cut or have the number of seats reduced. For many East Lime High School students, these classes are critical for

221college readiness and academic recognition. Their reductions could lead to students being less competitive college applicants. Therefore, the budget cuts will not only impact students high school experiences, but their college careers as well. If you could wrap it up, please. Yep. My family moved to East Lime in July 2015, the summer before I started kindergarten. specifically because of the schools. We left a school district that struggled with underfunding and staff shortages. And we came here because East Lime was known for its excellence in education. You've heard this statement many times this evening. Strong schools draw families in. But strong schools also bring communities together and a shared mission to prepare the next generation of American citizens. Please do not Thank you. We do have to Hello, I am Zoe Corpacken. I am a 16-year-old junior at

222East Lime High School, and I would like to face the educators that made me who I am today. Uh, I saw that the budget would cut seven of the teachers at East Lime High School, and I knew that I just had to come to this meeting and I had to know and tell you how I feel about this. As you guys are not teachers, I'd like to point out seven of the teachers that you plan to cut just to put into perspective for you. And those seven teachers, how they impacted my life. Like to start with Mrs. Sherah, my creative writing 2 teacher. And how every time I come into my class, I know that I am safe and I am loved. And I know that if I demand the thin mints from your desk,

223I'll get the thin mint. If I need help with my poem, I'll get that help from my poem. uh my English teacher, Miss Buckley, who for the first time in my life made me feel challenged in my English class and made me know that I could do English at that level that I am at today. My science teacher also, Miss Buckley, she has made me realize that I could have a career in marine biology, a career that was never supported for me as a child because I could never have that much of a specialized class for me. Uh, my art teacher, Miss Mashad, who has faced so many hardships this year. Love her so much. She has supported my artist career and has made me who I am as an artist today. Miss Jenkins, my

224psych teacher. She has supported me in psych so much. Every time I come into her class, she always greets me with a smile. She always helps me. If I struggle with that test, I know that I will get that help with that test. My teacher, Miss Capa, who helps me out in the library, she helps me my anxiety, as you might see with my shaking. She helps me with my test. She knows that I struggle with that, that I get scared, anxious. She will be there. She will be there to support me always. And I would like to save my counselor for last, my lovely, lovely counselor, Jacqueline Sullivan, who if it were not for her, I don't know how I would be standing here today being here. I'd probably be shaking in my seat,

225scared, crying. But because of her, I would had the courage to come up here, face my anxiety, and tell like tell everyone here how much I love them. And this is just seven of my teachers, just to name a few. This is including teachers such as my gym teacher, Miss Thompson, my civics and history teacher, Mr. Macgyver, my English teacher, Mr. Ankco, who recommended me for Miss Buckley's class, and so many more. Teachers aren't dollar signs. They are people. They support us. They are real. Please keep them in our school system. Thank you. So that wraps up the um public discussion portion. Um next on the agenda is board comments. I don't know whether anyone uh wants to say anything. No. Um all right. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? Second. Motion has been

226made and seconded. All those in favor? I. Any oppose? No. Thank you everyone. I do appreciate everyone's time and attendance and comments. It's like you.