001Okay, there you go. Okay, so the time is now uh 7 o'clock. It's September 10th, 2025. And uh we would like to proceed with Wednesday's meeting for the uh um for the regular uh uh meeting for finance and operations. Um I didn't have anything prepared. Um so for the minutes we have um I'd like to call to order and uh I'd like us to all stand for pledge of >> allegiance please. Through I was going to say we need to do the pledge. I pledge algiance 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. >> Okay. Uh at hand here today we have approval for the minutes for um for August 13th. Um, uh, commissioners that
002were present were Eric Carlson, Dante Tagarelloo, Virtual, and Shelby Ponds, as well as myself. Um, I would like to see if, uh, do we have, um, do we have a quorum to to approve the uh, the minutes for August? >> Yes, we do. >> Okay. Thank you, Dante. All right. All in favor? I I'll I'll make the motion to approve them. Okay. All in favor approve the minutes. >> Yes. >> I'm sorry. Second. >> Yeah. I I figured it was implied. So, yes. >> All right. I >> I >> Okay. Um also for um for uh for public comment. Um, do we have any uh public comment? >> No. >> Okay. Okay. With no uh with no public comment, I guess we will move on to the uh to the 2026 budget update um through
003uh August 13th, 2025. >> It's on now. >> Is now. Um, I'll report on the financials through August 31st, 2025. As of August 31st, salaries are fully encumbered. Yet, we are still working on some employee uh employee movements and transfers and making sure that all employees truly are coded to the correct locations and general ledger accounts. This takes a little bit of time, so that is still ongoing. Um we have actual expenditures totaling 6,777331 encumbrances totaling 80 million554986. It's primarily payroll which leaves us with 49,729498 remaining to spend. It's still pretty early in the year. It's only been 2 months. So at this point I'm not particularly worried about any line. Um we'll have probably a much better picture next month. I know the city recently um during the month of September pulled our insuranceances
004which were actually right on budget this year. So that's great. Um but as of right now I'm not worried about any particular line. Any questions >> Russ? It's hard to hear you online. I don't know if you have your mic on. >> Sorry. That's right. Thank you. >> It's been a rough afternoon. Um, yeah. Will there be any surprises or anything like that that um >> I don't foresee any actual surprises as of yet? The lines that I'm always a little bit concerned about are substitute lines. Um, so that'll be kind of curious to see. We just recently um as of today actually received our first ESS. That's the substitute agency that we used. We received our first bill. It's $42,000 for 4 days. So, which is right in line what it what it always
005was last year. Um, so that's always a little bit concerning. Um, so that's something we want to really keep our eye on. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Okay. Um, moving on to um item number five, cafeteria report. >> Yep. Uh, the snapshot balance shows a surplus of 667,665 as of August 31st. In August, we served our scholars 4,257 breakfasts and 5,18 lunches. Any questions? >> Um, I I do have a I I do have a question really has to do uh not so much with the budget, but with with the contents of what we're what we're feeding the kids. I know there's been a lot more attention being brought to um the uh the content or the the wholesomeness of foods. Um you know where are we uh you know what
006kind of uh food programs you know what kind of food uh are we serving the kids they fall in line with those national nutritional guidelines? >> Yes they have to there's very strict guidelines actually on what we can serve the scholars and what we can actually purchase. Um David Folds is always, you know, in touch with all of um with the state and he makes sure he follows all of those federal and state guidelines as to what he can serve. Um all of our funding really depends on what we're serving. So there are strict guidelines that we do have to follow. Certain numbers of fruits and veggies and the the whole grain, all all of the ingredients, all of that matters. So he does follow um the nutritional guidelines. >> Okay. Because I have had
007some parents ask about that. So thank you. >> Yeah. Um so um on to item number six would be appropriation transfers over 10,000. >> I made one transfer last month of $40,000. It was within the athletics budget. um that was reappropriating funds from their liability insurance line. Um they had a surplus there because the insurance came in less than what we budgeted and we moved it over to their high school athletic supply line where it could be better utilized. >> Okay. >> U moving on to um item number seven, pupil personnel services report. Good evening. As of September 1st, 2025, 1,760 of the 7,898 enrolled students required special education programming. This continues to reflect 22.3% of the population. As of September, we have 119 students who are requiring out of district placements at private special
008education schools. 99 students require special education at other uh facilities. That includes public um magnet schools as well. During the month of August, 30% of the newly registered students required special education upon enrollment. One of these students required an out of district program. And I know I always talk frequently about how the numbers themselves don't really capture the snapshot, but I thought it important to note that in August in particular, one week we had eight students coming into our district that required an in district program. Four of which required one-to-one services. So I highlight that just because of how how fluid um our needs are every month. that does necessitate the need for some additional services in the district that we'll talk about. And then during the month of July, there were 5211 and 0911
009calls. Are there any questions on that report? Before I move to the next report, >> um if I may, um yeah, so the uh the increase that that you're referring to, is that would you say that is still falling in line to what you anticipated or is that um slightly higher than what you had expected? because you we were talking last time we had this conver you know like we talked about the the numbers we were like we really wouldn't know until closer to October. Um and I know we still have probably another month out but would you say that the numbers are kind of where we want we expected them to be or a little higher? >> I would say the numbers themselves aren't as alarming. It's the level of service that the kids
010are acquiring that is a little out of sync of what we would expect. Um I know uh Commissioner Tagler last budget cycle really wanted to us to show what is our seat capacity in every one of our programs that we have. Ending the summer we started at capacity in almost every single program. Um, I can share it during the October snapshot, but we have seven classrooms for sure that are at least 3 to four seats over capacity with eight students that are still requiring that level of service. Uh, so I did speak with Mrs. White recently to say like we're going to have some hard choices to make because we either need to consider out of district or we need to create some more programs to which we chose the latter. Um, but I think
011we just need to continue to highlight some of these things that are happening that we wouldn't anticipate. >> Thank you. You're the share. >> Definitely. >> Is your next report on the um the budget lines? >> Yeah. >> Okay. I'll wait for you to go through that then. >> Okay. Perfect. >> Okay. So, um, as we shared, as we're thinking about creating a dashboard and because special education costs have continued to rise each month, we're looking at what, um, our budgeted lines had. And in the previous month, I was showing you what we were encumbering. However, you know, after discussion, we thought, you know what, it's actually better to show what we're spending versus encumbered. So, you'll see a different type of chart this month. really I'm doing so for feedback of what shows us
012what it is that we're needing to see more frequently. >> And that would be this chart right here. >> Uh that was last month's. >> Okay. >> Uh this is what this month's looks like. >> Okay. >> So what you'll see is that there is a line uh going horizontally that really is showing you what percentage of that line that we've used. Um what I do want to kind of call out is me one second. Um, most of our lines are trending as we would expect them. I would say a positive is that our out of district tuition lines because our numbers are lower than they were, that's promising that we might have some level of cushion there to offset some other lines. I'm going to knock on wood because anything could change. Um, but
013with that said, the extended school year line is over budget. Um when we look at why it's over budget, I can share with you that the professional service aspect of that line accounted for 98 uh 863 of the line. Teachers salaries were over about 52,520 and then the PAR education salary line was over about $10,726. So then I looked at okay the professional service line is making the biggest hit on that line. What is that accounting for? And when we looked at it, it really reflects all of the related services from outofd district programs, not our in district school. It also is reflecting a high rate of hospitalization tutoring that were responsible for. Uh so that you know does um kind of take up the extended school year. The other thing that I wanted to
014call out was while this chart doesn't reflect this just yet, once the encumbrances are all fully in, we're actually going to see that the preschool line is also overbudgeted and the entirety of that o the overbudget is because of staff salaries. Are there any questions? Yeah, I I think to that to the point of showing what was been actually expended versus expended and acred, right? It was it kind of led me to the question about the private place tuition. >> So, we know we ended the year at about $11 million and I think this budget only has about 10 million. And so, um I think up to this point we've expended and acrewed about 3 million. How are we feeling about um this particular line as we move forward um in the year through the
015remainder of the fiscal year just kind of given the dynamics around that and um I don't know if there's ways that we're trying to defay it. I mean I I know that we you know we wanted to add programming to reduce any form of outplacement but this is a particular line that is not only costly but also in theory under budgeted given the fact that last year's expenses are higher. >> Absolutely. Um I would say because our numbers are lower I'm optimistic again said you know things can fluctuate. One of the other uh I guess a couple things that I'm excited about is that we just partnered with the bridges program at the state of Connecticut that will give us $40,000 for the next three years really to support transition services. So we're kind of
016thinking in our mind about how we can create an in district transition program using some of those funds. We already have one but we can reimagine that and use less contracted services. On top of that, the seed grant is now available and that's a $800,000 grant that I'll be writing. And really that the whole purpose of that is to bring more programs into district. And I've already shared with Miss White that my intent is once we can get something solidified the first year, I'm really going to start targeting site by sight to bring at least a chunk of students back home. Um, and I think that perhaps over time we're going to start to see that line come down. That's my intention. or rosecolored glass view. >> No, I think that's great. And you know,
017I think you know, the department's always asked to do a lot with very little um in my mind. And so I do think it's nice that you know you're taking the initiative to not only you know apply for the current grant for the $40,000 right and get that but also um sort of look at this from a long range perspective is if we make the investments what does that look like over you know say 3 to 5 years and what that investment can really do for Bristol public schools which is in hopes is free up you know the budget so you can continuously reinvest and invest in other areas which may um be lacking because of the um significant costs. So I do appreciate that. So thank you. >> Absolutely. Thank you. >> Thank you
018Amy. Um, moving on to item number eight would be student activity accounts report for August 31st. As of August 31st, Bristol Central High School athletics account began the year with 53,78155. They had $8,29527 in expenses and brought in $888.40 in receipts, leaving them with a balance of 46,37468. For the Bristol Central School activity account, they began the year with 155,10557. They had 10,51893 in expenditures, 1,45025 in receipts, leaving them with a month-end balance of 146,03689. The Bristol Eastern Athletics account began the year with $18,572.98, a total of 11,25424 in expenses and $7002 in receipts, left a balance of $8,2056. The Bristol Eastern High School Activity Fund began the year with 147,12242. They had 16,7205 in expenses, 9,55772 in receipts, leaving a month end balance of 13997809. Any questions? Uh with no other questions, um the
019uh we have for item nine, we have finance and operations acting as the building committee, but there is nothing on that agenda for that item. So, we're going to move on to old business. Is there any old business that we wish to uh discuss? Is there any new business that we would like to discuss? With no old or new business um to uh to discuss, I call for an adjournment. >> Thank you.