001difficult. Uh, and with that we I have my colleagues here. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and then we will go to uh the presentation. Thanks. Uh, Ben Wenrad, deputy mayor. Good evening, Laura Thomas Ferguson, chair of the board of education. Good evening. Latoya Yagalov, secretary of the board of education. Ethan Gleman, just on the board of education. Not just no just. Okay. All right. Uh so we have you two can hold those and all right. All right. Thank you Mayor Caner and good evening everyone. As as uh Mayor pointed out I I also want to thank you for your engagement um your participation tonight. Um I I've given um a pres you know a large scale presentation with a lot more detail workshops that we've had thus far. So, uh, tonight I'm really
002just for this I'm I'm going to hit some highlights, but through your questions, if there are specifics, I'll certainly dig in. Um, and I want to begin with what the key drivers are on the board of education budget uh that I've recommended to the board, the board will vote and adopt a budget tomorrow evening. Um, but, uh, one thing that we talk about, and I think you'll hear this from my colleague, Mr. Ledwith, u, we're a people organization at the end of the day. So 81% of our overall budget really comes from um salaries and benefits. Um and in terms of that this year just in terms of of kind of where that sits when we build a budget we we start from a premise of um we want to we are assuming we want
003to continue with all the programs and at and at the appropriate levels of staffing um that we have in the existing year. we roll that forward to next year's contracts, next year's prices across everything that we do in terms of both people and services. Um, so this year, uh, one of the things with our budget that we're contending with is we do have a 5.2% increase in salaries. That's based on, uh, a market negotiated contract. Uh, we also have, I think the bigger driver is, uh, the 9.9% increase in our health insurance premiums. And I know that uh, Mr. led with is going to kind of talk a little bit more in depth about the history of that. Uh but those are those are the the the drivers under our people cost uh that bring
004us some some increases to the budget. Um in light of those increases, we take a close look at enrollment trends um and a number of other things. And to offset costs, uh one of the things that I've proposed and recommended to the board is a net reduction of 8.2 two full-time positions or FTEES as they're called. Um, this comes uh after a year in the previous year with the sunsetting of the ESSER costs uh that we that will position us with a total of 40 positions fewer than where we were two years ago and and that was really uh the significant benefit that we had with the federal funding. Now, the return on the investment that I like to point out about this, I, you know, I can't um speak highly enough about the professional
005staff that we have. Our teachers are second to none, and they're a huge driver in this niche rating. Uh placing number uh West Harford is number one place to live uh multiple years in a row. We boast milk winners, several award winners on staff. That's a huge award that goes to individual teachers based on uh their outstanding performance. We're hosting this year the 25 2025 outstanding music educator of the a year award as well as our arts administrator of the year and and I know from talking with parents um really our our teaching staff is second to none. The big driver in our budget, the one that I've talked quite a bit about um has to do specifically with our outofd district tuition and and the driver behind that is a flat funding scheme on
006the part of the state of Connecticut. Um out of district tuition happens when a student's uh specialized needs are something that exceeds what the district itself is able to provide in house uh for the school. This can be a residential therapeutic placement. This can be a placement where there's uh greater medical needs for medically fragile children. Um it's it's it's nothing insignificant or or anything that we do without careful consideration. And one of the things I talk about here is I do talk about um and I and I'll kind of mention them when I close the slide of the pro or the programs that we have. But in terms of the budget driver itself, this one line item, it's going up 39.6% overall. as I said, based on the fact that that those costs are
007typically reimbursed from the state once you exceed a th certain threshold and the state has flat funded it um for several years in a row. Uh there's escalating costs with the tuition in those in those facilities. Um, and so we see ourselves needing an additional $3.7 million just based on uh what we know from this past year. Um, and what we anticipate for increasing costs and our total number of students. In addition to that, there's transportation costs associated with that to take these students from West Harford from typically from their homes and and drive them out to wherever the facilities may be. Um the total increase in our transportation budget is roughly $1.3 million. That's not all associated with this. Uh but this is kind of the big driver. Um so in the face of
008these increases, some of the things that we're looking to do uh is we are we first and foremost u I will credit our mayor Sher Caner. I will credit our West Harford delegation that did incredible work this year to get some emergency relief bills passed that provided, you probably saw a lot about that in the news, the additional 40 million that went out across the state. Um, that was a lot of lobbying uh on our part and for us that equated to an additional 1.3 million that we were able to get this year. The governor has promised an additional 40 million two years out. However, right now as the state is looking at its budget, there is nothing in place for next year which is kind of driving where we are. So, in light of
009this, we're exploring some ideas. We're exploiting regional busing routes where maybe we have uh many other families perhaps in districts that are nearby and we can and if they're all going to some of the same out of district placement locations perhaps we can partner and share some costs with the busing as opposed to kind of how we currently operate where each individual town uh is responsible for its own. We're also looking at uh the potential to pilot a new program um as an alternative to one facet of our outdist out of district placements. Um that's that's kind of a big question that's been talked about. Well, why don't you do more um in district instead of the out of districts? Uh what I want to point out our return on investment listed on the screen
010are all the different things we do in district that are alternatives to out of district placement. So we have our early learning centers at multiple elementaryaries. We have intensive academic and behavioral programs that run K through 12. We have a school engagement program, our strive program, and our nationally recognized postsecary program. Um, we did a cost analysis to say, hey, if what's the total cost to run all of these programs, all the staffing, all the services that are provided, um, versus if that was at an out of district cost based on the average out of district cost. Um, and it and it's a it's a return on investment of a savings of roughly 35 million. So, we're extremely proud of the programs we have. We we want to see if there's one more that we
011can bring on, but there are certain services, I'm just being honest with you, that we can't necessarily replicate um in our school district. Um, finally, in terms of programming needs, when I kind of look out and I say, "Okay, what do we need to do relative to whether it be the addition of a program or just staffing needs in general across our programs, um, I would tell you that this current budget does have an increase of four and 1/2 positions um, specifically within special education. And that increase of four and a half positions, that is that is part of the net overall reduction of 8.2 too. Um, this budget proposal does seek to preserve all of our existing programs u while finding some savings through more efficient staffing and scheduling. So, in terms of how
012do I how do I add four and a half but still get down to an overall net reduction of eight, we expect to be able to trim some part-time staffing uh with cuts as far away from the classroom as possible, preserving programs um in those departments. So specifically some trims within intervention uh within counseling within gifted and talented and within instructional coaching as well. Of course we look at the enrollments um and I think you know I've gotten a significant number of emails and had a significant number of conversations in and around class size guidelines. And I anticipate that'll be a question and I'll be happy to talk about it. But we do have uh some declining enrollments. So, we do anticipate a total of five fewer um elementary sections next year. Uh when we
013look across the schools, um I've talked about the return on investment for our programming. I should really say this is the return on investment for the incredible work that our teachers do. We have six named schools of distinction just this last year. We have a recently named Blue Ribbon School. Our high schools continu continuously score in the top 3% nationally and that rests on a foundation prek all the way through 12. Um we just presented to the board of education this year we were the we were the number one highest uh number of early college experience um through Yukon the ECE program uh courses taken. Uh and when you cost that out at the average tuition cost, uh that's a that's a savings passed on to of roughly $2.7 million in tuition savings for our
014parents. Um our sports and co-curricular uh programs are recognized. They're recognized regionally and nationally. We just we just uh got word on our state champs for hockey. Um, we also just uh stole some we stole 18 awards at the uh at the at a computer science competition this past weekend. So, um, I just can't say enough and I'm sure there's a hundred examples that I could point to in terms of that return on investment. So, kind of where all that lands and as I mentioned at the beginning, uh, we really begin uh by looking at the existing budget which for this current year is just over $200 million. and we say, "Okay, if I'm going to roll that forward and continue all of the same uh programs, what would it cost at next year's prices?"
015Um, that drives a roughly $16 million increase. From that, um, I've looked at what can I cut back on um and and what kinds of savings can we have? I recommended to the board of education um some cuts and changes while preserving all of the programs equating to a savings of 1.56 million landing us at a 215 million for total which is a significant you know increase relative to what we're typically used to of 7.2%. Um the biggest part of that increase as I've kind of mentioned uh really lands with uh some of that flat funding at the state level. So that's the point from which um we've begun the process. Uh we've had a lot of questions from our board of education, a lot of inquiries that we've tried to address uh both through
016these meetings and listening at our public hearings. Um and we'll we'll bring that to fruition with the board of education vote before turning it over to the town council. With that, I'll give it to my colleague to go through the town's budget. Thank you, Paul, and uh good evening, everyone. Thanks for being here. Um, this is our uh third community conversation. Uh, we had one this morning. Uh, and we had one a couple of weeks ago at the Bishop's Corner Senior Center. It was a bank brain trust of our mayor and the chair of our uh, board of education. Uh, normally what we do and Paul described the public hearings that we have and the budget workshops that we have, but those are really more one way. So, it's either the community talking to us
017or during a workshop we're gathering information or the staff is providing uh information to our counselor and our board of education to digest um our very large budget. So, this is an opportunity for us to get into a back and forth with our residents and that's very important to us through this process. We've been working on this budget for uh for a while now. This isn't something that just started four or five weeks ago. Um Paul and I have had uh a number of conversations throughout the year. We've had conversations with the mayor and our board chair. Uh and we knew this was going to be a difficult budget this year. Um and and I'll get into some of the reasons why some of the reasons for our budget, the town budget increase are very
018similar to what's happening on the board side. But normally what we like to see happen is an incre see an increase in our grand list growth. And that's very important for us to continue to provide the exceptional services to our community. We had good grandlist growth this year. I'll talk about that a little bit, but we have a we have a significant amount of grandless growth coming over the next couple of years. And when you see that number increase, that'll help us lower our mill rate over time. and and that's I know important to our residents to to be able to continue to deliver the services that we do at a a more coste effective way. So um so this year um similar to to the school side our salary increases and benefits are driving
019uh most of our costs. So, um we did settle uh with six bargaining units uh during the 24 um calendar year, but those contracts went retroactive back to 2001. So, our employees got a retroactive payment back to 2001 and we had to build a contingency to to offset that wage increase, which is factors a little bit into our salary increase this year, but they were they were wage increases that were essentially shared across the state. So, anytime we're sitting down and negotiating with the union, whether it's on the school side or on the town side, it's a very scripted process. So when we're meeting with our police union or fire union, public works union or teacher union which just settled, you're looking at what those settlements are around the state and everyone pretty much comes
020in right around that same number. Our benefit costs this year uh as Paul alluded to was significant. Unfortunately, our costs went up 9.9% this year and we joined the state partnership plan seven years ago. So that allowed that's a a statute that allows municipalities around the state of Connecticut to join the state health care plan. Usually you get a large number of um employees and those you get some cost efficiencies when you join a large number like that and we've been very it has benefited us tremendously long term. So, the first year we joined the partnership plan, we saved $2 million in our health care costs. That went directly to our bottom line uh seven years ago. Since then, our average increase has been over 7 years 4.2%. So, that's below our national healthcare trends
021that we were seeing around the country. Unfortunately, this year we were hit with a 9.9% increase. A really bad year to see um that kind of increase hit. Um, but it's it's, you know, again, when you look back over the last seven seven years, it's been a a windfall, so to speak. I mean, a very it's been very beneficial to our um to us and to our taxpayers to have joined that plan. Um, but we will continue to monitor that plan as we move forward. Certainly, if that's those are the kinds of increases that we would expect in the future. I'm not I don't think that'll happen, but if it were, we'll work very closely with our unions to potentially look at other types of plans. But our mayor's had several conversations with the state
022controller. Um we do feel it's an isolated year this year. Um last year, I think was a 2.2% increase. So um but again, those two factors are are um hitting us pretty significantly this year between the salary and the benefits. and you know return on investment as as Paul was alluding to um in his comments and and I'll echo those as well like the mo the niche um best town to live in for eight straight years. Those are the kinds of things that drive what we do. Um so those are so important to our town council, our board of education, striving to be the best place to to live, to raise your family, to educate. Those are the kinds of things that are so so important to us. And I know they're so important to
023our residents as well. And it's a combination of our policy makers, a combination of our staff, our teachers, but it's our residents as well and our businesses that are so important to collectively uh continue to help make West Harford be the best that it can. So, as we move forward, obviously, we're dealing with some challenges this year. We're going to try to uh balance those uh and continue to deliver the exceptional services as we have in the past. So, uh, a couple things here. Operating expenses. Um, our operating expenses on the town side this year are flat 31 million. They were 31 million last year. It's 31 million this year. Last year, we increase those costs by 1.3 million. As we all know, when we're out shopping, whether it's, you know, grocery shopping or buying
024something for our homes, everything costs a little bit more this year. Um, but we're maintaining our operating expenses across each department within the town. So, we're talking our directors understand that we are essentially are operating our departments as if they are our own household um expenses. So, if something's if salt's going to cost us a little bit more next year, we're going to have to do something to offset that expense within our department. and our directors are committed to maintaining um that that operating expense number where it is. It's not going to be easy. Um but we did come in with a flat operating expense increase, capital financing, um everything you're seeing around town from a capital from a infrastructure improvement standpoint, those are those are things that we're going to do every year. Um
025we essentially bond $15 million every single year. And the way we do it in West Harford is we will actually use that bonding money to pay for expenses in the future. So, um or or I'm sorry, we use that money to pay ourselves back. So, that $15 million, we'll we'll fund it with cash. We'll use that bonding to to pay ourselves back, but we haven't increased that number this year. It's $15 million, but we're still committed to a $550 million capital improvement program over the next 12 years. So, um, it's not having a dram significant impact on our budget this year, but we're committed to building on what we've been doing and continue to make our roads safer. Programs like our vision zero program, I know folks have probably heard about that program. It's our
026commitment to making our streets safer for everybody. Um, and our commitment to that is maintained in our capital financing program. So we do uh we maintain we are AAA rated community. Uh something we're very proud of. We've been AAA rated for ever. Um so it goes back to the early 70s. Um but that's a benefit to us and it's a b benefit to our residents. So we're able to borrow money to bond those infrastructure changes at a at a much lower cost than a double A or a single rate single A rated community. So maintaining um that AAA status is very important to us and we will continue to work to to ensure that we do uh stay at that level. Talked uh when I was uh my opening comments about grandless growth. So this
027year we are so you you can't look anywhere in town and I'm sure people will have some questions like when are we going to see the benefit of all of these developments that are being uh approved or have been approved or in the process of being constructed. So, like I said in my opening comments, we're a year or two out from from seeing the the fruits of those labors. Uh, but this year we did with all the construction that you're seeing uh right back here at the old children's science museum right here on Farmington Avenue with a by line and uh the Camelot which is um a 100% affordable project. Um all of that was with those projects that are in the process of being built. We saw $61 million of uh grand list growth
028this year. So, we expect that number to be significantly higher as we move into next year and then in the following year. So, uh had a conversation with our assessor just over the last couple of days. Our current grand list is at $7.2 billion. We're expecting that number with the our we and we've all seen it, right? Anyone who who owns a home, a personal home here or a business, you seen what's happening with the value of your home. it's increasing across the community um significantly. We're up on average about 35%. So two years from now we will see that grand list grow from 7.2 billion to 10 billion. So and I think that's a reflection of um what we have here in West Harford, that uniqueness, that specialness, that place that people want to
029be and and people want to invest in our community as well. and that's reflected in in all of these projects that we're seeing uh pop up around town. Um there's been a a recordbreaking level of investment in our community um that we will benefit from as we move through these next couple of years. I I always refer to the property at 1700 Asylum which uh is a former Yukon campus. that parking lot side of the uh development. Uh that de developer purchased it from the uh developer that purchased the entire property, both 1,800 and 1700, and purchased that parking lot side for $23 million, which just had us all scratching our heads in internally at the town. But that again, it's just a reflection of the willingness of people wanting to invest in in what
030we're doing here. Um, you know, whenever we're doing every year we're looking at ways to do things more efficiently, more effectively. One example of that is our our pension plan. Uh, back in 2022, so just 3 years ago, the amount that we had to contribute to our pension plan was $26 million a year, and that number was going up by $2 million plus every single year. um our our mayor and our town council had the vision of taking advantage of our AAA rated status, issuing pension obligation bonds because of that AAA rated status and and and getting a true interest cost of less than 3% investing those funds earning 6.5% and completely turning around our pension plan. So three years ago we were contributing $26 million. Today, our ADC, our actuarial determined employer contribution is
031$10 million, and we're nearly fully funded in the pension plan. So, we do have to pay off those bonds. Uh, and we will do that over 22 years. But um we when we did set this plan up, not to get too far in the weeds, we also had the vision to set up a pension obligation bond reserve fund to use th that fund to offset mitigate any significant increases in our pension plan moving forward if the markets were to not um go in the direction that uh that they have been previously. So, um, and again, as I mentioned, uh, 35% increase in residential home values over the last couple years, um, indicating our strong economic health and ability to provide a high quality of life for our residents. So, just overall in summary, uh, 6.55%
032increase in expenditures, 5.73 on the town, 7.18 on education, 5.27 on capital. um our mill rate as of now, and this is something we're working on. So, we still have a couple of more weeks that we'll be working very closely with our town council. As Paul said, the board of ed will adopt their budget tomorrow night. Um but we have some time to continue to work on getting our mill rate down from where it is right now of 45 uh. 21. Our motor vehicle mill rate, I I do want to correct something uh some misinformation that's out there. So motor vehicle mill rate is fixed at 32.46. So every uh community around the state has a a maximum mill rate of 32.46. They could have a lower mill rate than that. Um our mill rate
033is not changing. So going into this year, state had um dictated to all 169 cities and towns a new method to value our motor vehicles. So they essentially changed the way we assess our vehicles. That resulted in a significant decrease in grandless value for most communities around the state. Ours dropped by $50 million on the motor vehicle side alone just by this kind of arbitrary change that the state implemented. The state realized pretty quickly after hearing from our council and delegation and delegation from around the state that that needs to change. So the state actually provided allowed municipalities the option to roll back that decrease in value. So um so we will our value go we clawed back that 50 million decrease in value um but we won't be paying more in motor vehicle taxes.
034So we collected $18 million in motor vehicle taxes this year. Uh we'll collect $18 million next year. We won't collect a dollar more in motor vehicle taxes. So, I just it's kind of confusing, but I just wanted to correct some misinformation out there where folks may think there's going to increase in her motor vehicle taxes as well. So, uh turn things back over to the mayor and then we would love to hear from everyone here and and answer any detailed questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. So, I hope that helps a little. I know it's very dry, but I I do want to give you a full picture of why property taxes are what they are. And often times people do say they really are high. They are and
035there is a reason the state has designed it this way. Um and some towns have a different dynamic than we do. So the state contributes 10% to our overall budget. That's and the property taxes are 90% of the town's budget. Uh some other towns like Hartford get about 50% of their budget from state support. We get 10. Um, and it's remained fairly stable for for a a while. It used to be more actually. It went down a little bit, went up, whatever. Um, of that 90% of property taxes, 90% are residential property taxes. We have 10% in our town that are commercial taxes. Uh, a town like Farmington has a very different dynamic. They have a lot of state property with Yukon Medical. Um, they also have a lot of corporate headquarters. We don't. We
036have some industry uh in the southeast quadrant of town. We have the mall, half the mall or a little over half and we have blue back square. Um we will be adding uh uh we have approved and 1,800 there will be some commercial uh there but that's not in the overall scheme of that 7.2 billion. It's not much of it's really residential. So again different dynamic than some other communities. People do ask that um and what do we pay for 60% of our budget is education the a majority on the town side the other remaining 30 31% and then we have financing police fire public works those are the drivers we have um we have some smaller departments we have a community development department we have a our social services department where the libraries fall
037under uh they're very small um compared to what we what are what? And and if you eliminated all of if you shut the libraries and the senior centers, you would be reducing the budget by $3 million, something like that, right? I think it's about three four 3.8 or $4 million. So, I mean, it doesn't move the needle that much and that would impact quality of life quite substantially. We rely very heavy uh heavily on uh temporary employment for our parks and uh our summer our golf courses and all that that and we do have fees that offset those. So really I want you to just remember the real drivers education, police, fire, public works, that's trash that's you know and that's probably half their budget is trash snow removal all of that. So, and that
038is that's people, right? We so we would have to um reduce people to make a a substantial change to our budget in anyway. We've we managed over time very carefully in police. We have we're pretty fully staffed for the most part. Um and I you know and we talk very frequently there. There's a lot of activity in our police department. There's a lot of activity in our fire department too. There are paramedics too. Another change that we made, rather than our fire uh fighters uh being um responding only to fires, they became paramedics so they could respond to and we ended a contract that we had for paramedics. That was saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Um I do want to recognize and thank a couple I want to thank WHCI for being here
039for filming this so people can at home can watch and and uh and learn. So you will be on potentially on camera so know that. Um, I want to also thank the library, Laura Imshire, and um and all the people that um sort of set this up and and made this happen. So, it's after I want to recognize Jason Gagnner from the board of education's in the audience. Uh, and Deb Puland from the town council's also in the audience. I don't see anybody else. I'm a little short, so it's hard for me to see that angle. Uh, but um anyway, so I just wanted to give you a full a full picture of of what he's going and just another just one other little thing, my soap box. Um the state is just a backd
040dog. This is an example that I the state doesn't give us any uh diversification in revenue. It is all property taxes that the town can collect. That's it. Um we have a couple of little slices that are coming. Uh we have cannabis and uh that they added recently and uh potentially on uh and uh speeding enforcement, but um but we're not there yet. Uh but I'll give you an example. Dog license. So a dog license cost $9. The town keeps one, the state gets eight. It cost us more money to administer a dog license than it does. So, uh, the state has really swept a lot of revenue uh from the towns and the towns rely solely on property taxes. Uh, a town like us that is considered a wealthier community um by the state,
041not by me the mayor, by the state uh is, you know, it really is residential property taxes that drive our budget. and you investing in our community have defined what this community is and how it operates. So, uh, all right. So, we would love to hear from you. I know it's always hard, but ah, an eager beaver in the back. We're going to give you the mic because we want to cover it on. Thank you. So, I have a couple issues. Um, first of all, I've lived in the town since uh 2012. My grandparents, they have lived they lived in the town since probably the 40s. My father graduated from Connor High. Um, and he grew up in Elmwood. My first house was in Elmwood. Now I'm on Cedric Road, the old Philippine house, if
042anybody knows him. Um, the issues that I have here is yes, my house went up by $300,000. Okay. But when my husband and I bought that house, we were not expecting it to go up to an $800,000 house. And we were not expecting to pay taxes on an $800,000 house. It's getting to the point where my husband and I are looking at it saying if we can't meet our monthly bills, cuz we're also paying how much in daycare year? 27,000? Something like 30. Yeah. 27,000 to 30,000 a year in daycare, then it's like, okay, well then maybe we sell the house and we go to a different town because we don't benefit from the education system right now. There's not enough prek programs to to meet the needs of all the prek kids in town.
043On top of that, I'm walking in the center last week of my husband and my baby and someone's out on the street smoking marijuana openly and my daughter has to who's 17 months has to go through the fumes of that because the politicians at the state level and then the introduction of the cannabis shops. That is now what has been introduced into our town. Then yesterday we're at the corners uh the intersection of Farmington and Boulevard. Same thing. two kids in their 20s just smoking up out in the open and it's not even 10:00 a.m. Okay, it's not like it's 11 o'clock at night. That's the part I have the issue with. As you say, this is such a great town to live in. You guys are I'm just going to say it. Sorry, honey.
044You're raping us over taxes. Okay, I am. And if you compare the school system Okay, I'm sorry, Mr. Superintendent. If you compare the school system of our school within our DUR, so Avon, Simsbury, Farmington, our schools are not as great as theirs. The test scores are not that high. And I would love to know who negotiated a contract with the teacher union to give them a pro-rated salary from 2021. I'm a teacher in South Windsor. We did not get a contract like that. We got a 1% raise. So, whoever the negotiation person was on that, they should be fired because they did not do their duty to this town. The other thing as well is our police department. First of all, I come from a police family. I'm the granddaughter of a chief of police.
045I'm the cousin of a captain. I'm a cousin of a lieutenant. And I got five other cousins who are cops. And we have a huge police department. We have how many captains? Like two at least. We three we have three captains. Do you know how many Rocky Hill has? None. They don't have a deputy chief. Don't we have a deputy chief? Two assistant chiefs. Two assistant chiefs. Three captains. How many lieutenants? Uh I mean our our police department workforce has not changed. Yeah. But that doesn't matter. We have a massive police department. Okay. And I and I love the police. Okay. I love the fact that if I call them, they are there. I love our firemen, too. However, you guys are introducing all these apartment complexes and yet you think there's going to be
046no added cost onto the police department, the fire department, which our schools. How are you then going to alleviate that? You're going to say, "Well, we need to hire more police. We need to hire more fire. We need to hire more teachers. We need to build another school building." Okay, it's just crazy. At a certain point, you got to say, "I can't afford the Balenciata bag, so I got to go to Kmart." Okay, I'm sorry. That's just how it is. Because at a certain point, people can't afford to live in the town because the taxes are so high. And I know it because we're going through that. My husband works at Sigma. I'm a teacher. We're highly educated. We have good jobs. And it's just a shame that my grandparents who had no high school
047diploma couldn't read or write. My father was a painting contractor and yet they were able to live here wonderfully. And yet now, you know, we're making over six figures. We can't afford to live here. So, it's gotten it's just gotten a little crazy. And please stop saying our school system is the best school system. Okay? We are below Farmington, Simsbury, and Avon. Okay? I'm going to disagree on that. So I'm sorry I everything you're saying but Farmington Avon Simsbury you know when you break it out they do not have anywhere close to the diversity we have. So if you want to look in the aggregate, you can say that. But if you look at the performance of our students across the different groups and you compare them likewise to those different groups, um West Harford
048is doing extremely well and we continue because we know that families are choosing between West Harford, Avon, Farmington, Simsbury. We don't shy from those comparisons, but you know, I I'm not going to stop saying how excellent the schools are. I'm really not. I've looked at the test scores. They say differently. Okay. Yes, we have a ton of APs, AP classes, but the average is like a three. It's not like a five. Uh Hall has better SAT scores than we do than Conor district. More than doubled the number of students who have access to AP maintaining the same average test score. We have opened our doors. We become a national model for that. Right. But they need at least a four on the test in order to get college credit. So, you're feeding kids into the
049system. They're not getting a four and they're not getting college credit. And I say that because I'm an ECE teacher and I was a former AP teacher. I know. I know exactly what it is. So, when my daughter, we're actually getting to the point where if the schools continue the way they are, then we're going to have to go talk about private schools. And then it's like, well, what's the point? What's the point? You know, I might as well just move to Bloomfield or Hartford and then pay the money to go there. So, no, I I hear you. But I was an AP teacher and an ECE teacher also. And you know, it's not every school that requires a four. It's not every program. Um, and I've had I've had so many students who have
050come back, students who have earned a two, and said that what they gained from the experience was more than the test score was more than the placement. What they learned in terms of the studying habits, the just the skills that that go into it, the soft skills, the the ability to argue, to think critically, all of that, you know. Right. But that doesn't help the parents pocketbook. No, I I respect what you're saying relative to the costs. I do, but I just, you know, I just have to come out in defense of the programs. That's fine. And you do I love Julio and and Ann McCernen, so they were I went to high school with Julio, so and Ann was my civics teacher. So, fantastic people. So, thank you. Thank you. Hi. Um, thank you
051so much for taking your time to sort of illuminate what's going on. Um, my family's also been here for a lot of generation. My my kids are fifth generation. And one thing I think about when I think about quality of life, best place to live, best place to retire, all the law audits we won is, will my kids be able to live near me? That's a big deal to me. I'm not sure I could even live near me now. The the prices of property have gone up so much, and that's a lovely thing for folks who can afford the tax bill. It's not a lovely thing for everyone. Um, you know, if if any of you are ever visiting the library when the local history room is open, take a look at the atlas of
052uh West Harford history there. It really is a treasure and you'll see that our schools that are winning blue ribbons, our schools that are rated so high, our streets, so many places are named after families that were here for hundreds of years. It creates a lovely sense of place. And I think this kind of contiguity can lend a sense to whether the town is going the right direction, the wrong direction. Uh granted, bringing in new people who have seen other places, it's also a great way to do that. I wouldn't want to lock other people out of the town, but when we're talking about the schools being good, well, our enrollment numbers are going down. A lot of that is because young families can't afford to live here. And look, I I've got a gray
053beard. I wouldn't remi mind if our town became a retirement community. I'd fit in. My kids maybe not so much. But where people are moving and one of the few districts in the state that's increasing in size, South Windsor, people can afford to live there. I think there's something to be said for that. And look, West Tartford has for a long time been a one party town. That's okay. There are pluses to that. There are minuses to that. But I think it imposes on the de facto ruling party a duty to be perhaps excessively thrifty or parsimmonious because there's no one who will be holding them to account or no one who can anyway one way or another the Democrats are going to win in two years and in four years and in 8 years
054that's what it's going to be and we if we want these sort of legacy families and maybe we don't. And if we want our kids to be able to live near us, then maybe we can't continue programs that we've enjoyed this long, maybe we actually have to cut back on some of the things we're funding in education or as you mentioned in the police force because I think that uh retiring a big if it's the best place to retire, I think we have to consider whether we're going to be able to retire anywhere near the people we love. And if people are choosing to go to South Windsor, that suggests to me they're choosing that as a better place to live, at least for the dollar. Now, I appreciate, believe me, I appreciate my mother
055is on fixed income. Um, I now am on a fixed income recently. Um my son uh recently moved here and is in a similar very challenging position. One of the reasons why the development is so important is we don't have houses for sale. That's what is pushing up the prices. It's the demand. It's supply demand. And our community has been hit a little harder than others. I don't know why. There's been less supply. So one of the reasons for or you know one of the thoughts about development and is putting inventory is getting those housing costs down. Uh we need to get the housing costs down and this is the housing costs in Connecticut overall are very very high. West Harvard has always had high property taxes but they are they're really they are high.
056Um but we you know the it the only way to to help is one grandless growth which we really haven't had much groundless growth since blue back square and now we see a lot and I think we're going to see a dip soon because of steel and wood and inflationary pressure. So we you kind of have to grab it when the catch the wave when it's when it's happening as long as you do it in the right way. Um, and we feel like we have all of the developments have gone through extraordinary um uh reviews and and and uh and lots of changes along the way. So, we we think we have quality projects. Uh, but part of that is adding to inventory for choices of housing. So, somebody that is in a house with
057empty nest has an opportunity to move to a a smaller home, a town home. Part of the problem is people there are no places to go. If you want to stay in town, there are very few places to go. Um but and a lot of it is an inventory uh situation. Um as far as the police go, I think the the town manager can speak to this a little bit more. We are a town that has activity all the time and we can't always determine what that activity is. Um it's community groups that are asking for, you know, whether it's a walk-athon or a or um uh um fire and ice or or whatever whatever those um uh pride or whatever those activities are there. And we ask people to pay for their use of
058the facilities, but it does require a lot of police with the current culture to make sure our people attending and people that are people that are there and people that are attending. Celebrate is another big one. Uh that um they are protected and they are safe. And there's a lot of uh things that go on under radar that uh we are concerned about and we do need to be able to respond to. We are we would be a different community with 10 less officers. We would um and with um and again police officers um we get the cream of the crop um because we expect it uh and we pay competitively. We aren't the highest. We're surely not the lowest. Um but um and it's partly the way that they handle themselves with the public
059and visitors and uh something that we actually are very very proud of. But wa and I can add on to that. A couple of things I just wanted to add to the mayor's comments. So of a community of our size, 64,000 and we are growing. Um and you compare any other community of our size or and you can go above and beyond us. Um our police department is is where it should be. We we could actually probably use a couple more officers based on the size of our community. And what's to the mayor's point, we're a draw. We're a draw. We're a regional draw. Um we have something going on in this community every single weekend from right now until right through the holidays. Literally every single weekend. And we're drawing from uh all over
060the state. And and then there's things happening in the world that that we're all seeing. And then West Harford's a place where you want to let your voice, you have you have the opportunity to let your voice be heard. And we had a rally here this past weekend. We had one last weekend. Um there's always something going on and we have to provide protection for for our community. It's just what we do. Um and it's one of the most important. I always refer to it as as the foundation of everything we do in our town starts with public safety. It allows us to have these great schools. if we don't have the ability to keep our residents safe, um then we wouldn't be who we are. Um and I know when we need them the
061most, and we've all, you know, just looking around the room, there's enough people here statistically to say, I know some of you have needed uh our police department or our fire department. They were there before you needed them. They were and they that's what they do. Um, so I I there's not we wouldn't be in a position to reduce our police department, that's for sure. You talk about our affordability in town and we've we're talking about the development that we're seeing. Um, our commitment to affordable housing is unmatched in the state. Everything that's happening around uh the town, we have a focus on affordability as well. So, we received every town in the country received American Rescue Plan Act funds. We received a decent amount of money like everybody else did. You were allowed to
062use that money in different ways to help your community get through CO. Uh we use $7 million of our $35 million for affordable housing alone. So with these developments that we're seeing, we want those developments to have units that are affordable for individuals at different levels of affordability. We don't we just don't want Yeah. Our values are increasing significantly of our home values. We still want to open the doors of our community, allow people to be able to afford to come back here and live. I want my kids to live here just as just as much. That would be wonderful for me uh to have my family come back to uh to West Hartford. It's a a great place to have raised a family. Um I I'm I'm so glad I did it here and
063nowhere else. But we're going to continue. Our council's committed to looking to make sure that we find uh ways to make it affordable for everyone. I was just going to let me add one thing and I'll turn it to Laura. Um, South Windsor is the is a town that uh is the only town in the state of Connecticut that has an increasing enrollment. I meet with the superintendents across the board. So, um, you know, across the Harford region and then and then we meet we meet at the state level and and they're the singular example. So, I don't know that you know I don't know what explains that trend. I'm well I'm friends with Kate and so if it's the entire state moving to South Windsor that's a theory but uh the the enrollment trends
064across the state are are down. I only talk to one group of people primarily. 99% of the people I talk to are parents in the district. And what I hear from them continuously is they they move to West Harford either from other states from within Connecticut or often times I've got a lot of my own students that have come back. They move back in for the schools. I recognize I'm biased on that because that's that's primarily the folks that I talk to if they're already there. So there's a bias inherent to that. I acknowledge that. I recognize it. Um, but I wouldn't, you know, I I don't know that uh enrollment is something um in terms of a decrease that that's necessarily being driven by the economics. The economics are tough. I'm I'm not going
065to dispute that. But I also know that, you know, if a house goes up for sale, it's it's sold pretty much within hours, if not days. Um and and again, the folks that I know that are that are buying are customers of mine at the school. So that's that's what I know. I'll let Lauren get the final word. Not the final because want to certainly hear hear more and just wanted to say this is what we wanted. We're so glad that you all are here. We're so glad that we have this opportunity. This is certainly what our town coun our mayor our town counselors and fellow board of ed members wanted was to hear from all of you. Why? As was shared in terms of the budget overall, 60% of it is made up of
066the board of education in terms of what supports our students. That means the majority of the town budget is to support the students in the district. However, we represent a minority of constituents in the town. We just make up about 30% of residents in the town. So there's an inverse relationship right there. We make up the minority in the town, but we take up the majority of the budget. And so for that reason, that's why we collectively knew it was so important to have this open conversation because all hands are involved. All hands are on deck. We certainly can't just speak in a silo of what supports the district without all investors and stakeholders being a part of that. And all of you are stakeholders. All of you are stakeholders. So I appreciate your passion,
067ma'am. I appreciate and I respect it. I do. And I appreciate yours as well too because we didn't come here just to hear nicy nicy fluffy fluffy. We wanted to hear real conversation. So thank you for reminding us of the real conversation. And in doing so, we'll continue to speak and advocate for the purpose of why we serve and why we are charged to do what we are charged to do. And we are so pleased with our district and respect that their different views in terms of the school system. We are so proud that our school system represents over 70 different languages spoken in the district. We are so proud that within our school district, we have about 18% of students that receive serial education services. And we say that with pride. We say that
068with pride because regardless of the additional supports they may need, they are still our students and we still are committed to investing in them as they deserve. We recognize too we have many students, pardon me forgetting offhand, the percentage that are economically challenged. They are still our students. We know that those students that receive free and reduced lunches, lunching food rather, we need to support and invest them in them because the challenges they face outside of school trickle into the classroom and they are our students. All of those pieces contribute to the resources we must put in place to support our budget. Now, I say that not to say that's going to put a smile on everyone's face and you're going to say, "Oh, hurrah, hurrah." No, because again, we're talking numbers. But at the
069end of the day, we must never forget, and I know you all believe this, these numbers relate to people. These numbers relate to human beings. These numbers relate to children. Even those beautiful children that keep saying, "Uhoh, uh-oh." Back there, they're children that are going to grow up to become adults and hopefully will be adults in our community. But right now, I'm just speaking in my lane within the board of ed. We are committed to investing in those little children, wanting to support them growing up to become healthy adults. So, we want to continue to receive your questions and your concerns. That's why we're here. That is certainly why we're here. So, thank you for being open and candid with your sharing. So, just to make a point, I have a daughter who moved to
070the town in the last year and uh she was pretty surprised when I mentioned what the rate was going to be. So, I understand your concern because she had the same um good evening. Uh my name is Paola Vera Leona. I am resident here in West Harford. I have two children at Bravon Elementary School. I was here already last week um to to speak about our particular concern. And um so first I I want to emphasize again I truly appreciate this opportunity because indeed is not the same to just speak and tell you what are our concerns but to actually hopefully concretely hear potential solutions to address these concerns. Having said that, I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed that you know I was able to hear from work the conversations in the
071morning and I hear right now this perspective that because you know only 30% of of our families you know are are representing from all of the families that you know only 30% of of our families that that actually have children in in um public schools. So um in my case we move actually from France. We could have moved anywhere in the state of Connecticut. I moved here for work and uh really our realtor was trying to convince us to go to Simsbury and we insisted that we wanted to live here. And the number one reason of that besides the fact that my friend's husband loves a walking town is is education. We didn't even have children back then. This was just the plan. We are going to move here. We are going to be years
072paying taxes while we won't benefit from it in terms of education but we hope and we think that it's worth to pay them for as many years as we need to while hopefully God will give us children. So and then they came our children came wait seven years while you know we are in preschool system and so on and so forth we've paid taxes happily again because we feel an investment but however now that is the time that now I have two children now it seems that this is just sliding down completely going away um and in the particular case of my eldest child he's a Braborn elementary school third grade about to move to fourth grade, moving from 18 children to 27 in a school that actually have this intensive behavioral program as you
073know and as I said last time I I'm actually losing my sleep at night because both of my children every year have had at least one children in this program and of course it's important and we need to embrace but again just simply by overcrowowning a classroom that simply is going to be at a forget about even within the program or not is worrying me how you know how is it going to be and we all in town I seen the disparity across the schools I'm sorry and and I have friends at BBby so I don't want to say anything I'm I'm happy for them but discussing with my the former uh teacher of my children uh in kindergarten they are overwhelmed in Brainburn with even a classroom of 27 uh kids in Jack's classroom
074for four grade with 27 kids and then I see other schools for the same town we are paying the same taxes and I'm sorry but we are not getting the same opportunity and so obviously I hear you completely all the time you've spent thinking on the budget trying to cut and I asked last time like really please whatever it needs to be done because beyond just the theoretical we can actually ask very specific questions and I I beg you to please answer us in a very concrete way. I know that in the this is specific case for the 20 the three there are three uh um grades across the town that are going to have 27 kids between fourth grade and fifth grade and I know that you budgeted three extra classrooms and so hopefully
075you will allocate it hasn't been concretely set but that is depending that 100% of all the children that have been accepted in the lottery right uh for the magnet schools will go to magnet schools but what is the contingency plan if that doesn't happen and and again for for my child with 27 in an in an IB program what is a concrete contingency plan so that this just doesn't happen and as much as as of course the purpose hasn't been to increase the class is just out of being mean to us but the concrete result is that my children is going to have 26 classmates and he's not going to receive the same education opportunity as other schools that in the same uh town with the same taxes. So I I beg you to please
076be very open. I will I will do my very best to answer that. I've answered that question a couple of times already. So um follow up if if you don't get the answer if you don't get the information um that you're seeking. So, first and foremost, what's being referenced for folks who may not be aware on the data supplement um we produce something that looks like this, which is a projected enrollment that breaks it down by neighborhood school and then we apply to uh the projected enrollment for each neighborhood school our existing class size guidelines. And there is a difference in the existing class size guidelines for grades K through three where we look at typically a maximum of 23 students per classroom and grades four and five where we have a maximum of 27
077students. And so where we hit these friction points year-over-year, not a new not a new phenomenon, is in the transition primarily from third grade to fourth grade. Because if you have uh classrooms that are if you if you have a cohort at a building that's roughly close to 54, in third grade, that 54 is going to be divided across three classrooms, and you'll have very comfortable class sizes. But in fourth grade, it could be a very tight class size approaching the guidelines. So in that document which is a planning tool and as you said there are three sections left to give but just for the planning tool we demonstrated here's how it would break out if we were only using the class size guidelines before we put those three out and and I don't know
078if it was you someone asked me through an email um and I responded at the budget workshop kind of in my comments um while there are a number of factors that would go in not the least of which being is it a program school? Is there a significant density of students who might have a particular need? Whether it's special education, whether it's English language learners, or whether it's information that our teachers feed up to us through their principles. Hey, there's just difficult cohort in this particular group. We try to look at all of those things and make the determinations as to where we would put those other three. Now, in that planning document, the one that's posted on the website, there are three specific spaces where there would be 27. So, without knowing any of
079that information, if I were just going off numbers alone, yes, I would be putting those three classes to those 27 and breaking those in all likelihood in preference to some other moves that I might make. Um, however, that was a point in time. So, at the most recent board workshop, which just happened the other day, I asked uh my my uh planning director to rerun the numbers to look at what have we heard from folks who have moved in, what have we heard from folks who have moved out, and what have what about um folks that applied for our magnets, specifically Smith School um and Charter Oak, which are both magnets. And because people apply into those magnets um if they are selected, we anticipate there's a very high likelihood that they would accept those
080those positions. Um so we ran some new numbers and and shared them and I want to get them up onto the board website. Um I was hoping to get them up there today, but I'll have I should be able to have them up there for tomorrow. But again, it is a moment in time and that moment in time will change when we rerun those numbers very specifically in the Berburn example that you're quoting. Uh they picked up an 55th student in a fourth grade cohort which would which would break them out into three small sections. So that's like oh that's that sounds wonderful. That's today's news. If a family were to move out next week I could be back and it would show as a 27 and I'd still be waiting. But when we reran
081those numbers, um, moving folks around for the magnets, now there are now those available sections to assign are up to four and I would have new decisions to make about where those four sections might go. And this is not unique to this year. This is how we have done class sizes. Um, really for the 30 plus years that I've been in the district, we had a luxury for a number of years with the ESSER funding. It was a luxury and a curse. we had to we had to have all that physical spacing. We wouldn't be allowed to sit next to each other if you all remember what we went through. So, we had much smaller class sizes and we paid for those additional teachers using the Esser funds. Um, now we are back to what
082we've historically done. Um, and I recognize that it is a significant adjustment and there are significant unique circumstances. We do have that baked in to our model and we we will apply those. is we typically try to have as many of them applied as early as possible, but often times we're we're waiting and we're seeing is there a section that's going to collapse somewhere? Is there a section that's going to break into an additional one? The budget that the board of education passes is it's a dollar value that's informed by numbers, but the but the scenario on the ground trumps everything. So this year, for example, we we went into that same planning. we were provided a specific number of elementary sections. By the time we got to a uh to you know June, July,
083August, our needs were were greater than the specific number that we had. And so in those cases, we go over budget by the sections that we need. Current this current year, we're over budget by three sections. And you say, well, where do you where do you come up with that money to be able to pay for that? Well, there's a couple of ways. First and foremost, it has to do with when we budget any one of these sections, um, we're assuming a mid-level salary somewhere around 75,000 plus 25,000 for benefits. Um, if in our hiring practice, if we end up able to be fortunate to find a number of teachers who are newer to the profession, uh, then we can bring some folks on and we can we can actually then have an additional teacher.
084Maybe there's one that wasn't budgeted that we went over on and we can afford it with the same money because the 75,000 was a guest. We don't know necessarily who's coming through the door to interview. The other mechanism by which we can do that is we will have positions that sometimes get vacated in the middle of the year. And if it's not a classroom position, we can say, "I'm going to hold that position open. It's budgeted. I have the money for it, but I'm going to hold it open because I know I have a need over here that I'm over budget. Um, or I have to then go in and find another way to to find some money and not do something that we were planning to do in order to attend to the fact
085um that I'm over budget. That that is um a very usual occurrence. It is not unusual. it it happens um with with more frequency. We we would like to be straight on the money. You know, in fact, when we looked at our planning figures, we said if it were going to be a strict application of class- size guidelines as the enrollment lived on that particular day, uh two weeks maybe before we published the budget, uh there were probably uh instead of the five fewer sections that I budgeted, it was probably eight or nine. But we know that it's not going to be that same number. We know that um there's going to be a certain number of students who move in from essentially from February and March until August uh that are going to adjust
086those numbers. It's not that we're going to um you know so so so we went so we went with five. It's not that we're going to create sections where we don't need them. Um but but you know we've been at this for a very very long time and we sort of have a sense of how the enrollment trend will change from uh numbers that we can provide with names attached to them today versus down the road. And the only the only numbers we can't really support with names attached to them are kindergarten. Kindergarten's always kind of a our best guess based on what trends have we seen and and uh and as we've all seen state of Connecticut threw a change at us this last year that kind of threw some of those models off
087and that was that was a difficult that was probably one of the most difficult years for us to guess what what enrollments might be. So I hope that answers some of your question. Just a quick question. What's the largest fourth grade class in the district right now? Right now today, um I'm going to look I want to say the largest class I'm aware of is a 26. I don't know if it's in fourth grade. Thank you. I'm sorry. The largest class that I'm aware of is a 26. We attempted to have everything come under 25. Uh I am aware that we had a move in late that pushed a class into a 26. Thank you. Please. Hi. Uh I'm not trusting myself to talk well on my feet. So I prepared some remarks. Hope that's
088okay. Okay. So uh my name is Allison Freeman and I am here tonight as a representative of the Bristo community as the PTO president there. And uh Bristo is the only school in the district with a part-time assistant principal. Um 15 of our 16 schools have full-time assistant principles, but Bristo does not. I don't know if that's changed from the last budget workshop. So before I proceed, it has changed or um so no the Bristol I am looking I'll let you have your comments. We are look we talked a lot about your question that you may have left about the Bristo position afterwards that evening. Okay. Um so our student population is nearly identical to uh most of the schools in the district. Yet Bristo only has one full-time administrator. And in this coming school
089year, um the full-time administrator, assistant principal, will be um full-time, but only for 10 months of the year, I believe. And um and that leaves only one full-time administrator in the building at all times right now. But in the coming year, it will have an effect on summer planning and academic planning over the summer. So, um then that kind of comes to the question of the reduced hours. Will that kind of influence our current assistant principal to move to a different location since you know it's a significant cut in salary and everything. So that becomes a concern for our community of whether if this would require someone new to come into the Bristo community and we're a school that only has people there for three years. is not a neighborhood school and um so it's
090already hard to kind of create a community when it's a small time that you're at that school and it's not a neighborhood school. So that kind of is something that falls to the role of an assistant principal which is you know kind of fostering professional development, academic development, but also fostering a sense of community. And so we're hoping that you will consider having an assistant principal there being there full-time year round because it's it's needed at the middle school level. It's disparit from the other schools in the district and um we'd hope you consider that. Thank you. I kept it short so that way someone else could talk. No, that's great. Thank you. And I'm glad to have the opportunity to to address that question, you know, with you face to face. Um, so yeah,
091Bristo Bristo as a as a middle school. Um, it's it's got the one full team. Um, and as you said, as the one assistant principal that's typically been 7 for Bristo and then has had, and this was a change from, I don't know, four or five years ago, maybe uh 30% of their assignment was uh dealing with administrative duties outside of the building. It used to be um supporting the elementarymentaries with evaluation. Um the other the other two middle schools in town, they have uh three three full teams. So they're they're essentially about triple in size. Um and they have two assistant principles in addition. So So part of the difference is, you know, is based on the size, the number of students to be serviced. But what has become very clear, especially as we
092changed our evaluation model at the elementary school, we didn't we didn't need the Bristol principal to do that. So we've tried to identify something they could do um over at our alternative high school program, which was the reach program. And what we really found, which I think you're kind of um alluding to, is the fact that not having the principal, the assistant principal in there on a day-to-day basis has been a point of friction. It's been a point of friction for you as families. It's been a point of friction for me as a superintendent. It's also been a point of friction over at REACH where they need um even as a small program um as an alternative high school, they really need more, you know, supervision that that kind of lives in house. Um, so
093the question is what's the cost-effective way to be able to do that so that I can provide consistent on the ground um supervision there the whole time and there's there's really two approaches. Um, and they're in negotiation with the administrators union. So I I don't I haven't settled on one or the other. One is to have the assistant principal at Bristo as they are now. They're a 1.0 0 employee, but I give them something to do with the other there's some additional responsibility with the other 30% of the time. And that additional responsibility would be something that they could accomplish in the building. So something that doesn't require them to travel outside of the building and go somewhere else. That way they could be there kind of all the time dealing with things. is if
094they were working on just like anyone else, if they're working on something else and and it's and there's an emergent issue, they have to attend to a student discipline problem, they can they can go attend to that. Um the other one that you sort of mentioned is to use the model like we have recently adopted at the elementary school where they become a 10-month employee. So they're the assistant principal during the months that school is open and technically some summer days to help support administrative tasks like building the schedule and some other things. um so that they are there kind of all the time with the students during the school day. Those those are the two options that I am looking at. Um coupling that with um a supervision plan for reach that keeps them
095there that's generally costneutral. Um I was able to do an administrative restructure last year so that folks know at the elementary level where we trans transferred um those positions uh that were curriculum specialists. they were teacher leader positions into into 10-month elementary assistant principles. They were 10-month employees as teacher leaders as well. Um, and I was able to couple that with administrative reductions in some other areas primarily at the secondary level at a at a general small cost savings. Um, I'm looking to do this with the Bristo and the reach and it's it's about costneutral. Maybe it might cost a little bit. I haven't depending on which direction I go with it. um it'll either be costneutral, a small cost savings, or or cost at most somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000. So, it's not
096going to be dramatically expensive in order to solve the problem that you're talking about. So, are the assistant principles in the middle schools middle schools at KP and I'm sorry. So, the assistant principles at the other two middle schools are year- round employees, but they qualify for vacation. So, a lot of them will take um some significant time in the summer for vacation. as a 10-month employee, you would have the summer off and you wouldn't qualify for vacation. Okay. Well, it just seems like I don't know. It still still has a a fairness issue component that it doesn't sit well. So, I I I mean, I understand what you're saying. I look at it as like a proportionality issue, but um but I understand what you're saying. Okay. Well, thank you. Question. Thank you. Sorry.
097[Music] Um sorry I had to write this down. Uh first of all I just want to thank you all for being here and for uh presenting to us. I want to thank uh my peers and fellow colleagues who spoke uh before me and so eloquently. Um you know we understand um that these are difficult choices and very challenges uh deep challenges for everyone um especially affordability. Um but part of at least what helps my family and so many other families I know um at least mentally face those challenges is the return on investment that you spoke about um so often in the slides that I agree with. It's a wonderful town and I we love it here. Um and so I think part of what makes this uh a bit challenging and uh you know
098I think difficult for a lot of people with young families like myself in this position is that we feel that return on investment is being jeopardized. you know, for myself, for my neighbors, for so many in my community, one of the number one reasons we moved here is because of the public schools. And you know, I'm not going to say that you don't invest in it. 60% of the budget goes into it. Thank you for explaining that. Um, but on the other side of that, as you also explained, you know, 90% of that of the overall town budget is is funded by property taxes. And you know, we buy the familysized homes and we pay those familysiz home prices and we pay to maintain those and um you know to entertain and um our families
099and so we're also funding a lot of small businesses in town and we feel you know there were in many ways yes even though we're only I think you said 30% of the population we feel that you know probably pretty significant percentage of that 90% that funds the town. I mean, I stand to be corrected. I'm here to learn just like everyone else here. And so, again, like putting that in, that effort and that work and that sacrifice in and then to feel that we're not seeing that come through for our kids in terms of this school. So I guess the first question I have and I only have three is um do you honestly feel that you know as we have to face let's be realistic about affordability concerns and other issues you know
100whether it be healthcare changes or unforeseen events um that you can maintain that commitment to these public schools. I think you mentioned um eight cuts that are going to be coming this year. um could you tell us what those cuts are to which positions those will be? And I think really the last issue is and I thank uh uh uh the woman for mentioning um you know that we're all in this together and I think it's important to be solutionoriented. How can we help you get more money from the state? Do we need to talk to our state reps, our state senators? You know, how can we help fund capital finances? I mean, I don't know if the budgets are I mean, sorry, the bonds, are they available for us? I'd love to purchase a
101West Hartford bond and invest in that and also write write that off my state taxes and feel like I'm investing in the town at the same time, you know, right? Two two birds with one stone. So, I just, you know, it's one thing to feel that the reason you move here is under attack. Part of what makes this town so great is in jeopardy. It's another thing to also feel that there's not much you can do about it, you know, and so if you could speak to that concern, uh, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you. So, I I'm just going to start and just say that West Hartford we are investing a lot in in the schools and I don't think it's a ma it this is an we're playing out to all of you.
102I think a little bit of what has gone on behind the scenes in previous years. Um, you know, it's it's we always are frugal and it might not seem that way, but honestly, we are with your dollars, our dollars, and we want them spent in the best way, invested in the best way possible for the best outcome. Um and so I I don't think it's a matter of cutting or running away or not investing in the schools. I think um there is a you know some years you know more more vocal than others on something that impacts a particular you know but maybe a reduction in in a in a uh a section. Um when I I remember when my son was in kindergarten there were I think in his grade there were six sets
103of twins and they were going it was for for third grade to fourth grade and they were going to three or three sections to two I think or four to three I can't remember it morely and um and there were par parents were so upset and the line to speak at the board of education meeting was out the door and um and it was I think there was TAs that were any and assigned to each class that was ultimately how And I think ultimately they went to a like a half class, three two and a half classes, I don't know, but whatever. Everybody was okay in the long run, but um but and my son was is dyslexic and had trouble reading and I was very concerned. But the bottom line is we are invested
104and we're here because we want to talk about how to best invest your dollars. Um and that commitment has been there year after year after year. It's not at risk, but I will say that we want to make sure we're doing what we the best we can because we don't want people to have to leave their homes because they can't pay their taxes. Um, we do have to do a better job with the state and I think it's an overall um structure of property taxes. I think West Hartford has been shortch changed um honestly uh with all that we do. I think we've been penalized for our success. Uh we are not an alliance school. Many communities that actually look somewhat like us like Norwalker or something are alliance schools and get much more assistance
105with uh state funding. But because we've been so successful, our test scores or uh I don't know what other they judge by alliance school districts, but maybe AP and there's a a a number of things that they judge Alliance schools on and they do get more money. So, I I I will say, you know, it's it's a it's a tender line. We don't want to be a school district that isn't performing as strongly as we have and and will and will continue to do. So, I I we are investing. It's close to I mean this proposed budget and there might be some changes, but I think it's $17 million 15 million uh for at the end of the cuts 14 and change. 14 14. Okay. 14. And on the town side, uh, seven, uh, again,
106some driven by the by the increase in, um, the state partnership plan, unfortunately. But but I I do want to just make a commitment that I I we have invested and I've been on the council a long time and we have continued to invest in our our schools year after year after year as frugally and as efficiently and as responsibly as we can for the for each year and for the future. And we know that if a student falls back one year, they're not going to make it up the next year. Um but I do think the needs have accelerated postcoid. I I think that's a reality. That was a good pivot right there. He has there. If I may high level and then uh Vina uh Superintendent Venus will go into more granular details
107to your question. I think your third question um segus into helping to answer the first question. So in terms of the budget and the challenges, we cannot underscore enough how much we are in support need of support from the state. Um and we are so appreciative of our state delegation that has advocated on our behalf. But just to give some context, over the years we have unfortunately continued to receive less than what we would hope for. Now ideally in terms of educational cost reimbursement, ideally we would get 100% back ideally. Okay, we know that that's not practical all the time. So hopefully 80% 85% rather is kind of what the unspoken number has been. We haven't even received that amount. There was one year we received correct me uh 72 I believe percent. That's less
108than 85% but we still made it work with that amount. But then the year after that it was even less than that. It was 68 67 67 6 67 67% so even less and we learned of that number last minute and then the year after that it dropped down even further to 62%. And right now what is hovering what we're looking is is 55%. So, as Superintendent Vicina shared, a driver also for the budget is of having to compensate for what we're not receiving on the state end. I don't say that to to uh deflect or to offer excuses, but just to give a reality of what we're working with. So, to your question of what can we do, we appreciate those that are squeaking the wheel. Squeak that wheel. Please squeak the wheel. Advocate.
109And even if the return is not demonstrated this fiscal year, it certainly is planting a seed for the next fiscal year because as has been shared, we already are anticipating challenges of of not fully being receive receiving the funding reimbursement for next year. And so it's important again for all hands on deck to advocate for supporting this budget. It's not something that just the town supports, but the state as well. And to your point, um, squeaking the wheel can certainly help us in that regard, but there are many pieces that play a role in our budget, and that unfortunately is a reoccurring one that we have not received the fair share that we are due in terms of reimbursement. Thank you. Um, and I I'll I'll you had some other questions, so I'm going to
110try to answer those as well, but I would I would just it's important for me to say I've always felt support. Um, you know, I've been in with the district for 31 years, so two years as superintendent, but a fair amount of time before that as an assistant superintendent and then and then a variety of other positions. I grew up in the district as a high school teacher. Um, and between both our board of ed and our town council, um, dramatic supports for the schools. Uh, this budget seeks to preserve all of the programming that you spoke to, seeks to preserve all of the things that provide that return on investment. Um but there are cuts and those cuts those 8.2 positions that you asked about um you know really we're looking at the enrollment
111trends and um it uh one of the things you know we've identified some a lot of folks here elementary parents uh we've identified the ability just just from enrollment trends uh decreasing and kind of being more fully back to uh our class size guidelines than we than we have been. We we were you know our class size guidelines themselves haven't haven't changed but we were trying to enforce instead of enforcing a 2327 last year we were trying to enforce a 2123 or 2125. So as we as we look forward we say all right we we you know we're in a financial straight where we have to have that stricter adherence. Um and that we anticipate would net us five classroom positions um at the middle school level. Um, I got to get this right in
112my head. We have um I I I think we have a reduction of four uh positions at the high school, but an increase of four positions at the middle school because we have a smaller cohort leaving 8th grade going up to the high school. That's going to translate to some savings at the high school, but it's offset by a by a larger cohort coming in at the sixth grade. Um we do have um a plan we have a planned reduction of one middle school counselor that that I've made mention of. Um and that's just trying to reset when we were in our COVID years. Uh we bumped up to an additional counselor. We held on to that for a year just based on some behavioral stuff. Um and while mental health is still, you know,
113a dramatic need and support, uh something to support, we said we were going to go with that planned reduction. Uh and we had we had offsetting increases within special education with school psychologists and others. So we're kind of weighing some options. Uh we have an administrative position that we cut. Um and then we have a point s uh and we had an instructional coach that we cut. So throughout um throughout prior to the I mean we've had instructional coaches for math specifically for a number of years at the elementary. We had a planned to bring them into the secondary with one under Esser. We were able to bring two. We cut that back to one after um we cut one of those positions away. Uh when Esser sunset and we're cutting a second one despite
114the fact that wherever those coaches have been placed um we have seen you know just very very strong growth in our mathematics as a district. We've uh we've we have surpassed this past year. We surpassed our highest math performance overall, which which had been in 2018-19. Uh we surpassed that this last year. Um but it it's a hard cut for us to make, but we're we're sort of recognizing, hey, I could still maintain one at the elementary level with a strategic placement and I could still maintain one at the secondary level. Um everything else is kind of uh looking at enrollments and things. So we have some department supervisors, their administrators. We're asking them to teach classes next year. They didn't do that this year. So that that equates to um somewhere in the neighborhood
115of a uh that could be a 1.0. I think it's uh actually no, I apologize. It's 6. It's 6. Um taking it. There are three of them that we'll teach. we have, you know, with the five fewer elementary sections, that's just a little bit of a fraction less of art, music, PE, world language that's needed at the at the elementary level. So, those little fractional pieces and and some other fractional pieces with some decreases um here or there at a high school, some trimming, I mean, that's where it kind of all adds up into the 8.2. Um if if that helps naming as many as I can remember off the top of my head. Um, the last thing I wanted to say because I've been replaying a comment that came over from this side of
116the room earlier about the teacher settlement going back to 2021. I think that was confounding with what Rick was saying about police and fire. The the the teacher contract is is yeartoyear. They did not get a back settlement. U, so I apologize for not picking up on that in the moment. Um, I just wanted to correct that for the record. And I don't think they were police and fire either. It was I apologize not police. smaller. Now I'm confounding it. Who whoever it was that Rick was referring to, it was not the teachers or police or fire or police or fire. My apologies. Um I do want to say about what you can do just to build on what Laura has said. Um it's really important of that you all understand how much of a
117burden uh the taxes, property taxes have become. Um, and I actually wanted to go back and do an exercise of like when my, you know, 50 years ago, what percentage of the value of the home I I still want to do that. I just haven't had the time. Uh, but to see snapshots in time of of where I did 10 years a few years ago, and it was pretty pretty solid. And we were we've been around the the CPI, consumer price index, inflation rate over the last 10 years. This is this is not um this year, but we need to change the dynamic in the state of Connecticut. We need to and it and I I know our our I know there's been a lot of feedback to the governor about this and um you
118know there's a they there's a a big surplus in the state and I've said it's easy to have a surplus when you're not paying your bills, right? um when we're being funded at 55% 58% 60%. It's it and and we are not alone. Not every town is is in the same position as us, but we're not alone. Um I know there's been a task force that reported to the state on education cost sharing grants and how those are calculated and changing the formula, but fine, change the formula, but then you have to fund it. So, uh, I think knowing that and hearing your voices, um, saying you need to fund education. We are one of the lowest funded per student education from the from their states and Connecticut. Um, and we're look at we're 100
119out of 169 towns in per pupil spending 100 out of 169. a lot are smaller school districts so they don't have the economies of scale that we have and that's sort of a lot have declined and they have the structure and you know the schools and whatever. So so that there's a lot to glean from all of it but the fact that you know we we're there's a lot of towns that are spending a lot of money on their schools and the state has not um stepped in to help. Now again, some are many. I would think the top funding are are fearful county funded, but um did we answer all your questions? I think so. Thank you very much. Okay. And more other questions, comments? Yes. Um hi, my name's uh Kevin Simpson. I'm
120a graduate of West Harford Public Schools. Um my time at Connard over overlapped with Mr. Vicinus. I believe my sister might have had you as a teacher. Um, so my family has lived here for a very long time. My wife and I chose to live in West Hartford. Um, not because of like one of the reasons was the schools. It was exclusively the school. My wife is a graduate of Connor as well. So we believe deeply in sort of the mission. Um, when we we live in the Webster Hill district, my daughter is entering the fourth grade. And when we talk about the class size of 26, that's Webster Hill. And the reality of the situation is is that when you have a district like West Hartford that bangs the equity drum a lot as
121we should, right? We moved to to Webster Hill. We chose Webster Hill District because of the diversity that is there. I am a teacher at um in another district. I believe in the idea that diversity and education is important. And when we talk about what you said earlier in comparison to Avon Simsberry, Farmington, the diversity there is not even remotely the same. So when we look at Webster Hill, we see a very diverse community, a community that my wife and I have embraced and that we love deeply. Um the reality of situation is is that you have a class of 26 at Webster Hill and you have classes of 18 in other schools and we're going to talk about equity. And so as a teacher myself, the reality of eight additional students in a classroom
122changes the entire dynamic of that classroom entirely. And that has nothing to do with the fact that those teacher or that those students may be English language learners. They may be receiving special ed services. They may be they may have an IEP or 504. There may just be tiered supports that are in place there. And so when we talk about the idea that 26 or 27 is the cap whenever that cap was set, that was well before COVID. CO accelerated a lot of the problems. We see that in my school district. It is a complete change in the way that we run our school in a postcoid educational world. So if we're talking about the idea that 26 or 27 is the cap there and that you set the arbitrary change from third grade to
123fourth grade and third grade you have that lower number and fourth grade is when all of a sudden they get old enough to deal with that. Um I I just don't understand why that how that kind of what that thought process is. And I recognize that some of it is outside of your control, but the reality of situation is that when we look at other elementary schools in the fourth and fifth grade that have 18 kids and then I think about my daughter moving into a class with 26 kids, her experience is not going to be the same as those other. It's less small group instruction. It's less opportunity for the teacher to form a relationship with her. It's less opportunity for that teacher to provide intensive supports to the students that need it. So,
124you know, I I don't hear Web Hill get advocated for very much. Um, where it's kind of stuck in that little neighborhood that some people aren't from West Hartford, don't know exists. Um, so, uh, you know, I just wanted to make sure that somebody heard that. Um, and to ask you guys the question in terms of when we talk about equity, how is that equitable to have a school on one neighborhood have 18 kids and then the other school have 26? because it wildly changes the way that education happens. No, thank you very much. Um, first shout out and I know I have a web hill teacher here and uh, Web Hill School of Distinction this year. Uh, very close to my heart. It's an excellent school. Um, and very proud of really the dramatic
125improvements that have been um, demonstrated over just year after year, continuous period. um very reminiscent of conversation that we had at this morning's session and and you know what I said then uh because it was a direct question uh so I'm going to introduce this uh but I'm going to say this was a direct question from a community member this morning so that I am not um run out of town tomorrow morning. Uh the question had to do with you know to to create that equity um it's kind of a twofold question because um it it's a question of the districtricting but it's also a question of the class size guidelines. So the question I was asked this morning was, you know, is the school going to, you know, ever look at this relative and
126and you can and you can look out because there's a in some regard depending on how you want to play it. There's an equitable model that's used which is everyone we use the same model everywhere, but in any given year based on the size of a cohort for a particular neighborhood, the number of students as you've described can play out differently. And and in all honesty, there's no way to equalize that. Um you can, you know, so so it becomes the question of if if the real issue is a concern about a 27 or a 26, um how do we impact that? And this was not the year that I thought uh prudent to try to take that on as a policy measure. Um, we as we've as we've kind of shared, we do have
127some sections that we're able to develop and we have some flexibility. I I clearly do not have unlimited flexibility. Some folks have come in and said, "Hey, you know, we'd like all class sizes to be 21 or 20 a lesson." I'd be like, I would like that, too. That would be 25 teachers. That would be uh, you know, $5 million. Something, you know, something just exorbitant that we can't do. Um, so if if that becomes a goal to try to take that on, it it can't happen in a vacuum because it can't just be the addition of staff because I think that's really what we're here talking about tonight is how do you balance um the level of of support and service that we want our schools to be able to provide against the financial
128realities. Um, and I, you know, I love what Laura said about, uh, and and Sherry as well about the advocacy that's necessary. Um, West Harford, you know, just both as just only getting 10% of its funding from the state and then and then for the number of unfunded mandates that have come across. I mean, there there are systemic issues and towns are talking about them. There's talk around special education. And I have a colleague in New Britain who's said publicly, you know, he's he's over 25% special education and he says, "How is it special if one out of four kids need specialized services?" We have to look at that as a model as a whole and and have a better understanding of of what that means and and how to provide for it. Um, so
129you you ask, you know, you ask a really good and a really tough question. Um and and I don't know that I'm thoroughly prepared beyond to say that, you know, it's it's something that we'll need to think about in conjunction with other things. Um what I said this morning about redistricting, like there's no way you're not going to we're not able to redistrict the whole town to get kids equals. We want neighborhood schools. They're they're just a fabric of the community. But we have looked at things and we've done it in the past where we look at that and talk about spot redistricting. I feel like Web Hill was a spot redistricting neighborhood and I don't remember what direction it went in and okay so it was exodus from in order to alleviate some burden.
130Um you know the these and then Duffy's going to you know they'll be the if I don't know if we have any Duffy families in here they'll be the first ones to tell you because they're a larger community they are often you know they don't have that same benefit all the time of of bridging up to that size cohort. they get get to that size cohort to to create the small break, but they've got, you know, a larger number of of um of students in their sections by and large because it's a very dense uh community with with school age children. So, um you know, it it's a it's a tough issue. Um but I think it's it's it's one that bears conversation. Sure. Um I saw a hand in the back and then up
131here. GI. Hey Gigi. Hi Mayor. Thanks for having us. Um, something just came to my mind as you were talking about what we can do and how Lorna talked about how the state has not been sort of full fully funding our schools. Um, I just want to put a plug out there for the school and state finance project. Um, they do a lot of education, a lot of advocacy around this. Um, I do think because West Harford is known as a town that is pretty well off, people don't understand that one in four kids do get free and reduced lunch in our town and that there are there is a need for affordable housing to sort of maintain the diversity that we want in our town. So, I do think it is a really valuable
132website and they actually do offer um like free workshops if we want to bring them in so that we can figure out how to better advocate because I did see that we had to make up for the fact that they did not fully fund us um and take that money to sort of educate kids outside of our district um and to fund them in other schools and like pay for them to go So, um I was just wondering as we are one of the things that families do advocate for is for their children's educational needs which sometimes are out of district if you have considered flexibly thinking about what you can do to bring either teachers in or some sort of services within the town that would meet that need project. We brought them in
133for our board of education workshop. Excellent, excellent group. Um and uh they have great stuff on their website. So I would encourage you to take a look. Um we are talking about um a program uh with the outplacements that we might utilize. Uh it's for credit recovery. Uh there's that that's like the one of the areas that uh there seem to be some students that are in a that are in a specialized credit recovery program as an outplacement that I don't have all the specifics. I can I can get more specifics. That's something that we feel like uh as we've looked at what some services are and it's it's a it's it's we don't place kids out for credit recovery specifically. I think it's a a service that exists within some of these where we
134figure we can we know that we can do that internally. Maybe that can help to draw some of our kids back. We have a department supervisor within pupil services. They're dedicated to all of our outpaced students. There are roughly 135 outplace students right now and we're projecting 140 for next year. um their job is to not only check on students whenever possible if it's if it's something in state or not too far out of state but also try to educate the parents and try to check their prog progress and pull them back. We will get some outplacements that um sometimes there there are outplacements where a family moves into the district, they were awarded an outplacement from out of district. Um we're very as we're very we said earlier today we're very judicious with um
135the outplacements that we provide because we have so many programs in district that support our kids that would create an outplacement somewhere else. Um and that was part of my presentation. Um, you know, if you look at our intensive academic, intensive behavior, our school engagement program, our early learning center, our strive program, and our post-secary, it's a cost savings of approximately 35 million to run those programs in house. So, we're trying to say, is there something else that we can do, but there are things that we can't replicate. We can't replicate a um therapeutic residential program, right? We can't replicate uh some of the programs that are for our medically fragile children. Um, but I think it was the board workshop. I don't remember if it was number one or number two. We were just
136celebrating one or two students we had just brought back that day. So, we're always bringing students back. In fact, one of the students we just recently brought back uh we had this great unified uh banner presentation at Connard uh for the unified sports program between Connor and Hall. One of those students had just been brought back this year um that was participating in that pep rally um demonstrating their skills, made a basket, uh was covered on ESPN. So, it's an important thing. We're looking at what additional programs can we do. And and this is the other thing that Sherry mentioned, you know, we don't we don't get credit. The state's going to now they recognize that it's such a problem. They're going to fund school districts to pilot and start their own programs. We've got
137like six amazing programs that already exist here and I'm not anticipating the state's going to say, "Hey, we're going to give you money for having run those for the last 10, 15, 25 years." So, you know, this is this is one of the issues where, you know, you don't always get credit for the things that you do even when new funding becomes available. Oh, you got to be Thank you. Hi, my name is um Katie Gregory. I um lived here in West Hartford since 2013. My husband and I were very fortunate to come when the market was down. Um otherwise, we would not have been able to afford it. I think our house was on the market for six months. Um uh we came here, you know, for many of the same reasons that others
138have come. Um was we didn't have children at the time. We actually weren't even married at the time. We bought the house, you know, knowing we were going to have children. Um, and that we wanted to send them to West Hartford schools. Um, I we've been very fortunate. Um, I have everything in the town that you've mentioned has been wonderful so far. I've been to so many toddler times in this very room that I'm so thankful for. Um, my son had a febral seizure at Whole Foods. Um, and the EMS was there in two minutes. Um, I couldn't be more thankful that for that. I can call the public works um for a pothole outside my my driveway um that's on Webster Hill Boulevard and it'll be filled within a week. Um so for those
139things I'm very thankful. Um like so many of us here tonight um I have noticed a decline with the education uh recently which is um sad to say. Um my son in is in fourth grade now and he has uh in a class of 25. He has a 504 which I don't believe was being followed at the beginning of the year and it wasn't until um parent teacher conferences that I when I spoke up about it was I contacted about it. Um I am also a teacher. Um so I know the importance of small class sizes and how um it can vary from group to group. I have I'm a middle school teacher, so I have one class that's 25 that is sunshine and I have a class of 17 that is very difficult. So,
140it honestly just depends on the children in the room. Um, I know also that small group instruction is incredibly important for leveling um, test scores and I know how difficult it can be when you're trying to work with a group of five and you've got 20 other kids that you're thinking about at the same time. Um, so I feel for the teachers in the classroom. Um, we are a Webster Hill family. Um, so I kind of want to get back to Kevin's um question about equity um and how how at in this town we can have classrooms of 16 and then also 27. Um I know that Webster Hill gets title one funding and my understanding is that title one funding is supposed to allev is supposed to create or alleviate those um questions of
141equity. you know. Um, so I'm wondering where is that money going? Are we expecting to continue to get it? Um, and yeah, that's my question. First, foremost, you know, hearing if there's any issue with, you know, situation with the 504. Very, very sorry to hear that and I hope that's resolved and if not, I would hope you would reach out. Um, title one funding for for certain. Um we we have five title schools uh and we utilize that funding for any variety of things. Some of some of the uh FTEEs that we pay for uh are out of title one funds. Those are specifically not for uh for Webster Hill because Webster Hill is not a um a title one. You have a title one program. There's difference between title one program and a title
142one school. So you have to have a certain thresh. Yeah. Yeah. So, we do have um at at a at a couple of schools where where they're a title one school, we're able to provide uh specific money directly for positions um at that school. And then typically, you know, it's it's the whole supplant versus um oh, what's the half the other half? Supplement versus supplant argument. So, we we utilize that for specialized teaching positions that exist only at those schools. And that's and that's pretty much our magnet schools, our Smith and our and our Charter Oak. and they do have a couple of positions that are unique based on the unique nature of either the STEM program or the IB program. But where we use uh a dramatic amount of the title one funds for
143uh for the other title schools for for a web hill at a whiting um we use it for uh an increase in the number of tutors that we're providing at those schools. You have a higher tutor ratio. Um that can be for reading mathematics that could be for English language learners. We also use some title three funding. Um, and in terms of the question that you asked, uh, do we anticipate any interruption to title one? Right now, we're cautiously optimistic that that money will be there. There's been a lot of talk about federal funding. Um, obviously, we all see what's going on um with with, you know, governmental efficiencies that are occurring and and the impact that's having on some governmental agencies. But what we've been told by the office of management and business is
144that our formula grants specifically our idea which funds for everyone else um special education um title one um uh and title three which is for title three for English language learners. We're told that those uh formula grants will not be impacted by administrative uh cuts. and with the continuing resolution that just came through um those were specifically written in as being protected. So cautiously optimistic. There are other federal grants, title 2 grant, which we get a lot of our professional development money out of that was not listed in the most recent continuing resolution. So we're watching to see does is that a signal for anything coming in the future. Um but but you know at the end of the day there are additional supports. Uh, those are some that I know off the top of
145my head. I could, if you email me, I can get you a more detailed answer as to what exactly Title One, what additional Title One funds go to support at Webster Hill specifically. Um, Webster Hill obviously is a place where we also opened up some preK and we use some we use some Smart Start grants for that, right? Um, but we pay for we pay for a fair amount of that uh out of our own. we pay uh the PAR educators um benefits and I believe we were able to pay some of the some of the some costs for some of the folks in the staffing out of some of the grant money but we cover the benefits out of the town budget. So um you know we do rely on the grant funding that
146we get in order to support all the things that we do in the district. Thank you. All right, we are at 8:00. Um, and I I do see our library director in the back, Laura. Say hi to everybody. I'm sure. Um, I know Yukon Star tips off in about an hour. Uh, so yeah, go Huskies. Um, so I I don't know if anybody has a last question, but I we should probably wind up at any Yes. or comment. I get it for you. I got distracted earlier and said what I wasn't going to say, but this is what I was going to say. I was going to speak up about um the ESSER funding sort of being pulled away and the loss of our counselors and social workers and how much that has really helped
147especially post pandemic and continues to help and the great loss when we don't have that extra support in the schools. So that was it. Definitely. definitely feel that and and would just say, you know, we we've maintained what we can. Um we did maintain three elementary school counselors. Um we have uh maintained some trauma interventionists that work uh at the secondary level, but uh I would be remiss to not simply acknowledge and affirm that the mental health needs are something that we continue to be concerned about. And um yeah, I just wanted to uh you know, close out and say sorry, I get a little nervous when I have to speak publicly. Um and talk about personal things. Um but I just wanted to say that I moved, you know, I moved from back home
148from California. I moved back home to Connecticut. Um you know, with my daughter. Um, and just a little context, I'm from the north end of Harford. Um, and you know, I know there were some some comments made earlier, but you know, if uh if kids smoking weed on the street is like our biggest issue. Like just saying coming from Cap and Infield Street, I can live with that. Um, I moved back home to Connecticut. The main reason being uh that my daughter was struggling a lot going to school in California. Her mental health was at an all-time low. Um and I was some of you parents out there might know how it feels. I was terrified. I mean terrified. So I moved back home to Connecticut. I was like she needs to be around a
149village and and we need to be in a community that's safe, that's stable, where I know she's going to get a high quality of education but also get the diversity um and have that safety net. Um, obviously I wasn't taking her back to Harford. Um, and in my career as a teacher, I taught in the hood. I don't know anything under 30 students. I don't know that. I've never had the privilege of having less than 30 students in my class for all the years that I taught. Um, not saying that that wouldn't be hard, but I just I don't know what that's like. So, I only know 30. Um, and so coming home to uh and moving to West Harford, I couldn't afford to buy a house when I moved here. We rent and that's
150fine. I feel like I'm willing to rent a house and not own a house right now if if the trade-off is my daughter getting a high quality education and breaking, you know, those generational barriers in our family around having access to educ high quality education. Um she we got here and um it was just a huge turnaround. I mean it just it makes me emotional to think about. Here was a kid who I literally was fearing for her life and within just a few months um come you know coming to school here it was just totally different. She was so happy. She was sleeping well. She was eating well. She had really connected and and with friends with with people she really feels sees her. Um the way the schools wrapped their arms around her.
151um the support, even the connection to not counseling in school, but how to get counseling out of school. Um all of those extra resources were provided. Um and I mean, one of the reasons that I I I ran for board of ed was because I started to advocate as a parent. I was excited about all the opportunities she was getting and I wanted more. And and I was encouraged as a parent, you know, some sometimes they're going to they want to kind of shut parents down, but in here I was encouraged as a parent who was advocating for her child to get involved, to be engaged in the process, to come serve on the board of education, right? And I thought, wow, that's really beautiful and really profound. My daughter has excelled here. She's in
152high school now. She's an honor student. Um she's involved in so many different activities. She literally got discharged um last year from therapy um and is really living a a a liberated life. She's at the center every weekend with all of her friends. She's studying. I mean, good kids. Kids that I trust whose parents I trust. She's having all kinds of cultural diversity experiences. She's got been to bar mitzvah, bar mitzvah. She's in a kinsay. It's in someone's kins right now. Um got me driving her to practice every weekend. She's in school of rock. Um, she's in choir. She's taking language classes. My daughter went from a kid who was literally I'm I'm serious, like had a dark cloud over her head to being like, I'm going to be a scientist and like having these
153amazing relationships with her teachers. So, I just want to say that, you know, the taxes that are being paid to support education in this town, you know, and and we think about equity and for people who may not be able to have certain things, like I can't afford a house. I don't have that. We definitely couldn't go to Simsbury. But, you know, I I just want to say that there is a trade-off that my family and kids like my kid can come to this district and have access to a high quality education, right? And like that is because of people paying their taxes and because of what's going into creating that highquality experience for her and a high quality living for me. Seriously. And so, I just, you know, I know I'm a board member
154and whatever. Maybe this isn't professional, but I'm also a mom and a human in this town. And I wanted to share my experience because even as you know, folks are sharing and coming out, we might not see a lot of those diverse families showing up because they might not be able to come here 6:00 at night or get out of work early in the morning to come. And so while I have an opportunity because it's part of my duty to be here, I want to also share from that perspective as well. So thank you. Absolutely. All right. Anything else? That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Thank you all for being here, for sharing, for input. If you think of anything, uh any suggestions or anything, we're always our emails are all available for you.
155Um and again, I want to thank my colleagues who really lead with their heads in their heart. And uh it's such an honor uh to have such a great community, wonderful elected leaders, incredibly professional staff. We're we're a very lucky community. challenges, sure, but very lucky. So, all right. Uh, drive safely and go Huskys.