Board of Education Budget Workshop #1 - March 12, 2025

001e e e want spe should like one hey sorry I'm very help e well hello good evening I'll do a gavel with this although it's not an offic regular boarded meeting but glad we're all here good evening we are here for our West Harford Public Schools 2025 2026 budget Workshop number one let us first begin with the roll call oh my Miss Charlotte's not here so I will um ask for us just to name who is here ah I know she does such wonderful things we'll just acknowledge who was here with us for this board workshop and starting to my left please gaale Harris here Ethan Gman Latoya yalof Lorna Thomas farus Shannon Maron Jason gagnet Claire narella all right I get to participate I'm excited in the roll call I never do this PA

002seen a superintendent thank you and so with that we know that the last time we worked together we received a presentation from our superintendent and we all received a lovely binder with Rich information and this is an opportunity for us to go into more granular detail to learn more of the contents of this binder and for us to ask questions that may come about and so without further Ado I'll pass over to our superintendent Mr vinus thank you very much um and thank you all for being here and thanks for those in the audience um most especially I'd like to again reiterate my thanks to uh not only the entire team here in front of us and uh you know everyone I'm excited to have them all present although um some will speak more than

003others tonight just based on uh roles and responsibilities uh as it lives within the budget but uh again a huge shout out not only to Liz but to the entire uh the entirety of our business and finance office for all of the amazing work that they have done in in the um preparation of this budget and the budget recommendation and a special thanks as well to uh team members here um Gail shann and Lura um and in our audience Today Jason we we attended our first uh Community Workshop uh this afternoon this very afternoon up at Bishop's Corner at the senior center and uh I thought while it wasn't um it wasn't a blowout crowd uh I thought it was very strong public public engagement uh the questions uh that were asked by our community

004members were very very thoughtful um and I appreciated the opportunity because I have received um a number of emails uh I believe the board has received some and we've gotten some into the budget work into the budget email address as well so I will be forwarding those um to all board members um so that you can have visibility on those and I just apologize I haven't had the opportunity to do that prior to this evening I would I would let you know that the majority of questions that have come in at this time um focus in and around class size and there have also been some questions uh in and around our gifted and talented um program Cuts so um those are all things that we'll have the opportunity to discuss tonight in Greater detail

005uh but I will make certain that you have 100% visibility on every communication um with that said uh as is our practice uh the team will go through uh each section of the budget they have uh prepared for you sort of a um Readers Digest version to help to help go through all the major components but um as components are gone through is if in your in your Deep dive of the budget there's something more specific you know tonight really is the opportunity uh to to address questions that you may have I think they'll they'll questions typically fall in kind of one or two categories there'll be clarifying questions um what's this line item what's this mean kind of a thing that that are are typically fairly easy for us to answer right here on

006the spot and then if there are more complex questions in terms of something that uh what if we were to do X instead of Y how would that impact z um those are things that we can take away uh perform the necessary research on uh certainly provide you an answer in the interim as quickly as we can but at a minimum we would bring those and regardless if we were able to provide that we would bring those back at the second Workshop remind everyone in the in the viewing public about the question and then uh provide the full board the opport the uh information at that time in order to enable the discussion that that obviously needs to happen in the public setting so um that that's kind of uh how things will go I

007will um I will do my best not to jump on people but I may chime in from time to time but um barring any questions about how we will proceed um I will be excited to turn it over to the team and I think Liz will take lead with uh with the conversation good evening uh before we get into the detail I just wanted to take a moment to remind you of how these uh Workshop summaries are laid out just so that we can all follow along um if you turn to the first page uh you will see that each page is a summary of one of the budget sections in our book so for example by looking at page one you'll see at the top that this page page deals with regular instruction at

008the elementary level at the top it references Pages D4 and D5 so that if you'd like to follow along in the budget book itself you'll know what page we were on each summary page starts with Staffing information looking at adopted current and then the proposed budget uh we'll talk about program changes we'll look at the actual budget dollars and speak a little bit as to uh the reasons for the various increases um and we'll go through all of our regular instruction and Melissa will deal with our special instruction as Paul mentioned we're happy to take questions along the way but if there is some detail information that we don't know off hand um I will keep track of questions and make sure that we get answers back to you for the second Workshop very good

009well good evening everyone nice to see you I'm pleased to talk with you about uh regular instruction um starting with the elementary school students in the elementary school program um looking at your board uh your supplement or the the the document on page D4 and D5 you may see you will see uh that our budget projection for next year would be a reduction of two uh regular classroom positions over the adopted budget from 2425 a reduction of two positions in that line we also have in um the next line um an increase of not a a maintaining of the current teacher and residence program at two individuals this is a program c teacher residency program which is an alternative root to certification program focusing on diversifying our teaching staff across the state um there's also

010another minor adjustment in physical education that is uh very minor 03 reduction and that would come from a little bit of efficiencies we think we can find and some changes in the program minor minor changes and as we look at the um budget figures uh for the elementary section you'll see that all of our budgets are broken up into three categories salaries operating expense and Equipment um clearly uh for a school district these salaries are the major component and so you will see most fluctuations that we'll discuss really have to do with salaries and Staffing levels so you'll see that um for this program our salaries are going up 4.4% that reflects our contractual collective bargaining incre inrease for our teachers Librarians and our par of professionals offset by the slight reduction in positions that

011an discussed um from an operating expense level we have just a slight reduction of 0.8% uh just based on anticipated needs at the elementary school level for the upcoming year and a very small appropriation for equipment just about $1,100 that we use to replace outdated items as needed you may recall that we uh settled our wha contract uh this past um fall I guess it was and our market rate settlement was 4.82% is the estimate that's going to vary by program depending on the actual teachers assigned to each uh category but you can kind of use that as a guide as we're looking at some of our salary percentage increases can I piggyback one thing um prior I apologize so the the one thing I just wanted to mention um as Ann showed from adopted

012budget to current budget proposal that 198 that Top Line on page one for classroom teachers that's a that's a budget a budget Savings of two but from current status as I think I mentioned in our budget summary in my budget presentation um our current Staffing levels are are actually three sections above um so so we' be realizing uh a decrease of a total of five teachers from current Staffing levels and since class sizes have been a have been a question that have come up I wanted to just provide some clarifying information um we're we're Staffing for 196 sections and I know in the data supplement I think which is what some of the viewing public has um referenced online and concerned um you'll notice that that's a projected enrollment for October in the data supplement

013I believe one of the first pages and it reflects it reflects a projection of 193 sections with three sections eligible to give for breaks and we do do anticipate there would be some breaks especially in some of those schools and in some of those grades where there are where there are higher projections we would distribute those breaks as we always do um very you know this is just how how we practice based on an ongoing monitoring of do those enrollment projections turn into actual enrollments do the number of kids that we think show up show up uh do we get ads in unanticipated places and then we assign those breaks appropriately and and equitably so if we're going to typically if we're going to break one at a particular number we would we would try

014to you know look at all and treat all all schools uh with those same conditions equally question when you say breaks I assume you mean additional section section breaks yeah I apologize so if you have for instance in um let's say you had uh 50 children at a particular at a second grade level we would break that into two section uh 50 Children we'd break that into three sections two sections would be 25 that would be too large in second grade so we'd break that into three sections if we were down at 40 we'd be okay once we start to Crest over 40 creep up to 42 44 we're starting to worry if we're going to need to break out into an additional section I just want to make sure the right understood gaale yes

015thank you um I just had actually two questions on this um in teacher and residence it says says that we adopted in 2425 I'm assuming that's one position M but we actually have two positions yes we had uh we this is a program that comes to us where the candidates we don't always know at this point the candidates that will be available but we did have one candidate available that could go into the program I believe we had two in the previous year and so when a candidate became available and we we were able to staff that at what had been previous levels So when you say adopted does that mean that in our 2425 budget we adopted one spot so then how do we actually pay for two spots if we hadn't put it

016into our budget much like uh you know we have at times have to make adjustments in other lines to make that happen but these are usually small adjustments that we can make when the opportunity presents itself okay basic basically making yeah making sacrifices in other areas in order to accommodate making sacrifices in other areas in order to accommodate that okay and then I had just one other question about um the um salaries at the bottom of the page um did is the benefits in that number or is that in the operating expenses or in neither so the um the amount in the salaries is solely salaries um and as we get to the general support section at the back uh we will talk about benefits we budget benefits it's all in one line item all

017of the medical expenses uh are together so they're not broken out by category okay so it's somewhere else somewhere else and what is so what is actually operate like what is in that operating expenses so operating expenses are um instructional supplies that we may need for classrooms um it can be textbooks it can be all of the the tangible items um that you need to uh to conduct class and then when we get to the Support Services area um it's going to be things that could be rental expense it could be utilities um really anything needed to operate our buildings Latoya um just for some clarity for myself what does it mean when it's like like 31.9 or 12.03 because these are positions right so what does it mean when it over that but it's

018not the next number like 6.35 for World Language I guess I'm trying to understand 35 of a person correct but we do have it's not a small person it is a part-time okay uh and and so you might have a uh 12 full-time people and a point 6 teacher part-time teacher um just at what level are you eligible for benefits how many hours per week you have to be a 0. five or greater CLA um so tonight's meeting started in section D will you be addressing or talking about section c we don't typically go through that in detail but if you have questions on section c I'm I'm happy to address those May at the end I'm just confused about um all the nutrition services it's in the pages C1 C2 but then when you

019get to C5 c um C4 and five it's it's not on there and I'm just trying to understand why all the um cafeteria so if you look at page C1 in the top left corner it says combined funds okay do you see that right right so those are all of our funds that includes the general fund and any other fund that we're looking at so that can be um Grant funds the nutrition services fund um you know it includes information on our utilities Etc as you um continue on when you get to page C4 this is only the general fund and it says that in the top left and so uh we provide a summary for both uh we really spend the majority of our time talking about the general fund because that's the one

020uh that we're primarily concerned with the others you know are more um typically funded with with Grant Revenue um or with you know pay to play fees or that type of thing so we do talk about them a bit when we get to uh section g okay um but we try to provide a summary for you with both a combined and a general fund level and and is that why like nutrition services is separate in the financial report exactly it's not part of the not part of the general f all salaries all Food Services costs are all covered in the non general fund correct thank you of course Jason might miss said this many times before that math is not my strong suit but on the um changing so a reduction of two classroom teachers

021um and then five from current Staffing levels what actual savings are we realizing there so the figures that you see at the bottom are it's adopted versus budget so that difference is looking at what was adopted last year which would be um the figure there that you see of in the example you gave 198 classrooms versus what we are proposing which is 196 so what you're seeing in the um in the variance column is you know our collective bargaining agreement increases for existing staff less the positions that are in that difference column does that that make sense I'm it does but financially it it doesn't to me so I know overall we have an increase because we negotiated right the salar let me let me add this if I may and this might help you

022um if you imagine I'll keep the numbers really simple if you imagine we had 10 teachers um here in March I was proposing 10 teachers and as a team we get to the summertime and we realize we need an 11th teacher so because we need we need it um we go ahead and program for it and we'll find a way to find uh the savings for that because you've already passed the budget I'm not coming back to you asking you to open the budget revote on a budget when we get to this point in the following year if our staffing levels are such that I need to maintain that 11th teacher now I'm coming to you and I'm not saying oh no change from what I'm currently doing I'm I'm sort of sharing that in

023my presentation so that you have a picture of of the impact but when we're at this level of the discussion this this is what you approved last year at 10 I added an 11th and now I'm putting that 11th in so now I want to pay for that 11th not out of some other place that I was able to carve out the the savings I'm going to I'm going to pay for it here so so the EB and the flow um that some of what you'll see here it's uh the decrease is less uh but somewhere else I'll realize savings because I already stole money from somewhere else in order to in order to find the savings for for the three teachers that were over in the budget currently does that make sense it does

024I'm I'm just kind of looking for a number for we're reducing you know the the two teachers here what what number is that so we we yeah we we we value a teacher at uh 75,000 in salary 25,000 in benefits so it's 100,000 overall in this line it would be 75,000 because all the benefits are in a are in a different different line um seeing that we're on the uh Elementary regular instruction will this be the time that any discussion about class size will happen or is there going to be a time later I think you could ask that question now okay if I if I may so I think yes we certainly want that question I just wonder if we have receive additional information if that may help inform how we ask the question

025as well so I defer to you if you want to ask now so be it but we may get more additional information that may help us right other are they gonna give their PR we're yes because yes so any other questions IM minute please continue thank you okay all right um if am I on yes uh if you would move to the next page in the supplement which corresponds to D20 and D21 in your um book book this will be regular instruction in the middle school and you will see um under the teaching line we have an increase over the um adopted budget of 4.55 and that is related to an increase in enrollment in the schools where we will add a team um at one of our middle schools because of increasing enrollment there

026it's not a full team because we can share uh a staff member there's some people that can be D teed and and shared so it turns out to be on the FTE line of 4.55% increase we will see a very slight reduction through uh some some minor efficiencies in the unified arts and that will result um in uh we also in the reading line we had an adopted budget of five we had a a small need uh for increase there and that will turn to five in this proposed budget and so this line of Middle School instruction will result in a 4.49 increase in teachers and Liz can go through the salary numbers yep and the corresponding budget for this section as we look at salaries um you can see that this is an increase

027in our salary line item of 5% that is our contractual uh increase per the wha collective bargaining agreement plus 4 and a half positions as in detailed for you as we look at our operating expense that is up $10,000 uh that included a higher requested appropriation for instructional supplies at the middle school level and we have just a minor $200 reduction I'm sorry increase um for equipment at the middle school level so overall middle school is going up uh 4.9% for the upcoming year um so I see for the enrollment um you have Elementary going down 20 students and then Middle School is increasing by 14 I'm assuming that the teams were over capacity before because 14 students so what is the typical team size and and how many teachers on a team and how

028many students does a typical Middle School team have with in their team it's good that you point that out because the increase isn't dramatic but it it depends on where the increase is and uh King Philip had been operating with um a a split team but their increase is more for next year so they need to add a team there and that team is usually in the 95 to 100 student range and typically it is English social studies Math and Science World Language can be team can be split across teams because there's more than one World Language and you can split that person so it's not a five member team it's more of a fourpoint something member team when you're at and the team is is usually between 95 and 100 students follow up um

029and Bristo right now is one team one team per grade cedrick too Cedric has three teams per grade three teams and now King philli has three full teams it it's proposed to have three full teams next year this year I believe it was at uh 2.7 2.7 okay and just curious uh brist out one point had two teams 1.5 per grade um brista was originally designed 140 students per brist had 420 students between the three grades they're now at 3:15 okay yes thank you yes any other questions regarding this all right please continue thank you all right we'll move on to page three in the supplement which corresponds to D 38 and 39 topic we're looking at today is regular instruction in the high schools uh here you will see that in the high schools

030we will we look to realize a 2.47 uh FTE uh decrease uh that is due to uh changing enrollment uh um it is uh projected to have a staffing ratio at 17 students per FTE it's a reduction um that is split among all areas small reductions in all areas to realize this 2.47 reduction we will also have a small reduction in Staffing at the reach alternative school and it's going to be created from a new a newly created department supervisor position that you'll see later with some reductions that will be off set by teachers but that will um come that will result in a point2 decrease in Staffing at reach inconsistent with that change in Staffing level you see that our salaries for the high school are increasing but only at 2.4% um and that

031the operating expenses and um equipment at this level are relatively consistent no major changes um for the current year any questions please continue no questions okay then we'll turn to page four which corresponds to d70 and 71 in the book okay and this is regular instruction systemwide and here I'll turn our attention to in the gifted and talented teacher line we will see a minor reduction of 7 FTE in gifted and talented which will really be through efficiencies in scheduling of uh enrichment programming in the elementary school our Quest teachers uh have a designated case load of students who have uh been accepted into the quest program that they directly teach but they also provide enrichments supports in classrooms and we will look to realize savings there in in some efficiencies in the enrichment program

032we'll see a small uh increase uh really it's a it's flat from the current status but it's a small increase from the adopted uh budget of 04 teachers in Esau and that um is a result of increased students who are have Esau services and you will also see a reduction this is a planned reduction in counselors um this had been a a planned reduction in counselors at the middle school level by one FTE this was a step down program still from the previous era of of additional funding that we had that we had been stepping down for a couple years now and this will be the final step down there and you'll see that our salary variances support both the contractual increases for the appropriate unions um offset by the reduction of the 1.3 positions

033um that an detailed um in addition we have just a very slight reduction in our operating expense that relates to A reduced request for supplies in our counseling department um of as I said just about ,000 so an overall increase for our systemwide programs of 3.6% for the upcoming year Jason so I think in some of the initial corresponden we've been seeing I think there's some confusion about the the reduction the 7 reduction FTE for Quest and so as I understand it this is not going to impact kids who are enrolled in quest this has nothing to do with their programs their activities this would be the enrichment aspect of it where they go into general education classrooms and kind of share some of the other things that are going on in quest with that

034general population absolutely and we wouldn't look to eliminate that at all we just for efficiencies within that and within the scheduling of that so that we could realize a small savings but it will not affect the quest program and just as a followup we had some feedback earlier today at the um afternoon session that was held with the community where there there appears to be a belief that Quest funding has gone down over the years that there's a trend in in you know downward funding is is that accurate um I have to look at the book there is this this proposed reduction and I believe there was a proposed reduction years ago um but that was also a very small reduction as well I don't believe it was a full person I don't believe it

035was a full person two years ago either but we can get that history for you we can get that for you but really the the quest funding has has dropped as our enrollment has dropped right and and no at no point have we impacted or cut any any programming it's just this other stuff that they were doing as so Supply is meeting demand demand supp is meeting demand It's just sometimes we have excess Supply that we're taking up of the system um and and I remember last year you spoke of the the counselors coming in and and teaching lessons that were TurnKey and from what I understand in a normal classroom um the differ differentiation that takes place is both in scaffolding for your struggling kids and also offering enrichment opportunities for for kids in

036your class that do get through things quickly it's kind of part of what a teacher does is meet the needs of everyone in the room so this enrichment that you have now um they'll still get that but teachers are given tools and they know how to do a lot of this enrichment themselves yes um teachers are trained in differentiation and we encourage more strategies for differentiation when you find children who have different needs needs so that will continue um the enrichment portion of gifted and talented will also continue we will look for efficiencies certain kinds of savings um that can be realized but it's also affected by a little less demand too but the quest program core will not not be affected this is a request for the next meeting because um I went through

037after I got the schedule this afternoon and tried to map out um there was I counted 1,600 employees and just try to figure out how many are directly teaching how many are indirect teaching how many are supervising how many is Administrative is it possible in the totality and people Services yes there's actually a schedule in section B of the document that lists out all of the employees and it's subtotaled by certified staff versus non-certified staff it details out administrative page it's in the B section b b what it is B it is not B it is C there we go C 12 and 13 so you'll see what this schedule does is it shows you what was adopted for 2425 and what we currently have yeah it gives the proposed budget and then it does

038two variance columns one from adopted and one from the current change and so you'll see at the top it has non-administrative nonsupervisory and it lists all of the teachers and does a subtotal it gives us our pupil Services personnel and gives a subtotal and goes down and then provides information as to our administrative Personnel comprised of Department supervisors the superintendent principles Etc and then the detail on page C13 are staff who are not certified and again gives the the detail of that but if there's additional information or something in particular you're looking at but you know you can see here for regular instruction we budgeted for 293 teachers yeah I was looking more for what the percentage is but I can take it from this or just to get it overall fi okay all right

039see how far off I am thank you sure um and and then I'm I'm curious about um counselors Esau and gifted and talented all being on the same page in that from what I gather these are all non-mandated these are all services that I mean why why are these groups put together and from that standpoint the esol teachers who who is their director who is their supervisor the counselors is that pupil Services why are these in this area all clumped together but not part of pupil services and and is esol not mandated is that why it's in this area esol I I'll take a couple of your questions and then turn it to liist to explain how they're grouped or why they're grouped the way they are for Budget purposes but esol is mandated and

040they have a curriculum specialist who leads their area and that is overseen by our a director of secondary education Miss Eileen Eustace overseas Mrs Eileen eustus oversees the curriculum supervisor and the EOL teachers and that is a mandated program so the secretary supervises well their EOL teachers are K12 so it's a whole K12 program the councilors have a department supervisor I'm Patty pyrus and she oversees all counselors and that so we have high school counselors middle school counselors and a small number of elementary school counselors um you asked about gifted and talented uh well gift it is required that we identify students as gifted and talented it is not required that we program for them but we do program them for them in West Hartford and they are overseen by the director of gifted and

041talented Mrs Mary Thompson and then typically how many people would a supervisor or director supervis uh it it there's there's some good variance but that we have some Department supervisors Who oversee 25 26 people in some cases there are 18 esol teachers currently um so it there's there's variance I can't give you true figure uh but I can tell you that um they can be up as I've seen as high as 28 29 people and I think there's a there's a difference between supervision of a program and then evaluation an evaluation case load so um our administrative staff our administrators obviously all evaluate you know all the teachers and we need to we need to identify assignments but um some of the variation in the size you know of an evaluation case load or even

042in the size of a department there's also the supervision of a program so I can picture we have a department supervisor that's a K12 supervisor supervises teachers across you know World Language all of our elementary schools there are more people in the world language Department than it is possible for her to evaluate but but her responsibilities and the structure of her job she's overseeing the curriculum she's evaluating a an average size case load for a department supervisor and then has you know input into different building leadership um inputs in terms of when when when the uh typically at the secondary level when they're calling a meeting and they're engaging their full leadership team on decision making things that might impact a department any other questions yes Shannon um can I just uh confirm does the

043director of um gifted and talented supervise anyone beyond the eight members of that team yes she does um What's the total not I'd have to I'd have to check the total but her her supervision case uh so she as Paul appropriately said you evaluate the program you oversee the curriculum for the program and then you have a case load of people to observe and evaluate she does have additional uh staff and I believe the Arts Music Arts and Music area that she helps out because it's a large group over there and one supervisor so there's some shared but I I can get you her number uh Julia works really hard in the fall to make sure those are pretty Equitable numbers and uh we can look it up any other questions all right please continue

044all right we will be moving on to page five in your supplement which corresponds to page 79 to 81 in your book okay and this is supervision of instruction um for the district and so we have a little bit of a difference here in that we will see a slight increase in department supervisor role from current and adopted and that uh is reflective of a new department supervisor with administrative responsibilities in reach this person will also do some teaching so they'll have part-time teaching load and they will do some administrative supervision at our reach uh program which is on the Conor campus Dropout prevention program and Alternative Learning environment for our students uh we will see a decrease in teachers to offset some of that increase and that will come in the form of some

045of our department supervisors who will be picking up teaching sections to offset some of that and then we will have a small increase on our non-certified support staff which is I believe in this case uh teaching assistance and Pairs and teaching assistant are often called non-certified support and it will be in the teaching assistant line increase of of two over adopted but it is our current level of Staffing so this is a this is a change that I mentioned briefly um you know we've been we've been playing with our supervision model at our Alternative High School for a couple of years um trying to uh trying to help it and and it's it's not that we haven't um had the right people or anything like that it's it's sort of this finding a model where

046we can have boots on the ground um on a consistent basis so we've been sharing supervision um from uh assistant this most recently persistent principal over at Bristo who whose assignment was part-time at Bristo and parttime over at reach and just the nature of building supervision as you imagine um anytime you have to be away from the building that's of course when something's going to happen where your presence was needed and so we've really been looking at how can we adjust the assignments with in in as cost neutral a way as possible and I think that we've got uh we've got a a means by which to do so that'll you know it's going to add a little in this line subtracts from another line earlier that you saw when an mentioned it uh I

047think on the high school Pages um and so it's it's not perfectly cost neutral but it but it's a minimal cost uh to be able to solve uh a supervision problem and be able to provide consistent uh supervision with boots on the ground in both locations Gail and then Ethan thanks um I had a question in the um teachers that is in that list um I wasn't sure why they're in that list and what are those teachers because shouldn't they be in the wouldn't they be in the other lists before on the other pages so these teachers are a portion and Liz make sure I have this right so those the instructional coaches in your office instructional coaches in my office who are teachers but they're at uh in central office so that's why they're

048not on the elementary they're in what office this office central office my office okay yeah we have a townwide uh townwide curriculum specialist for Math and Science townwide curriculum specialist for literacy and social studies um we have so I I thought our curriculum Specialists went away and we are building based curriculum Specialists yeah these are these are folks who work directly in the curriculum office and they've you know they maintain that title but we had 11 in our last thing we we replaced the 11 building based curriculum specialists with 11 Elementary assistant principles we maintained um as as uh Ann mentioned earlier we have a teacher leader position a curriculum specialist for Esau that's Al who's esol certified um that's overseen by um Eileen Eustace we have Folks at the elementary that that support Melissa

049Baron's in elementary aded um for the content areas um for all the various content areas at the elementary level so these are teachers that are not teaching they're and it's some kind of an administrative role is that correct or well I'd be very cautious to ever say they were an administrative role especially with my dear friends from the wha they're in a central office role where they're where they have oversight of curriculum so [Music] okay so the non-certified support staff there's 5 which as I calculate is more than 10% of the total staff and then uh two pages later for the pupil Services there's another 279 is it possible for the next round to just get more definition because that's 25% of the staff 25% when you say a definition do you just mean more

050detail of who's in there what RS what rols yeah are they all like s pair professionals so if you look on page d81 81 which is what this summary page refers back to in the book you'll see at the bottom section where it says non-certified those are the 167 positions so those are non-certified um so they are consist they consist of executive assistant in school suspension supervisors our registar students at the high school um secretaries or clerks for all 16 schools and Central uh and central office and then we have par professionals and teaching assistants uh that cover all 16 schools so that's the 167 so in the difference what you'll see you know these um individuals could be office pair of professionals that are helping in the office when you walk in uh they

051could be instructional par professionals they could be Library pair professionals um and so they cover all 16 schools when you look at Melissa's group um of non-certified Staff those are student AIDs that are working directly with students and she'll take you through that but they they are a little bit different just a large number and trying to figure out what they're doing y a page will show you um couple clarifications one um the Bristo um doesn't or has a part-time assistant principal correct there's a we have a full-time employee who uh we assigned a portion of her we assigned her you know her pay and her budget in the budget book uh based on a part-time assignment for being the assistant principal at uh Bristo and then there's a portion um that that is currently

052allocated to supervision of the reach program his historically in the past um if you go back a couple of years uh before we had Elementary assistant principles we had the part-time we had the assistant principal at Bristo uh would supervise Bristo for U 60 or 70% of the time and then and then there was an expectation with the other 30% of the time they would float over to the elementary to provide relief for evaluation case load at some of our larger elementary schools we shifted that we shifted that model um with the with the provision of having an 092 certified Elementary assistant principal at our at our elementary schools and and shifted uh the responsibilities to reach and again we're looking to tweak that again okay so when when the Bristo principal needs to go

053to central office is there someone with an 092 in charge at the school yes yeah typically it would be that assistant principal um but we also have our department supervisors who have 92s and um at times there are there are teacher leaders that are in programs that might uh be tapped on the shoulder to carry the M carry the walkie-talkie for the day to give them some experience especially if uh a couple of the administrators need to go okay and um the teachers that are uh based at the board of bed they also go into schools they do professional development they help crunch data look at test scores so they're doing a lot but do they model lessons ever they can yes they can um some of them go to the plc's sit in on

054the plc's and help um teachers at that level uh they can model lessons coach lessons uh meet with teachers on curriculum there's a wide variety of things they do directly supporting teachers and then supporting them at you know the next level here with and definitely some of our lead trainers on csis right yeah they they develop CSI and training and they often not only develop it but deliver it or teach uh or work with a smaller group of people who can turn and deliver it so and if I understand too they they often work on a on a state level too like with the Native American um curriculum and different programs and with the Asian studies and things that are coming up there's roles to build State curriculum they stay very well um in tune

055with State Trends and um communication with different offices uh there if there's something that is coming out that needs to be adjusted for instance the science of reading for instance major change to our reading program in the elementaries uh so our curriculum specialist for ELA and social studies has been very closely aligned with any State uh efforts and Regional efforts to um ensure that the science of reading uh programming and the district leadership literacy teams and the school-based leadership literacy teams are functioning as a state head intended okay um one last thing um at next meeting um for the the budget um we made a big change from curriculum Specialists to assistant principles I'd love to hear um the results of that this year um any changes going forward and and what has been the

056benefit because that was a a a big change and I can see from the budget of 2023 24 it was it a cost change but um I'd love to hear if the change was worth and the benefits thank you yeah no I'm happy to speak on that um I can give you information next time I can I can just talk about the uh uh we're we're excited by the change I mean it was uh it was not perfectly cost neutral but uh actually was there a cost savings associated with that Liz do you recall uh there was a cost savings um I don't recall off hand what it yeah it wasn't drama it was like 23,000 something in that neighborhood maybe I don't know it we can look up I have it from last year's

057files we can look up what the cost savings was but um one of the real benefits of that aside from the opportunity to divide uh evaluation case loads an immediate piece for um for our elementary principles to kind of reduce that evaluation case load uh down to something more manageable um it we we really looked at all of the different uh respons responsibilities inherent to uh an elementary principal and wanted to position them more in really more I guess in the curricular role as the leader of uh instructional practice um and uh so so whereas our curriculum Specialists did an outstanding job with that for years and years kind of as a coach Mentor um being able to have the uh principal in that role especially to not only coach Mentor but um you know

058as as the prim Ary evaluator for a lot of the classroom teachers um in order to do so our our principles would often get tied up at the elementary level in a lot of um management related tasks uh student discipline and uh certainly uh attendance at ppts as the 092 um so that that is is essentially uh the bulk of the responsibility that we put on to the assistant principal on the day-to-day operations although obviously um our El elies work uh leadership Works work as a team they divide and conquer and there's you know there's some overlap in Sharing but uh but that's kind of the big picture um it's also helped to therefore do some recalibration with our department supervisors on pupil services and have them have some greater Focus uh whether that be

059in their program responsibilities or looking at some of the some of the secondary um High School Middle School responsibility so U that that's been our approach uh I'm I'm certain we can prepare some more information um uh overall I would say the change uh has has yielded um some really good results but like anything it's brand new this year everyone's kind of learning it test driving it we've certainly hit some speed bumps along the way that we work on um but I couldn't be more impressed with the team that we've that we have and uh and uh I do hope that uh we'll be able to talk about tangible results as it's as it impacts student learning Toya um my question was just about the ISS supervisors is that four um because I know it

060says we have four last year was that from um we there was uh we brought in two additional staff in there that were getting trained in some stuff to support in in those roles or is that just like more supervisors or is it staff so you're looking at the I ISS supervisors so previously we had one at each High School okay and then we have one um now at two of the middle schools as well okay and then the staff who work there what's are they what's their um titles so the ISS their pair of professionals okay all right that was an addition yes yeah thank you sorry me step and I'm just curious to go back to Ethan's question about the density of some of the non-certified staff there's a there's a number that

061you typically use I know it's based on um number of students in a school in terms of how many ta they might get I wanted to share with Ethan that you know our our Tas that are um that are not necessarily within Melissa's program um these are the some of the go-to people uh that we utilize when there are substitute positions requiring a substitute that go unfilled um and and I would say that that's a significant way in which those folks are utilized on a daily basis yeah and so what we do is each building depending on size we have a a number or calculation that we do and each building's allocated a certain number of uh teaching I got to get it right now student AIDS right list teaching assistance is it still teaching

062assistance um that we look at and allocate to the building and essentially they act as um you know for when there's shortages teachers are out Subs aren't there they're able to go and provide that stability um and so that's something that each building is given and that number is monitored very carefully um so that they have those in the building yeah absolutely any other questions yes Shannon um just curious when if you think about kind of a breakdown percentage wise of expend expenditures on Central off off compared to school level I know there's a resource online where I looked up last year it was for the 2223 year West Harford it I don't know how accurate this is but it said about 1.4% of the funds were spent on uh central office as compared with

063the state average of 3.4% which sounds pretty efficient um and just curious if that's accurate if you guys think of it that way I believe those figures are accurate generally those come from the um reporting that we do at year end through the EFS system the educational Financial system and so what we're required to do uh by state law is to take all of our expenditures um from the general fund Grant funds Etc um we classify each and every expense by type of expense by funding source um by purpose whether it's special education regular education um or support services for um for central office um whether it's a salary a Ben or and they have all these codes and so we go through uh we code each and every expenditure to this and then we

064submit it and they uh come up with the reports that you're looking at online um and so we we do that every year Paul certifies that um and it's something that's due to the state uh by the 1 of September every year we do that over the summer based on our actual expenditures so while I'm not sure what our percentage was for last year I I assume that the data you saw um is accurate based on the filings that we do certainly our EFS reports from last year is that what you're looking for sure thank you other questions please continue thank you all right we'll be moving on to pupil Services special education that starts on page your summary and references Pages E5 and E6 for this first page but in case you didn't see

065it I also want to start by referencing the supplemental Pages starting on 8 through 12 in the back of your board book because they do highlight a large overview of the pupil services department and important trends that we've seen and we've talked about at the board table before but I think it's important to highlight them as we talk about pupil Services um and what that's looked like over the past 10 years and so thank you to Liz for putting together these beautiful graphs that really help illustrate you know the changes we've seen over time so from the 2015 2016 school year to the present school year um you know the in the prevalence rate of special education here in West Harford has increased pretty significantly um we are not different from the state uh we're

066closing in at about 20% and that is similar to where the state's prevalence rate is as well um so we really see that in terms of the students that we support in pupil Services um this current school year these are October one numbers we have a little close to 1600 students that are served in District but important to note that we have um over a hundred students almost 120 students served in our magnets in private schools and while um we support our students in our private schools for child find and I under Ida they actually receive a proportionate share of our funding to go towards their special education services they may or may not be West Harford resident so you'll see in some of the supplementals that that's kind of disaggregated out about who's who's

067a resident who isn't a resident so you understand that but regardless of their town of residence if they attend a private school located in the town of West Harford West Harford Public Schools um serves our special education meets so just important for you to note that and um our out of District numbers um October 1 was 125 important to note that we have some unique characteristics here in our district we have one of the largest public transition programs in the state of Connecticut that proudly serves our postsecondary students 18 to 22 um and you know there was a recent change where students were exiting at 21 and then later at 22 on their 22nd birthday um and last year that had changed it was an unfunded mandate um they were staying the whole year which

068we were very happy to have them um but just important to note there are some legislative pieces that have come and changed our world um we also have the largest DEA and heart of hearing population in a public school in the state of Connecticut and we're proudly serving those students with our teachers of the death and sign language interpreters uh we've had some great events events um our special education teachers and related service providers really create Magic in our spaces we've heard some highlights here at the board with our unified theater performances Unified sports celebrations um we've had some great deaf and heart of hearing community events that are happening um so just a very wonderful Community for our special education students here in the town of West Hartford of course we've also talked about

069some important facts that have um been late in Breaking around a legislative movement to fund some of the excess cost components we were really happy to see that Governor Lamont did put through the $40 million for this current year um towards our excess cost reimbursement and we um hope to be recipients of of a pretty significant portion of that which will really help us this current year um there is legislative um movement on a new bill for $40 million but that will not be till the uh 27 it's 2627 school year for 40 million and it looks like a potential Grant opportunity for that same year in the amount of $4 million which will be a competitive Grant um it's important to note that and the reason I bring that up is because we still

070um are active in our community um voicing our concerns around excess cost grant funding because next year at this point there is no um and there's nothing through the legislator at this point for support for the 25 26 school year relative to the excess cost reimbursement and we we could talk more about that um but we'll talk more about what the stat staing looks like on this page um you know Kelly and I had a great opportunity in January to provide information along the Continuum talk about our services and our programming so what you're going to see here is um our Continuum of services from resource Early Learning Center intensive academic and intensive Behavior Support programs um in the adopted budget to the current year there was a a variance of 1.0 from our intensive

071academic program to our intensive resource program again this is driven by student need and so we had originally allocated to our intensive Academic Program um but as we kind of surveyed as the students came in um it was shifted to our resource program to really support our students in this current budget we're looking to um add an additional three intensive academic teachers to at the elementary level and one at our postsecondary program the elementary numbers are primarily due to the Bur baby kindergart and start age change so those students would have started this some of those students would have started this year It's a larger cohort moving into kindergarten next year substantiating the two positions and then um our postsecondary teacher position would be in response to students requiring transition only Services also in response

072to student need we're looking to add a board certified um behavior analyst to support our Behavior programming and U behaviors districtwide and those are offset Again by enrollment and student needs of two resource teachers at the elementary level and an addition of 0. five at the uh Middle School level so overall it's a net 2.5 increase for special education teachers and as we look at the funding um for this program you'll see as we compare the adopted budget to the proposed for the current year um that our salaries have a variance of 6.1% um that is our uh collective bargaining agreements and the uh market rate settlement that we had as well as a net increase of the 2 and a half positions that Melissa detailed for you um offsetting this increase is a reduction

073of approximately 46,000 in the appropriation for tutors in the homebound instruction program and I believe that's due to um a change and some success in the way that that program is run and maybe Melissa could speak more to that um but then the the other significant change here and really an item that's very significant to our budget um is the increase in our outof district tuition which is almost 3.7 uh million questions Ethan so that assumes you there won't be funding for that is correct we have not seen anything yet that adds any additional funding to the state budget for the 2526 school year um above and beyond the the flat funding we currently have So based upon our anticipated number of students an anticipation of increased tuition rates and a reimburse rate of excess

074cost probably in the 55 to to 58% uh we are seeing a significant increase in that line at of Claire um and I I believe um we are going from like a seven 19% or 177% special ed population almost a whole percentage point up this year yeah we've really see continued to see a sharp increase in our prevalence rate um you know it's it's a number of factors I think it's better identification I do believe that we are a destination District we have families moving in all the time um seeking our special education services um so we do see that um we've had a pretty significant increase um as far as the Intensive Academic Program how are you finding space within the school because these are class rooms or mini classrooms they they are not

075in the general classroom so is there a space constraint and a space problem I can tell you because we're finding it Melissa and I because we went out to schools and walked the hallways and kind of did an assessment of um our SPAC is being utilized um so you know the potential of of um seeing some reductions in classroom spaces and if if we can project and see that uh that they'll be consistent space available um that that's kind of the determining Factor uh for us to be able to say hey can we can we utilize uh a classroom space here now obviously any space in any building um no spaces are are ever left vacant so uh it's a question often of as you're going um if if there's a larger classroom space that's

076that's uh being utilized for a smaller number of students it's it's sort of a question of all right is there an alternate space that we can take that programming um in order to have a larger space that we might need for a classroom in the same way that principles do when the number of second grade classrooms you know goes up by one they they they find they find a way to utilize what they have and how many um I know there's been some locker room renovation into classrooms is that something that's happened at other schools Duffy has had uh that happened in the past about I think the last one we did for that was six or seven years ago and we have we have no plans to do it again and you don't have

077any other unused locker rooms when we used to change the kids would change clothes for gym not not that are applicable to to convert to any spaces like that okay thank you Ethan page nine and the data supplement I think it is I'm reading right yeah that's I just I thought you were saying that you went from about 2% up on student special education prevalence is that am I read is that something that mean something else I'm sorry can you say that again Ethan I don't I couldn't hear you no no it's fine okay I don't control it um the student special education student prevalence if I'm saying that right that applies special needs right correct so that shows 2% for the last fiscal year correct but it's a overall 20% here in the district

078so the percentage of prevalence of disabilities with the overall population of students enrolled in West Harford is 20% does that make sense 20% of the student population correct yeah Ethan you may be doing like 1794 uh compared to 1756 a true Count to true Count when we're doing when we're talking about did I think when what Claire's talking about if we take the the 1756 for 2324 and divide that by the total po student population um and that's our that's our prevalence percentage for that year so when we take the 1794 for this year we'd be dividing by was it 9316 or the total the total student population for this year which be a different denominator so we're not necessarily doing a a count of special ed this year against last year we're doing the

079percentage of the true population last year to the percentage of the true population this year no I understand I was just but I was looking to see how much has the special needs students the number quantitatively changed and so it looks like it's been pretty with the exception of uh 23 to 24 when it went up 10% it's been pretty steady relatively speaking Yeah we've had we've shown steady growth I think I guess I'm just trying to say that when we when we talk about the percentage special we're we're we're not comparing to the number of special ed students we had last year we're comparing to the number of overall students we had okay well I'm looking for Budget how much it decrease yeah all right thank you um I had a question on this

080same um graph on page nine what does DCF mean on that graph those are students that are DC placed by DCF yep um placed in an outside appr special education school by DCF so DCF is the guardian or DCF made the decision both but their Nexus is their Nexus for funding is West Hartford for enrollment uhuh got it okay um I also had the I also wanted to ask you considering that we keep hearing over and over again how West Harford is a destination for um particularly people uh with children with special needs what is your sense that that we're actually estimating this and appropriately meaning that we're not going to have more need than we're actually budgeting for because we keep hearing that everybody's moving here for the special needs programs you know all

081we can rely on is uh historical information based on you know projections what we know in the current moment um you know it does happen that we do have to reexamine just like there's section breaks at times at the start of a school year there are times and you'll see in the next page when we talk about related Services you know even this year there were additions Beyond uh the adopted budget in response to student need yeah and so you we see that over time I mean pupil Services is driven by student need and so as students enroll or pbts meet and discuss an evolving student need you know Services change so they you know a meeting might be held and a student needs an increase in speech and language Services um and you know

082if there's a large end of that happening across the district then it might warn us have conversation about Service delivery and or do we need to add additional Staffing um during the school year it's an unknown projections are are I you know our best estimate um we try to be as accurate as possible I I can't remember the exact number but I want to say it was we had 73 movein between um July 1 and October 15th of this current school year and that's all with IEPs so that's that's a large number of students that you know we you know projected some but not at that many and so that really does have an impact um depending especially if they're Landing in cohorts if they require more specialized programming um if some of them go

083straight to out of districts because they were already placed in out of districts so you know those are things that you know we just try to program for students as they they come in but projections can be um hard to manage as like a firm projection just need your mic what was adopted and what was um what is current is not really necessarily the same correct yep yeah no for certain you're you're bringing up something which is a very valid point that the special ed you know Staffing and can be reactive um as opposed to um you know we can get generally you know pretty good Census Data pretty good idea uh we certainly know uh I think we used we used to talk years ago about the cohort survival ratio which is hey the

084percentage of kids who are in a particular grade or in third grade that are going to remain in fourth grade and so on and we know where we might see some fallof from that you know typically in the transitions from elementary to middle middle to high especially it is a little bit more of a uh kind of reacting to what happens on the ground we make our best estimates um but in terms of the destination District you know number one it's it's certainly true for our special ed but um I would say it's certainly true in general for the education program and a whole as a whole you know I'm looking at all the emails we've gotten even just this week um pretty much it's every parent you know if they if they moved into

085West Harford they're talking about they moved into West Harford because of the school so it's a valid point Claire um yeah I know that there was the 40 million um that was on the fence and then it passed um there was also a a 13 or 14 million that was going to be put towards studying the outplacement um transportation all these costs involved in that is did that pass and if it did is there anything we can do as a district to um you know apply or do a program or something that that would help to study this increase of outplacement the price increase the transportation those things because I think there's some expertise in this District that would benefit um doing some investigation in that area yes so there is a bill on the

086table for a proposal for the grant funded opportunities that will go live in the 26 27 school year so it's a future opportunity um certainly when that goes live we will take advantage of that for sure um it it just has to be offered um and go open so that we can um it does look like there you know I think there's been a a lot of um parents stakeholders community members Educators and professionals coming forward to speak on behalf of funding of special education in the state of Connecticut and so there are a number of initiatives um on the legislative table and I think the delegation is really advocating on behalf of our students and our families and our districts and so I'm happy to see that the initial bill passed and I'm hoping

087that you know there will be continued advocacy around some of these bills that are on um up for consideration for us to be able to really support them being moved forward and um having the delegation and legislation really understand the impact that this has on our communities and our schools and our students so I'm hopeful other questions please continue all right we'll be turning to page seven in our summary book which references page E21 and e22 and this is related services so this covers our social workers psychologists speech and language Pathologists our physical therapist occupational therapists teachers of deatha our interpreters and our nursing department as well so in response to student need and this is what we were talking about um and Gail was referencing earlier is that post the adopted budget we did

088uh have an increase in Staffing of a total of 1.4 positions over budget which was a a 1.0 school psychologist an increase of a 1.0 speech and language pathologist a point2 of a sign language interpreter and a point2 of a nurse and that was overall offset the psychologist um was a trade between a social work and a psychologist position to really support evaluation and testing two additional positions are added in the current Staffing for the 2526 budget um I say colist is added at the secondary level to address case loads and increased need for testing and evaluation and speech and language pathologist is added the elementary level to address needs related to testing evaluations related to dyslexia and also to support the needs or intensive academic programming increase that we anticipate and the corresponding budget

089for this section has a salary increase of approximately 6.6% um the employees in this division are in the wha and the nursing Union and we have their control rual uh collective bargaining increase as well as the addition of the 3.4 positions uh that we have discussed uh the operating lines and the equipment lines are an offset so we are um have a consistent budget overall as it relates to those areas questions all right please continue all right turning to page eight of your summary book this is p services supervision and corresponds with pages e33 and E34 in the binder um so you'll see that we have seven Department supervisors that are budgeted for the 2526 school year in the current school year there was an unbudgeted 045 department supervisor that was added in response to

090cover um supervision for Section 504 plans for students and this part-time position will be absorbed in existing leadership positions and eliminated for the 25 26 school year not impacting any students or supervision just efficiencies that we've found um and then there's a pupil Services office pair of professional that was upgraded to a clerk position in this proposed budget and you'll see this is where we really have our non-certified staff um you see an overall reduction of seven um really that's not um impact any student services these are student AIDS directly supporting students and what we've been looking at is certification levels that are required So within our current budget um so the less positions but same um allocation of funding is making sure that the certification levels meet our student needs so in some cases

091it's registered Behavior technicians that are really there to support very technical aspects of student program are more intensified programs or par Professionals in Lee of student AIDS so that students have a higher um the par professionals who have higher training are paired with those students who require that and as we look at the um the funding for this program um you will see that we have a salary increase uh for this program of 8.9% uh that's a bit higher than some of our other programs uh but it follows what Melissa had discussed that we're really trying to make sure that we have the appropriate specialized student support and so in your book you will see that there is um an increase um in our par professional line and a corresponding decrease in our student aid

092as we um bring on Specialized uh pupil support spe Specialists as we look at our operating budget um you'll see there's an increase of 50,000 which is directly related to the purchase of materials uh relating to our dyslexia programming CLA um these seven positions um are there opportunities or training so that they can apply for a different s sort of position or position within the the district or are these people going to be losing their jobs I could answer that so they're actually they were unfilled positions that we were um looking at um that they were vacant and we uh they were student aid positions that we were that were converted to par educator positions which were positions we were able to fill and also um in the par educator Union there's different levels of

093par Educators so um applied Behavior Analysis par Educators um and and Par educ ators that have specialized training so that allows for us to hire more qualified staff versus having the vacant positions for student AIDS so no one lost their job um it wasn't a displacement of any staff but great question yeah um I was just wonder if you could explain what department supervisors are on what they do absolutely so our seven Department supervisors are special education administrators that oversee the special education teams and students at their building sites and monitor all of the federal and state legal um timelines relative to special education so whato there's only seven of them so what school correct so they're mostly at the secondary level and cover our Early Learning Center in our outof District programs and then

094we have one uh one of them covers our strive postsecondary in our private school programs um our supervision at the elementary level for special education has shifted to our elementary assistant principles other questions please continue as you turn to page nine of our summary document you can see we have reached the general Support Services budget which corresponds to Pages F2 to F5 in your budget book um um these are primarily our central office positions or in the case of plant and Facilities um employees who work in all of our school buildings as we look at the Staffing uh for the upcoming year you will see that we have an additional 0.15 position in the superintendent office that is consistent with the current year and what that really is is a portion of a secretarial position

095that supports our high school summer school program um as we look at our security officers uh you will see in the current year we are one officer over budget uh in response to the construction project at Duffy we hired another officer to ensure safety uh at that site that project will be wrapped up before the start of the uh upcoming school year and so that position uh will be eliminated and we will go back down to 26 employees in The Residency and Security office um and other than that there are no other uh changes to our staffing as we look at the budget that corresponds uh to General Support Services you will see that um for salaries we have an increase of 600,000 or 3.4% uh for the individuals in this area as we look

096at our benefits um Gil you had had a question about benefits earlier and this is where all of our benefits um are listed um our the largest benefit is our health and medical insurance uh the budget for the upcoming year increases uh significantly uh certainly it is the majority of that $3.3 million increase uh at this point we've received an estimated premium increase or at the time that the budget was prepared we assumed an estimated premium increase of 10% um we received the letter uh a day or two ago and it is 9.9 so we you know have a a minor savings there but we had been optimistic that that would come in a little bit lower um we've belonged to the state partnership plan now since I believe the 1920 um n 2019 to

0972020 uh school year um and it's really been a good program for us I think overall the average increase has been around maybe 4 and a half to 4.6% but there are certain years that that it's higher you may recall last year it dropped down to I think 2% um was are increased but this is a year that that it is higher um you'll also see we our appropriation for unemployment insurance um is being increased 25,000 that is to reflect Uh current salaries and anticipated claims and our social security is increased consistent with our wages um and our actual experience as we move on to our operating expenses the largest increase in this area is our transportation costs um we have contracts ongoing contracts for both in District and outof District transportation so this increase

098includes our contractual rate increases for those contracts uh in addition we are seeing an increased demand for outof district special education buses and that's really what's driving um this increase and I know we've talked about that particularly as it relates even to the current year budget and we are anticipating that that will continue to be a budget driver we had good news on our utilities front our appropriation for 2526 reflects a net reduction of approximately 100,000 um our Appropriations for both Heating and water are reduced based upon conservation efforts lower usage and we've been able to amortise and accumulated Surplus in that fund our electricity budget is increasing a bit due to rate changes but as I said overall reduction of 100,000 our tuition reimbursement account for our teachers per our wh contract is increasing

099$110,000 for the upcoming year and we have an increase in our contract Services which reflects rate increases for existing services and we're also seeing an increase in our custodial supplies line based upon our experience um in inflation in that area we have just a couple of lines of equipment and we're seeing a reduction for the upcoming year um in the current year we had to do a planned replacement of a facility's maintenance vehicle that's non-recurring for next year and so we're seeing the reduction um resulting from that line item our general Support Services is a large area dollar-wise and has uh you know more of our um benefit operating uh costs and variances so if you do have questions you know I went through that rather quickly but I'm happy to answer any specific questions

100um that you may have on that Ethan so on page C1 when I went looked at the medical it went from 24 million in fiscal year 23 to 26 million 24 budgeted for 28 and 25 and then 26 another it went to 30 so it's 2 million consistently or 10% roughly the last four years it it has now that's the combined funds but yes it has consistently gone up you know it's the um so is your question why is well it's why I realize you have no control over it but it's a pretty significant number it is a significant number you know we are covering um I believe in the plan there's probably 1,500 employees and their families and so it's a significant cost so when we look at any kind of an increase on

101such a large base cost it is a large variant um it's not just the um Active Health Insurance that's in there that also covers our retire healthare and our contribution to our um obligation and liability for other post-employment benefits so that's all worked into that same number are the numbers all West Harford retired and active or is it the entire state that they take from the pool so we're only paying obviously for our folks but the state partnership plan um publishes Regional or County rates that are consistent for any participant who um is in that county okay maybe what I meant was when they pulled the number is it based upon the pool of West Harford or the pool of the state I believe it's the pool of the state because we're all participating in

102the same program that much yes wow well actually certain areas different regions may go up more or may go up less depending upon the they they Zone It Off by County oh okay so Fairfield County for example I believe had an increase this year of 11 a little over 11% whereas we were at 9.9 but we're ours is based on Harford County corre Harford County so we're part of the whole County yes we're part of the state but they they set Regional rates based on that's what I was trying to figure out yep just one additional question the um residen residency and security I assume is primarily the sro's it it's mostly our security officers correct we currently have 23 23 security officers um and then we have a director an assistant director um a

103residency coordinator and then someone who works in the office so that office is also handling all of our registrations as well as um building security then I can to ask one last question the um other one that surprised me was the um electricity went up 300 ,000 for the last fiscal year is that based on projection again from the town or from somebody else so that's we have a um an energy specialist who works for both the town um and the board and so it's a function of her projections for usage um as well as upcoming rates and she's projecting I assume that energy rates will go up uh that they will go up a little bit but we just haven't seen the same type of um drop in electricity usage that we have seen

104um in some of our other utilities but in whole for the program it is still a reduction overall and so you know it's about a 100,000 reduction year over-year under electricity under heating it was but under electricity so I'm looking at the combined so if you look at our three utilities heating water electricity okay and add them up it's a $100,000 reduction all right well it looks like they overestimated the heating last year because that was projected to go up about 400,000 and looks like from your budget it stayed the same we did we had a light winter and so we're now seeing the benefit of that okay thanks um I had a question on the health insurance being that um like as Ethan was saying it seems to be going up and going up

105and then this year it really went up is and you know when I look at all the things that are driving the budget a lot of them we don't have any control over but that that we do have control and I'm curious if um is there any other option for the health insurance or are we kind of in this state employee health insurance and that's it or do we have other options um I think we certainly you know there's always other options however prior to joining the state partnership plan we were self-insured um and we found that that really um added a lot of volatility to our budget um we experience catastrophic claims so that our um contribution each year was varying widely um and was quite unpredictable and so at the time when we

106switched to this plan in the 2019 uh 2020 school year an analysis had been done um as to the cost effectiveness of doing so um I think at that point it was determined that it really was a cost-effective solution uh at the time I believe the projection was we saved 2 million yeah just to start off just to start off the first year and then the first few years um of the program we really had very reasonable increases um the pandemic has thrown things off a little bit as we come back to a new normal um and so that has certainly affected us but as I said last year was 2% so we certainly were very happy with that uh percentage increase um I think that this just happens to be a year where the

107claims Statewide um require a higher contribution of course any type of um change to our our plans or our health insurance would need to be negotiated um with all of our unions as well oh really okay so is the only two choices then we either self insure or we do the state plan and that that's those are the options I think those are probably the two best options yes and we really found that the volatility involved with um with self-insuring um and hiring a third party administrator and and trying to do all of that ourselves was just not an effective means of doing so so we cannot change the health insurance without the of the unions I believe we would have to negotiate with that with them we'd have to open up all the contracts

108for that which is what we had to do when we switch to the state partnership plan okay all right thank you um so like Ethan I was surprised at the uh 39% reduction in the heating and the 21% increase in electricity um can you speak a little little to um some of the changes that have happened in our elementary schools I know we had air conditioning in both high schools um do you foresee some of the window work in some schools like Duffy to reduce some of the heating costs but then the electricity go up because are are they getting air conditioning or is it Anyway speak to some of the we should as we're as we're as we're bringing the new systems online at Duffy and then at web Hill and at the other

109schools years and years from now um you will see an increase in the efficiency of the the HVAC systems that are being put in place there's certainly a higher efficiency there's certainly operating uh with less of a draw from an energy standpoint we anticipate that it's not going to be a significant piece that you're going to see from a year to year in the budget but we we expect over time we're moving into these high efficiency systems like we did when we opened Charter Oak when we opened Charter Oak we moved from a very older uh boiler system to um actually the underground uh heat VX uh the the HVAC the individual heating systems that are in that building as well that run the geothermal so other questions could I just sorry could I just

110clarify one thing on the health insurance and maybe I'm reading this wrong but when I it looks to me like in 22 you were at like 24 million and then you were at 26 million which doesn't seem like 2% like each year it looks like it goes up 2 million what page are you looking at I'm looking at um C1 unless I'm I could be misreading it am I right like it looks like to me it's going up about 10% just about every year but there a couple of factors oops thank you um uh you know first of all it's um it's the number of employees who uh are employed by the district and elect to participate in the program uh we also have to look at what level they participate in you can participate

111at three levels either just yourself you and one other person or your whole family and the premiums are significantly different um at the at each level um the other thing that needs to be taken into account are retirees and the number of them um that elect to keep the district Insurance um certainly our non-certified Personnel uh when they retire can elect to keep it and even our teachers can elect to either take the state insurance or ours so there's a cost associated with that as well um in addition we have to make a contribution for other post employment benefits um which is basically health care for employees in retirement um and so every year an an actuary does a valuation for us and determines what that contribution is and that goes up every year as

112well so there are kind of a lot of factors it's not just a pre premium increase like I could give you a history and and I have one actually not on me but of what the premiums are each year so that you can see what the average increas is but that's just one factor in the whole program other questions Ethan this is just a followup but it's a question not a statement the do you know if the uh State or the county uses like a stop Gap and insurance for High High cases or I'm used to seeing that I assume that they do have stop gaps certainly when we were self-insured we had stop gap insurance mul levels of stop Gap and yeah we had multiple levels because you do have catastrophic claims that can

113just have too large an impact um for the plan to absorb now given the size of the state plan and the number of enroles they may not find that is necessary um but they do a uh a report on the state partnership plan I can look to see if it discusses or talks about stop gap insurance it would help with volatility if that's that's what I was wondering yes that's what we used to use it for we we would have levels of stop Gap that we would put in place when we were self-insuring right because just the increases just seemed significant other questions and Claire out of respect for you I know you had a question earlier and we paused but if if you want to revisit your question about yeah we've we about element

114class size um so we've received a lot of emails about uh Elementary class size and um there's two two issues one is uh a lot of the emails um talk about fairness and um why would a school one school have more kids and another school have less kids I know that our two magnet schools um by their design have a lower cap um of class size but um if you could speak to um the issue about why why schools can't all have the same number of kids in every class because a lot of people in their District well I mean I think that needs to be explained because from a parents point of view they see oh this school has this many this school has that that's not fair why would the teachers in that

115school have more kids in their class than the teacher in this school so I I think it's important to understand how those numbers happen and many of us understand that because we're in the business but if you're not in the business and don't understand all that it doesn't seem fair and the second thing is um we have set class size limits and as a teacher in West Harford I've been at that Max limit um and if we did did make a change in class size and drop say the uh four or five limit two sizes down or two students down and the K through third grade two students down so you'd have a cap of K to three of 21 and a cap of four to five of 25 students um looking at the chart

116and they did a lot of calculating but that would equate to um 15 teacher positions um that would have to be added to this year's budget to say that you can't go over 25 and you can't go over 21 um would we have the space for that and what approximately would be the cost yeah I can I can jump in um on your questions and certainly invite the team to add anything so just in terms of your first question about I guess I'll call it Equity of class size across different schools and across different grade levels so obviously you all know we operate within um board established class siiz guidelines and we use 23 as the figure for um you know excluding our magnets uh for our K to3 and I'm looking at our projection

117sheet and I see you know it's it's all based on the size of the cohort that happens to register um and let's just say you know in that kindergarten year um within that elementary school zone so I'm looking at two different cohorts um that are current grade KS that would that would roll into grade one next year um and in and in one in in one school there were there were 38 children uh who enrolled and in the other school there were 47 so with the 38 children uh that was a nice even split of uh two sections of 19 and uh whereas in the other school with 47 you know or even if it had been 48 two sections would be 24 24 students would be in excess of our class siiz guidelines so

118it was a it was a break of three sections and those three sections you know therefore break out into uh 16 16 each or you know really because it's 47 16 16 15 so that school gives the appearance uh wow they have nice smaller class sizes they're smaller by four or even um three or four uh students and then and then clearly those differences uh when you roll up into fourth and fifth grade where the class size guidelines go up to 27 those differences become more pronounced and it it's it's similar you know very much at the high school level uh the number of sections is based on the total number of students who happen to enroll in a given year so the class sizes can be very different from year to year and from

119course to course simply based on the number of students who kind of show up at the door um is it you know we heard a lot about this last year it's very true that uh there are some neighborhoods where you know the cohort sizes seem to consistently just be larger um and that uh you know I don't I don't have a solution for that um outside of kind of what Dr marrow said in terms of uh the only real way to to have greater Equity um across those you know might involve a redistricting which um would be a very much a larger larger larger conversation you explain redist sure like when we when we look at our maps of uh you know where you happen to particularly live in relation to the uh closest elementary

120school you know all the addresses are zoned for um for a specific Elementary School and So based on uh the address of the house in which you reside uh will typically determine uh the elementary school which you attend unless of course you're uh programming into one of our uh magnet schools um or in very unique situations you know um we we had situations this year where we did not want to exceed a certain class size um we had we had pretty much reached uh what we deemed to be capacity and we offered uh in those very specialized circumstances we offered uh attendance at uh either a magnet school or a nearby neighborhood school but it's um you know it it's a responsibility that we have to to ensure that we can uh bus efficiently that

121we can have Equitable um you know procedures for for for enrollment that that you know like like any school district we you establish zones of residency within the town to map themselves to our elementaries to our middles and to our high schools um so it's so it's it's dramatically unlikely that you know children are simply not going to be born at uniform rates distributed geographically uh evenly across so there'll there'll always be some some some variance there um in terms of the in terms of the different class siiz guidelines it's certainly uh certainly a prerogative of the board to look at class siiz guidelines it comes at a financial cost um to reduce you said you did the math and I I looked at your math and I would agree with you that if if

122we wanted to reduce uh K to3 down to uh from yeah K to3 down from from a class size guideline of 23 down to 21 and if we wanted to reduce four and five from a class size of of a guideline maximum of 27 down to a maximum of 25 um based on these projections we might anticipate 15 uh additional teaching sections and and as we said earlier uh we we look at an average kind of salary for a teacher in and around $75,000 and a $225,000 benefit package so it's $100,000 per section times 15 sections would be 1.5 million um so it so it is no small um no small undertaking um and and so you weigh the uh Financial cost um against uh the potential benefits um for students because I do I

123do recognize that at the end of the day we're in the business of educating children and we certainly want to be able to provide um the best that we're capable to provide um within within the constraints that we have um and I know we had we had a lot of conversation about this last year you you know I just want to go back to point out that um cuz I don't know that it you know it was necessarily obvious so I'm glad to have the opportunity to point it out that we do we we do anticipate you know what's what's on the page here would be um an absolute strict uh you know um application of our class siiz guidelines netting a total of 193 sections we are budgeting for 196 we are budgeting to

124say uh that we expect uh that that we may have move-ins um or we may have reason to um take three sections on this page um and you know three three spaces on this page in a particular grade level um and and create a create an additional section break uh to to uh to to provide an additional classroom which would obviously average average down what the average class size was for that grade level for that year um and we have seen historically we see in the current budget where maybe that number of movein um that we're projecting is larger than uh once we get to August there are more children present than we had anticipated and we still have that same need to break that section where we end up being over the adopted budget

125um something that we would you know we would I would take license to do as as your superintendent um in the interest and in the benefits of uh you know acting on our mission to deliver uh instruction and and then we would need to find a means to um you know pay for that between essentially September 1 and uh June what have you um so that we so that the budget uh is does not become over budgeted and that is where um the magic of efficiencies is undertaken by Liz and the team um we you know may not do something uh there may become a position open somewhere else in the district based on uh Elite resignation uh that ends up being not filled in order in order to accommodate for that it's obviously what

126we want to do is we want to have the absolute best possible projections so that we're not having to kind of play that um react contact game um and and find funding for something that was not budgeted hope that helps other questions Jason so this might not be for tonight but this may be you know the next Workshop discussion but a lot of the concerns we get from parents is obviously kids do better in in smaller class sizes that's kind of the mantra you here over and over again what does the data actually tell us about that and where our class sizes are sure so um we we've talked about this up at the table uh a number of times and and we can bring maybe some more I'm going to talk off the top

127of my head right now I don't have necessarily the there was a there was a there's one very good study that was done um that just had the unique conditions that they were able to um to perform I guess a more technical scientific based um study as opposed to um the protections that exist for children in terms of we're not going to experiment on them we're not going to you know change conditions and make them the subjects of the study but there is there is one study that was undertaken and and there is some true data that that uh within that study that reflects uh the benefits of smaller class Siz and off the top of my head and please correct me I'm going to I'm going to say you know I know a lot

128of those are based on class sizes that are smaller somewhere near 15 I don't know how high up they went um but they're they're their class sizes that um generally are not something that's going to necessarily be achievable as a a strict guideline that we would set out front that's something that would that would create um additions to our budget that would we wouldn't you know we would need to build schools we just it would it would be a significant increase in the number of sections for us to try to be averaging at 15 across the board or averaging at 14 uh across the board um and what they do find when you when you do start to break into kind of where we are which is I would say something that's relatively typical uh

129in the state of Connecticut relatively typical across the board um those differences from 21 to 22 24 to 25 those differences are not appreciable and I would certainly never want to say that it is that it is not um harder job uh I think I think we have some of the hardest working most dedicated teachers in the state of Connecticut if not in the country and I want to give them every credit for every single thing that they do every single day uh so I don't want to minimize anything ever um in fact I want to kind of tout the success that we continue to have with our guidelines I I I know that I have um also a historical document um we were able to run some numbers just based on kind of uh

130we've been in a period for a number of years obviously with Co we' we've we've talked about that before but um you know I've got a 20year history and we can we can share this with you um potentially you know added in um to the to the frequency of class sizes at the elementary that have let's you know if I just use the number um and depending on on where you go but if but if I look at a range of years from like 2005 till 20134 uh we were averaging somewhere somewhere close to 10 uh Elementary sections at a class size of 25 throughout the throughout that period of years um during 201819 we had five elementary Class sections uh at that size 201819 happens to be um one of our one of our

131highest um highest years for academic achievement and it would be an interesting question to kind of tease out those five classrooms or the or the uh that looks like a six or an eight classrooms at a class size of 24 just just to do those comparisons but um you know it's it's not it's not ground that we haven't walked in the past um I'm not going to pretend it's ideal and I'm not going to pretend I'm doing um you know I'm recommending this stricter adherence to class siiz guidelines because um it's it's neither Miser Le or something I want to do it is um it is a genuine concern on some of the some of the budget um challenges that we're facing this year uh both at the board table and at uh at the

132Town Council uh we're we're in the same boat relative to this 99.9% increase on our um health insurance premiums we're in roughly the same boat at this somewhere near 5% increase in our wages and salaries um and the only thing that we're adding to the pie uh that the Town Council doesn't have to contend with is this um this flat funding in the state shortfall that we have in our very specific um you know special education cost sharing that that we expect from the state of Connecticut so uh that's a burden that that the uh board of education budget uh will bear uh but we'll bear it with um I would think with a genuine understanding of um of our of our responsibility and a commitment to our mission and what we want to do

133uh to support all Learners that are here um and the promise of a high quality program you know that we set forward so um it's a it's a great Point uh and it is a great point of debate and I I recognize and value uh the very passionate um feelings of our constituents who who really would seek uh lower class size guidelines um and lower classes in general and uh I know that you as good-hearted people on the board are going to are going to have to weigh that very carefully and uh it's you know it it's just a a difficult climate um given what what I what we heard uh from our town manager in terms of his recommendations for the budget the the impact that will have on the community as a whole

134so um I'm concerned with being a able to channel the support of our parent Community for our budget as it exists um in addition to adding to it if if if if but I I I don't think that the argument is necessarily um I I I just think that everyone empathizes with with uh with our plate and I just think it's going to be tough to get to get this over the line is is is my uh is my assess and what I think I heard you sneak in there was that the historical data showed that when we were at periods where we've had higher closer to our guidelines there has been no academic repercussions from that I think in the in the aggregate um you know we we have a a long history of

135doing well and and within that history we have high class sizes and then just one other followup when we do have classes that reach sections that reach those closer to the guideline numbers are they given additional resour resources do they have you know additional teaching assistance other types of resources we can give them yeah absolutely you know so one of the things once we've published class lists um and told families this is who your teacher is um we we feel that's kind of like a that's a commitment at that point and we do have cases where all of a sudden that week before school or two weeks into the school year you get another student that gets added in and all of a sudden you're you're either at that class siiz guideline or you're or

136you're even one above it and what we will typically do at that point in time is we will hire uh a teaching assistant uh to be able to dedicate an extra set of hands in the classroom uh to provide for that circulation um and we've done that even in the given year where we've had um some higher you know if we have we I think we had a one Elementary School in the current year that you know we we did hear quite a bit about and I feel like didn't we did we hire Liz some um an additional teaching assistant one of the you keep saying 167 Ethan but I'm going to say 52 because the teaching assistants are 52 within the 167 um in order to uh in order to support the larger classes

137and and and and if not dedicated to a class floating between a couple of classrooms um so we do try to um be responsive I mean I I in no way shape or form want to dismiss the concern that parents have I I hear it I understand it I respect it um it's it's just um there's a financial component to it as well other questions Ethan just a question and I don't want to go over the numbers you have now because we're already at 7% but I was curious what is the pair the assistant how much is you know it's 100,000 for an incremental teacher how much is it for the PA professional or the assistant on average um so a pair of professional um the salary is around 30 um and they are eligible

138for benefits if they so elect um a teaching assistant is closer to 20 to 25 so there's a substantial difference there is and then if I could just point one thing out as you were talking I was looking you have one school with 71 kids in one grade 47 and the next grade below it so there's a lot of differences in the various school yeah from year to year yeah I I also see that for Elementry we're down 20 um students districtwide but yet the cohort in kindergarten I'm assuming with the bir babies the people that waited um we have 60 additional kindergarteners next year going to first grade so it's a big increase that do we have any projection or is this cohort of kindergarteners going to be like a blip do you believe

139and then we'll go backr year the current group that we have is is actually going to well it's 643 total but then the so that's the projection for next year I'm assuming what I'm assuming is that the kindergarten class currently that's moving to first grade will always stay as a low number because they were only n months eightth eight months um of students right but the group coming in after in the following year we're going to be back down into the low sixes we should my my assumption at this point is that because we are back to 12 months of eligible um 5-year-olds that we will return to a kind of what we think of as our standard um level per grade so similar to our current first grade what what will be the second

140grade for the following year yeah but if you if you look our fifth graders moving on are 682 yes I mean these are Big groups 690 um they are so those those two groups are moving on but we're going to be bringing in so there should be a reduction in the number of elementary kids pretty drastically in the next few years it seems that way we'll have to kind of see how it it plays out you know our kindergarten enrollment projection is always the the um the most variable because we really don't don't know how many will register but we do monitor that as as they're coming in and and really try to look at them and then one last question if we did add 15 teachers what do we have five classrooms 10 classrooms

141I mean a teacher is a teacher but then you need a classroom so are there available classrooms if we should add 15 teachers it depends it all depends on there's always available classrooms it just depends on what you want to displace it would mean putting uh perhaps specials on more of a cart system where they go to the classrooms versus having their own classroom um you know we've had situations in the past where we've due to enrollment we've had to have these spaces and we would certainly we would certainly work uh at each building if needed to do so it's just not an easy these spaces aren't currently vacant they're currently being used for instruction it would just mean a shift into classroom instruction as opposed to that being a music room or that being

142an art room perhaps or that being uh a separate esol space so Gale can I just clarify the class size is set by the state or is it set by the town we've set our class size I know the question came up is there a state maximum I think that was what you're referring to but the the class size that we have now is set by the town by the Board of Ed by the of by the Board of Ed okay thank you other questions if I may say to that last Point yes set by the Board of Ed correct me if I'm wrong but Guided by Guidance that is is we align strive to align with guidance provided but we ultimately do set the standard so Lorna I'm just curious what did we when

143did we set that because do we is that something we voted on I I don't I may not have a good ay it's an a I believe the last time you guys addressed or adjusted it was over a decade ago if I remember correctly okay thank you and again they're guidelines they're not they're not as set in stone they're they're guidelines and the goal I believe the language states that we will do everything we can to to implement Within These guidelines other qu yes clear and if I understand there are many districts in the state that don't have numbers don't have guidelines I I I don't know I my assumption would be that every district has guidelines I don't know how well they're publicized or or what they would be Ethan just trying to understand

144a schedule on page 20 of the supplemental data preschool budget it shows a net of net of 55,000 negative but then there's another 840,000 so it's the total cost the 55 was basically 900,000 so the pre school program um the costs associated with that are handled in two ways the cost of the all of the teachers for the program and this is our regular education prek program where we have nine classrooms is typically covered by parent tuition and grants that we receive um you can see where in towards the middle of the page where it says balance June 30th yep that's the running balance in our school special programs fund um for uh the cost of our teachers for those programs in addition to the teachers there are other costs that are paid for by

145the general fund tuition Etc is just not able to cover those costs so where it says costs paid by the general fund the PA of Professionals for that program um any sort of benefit costs such as Social Security and health and medical are paid by the general fund so for the budget for 2526 the general fund is supporting cost of approximately 840,000 for those 9 so the total is about 900,000 well the yes the 55 is just going to stay in the the special program yes but okay corre I just wanted to clarify that I understood it yep thank you other questions I'll take one more pan all right well thank you very much um again Rich information lots for us to continue to digest teammates do encourage if there are additional questions that do

146come up please um share them prior to our next Workshop so the team can come with additional uh questions but if I'm correct when we come again that really is a time for us to uh ask additional questions and for you to respond to questions you have given us the bulk of the information now it's time for us to reflect and process so thank you so very much and we shall adjourn just know