 want to kind of check in on a half a dozen different things I do want to talk a little bit about budget but I'll say that to the end that tends to be a more boring sort of conversation I think the biggest thing that's on folks minds now is you know what the heck are we going to do for these days that we missed because of the heat that we're going to have and so a part of the discussion for tonight is I'm going to go through and give you kind of the basics what the regs are and what the law is that we have to follow as we consider this and try to generate some ideas from the community one of the things that's really important is we will have to make up some days more at the high school and it's figuring out the best way to do that because if I don't get 50% of the students to show up on any day that we run as a makeup day it doesn't count and I only have teachers for so many days out of a year if we run a day the teachers are here they use up the base students don't hit 50% but we can get so far out of whack that we can't make up the days now they make everything really really easy so the calendar basics here teachers are contracted for 185 days a year under our contract there are six days that are required for professional development when the students are not here so we have contingency and snow days that do not need to be made up as part of the teachers contract so the first two days of snow days every year do not get made up we've already had our two days so that puts us down here a maximum number of student days typically is 177 subtract all this stuff up right now we've got to make sure that we get the minimum of 175 days required by the state and then the other thing that makes sense is the teachers are under year-long contracts they end in June 30th so we cannot go past June 30th as a day so this make a little bit of sense that's the golden number right now in terms of what qualifies for a student day 50% of the students have to be present today has to last at least five and a half instructional hours or you have to have 27.5 hours in a week and then you can count in this five days we talked a little bit about this on at the very beginning right the remaining number of teacher days must equal or exceed the required number of student days if we get things that are out of whack I run out of teacher days before I can meet that 175 day requirement and then we've got problems where we currently stand RTCC wasn't as bad they had they had fewer days out they were a smaller building so the temporary heating units that we brought in were able to heat it all up so we were able to get them back in pretty quick RUHS on the other hand was so spread out those heating units just couldn't do the job they were good enough to keep the price from freezing and that was about it so in terms of the tech center if we add up all the days so far that had done this they missed a day due to the water leak they had two snow days they had four days that were lost due to the heating failure if we add in two really simple days that we normally would have had off this year which is MLK day in the time meeting they're at 172 days so we got to make up three not so bad we might even be able to get the state to be able to weigh those so we don't have to worry about them that's a discussion that we want to have in here in terms of the high school right they lost the same two snow days they lost 11 days due to the heat failure and then we can make up two because of MLK in the time meeting that means would get us to 166 student days so there's nine days that we have to make up to meet the state and again we're just at the beginning of the winter season so this is no more snow days any snow days that that hit us between now and spring time we're gonna have to make up as well for questions on the basic kind of thoughts and ideas that kind of go into these considerations what is instructional time actually mean at the high school level does not include a lunch or recess so you said 27.5 hours of instructional I think it was a slide before that of instructional time in a week count as five days yeah so this is a reason we can have half days that we have for professional development purposes our half days are at 5.5 hours and kids are out after about three and a half to four but because our other days are longer by the end of the week we still met the 27.5 hour requirement so we still get credit for the whole week okay that makes a little bit of sense yeah would longer days be an option to help catch up since the buses there kids were already there is that help at all or is that just so these are the possibilities and you fit on one of them there are pros and cons to each we can seek to have the days wait right I can't do that until February the state board that makes the decision will not meet on any kind of request for waivers until mid-February so we've got some things that we've got to decide prior to then and I'm not opposed to waving days for the high school however since one of our goals is educating kids I would not like to wave all of them you know if we could make up if we could make up a quarter to half of them I think I would be happy but that's a discussion that we want to talk about here tonight is one of the parents and students kind of comfortable so the possibilities that came up and some of them were kind of interesting right we've got the idea that we could wave days 5.5 hour days on Saturdays and this was actually interesting the students when we had a little student group or the ones that brought this up and this is the one that they were the most favorable towards and we said well what what is that all about they said well you know what if we start doing them now it's winter time we don't have a lot of activities that are going on you know in our lives outside of school in the middle of winter so this would be an ideal time to just kill them off and get them out of the way so it was kind of an interesting observation that they made we could add additional hours to each day as David was talking about this we would have to again wait till February and have the state board I checked on the regs have the state board allow us to do that the problem is is that when you've got a lot of days to make up let's say we add an hour hour and a half on to each day right it's going to take five days to make up one day so it it's not a bad option but it's going to take a long time because we need to go if that's the only thing that we do the other possibility is reducing the length of the February and or April vacations or adding days to the end of the school year there are actually enough days in the calendar if we don't get more than two more snow days to be able to complete all this by June 30th if we add it to the end of the school year and then the other idea is that we can do a combination of them and so the discussion I think here tonight that's going to be helpful to me is first off do people have ideas above and beyond these that have come up and then secondly what are the pros and cons what are the things that people here think that they could most support because again once we make a decision in terms of what we're going to do I've got to have at least 50% of the student body show up on those days so if I'm not getting if I don't have the support from the community and the kids aren't showing up we're not going to meet what we need to do it's sort of a technical question if we've already got graduation scheduled right and then we graduate our seniors do they count as part of the student body that has to be that 50% so that that's make life a little bit more difficult and technically they would need to come back if they have things that are going on some of them do those are things that we would have to talk about a lot of states you know Massachusetts when I was there usually the first Sunday in June that was their graduation day and I could actually make that request on behalf of just the seniors which is actually a good idea I'll put that down my intent at least on the waiver is to ask for all the days from the state board because then if they grant them it gives us the most flexibility in terms of what we decide to do so I'll stop talking for a little while and see what ideas folks have you know I'll take some good notes as folks who are thinking their way through things you don't need to raise your hands so it is online off the table so that was the most frustrating piece of all of this being able to have remote sessions count is days towards student learning was a legislative action that took place for COVID it ended when the state of emergency ended right so that was the first question I asked the Secretary of Education but we can't do it anymore so here's my question about this then given the fact that you already have to go to the board I forget what board you have to go to in February to get days waived yeah and to reduce the length of whatever and the session starts in January the legislative session it would seem to me that there is potential potential to make a case to put online remote into this mix for a certain amount of things so I don't know what that looks like but if you can like you know maybe the Board of Education Dan French can do something you can get married I don't want to tell Larry what he needs to do but Larry Sackwoods can jump in and maybe you can get a waiver for nine days right you know or something that's a very clear in a box that would maybe help it yeah we one of the things that we did have a discussion about when this came up because we were so frustrated about the inability to use the remote days was I talked with the superintendent's association and the board that oversees them and they will be making a request to the legislature basically to say look the teachers learn all these skills in terms of remote sessions it seems like we should have some law that's on the books so that if people had an emergency like this one right right we can use this right and it could there could be a process by which you you go to the you know Department of Education to ask for the waiver but they are able to give it their hands aren't tied yeah and that's that's on the that is on the plate you know whether the legislature listens is another story they're usually pretty good about listening but sometimes getting stuff done is a little harder right but it makes logical sense I'm given a circumstance that we had so what's your idea my initial thought was going later in June we're filling some vacation days might be the most quality days like if we try to do longer days or Saturdays kids burn out teachers burn out I feel like you're getting outside people's normal rhythms it may not be as quality but then I heard you know that was a good point like if you're gonna lose all your seniors that may not be an advisable strategy has there been any feedback from teachers on their thoughts or preferences this is the first time we've got a few teachers here there will be another kind of group to get some more ideas and I was trying to get the community together as quickly as possible and I know this isn't an ideal time of holidays coming but just to get the conversation on because the end process of this is we'll put out a survey and just see where the preferences are because again we got to what is the last day school sure June 16th right now I can actually throw that calendar up here so yeah June 16th is the last day right now and again it will extend if we get more snow days we already did kind of had to change a couple of things in the calendar like I said Martin Luther King Day the 16th here in January we're just gonna ask you know I hate to do it but it's an easy pickup so that's an easy call the town meeting day that happens in March on the 7th you know that's an easy pickup there's no legal requirement to do that in fact most schools that close on town meeting day they do it because people vote in the schools which is not not the case for us I think Brookfield does once in a while where they've been doing they vote at the school but it wouldn't affect the elementary school kids no no it shouldn't and we can also make the request for them to use the town hall this year to help us out but no matter what decision we make it wouldn't affect the elementary kids no it only thing to worry a little bit about especially in today's day and age you know the voters are covered in well you've got the kids there you want to keep them a little bit separate just because of security reasons but the elementary kids could take that day off because they didn't have to take time off right they couldn't it's a good point so whatever happens here is strictly for the high school it doesn't in the middle school the kids who were physically in this building but the elementary schools could still take those days off you are correct so would that be problematic for parents though who have kids of both ages who have kids who watch kids yeah yeah but it's a it's a really good observation so if there would be like if there was a possibility of you know taking you're like doing Saturdays or you know extending the school day but every room to like restructure the day so like students and teachers wouldn't get like a burned out from having to just do so much all at once I mean I think we can restructure the day I'm pointing to you because you had some good ideas on that we were talking about with the students yeah I mean one of the things that that came up was potentially having like an extra block that would rotate through each day so you get like an extra class of each class yeah so that it wouldn't just be you know like a study hall after school which I think could be hard for everybody what were some of the other things that they were coming up with I mean I have no the students who we met with they were thinking about like experiential learning opportunities if it was of Saturday or something like that you know to really kind of mix things up and use it almost as like the way in which some schools have a J-term or something like that it would be like our Saturday term you know and we would you know infuse passion projects for teachers and students to work on together so those were some of the things that we heard from the students when they proposed the Saturday option one teacher that I have talked to suggested like adding an hour but instead of it just being like an hour to kill at the end of the day their suggestion was like if each core teacher added 10 or 15 minutes to the end of their class so they have a little bit extra time that way it doesn't fall all on somebody new to pick up that extra hour but they could actually and it's not just dead time where they're you know filling the requirements but they actually could use it for learning and then no single teacher has to take the whole burden of filling the time that if they added 10 to 15 minutes to some core classes that that could be beneficial so it's so Tim so you the question it would then be if we added 15 minutes to a block would that be too much well so you're teaching a course where it's on is so you might be the best before I answer that question I just want to say I'm just one guy I represent no one but me but I mean so you're asking me could I foresee doing that plan yes I could but I can't speak for anyone the people I would worry the most about your straight this was from a math teacher that suggested that yeah it wasn't me yeah because you usually that you know we've been talking about you know changing master schedules and things usually the worst master schedules out there except for science teachers and our teachers so but yeah no it's a it's a good idea so I've got that down the idea of having to stand just an hour at the end of the day that one teacher you know encompasses you know maybe adding the core classes so I'm wondering about parent conference day yeah so yes it's important the parents speak to teachers but given the extenuating circumstances can you buy a day by not doing that so we've already so here was the thing with the parent conference days because we have two of them we have been counting them as student days because the students come in and do portfolios but they don't we don't quite get 50% of the students in on those days they also prepare and do the presentations so recognizing that as we go forward those conference days can't count as student days unless they're half days and so what we've done that's the other reason that's the reason the conference day the purple one here in March has been highlighted is because that's got to be a half day but it can't be a full conference day teachers do not want to give up the conferences that was one of the discussions we've had in previous years connecting with the students actually do those presentations very beneficial so I'll just I hate to be the person who says about our online opportunities I mean we've all we've been through this parent teacher and student conferences via zoom given the extenuating circumstances if it buys you a day then why not schedule conferences in the evenings for you know Monday Wednesday Friday for a couple of weeks it's not ideal but you still get to parents and you still get to have conversations but you still get a day in class but the the year your logic is exceptional the the reason that this won't help us is because the 20 this 22nd already counted is already counted today so as we move forward we're having to either we either have to get rid of them because the state doesn't come in towards student days or we have to do them as half days and so that's already going to be a half yeah going forward and so that's then also to make sure that we're not getting those counts out of whack in terms of teacher days and student days and this one is quirky anyway we have to get rid of the 21st that was a half day so it would have counted as a full day under normal circumstances but if you had two half days in the same week you get over that 27.5 hours so we have to get rid of one so this PD day is going away that'll be a full day that's how you're buying a little bit of things yeah so good conversation other other thoughts other ideas other preferences good so I would advocate for not doing extended days or Saturdays or strictly the fact of the kids that do extra curricular activities with the basketball sports team right now the gym is occupied from 230 to almost 930 at night pushing that back an hour I don't think is really a good idea and then of course there is activities on Saturdays students would be participating in as far as games and so that the Saturday one makes makes sense here's a here's a thought and see what you think because we kind of had this discussion on the extended days we could push our own practices back and then kids that had competitions that still need to get there at the normal time they just leave early that's what happens in most schools especially right so you're you're saying to have the practices from 330 to 10 possibly yeah I marble had our field house the kids would get started it would run until 1130 to get all the practices in that they needed to yeah it's not ideal but it's a possibility but well I have your attention you have or did you have days in mind when you're talking about the February April vacation or is that just kind of an open no it was one of the ideas that that folks have kind of thrown out as a possibility we didn't even want to discuss you know the vacation we're approaching because people probably already have pretty solid plans which makes a lot of sense potentially February they probably some folks probably have plans but hopefully it doesn't you know wouldn't get us to violate the 50% well April is far enough out that it's probably restricted because I'm thinking you're gonna hit your 50% mark a lot easier than you are yeah so are you saying you think there's a preference to you some of those days I wouldn't want to use all you know you'd rather do like three a idea if we steal two or two or three days off each one yeah everybody still has a little break but then eating makes sense if they're gonna go town meeting they might as well go to Monday they still have the week off yeah John go ahead so depends on tech center depends on high school high school we've got to make up nine tech center three the tech center I'm actually gonna talk with the staff over there I may just see if I can get a waiver for the three days because it's it's minimal the high school is a little bit more problematic because of the number of days I don't think they weigh that many days so one of the things that we had talked about was this idea of matrix of things that we could possibly do the biggest thing and we'll have to do a survey afterwards we've got to make sure that if if and when we make a decision on what days we want to do we've got to get 50% of the students to show up otherwise we burn a teacher day and we don't get a count for a student day and if we get them out of whack we'll get ourselves a position we can't meet the 175 day requirement so it's okay so the February so all of February vacation I just mix it and then add on the end other thoughts that folks have just that that sounds risky what we talked about earlier because the senior graduation and they're not attending me later in June then we've run a higher risk of not meeting the requirements so so here's the pro and con piece right if if we miss days and we don't make them up it's learning that doesn't that was one of my kind of comments was you know I would really appreciate the kids are gonna be here they make up that time actually learn it's gonna be some type of a special project or something like that might as well write the day off and let them go do what they want but if there have you know there's got to be something in that curriculum where they missed and I really want them means yeah so I'm saying like if we're not gonna actually do have to do classes try to get the waiver and don't do it but you know I think if they're gonna do it they should be instructed and make the time well worth it is that we're giving up Saturdays and and vacation days it should be worth them being here is their value however in terms of the seniors have given them that break or should they serve that time as well so in other words I could potentially ask for a waiver just for the seniors again I don't know what they'll bring up they I had one that I had a waiver I had to put in I think it was my first year here when the water main broke in brain tree they gave us that one we had another similar circumstance that happened the year after they said no and it didn't really make any sense because the circumstances are kind of the same I mean I could definitely understand that with the seniors you know especially if we have to push out a couple days for the rest of the students they went off you know two three days for the seniors that sounds more than reasonable but I would just end like I think Lisa mentioned about having some type of a special project on a Saturday for them I don't know if that's really I think they should be concentrating on their core classes and really doing the instruction that it's just trying to fill the time I don't think that's worth it no that and I'm in agreement on the core class piece if we're gonna do this just because that learning it's a lot of learning to lose nine days thoughts and I have a couple of questions what about so so the way we're looking at this I mean there's a semester here and the students have lost learning in their semester classes on this semester and if we tack on things I mean what the semester ends in theory and end of January or somewhere I forget the timing of that yeah and so they go into new classes they've missed the learning in the classes that they had that other semester if they're at you know in split semesters and so how are they gonna make up the learning for the class that they're no longer in so usually usually the focus is on the core okay so you know your math science ELA social studies for language so pretty much they just lose they're just it's an extra quick they don't have to but that's that's a worthy you know thing for us to talk a little bit about here we can try to figure out a way to have the students make that up if it's a value for an elective I will just mention that there are all there is at least one core class that is semester split so that would be effective economics and sociology a little bit as part of thinking about it I don't I don't know and good luck you know that's you but the other question that I have is if you went on a Saturday route I'm going to assume that there will be some kind of busts less transportation but that would not include the little ones and so that would be a completely different kind of bus route right I mean we're all the way at the end in Brookfield right and so it's a it's a long long haul for Sierra so she gonna be the only person on the bus right you know how many like so obviously transportation has to factor into this as well yeah remember we didn't have to pay for the the buses during so it's not like we're losing money to run them on but they were still running because of the element for the for the elementary right but not not the same roots that they normally do and that's it's even with the gas prices up a little bit that that's not going to be a big factor but that's a good point to bring up now we talked a little bit about it once once we kind of have a plan for the days we'll talk with Danny the transportation director he's really good at kind of work out the best roots because the other thing too is you don't want the kids on the buses any longer than they have to be in terms of how he said that he's done a pretty good job in trying to keep them to 30 minutes or less other thoughts other ideas on I know this came up a little before but I just feel compelled to say that the teachers need to be on board with whatever is decided I mean if I were a teacher and I was told oh the community wants you to teach on Saturdays I would not be happy at all so I just I need to get that out there's the piece with the teachers to that we've got to take into account is a lot of them have little ones at home and so that's something depending upon what what folks are agreeable to it's something that we may have or like losing an entire break like that would there's a little there's a little more to it I mean they have signed a contract for 185 days those days you know can be compelled to be served I don't want to go that way so what what we'll do probably in the middle of the vacation of course that may not be the best time because people won't be around some people do it right after the vacation is we got to get a survey out and it'll break things down between okay students community members parents and teachers these are the possibilities rate them you know it's what's your number one choice which are number two you know do you want a combo it just it seems to me that a combo is probably going to be the way to be able to spread the pain out equally so that you know you take a little bit from here maybe there's one Saturday or maybe two Saturdays but one Saturday maybe you know the February and the April breaks are shortened by you know we're here for two days and we get three days off you know maybe there's a couple weeks where we go a little bit longer and then that way you're kind of spreading it out so that you're not fully impacting the kids in sports but maybe a little and then the kids in other extracurricular activities maybe a little some Saturdays and I just that's going to spread it out I'd like to think that most people would be like okay you know we can deal with this you know a little bit here or there and same for the teachers and we're not really a representative group in here but how many how many folks work on a weekend typically students do students do I think to the end of the school day then if you're worried about the 50% like if you're cutting out their vacation days or requiring them to come on Saturdays I think you're less likely to get 50% whereas if you add a little bit to the end of the school day you've already got most of them here anyway so even if there are a couple who are like I don't want to do this and they cut out because they can drive so they leave you've still had more than 50% here for a majority of the day so I assume that still counts as a school day rather than people on Saturdays being I know my kids were like adamantly against Saturdays I haven't had I haven't added it up it is possible again it's a long way of doing things already we got to make up nine days we had an hour each day it takes five five of those or five and a half of those days to get us to count there's three down so get down to it's not a weekend a half this year it's the February break and we go back a week and then we have to do that so they go on Monday and then not Tuesday yeah so we're going on the 21st back a week almost yeah here on Monday in your in your calculation you've already calculated for putting Martin Luther King Day and tell me there's two days back yeah but we're still with you're saying even with those two days back a seven I think I said nine at the beginning was it you're right yeah so so I mean so we're still at nine days even when we do take that's assuming we don't have any more so we need about 40 40 extended you know days to be able to pull this off if the state board doesn't get us till you know end of February if I don't get a response to March we may now have you know 40 days in the regular school year to be able to hit but that's something I can count up afterwards actually well I because it says it right at the end of 22 days in March 2015 in 252 and now yeah so I consist of the 40 so we could do it but we don't even know if they would prove that yeah but what I'll do is at least in the survey I'll put it on as one of the options for folks to read and maybe they'd be willing to wave for all the students three days yeah and so maybe I'm gonna ask all of them and then kind of figure out what people are yeah let's just so I have flexibility but then it's okay yes if they wave all of them how many days does the community want us to make up because we do not want to disrupt the learning right I don't know what's already been suggested but in terms of Saturdays I think it might be better if we didn't if we push back the start of the school day I just know like I think myself I think that would be better because yeah that would I think that would be encourage more kids to go so that we can meet the 50% also in April break there is the Morocco trip which I know at least potentially up to 12 students would be going in two teachers so like I mean I don't know like we obviously won't be in school but we will be the idea was we would miss two days before the break and then the rest would all be during the break but if we're I mean we're in Morocco we're still you know you know doing stuff learning but we wouldn't be here at the school so I don't know if there's any way that would count or yeah they're the curriculum days you're engaged in school curriculum okay any any other thoughts as we kind of close the separate so they are you saying regardless of what we do with this calendar graduation is not moving from the 16th are you not saying that I'm a little bit confused about that so the question that we have out there again there's pros and cons to whatever we do if if we wave days students miss out on learning that that's important but that might be acceptable within our circumstances that's a community decision that has to be made it is possible that we keep graduation right where it is and then as part of the waiver process the process I asked for a full waiver for the seniors so it's controlled by this state school board under the regulations they are not allowed to even consider waiver requests until their meeting in February and it scared the pants off me because they had some ambiguous language in there that seems to suggest though I got some clarification on it with the secretary that seems to suggest that any days that are missed prior to February cannot be waived and so I'm hoping that that doesn't come back and that would make up your nine days so we need so and that would still leave the February break there so each five point five hours of additional instruction time would equal one school day so it's possible but you can't get that approved until February take it that proved until their boards in it so probably they'll meet mid-february I'll probably get the letter from them first first week of March and that is transportation and issue now we can cover that well we could so we could you know if the town decided that they wanted to do some Saturdays and stuff after the survey we could do that we could we could add it well that has to be approved by the board as well yeah but you know people decided that they wanted to steal it maybe two days off of February or all of February break you know we could do that and kill that off before we get an answer from them because that doesn't require them to approve so some good thoughts yeah it's not a lot of fun thankfully it wasn't more days it was looking like it was going to be three months and moving moving the students around was not going to be a good time there would have been no learning that went on yeah so I do let's talk a little bit on budget we don't have to go into real details but it's kind of requirement and it's good to start getting the word out as we get kind of prepared for the March vote but before we do that any last final thoughts that people want me to take down kind of surrounding I'll just say give you a little heads up that miss Johnson actually held their AP class AP physics classes over the break they met at the town hall and I just want to say thank you to her for putting that effort in do that so I really like that was to see that happen this yeah those those AP exams especially teachers that have done it for a long time you know a lot of them will actually do Saturday depending upon how the kids are testing prior to their exam you know they'll do Saturday sessions and things with them as well it's kind of neat to see I think we should make up the time by sending all the students to Morocco what was the old that he used to my my daddy used to all go out to the Bahamas for marine science for the summer we we've had some discussions about this idea you know this kind of goes back to you know the community building and whatnot you know one of the best ways to build community which is what you're touching on is building some traditions right things that we do every year and so that's certainly something that we can consider did they ever have one folks that were here you know our alumni for the yeah just a class trip the the Morocco trip yeah that was a regular thing that actually was supposed to happen in 2020 and then it had been all planned and they were planning on leaving a few weeks before everything shut down so but that's that's not for everybody in class usually it's just those that participate in the foreign exchange through the foreign language yeah so so class trip was like you know when I grew up in Maryland when I was in elementary school you know you got the got the fifth grade everybody went spent the day in New York City at the Empire State Building you know when you're in sixth grade you spent a day or two in Washington going to the Smithsonian Institute stuff and those would take everybody it was kind of a like a nice building experience because the the best way for people to understand themselves is just to spend time with each other right and so they are good things and it is a lot of the ideas that came up at the discussion that the cabinets can kind of talk about it's an expectation that even before we had the discussion around you know transgender youth and whatnot because those sorts of traditions also built increased engagement with the district right students are more likely to feel positively towards school more likely to attend more likely to to work hard so those will be ongoing discussions and it's great that you brought that up because it really is everything all right so budget wise a little bit and I'm not going to go into any more detail than you want me to other than to say that yes given inflation everything else costs have gone up exponentially but we've got done a good job on the revenue side as well our revenues actually exceed our additional costs so right now depending upon what the legislature decides to do with the surplus funds that it has in the Ed fund if they do what everybody is recommending them to it will be about a million dollars less in terms of what we will be asking from the taxpayers this year but to kind of talk a little bit about this because it's important to give folks an idea of the things that we are actually working on and kind of focusing on especially in terms of academics what we're trying to accomplish for kids as we kind of go through this the big thing about this now that I'm getting my voice moving a little bit here is I'm going to talk fairly fast because some of it may have no meaning to folks or things that you don't care too much about but if there is something there just interrupt me and ask the questions that you've got so in terms of the numbers that we're going to talk a little bit about tonight and why those numbers exist a couple of things to be aware of we do not have all the data at this point in time that we need from the state to be able to actually calculate what your actual taxes are going to be next year the common model of appraisals have not come out yet and then the other big piece is that we have a surplus at the end of every school year there's always money left over in the budget I typically have been doing a couple of things with that I'll either roll it forward so that it helps subsidizes taxes in the coming year and sometimes we'll actually ask the voters to actually put it in reserve funds so that we have money available to do things like repair the heat when big things blow up and I don't have to go out to bond or go out and ask for loans that information on what our surplus was should be coming by hopefully the end of December we have auditors that check our books every year and they're the ones that tell us what it is and that's the number that we have to use so we don't know at this point in time impact negotiations with teachers and the support staff unit you know that could be be bring things up could bring things down all depends on how that that works out what we all decide upon I did take a strong look at where negotiations are ending in the districts that have already settled because that's the basis which if we end up like with the union going to arbitration that's what the arbitrator uses they'll look around at the other districts see what they settled that in terms of a percent increase and then that's what they'll expect us to do as well so I had built enough into the budget to take those considerations into account the big question here is that the state has 64 million dollars in surplus that was left over from last year and whether or not they are going to roll it into this year's ed fund everybody is recommending that they do that but once the legislative session starts they may have other ideas one of those ideas maybe the continuation of the universal school lunches which would take between we don't know what the surplus is yet that might be able to be rolled into this next year to help subsidize taxes further on the news around a million dollars give or take that I can tell you so we've done a pretty good job there as I said we don't know the common level of appraisals yet there should be out any day now but the one thing that the state budget office has said is that on average folks can expect an 8.5 or higher increase in expenses across the board just because of inflation and things that are happening on the economy on the revenue side of things the money that we bring in we've actually done it really really well in terms of the census block grant the state had changed how we get paid to support our special education students we will actually be receiving almost a quarter million more than we did in previous years the equalized pupils this is also called the relates to the yield we are going to be getting an additional 1.7 million from the state education fund each year we have a number a large number of students that actually tuition into our district to go to school here last year we had four hundred and sixty five thousand dollars worth of tuition in students that number seem seems to be going up every year so we expect it for next year to be about the same which one so no we actually that the RTCC kids from the district perspective we are two separate entities so it's a good question we actually that's tuition out money we actually pay tuition for our students to go to RTCC so kids like from loomstown or not just the high school we have people that pay tuition to go to our elementaries as well and that number has been going up it started out three four years ago it was about a 200,000 this was slowly growing even through COVID so that's been kind of nice the operational fund subsidy what I was doing during the COVID years was because we didn't know what the financial future was going to look like in the country given the fact that we were going through the pandemic every year that we had a surplus we had money left over at the end of the budget year I put it into a fund that was specifically designed to use in future years to help subsidize people's taxes bring your taxes down so next year the amount that is set aside for that right and right now the 746,000 and then we also have the surplus and some of that money will also be used to help the subsidized taxes I just can't tell you what it is now because I don't have a final figure on it so we're doing really well on the revenue side a little more details here kind of general expenses one of the things about coming into this district was there are a lot of things that this district did not do that normal schools do they did not have for the most part specific programs and a lot of cases they didn't even have textbooks and so some of the work over the last couple of years has been getting the right people in the right places to do the work that we need to do and now we are focusing on making sure that people have the supplies and the materials they need to actually serve the students well in their classes so over the course of the last couple of years we brought in Carnegie math for grade 6 to 12 it has a yearly cost of about $37,000 ongoing so that's being added to the budget to make sure that it's there your robotics both the in-school program and the after-school program are in this number to help to support that we built the half a million dollar robotics program STEM program at the high school over the last couple of years in terms of supporting English you know reading writing and this is K-12 you know we're bringing in a couple of really well-researched programs Geo it's written wisdom and foundations and they'll have an ongoing cost of $25,000 a year and these are normal numbers that districts pay there's consumables there's replacements that have to happen every year to keep these programs going most districts probably are spending about a quarter million dollars or more on the replacement materials for their programs we just didn't have them we're investigating a thing called project lead the way which is an engineering curriculum that is online as a further expansion of the STEM program the health teachers have been doing some amazing work in terms of setting up the curriculum as we do the curriculum work this year but there is the lead program that is out there that is kind of a gold standard so they're asking for materials to be able to enhance that that program within the district we have two K-12 curriculum directors one for math and one for English language arts they need some time to actually prepare the trainings and things that they engage the staff with so that they're learning what they need to do to provide the best delivery of these subjects to the students so this is for a little bit of extra time over the summer for them to do that work we built in what's called the boot camp so what we do is when we have our new teachers come in every year we spend a week or a little bit more than that with them and we get our teachers and they act as the trainers and they train all the new staff and all the new initiatives that they're working on so that the new staff can hit the ground running doing as well a job of the students as everybody else that's here another kind of new expense obviously is the gasoline prices have gone up so another 30,000 for next year to be able to cover that increased expense in gas I think remember the actual percentage that we were anticipating for the diesel fuel that's about about 30 grand this one ties into a bunch of programs that we are currently working on with the leadership team trying to get an activity bus back in to the roundup for two reasons we have a homework policy that we are in the middle of creating we actually had the first feedback session from the cabinet today it'll be going out to the staff to take a look at and starting this up because homework has not traditionally been a part of this districts it's one of those norms that this district has not had for some reason for time out of mind but it's critically important in terms of student learning to be able to support the transition from going to very little or none to actually having a very solid homework program we have to provide supports to kids and families so that they can acquire the skills acquire the routines for a couple of years before we expect them to be able to manage it on their own so the activity buses will allow us to use the after-school programs at the elementary schools to turn them into more of an academic environment so the students that are getting the homework done or they need some skills and some training and how to manage it can go there they can complete that work and the same thing kind of at the high school high school we're planning a little bit on more of kind of like a Saturday academic day they're a little bit more mentally developed students Saturdays are going to be a little tougher on them so hopefully we'll be a little bit more motivating about people that we're supposed to do so questions on this like you said I'm going through a rather fast big thing to take away is there's a significant amount of work that's going on in the district in terms of academic achievement preschool over the last couple of years we've worked very hard to build a full day preschool for four-year-olds that is cost-free to the families that is in place we are currently trying to expand the preschool hours for three-year-olds right the four-year-old preschool adds a whole additional extra year of education to our students and they had before the three-year-old program will help a little bit a little bit more and we're also bringing in and investigating some some curriculums to help the kids get the basics so they can hit the ground running in kindergarten at least in the early grades so we will be hiring a para for Brookfield to support the preschool program that person was originally had been paid out of grants for a while but the grants and after three years since now it's time we have the program to bring over to the regular budget brain tree you're going to see we're trying to increase the amount of time that our librarians are with the students used to be one day a week now it's two days a week we're trying to get them up to three days a week it's out of a recognition that the elementary teachers do not get the type of planning time that happens at the high school so they're going to serve two purposes while the kids are with the library media specialists learning the digital literacy curriculum that we've created the teachers will have some planning time to be able to sit down and kind of talk about curriculum talk about their assignments take a look at assessments find out where the kids are strong and weak and adjust their instruction to kind of match academic interventionist we have a person who's a point eight we don't want to lose them we'll bring them up to point two these are folks that work with regular education students that are struggling and in the case of the elementary they can do both math and ELA support Brookfield same same thing small school or just trying to bring the library media specialist up to three days a week to help out with that that planning for the elementary teachers Randolph elementary and this is a record breaker because this has never happened in the history of humankind there are no additions they're usually the biggest so I gotta give them a lot of credit high school drug and alcohol counselor we're gonna increase we had a half-time person here we're increasing at the full time there were a lot of impacts on the students during the COVID pandemic especially in terms of social isolation a lot of extra trauma that they suffered in the home it caused a dramatic increase in vaping drugs and alcohol use and so it seems kind of intuitive to try to increase our drug and alcohol counselor here to try to help manage that situation Gifford has actually been very helpful too especially on the vaping there's a cessation program that they run within the district we've also revamped the high school handbook as you know we work a little bit more on the discipline of the restorative justice versus the consequences we're focusing a little bit more on the consequence side now but one of the things is that you know if you get busted twice with with vape one of the expectations is to replace back you need to go to a cessation program if you're under age life-schools program we had a good start to it the conversations have been continuing in different different venues in different groups lately we've been meeting with small groups of students and advisories to get their input we are planning on doing some shifting of teaching resources to provide the bodies to be able to deliver on the life-schools program next year and adding a little bit of money for some of the trips and the field trips that we expected students to be taking as a part of that career expert exploration that's Jason Finley he does a lot of work with students getting them to kind of go out get a feel in the field for what I'm interested in being an engineer what does that mean I'm getting them out to do a field trip to see we see what the job looks like as well as internships and so they need a little bit more money for transportation and then the Saturday detention piece that we already kind of talked a little bit about if we've got students that are getting behind these aren't meant so much to be disciplinary in nature but if you are behind and we have assigned you work and it is important work for you to get done we care about you too much to let this just go by we're gonna have you pull you out of a Saturday have you worked with one or two of the teachers that will be there to get you caught up and hopefully over the course of a couple of years the culture will become that the students just begin to do it on their own a special education is difficult this year again we got a major increase from the state under the block grant about a quarter of a million dollars but we're spending a little bit more than that and a lot of it again is due to social isolation of the kids during COVID there's a lot of behavioral problems we're seeing coming in and they're different ones than we've seen before a lot of them are at the level that they are in disability so we need a paraeducator who work with one of our students that's really tough we expect that we're going to be tuitioning a couple of students out next year students whose disabilities are such that we cannot accommodate their behaviors here so we get them out of the specialized programs for a little while hopefully they can get the students back up to where they need to be so that we can have them back transportation to get the students back and forth to where we're tuitioning them out to and then OT is a new one a lot of students with developmental disabilities especially with hands that need work just to even be able to hold a pencil and things like that so that's going to be a lot of what we haven't seen before we had been cited by the state as having too many kids that needed speech and language work speech and language pathology work too many kids on IEPs for it and so and working with the state the solution was is okay we'll hire a new speech person we'll have them come in and we'll have them work with the students in the preschool to identify them early if they're having problems because it's a heck of a lot easier to remediate those problems at that that age than it is to not pick it up until they're in sixth grade when they've developed those problems quite severely so this is to prevent students from getting on the IEPs in the first place we have been paying for that person out of the grants now time to move them over the regular budget and we have two students that are coming in with severe visual disabilities that need specialized equipment contracted kind of mandatory obligations I split our new expenses the new things that we're spending on into two categories they're what's discretionary those are things that we can do or not do right buying textbooks adding in the Carnegie math program those are things that are a choice we have things that we have no choice on either because the the contracts with the various groups in terms of our staff require it or it's just things that we have to supply to run the school like right we got to pay for heating we've got to pay for electricity so projected salary increases across the district next year is an additional eight hundred eighty nine thousand dollars that's what we're projecting based upon what's happened in the other districts health insurance went up twelve point seven percent this year so that's an additional two hundred sixty nine thousand that we're going to need based upon what we're seeing for the additional cost for supplies just to get the same amount of supplies that we had last year into the schools and maintain things it's an additional hundred sixteen thousand because inflation heating right the heating oil prices have gone up and then our other utilities this is what we were talking about a little little while ago when you asked a question about the tech center right they are tuition out students if the cost of their tuition goes up we pay more and because we send you know 65 kids a year to the tech center it can be significantly more their tuition is going to go up based upon some of the things that the state wants them to do the overall impact of that tuition increase to the district the OSSD is going to be an additional two hundred five thousand so discretionary versus mandated the blue is discretionary those are things we could cut if we had to the orange is mandated there is no choice bottom line new expenses for next year and again it's an expensive year across the board because of what's happened after co-ed in terms of inflation and whatnot 2.2 4 million which is a huge number but our new revenue is at least 3.1 million so you're actually bringing in much more than the additional amount that we're going to be spending so technically you know if everything stays the same here we're going to be asking for nine hundred thousand almost a million dollars less what we did last year for the taxpayers what does that mean if the common level appraisal stay the same as they were last year which they very well might everybody's school taxes should go down by five cents per hundred dollars of assessed value so if you have an average home at this price right here that's what the average price of homes are and we're not you'd save about the big the big budget again some of these numbers are going to change the two biggest things that we worry about is if the legislature starts to mess with that 64 million dollar surplus and put it someplace else it's possible that they're getting a lot of grief not to so we're keeping our fingers crossed the other piece that is not included in here is how much I'm going to take from the surplus once we know what that number is so this number may be higher so a lot of a lot of facts and figures and numbers and thoughts and talks a little bit of a talk about programs but questions on any of this so those numbers don't include either of the surplus is whether it's at the state level or district surplus so this it's not including the most recent district surplus because we until the auditors get done we don't know what it is it should be coming any time now usually right after vacation the state surplus that 64 million it's assuming that all of that is put into the education fund that's what they said they're going to do that's what everybody okay so those numbers you had they are assuming that yeah okay yeah so there is accurate is what we've been told so far they're not in bad shape considering you know the economy right now it's getting a little bit better but you know that can change on a dime not a bad year we're able to kind of increase increase spending to support our and enhance kind of our academic programs for students and still have enough extra coming in to cover those additional expenses once the CLA comes out and once we know the surplus I'll redo these and typically what I'll do is at a future meeting prior to the March vote is I'll be able to say by town you know what you can expect on an average price home to happen to your taxes but some question I appreciate you stick with me I'm happy to talk about anything else while we're here nobody's locked here people can stay and hang out I usually hang out until the questions Peter out I just wanted to say that I appreciate the the emphasis on growing the academic quality here and and really thinking about ways to have a culture of you know understanding homework understanding you know the need to do some of these things to be a stronger student and I appreciate seeing that show up in the budget so the homework homework piece is key it's something you know in Brian you know going going back it was difficult to bring in till now because we needed to have the curriculum documents done which are now almost complete across the board they'll all be posted on the on the website and one of the reasons for it is when you look at a curriculum like math right you've got a second grade curriculum a third grade curriculum what you want to have happen is you want the third grade teachers to take a look at the second grade curriculum and say okay of everything that you teach what are the six or seven things that are the most important and so once those are identified we know that those are areas that those teachers should be doing a little bit of extra work so you know part of the homework policies if you've got foundational standards there will be homework it will be well thought out it will be quality and so part of that policy really describes what quality homework is what the expectations are it's not about time time doesn't matter as much as the quality of the assignments that the kids are given there will also be what are called targeted standards that will be in those documents that the teachers will identify when they do their data analysis and those are the usually the bottom six or seven standards you know that those are the ones that the kids perform the most poorly on and so those will have additional assignments and work attached to them so that we're specifically addressing those needs and so that's kind of where we are in the process after the homework protocols are out and people have had some chance to put some feedback on it and we've had a chance to kind of do some professional development around it we've also got to do some PD with this with the actual parents you know hey if this is going to work we need your support too so these are things that you can do to help us you know get this off the ground and get it running then it's taking a look at an assessment protocols we don't test you know there's there's good things and there's bad things about tests but one of the things that I can say about tests when they happen regularly and it's well-defined in the research is that if every two or three weeks that the kids are taking a test they actually learn while they're taking the test it's one more time that information is going through the brains they make a whole bunch of additional connections with the information of what they already know and you get this kind of exponential growth in their knowledge base when they do that and so that's going to be the next piece that's coming along so we're slowly getting getting there a lot of it was building the infrastructure in the first couple of years and then getting blown out of the water for three years we're going to try to get through it. Brokefield Elementary has zero homework. So that that's that's the reason one of the reasons that that policy piece is going into place so I spent the last week or so hitting the research base and pulling all the best pieces together like I said we had the curriculums are developed enough we can now address this piece of I've got this gigantic what I call the education plan that's got eight stages to it this is one of the stages that's the stage we're on right now so hopefully what will happen is the expectation is by the end of the year the homework will start happening next year during some of the professional development time the teachers will spend it to actually make sure that that homework is of high quality so that it's really just it's paired down to what the kids need to get the most out of it without spending you know any more time than they need to. It will be nice to see consistency here as the kids grow because right now there's an elementary good amount of homework and then middle school it drops off and then high school hits and like oh it's like a yo-yo for some of the kids so it'd be good to see kind of a steady. And you can as you look at that pattern as you look at that train of students as they you know progress from elementary to middle to high school if they're not doing regular homework at elementary even though homework looks different in the elementary school how can we say that we prepared them to have the skills to do it independently when they get to high school when they get to middle school which is why it's so important. And so those are the discussions that we're having you know a lot of the elementary stuff that actually should be fun stuff that would be especially for the lower elementary grades it's calling the parents and for a parent evening and here are the math games we'll give you the math games we'll spend the night we'll show you how to play them with your kids and go home. And we expect you to spend 50 minutes a night on this for this week and then you know six weeks later when things change over instead it's the word games. And those are real important in our community for two reasons it's not just the academic side that the students are picking up on right there they're getting a chance to really kind of rethink the things they're learning in school and see them in different ways and kind of build upon that learning. But it's also the fact that we have a community to a great part where the parents are disconnected from their children. And so if we can build things in a place like that where the parents are actually going on doing something fun with the kids while they're still learning they might actually develop some stronger relationships with their own children and that's going to solve some of the climate problems that we've had. That was kind of the exact rationale as to why we were told that they did away with homework because they used to do homework there and then we were told that there are enough parents who will commit to spending that time helping their children. So it wasn't fair to give homework because some people didn't have the family support. That's an excuse. And that excuse did not come from the teacher. That excuse came from the administrators at the time. I know because I fought them for three years ago. Well it came from one teacher. It came from one teacher. Well and that's the reason that the activity buses there is because we know that people aren't going to get this up front. So you provide the supports. It's the scaffolding right. If we expect you to do this you know we first introduce it show you how to do it. The activity activity time after school is for us to do what's called the guided practice sessions. We're helping folks figure this out. And eventually sometime down the road two or three years it's now all on the parents and the kids because we've given you the skills and what you needed. Will all parents do it? No. But most will. And you know you can't expect things to be perfect but you know if we can get 50 percent, 60 percent of the parents doing this with their children. That's a huge... Can you hold all the kids back for 12 parents? No. But you know if we have those after school academics and the Saturday academic days it makes a difference. I've seen it in other districts. So I'm kind of excited about it. Well it's about creating opportunities for access. Yep. And the more we can do that we can create an equitable playing field for all of our kids. Well the equity piece is interesting because that logic, I understand why folks would say it but it's actually turned upside down. The equity piece with homework especially as you get to like the middle school and the high school level is that when you assign the homework it's got to be at the edge of what students are currently capable of and learning because that's what helps them advance a little bit. It has to be something that they can do independently on their own without parent help. Why? That's the equity piece because some parents are not able to or willing to help their kids while others are. And that is inequitable. So when you get to that middle school level, you get to that high school level, that's the expectation is that you know the kids can do this independently on their own. And they've got some perseverance and some resilience that hey if I can't figure it out what do I do? Well you call up your best friend who's in the same class with you and you talk with them about it. That's the perseverance piece that we've got to start to train them to do too. And that's self-reliance because we want them to be independent at those ages. It's a good conversation. Other than this or anything else, it's a late night and I appreciate folks being here.