Town Council - Regular Meeting

All rise for the pledge, please. We could all rise for the pledge. Katie, you could lead us in the pledge. Sure to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. A moment of silence for the men and women in the armed forces, our first responders, our veterans, those fighting the good fight in Ukraine, thus those suffering from a military conflict in the Middle East and worldwide. Thank you.

And Diane, do we have anybody that would like Yep. We'll do that in a moment. Do we have anybody that's there for comment? Okay. Walter, would you like to open for the town for the board of finance? Motion to reveal the board of finance. Second to order. All in favor? Thank you. Council uh motion. Thank you. All those in favor?

Opposed? Any abstensions? Thank you. Okay. Next, Dr. Parlott. Thank you. Thank you, the board of ed chair. And I see board of ed members and I see some faculty and parents. Uh the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Katie. Members of town council and the board of finance. My name is Les S. Chair. Sitting next to me, I have Mr. Jovi. He's the director of the school financial services and Dr. Carla, the board, the superintendent of schools. Um, we are here tonight to present We are here tonight to present the 2627 budget in the amount of 78,78 million. Sorry, I know that would be nice, right? Everybody was clapping. Approved.

Approved.

78,773,658. That is an increase of 3.2% over last year's and we adopted it on January 21st and it was unanimous and I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Parlott. Thank you very much. Good evening everyone. Um, I have some slides that I'll project and members of the board of finance and town council have a copy and we have distributed copies among the audience. So, thank you for allowing us to present this evening. We'll begin with the board of education goals and I'll tell you what those categories are. Of course, we have goals in student achievement, family and community engagement, budget development and fiscal management, district and school environment, and our district workforce. These goals guide our work and serve as the anchor for for the decisions that we make. Of course, we begin our budget development process in October where our schools and departments receive their templates. We look at our enrollment projections since we have um enrollment projections over a 10-year span. And then through November, we meet with each school and department. They submit their budgets. We do a preliminary rollover into Munis which is the financial system and then in January the superintendent and the cabinet and the cabinet means the directors um decide what the proposed budget will be. We communicate those decisions. We create the budget books and deliver them. Additionally, we have some communication opportunities for the budget. So, of course, the board of education holds hearings in January um and then of course their board adoption night. Also, we have school visits that we offer to town council, board of finance, and board of education members. So, you

can see the dates there for all five of our schools. And then one thing I've done for the last three years is offer a dropin night at my office at Sarah for town council and board of finance members to come whenever they like, if they have any questions. And if someone's not able to make it on drop in night, certainly they can email me um and they can stop by um when we find a mutually agreed upon time. I'm going to begin tonight discussing the fixed costs for the 2627 budget. Fixed costs are required items and elements that carry forward from one year into the next. And so you can see in this chart how we've broken it out. So if contractual salary increases and that what that does is automatically provide a 2.45% increase to the budget for year-over-year. We have health benefit increases. That adds another 1.78% on top of the budget. Our bus contract, we're in year four of five with Allstar Transportation. You can see that adds another 26 percentage increase year-over-year. We have our utilities and our refuge and recycling. You can see that we have other insurance along with health insurance such as life insurance, disability, workers compensation, cyber insurance um and liability. So the total increase of the fixed costs, what I call the walking in the door number because the fixed costs are not necessarily anything that I can change would be a 4.68% increase year-over-year. It's important to note if you look on the right hand side that 77.3% of our entire budget is made up of employee salaries and benefits. That's an important number to know. So going back to the bottom of the slide, walking

in the door is a 4.68% increase over last year. So as Mrs. Serich mentioned our total superintendent's proposed and board adopted increase is a 3.20% increase over the 2526 budget. So in the next slides that are coming up, I'll show you how we got from a 4.68% increase, which would have been our fixed costs to how we got to a 3.20 increase. Um, and you'll see that over the next several slides. The green box on the bottom shows you the last three years of budgets. uh in terms of superintendent proposed board adopted and board of finance adopted. So you can see that this year's percentage increase of 3.20 is the lowest superintendent proposed and board adopted that we've had in a four-year span. This chart shows our district reference group of D. And so the way the state divides us up in terms of um school districts, uh they look at a variety of factors. They look at your median income. They look at your grand list. They look at the percentage of uh students who are learning English. They look at the percentage of households who have um at least one bachelor's degree. And they create categories that go from A to I. So our district reference group is D. And you can see all the towns that are in Durgd the superintendent's proposed budget increase for 2627 across our Durg is 6.17%. You can see where we are um all the way to the left you can see New Milford's there at 3.20%. And obviously that means we're the lowest in our district reference group. And again that means towns that are that are more similar to us um than others

might be. I think that's a very important chart for us to keep in mind as we go forward. I'll talk now about some additions and reductions that we made throughout the course of this budget. So looking at personnel. So this is part of the board adopted budget. We are reducing 5.0 certified staff in grades preK to 5, 3.0 certified staff in grades 6 through 12. a point4 nurse. Uh 0 point4 of course means the amount of time that they work, not the part of their body. Yeah. So that's their hours that they work. Um and so we're also um board adopted has shown that we have a 1.5 um certified staff increase in prek to five. So if you look at the net reductions, it's 6.9. That's a salary reduction amount, as you could see, of $516,000 and a benefits reduction amount of $130,000. So, as I go forward, I'll show you how we came to this number. Um, and a lot of that has to do, of course, with enrollment over over the years. Um, and using our enrollment projection to be able to make this decision. Oops. So, I looked at the budgets that I've done in my time here in New Milford. And so, the net reductions um meaning that there are some staff that I redeployed. So, that's not a reduction because they're still in our salary line, but net reductions of actual people, actual positions from 24 2024 25 to 26 27 um is 11 actual positions have been reduced. That's outside of redeployments and outside of additions. We have some other areas of savings.

Um, and we'll go for as we go forward, I'll explain some of these in a little more depth. So, we have out of district tuition. We're able to reduce that line by $195,000. Um, so out of district tuition is for students who have um some significant needs and cannot be educated within the new Milford public schools. And so we have to pay tuition to um some specialized special ed schools for those students. So we have um some students are aging out of the population. So we educate students up to 22 years old. So now students are aging out. So that allows us some tuition savings. Um also out of district transportation because if they go to a specialized school obviously we have to transport them there. The transportation is very very expensive. So you can see we're able to reduce that line by $320,000. Uh our general busing, meaning our all-star transportation, we're going to uh we're able to reduce a bus next year. And so that's a savings of, as you see, $168,000. Uh we're able to take some from our legal fees line. Um now that we've completed uh the major contracts, uh particularly of the teachers and the administrators, so we know we have some room in the legal line and we're able to reduce that. um and we're able to reduce $59,000 out of the pension line. Some increases that we've had. So, we had to add to our substitute line and that's substitute teachers, substitute pair educators, substitute secretaries. Um and that's based on the need that we know that we have. And looking at year-over-year looking at that historical trend data, we realized we needed to increase the substitute line. Disability insurance is an increase in the premium. Uh we have a yearly salary increase for our director of human resources. Um we're looking to add that um based upon the person's certification based upon the certifications the person

might have. Having extra in that salary line um helps us to recruit a very qualified candidate. Our school security officers, which are different than our school resource officers, um they are getting a dollar um extra per hour. So they'll make $31 an hour. And then we needed some literacy workbooks for Hill and Plane and Northville. And you can see the price of that. Those are all increases. So a question that's often asked is what didn't make it into the budget. So what kind of ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. Uh and we call those internal reductions. So you can see the uh we have our grade four literacy curriculum materials. were able to use some of our grant funding for that. And then you can see in number two, there are some requested personnel and items that that we just weren't able to include if we wanted to have a fiscally responsible budget to present to the community. Um, and so I'm not going to read all of those to you, but you can see that it's personnel including pair of professionals, a dean of students, um, in school suspension monitor, a director of curriculum for the central office, and you could see some of the materials there as well. So when you add all of those things up, including the curriculum materials, we are able to make internal reductions of almost a million dollars. I think it's important to understand some of our district's needs. So, um I don't expect you to see this. There's a there's a better snapshot in the next slide, but this is taking a look at um what our state department of education calls our highnee super group. Those are students who are either learning English for the first time, students who receive free or reduced lunch, or students who have an IEP, which means they receive special education services. So, you can

take a look that this chart goes from 20145 all the way to 2526. To make it easier to see, I took three points from that chart so that we can demonstrate a little more clearly. So you can see in the first row, taking a look at free and reduced lunch students, New Milford public schools as a whole in 1415 was 20.2% and in the current year 2526 we're at 36.4% of students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Multilingual learners in 1415 2.7% in 2526 9.3% of all New Milford public school students. And then students who received special education services in 1450 and 13.9% 25 26 18.8%. Of course at the same time you see that there's a decline in enrollment. However, this also demonstrates that while we have fewer students overall in our general population in the district, we have more students who have more needs. Often there are questions about out of district tuition and so we provided you with some examples of that. And so currently in this school year there are 33 students who are um placed out of district versus in 20 in 2425 there were 36. So what this chart shows is are the examples of the tuition if the student needs a pair of professional in that out of district placement the transportation costs and then the overall cost. Now you have to understand when you put a student place a student out of district there is some state reimbursement that is that comes along with it. Um and you can see in that column what the

estimated state reimbursement is. It's important to say estimated because we don't know exactly what that percentage is when we're creating our budget. So, there's a lot of volatility there. Um, some years you get 72% reimbursement, 72% reimbursement from the state. Some years you get 65% reimbursement from the state. So, that's a that's a hard number to pin down. And so, we budget it at 68%. And we've been pretty successful so far. Uh you can see however in the blue column on the right hand side even though we get state reimbursement through what's called the excess cost grant you can still see what the district's responsibility is and the impact on the budget line um for that tuition for that transportation. This is a very small sample of unfunded state mandates. There are I have a list from the superintendent's organization of hundreds of unfunded state and federal legislative mandates that we receive and they're costly. So very very few of them have no cost. Uh so for example, this was legislatively required. Students have to be educated until the end of the school year when they reach 22 instead of on their 22nd birthday. So in some cases you're educating a student for many more months following their 22nd birthday. So you can see um the costs that are associated with that um based upon that change in the law. Now there wasn't any grant funding that came along with that. They said okay everyone those students must be educated to the end of the school year when they turn 22. And you can see the the cost there. Um we do provide and are required to provide special education services to private school students uh specifically

Faith Academy and so we provide um the hours worth of 33 of a teacher and point4 of a nurse and so you can see the cost there. Um we have adopted a reading curriculum um in grades K 1 2 and now it's going into three and four that was completely unfunded and yet it was legislatively required that we implement that reading curriculum. We had to buy one of the on the list. Um you have to have a school medical adviser that's required. Um and for years it's taken a long time to implement this. There's been conversations about air quality, which are fair. Um, however, they said two years ago, you have to do an evaluation of all your schools in your district. So, we did that. Cost $250,000. Then the next year, they said, "Oh, you just you could do one school at a time. Sorry, guys." And so, that's those are the way that mandates go. But um that's just a small snapshot of literally hundreds of mandates for which we're responsible and most of which have a pretty high price tag. I want to show you some of our foundational documents and so these essentially create the direction for our school district as we move forward. So we have our ideas that we live by focus, heart, collaboration and creativity. We um we work by the instructional core in all of our classrooms. We have instructional keystones, four of them, which are instructional practices that we expect to see in all classrooms. All of our schools have a graphic around being on track in ter of their in terms of their attendance, in terms of their behavior, in terms of their participation in the community.

We're just um implementing this now. Um we call it a portrait of a lifelong learner. And these are the skills that we'd like all students and all adults to be honest with you to be able to possess um either as an employee of New Milford Public Schools or by the time they graduate in 12th grade. So we feel that these are skills and abilities that will serve students well regardless of whatever job they take. um regardless of whatever jobs don't exist yet um these we think are transferable skills and capabilities that students should have. This is I don't expect you to read this on the screen of course. Um this is our instructional improvement plan. And so you can see that we've adopted this growth um metaphor. And so you could see our soil, our seeds, our seedlings, and our uh vegetables. And so that's honoring of of course the agricultural uh history of New Milford. Um also our school gardens that we have and our wonderful gardens throughout the community and our farms. So, we selected that metaphor to show the growth of our district. And essentially what this one-page document does, uh, instead of being like a 70-page strategic plan, that puts everything we're working on on one page. And so, that allows us to have a very nice summary of the direction of our district. The state department of education provides every school district in our state with an accountability index. So you can see on the left hand side, those are all the ways that they measure our growth. So I won't read all of those to you. Um but they are essentially looking at our performance in English language arts, math, science, looking at our growth in those things. Making sure students who are learning English become proficient. Making sure students are on track to graduate high school. Making

sure we don't have too much absenteeism. Making sure students have access to the arts, are good in physical fitness, and have a plan for their career or college after high school. The one number that I highlighted for you is the overall performance index. So you can see uh from 2223 to the present how we're making slow but steady gains. And so the state target is 85. It's not 100. And you can see how we've um increased over time. And we're very proud of the fact that we know that steady growth and steady progress is sustainable progress um that will last. This is the same information presented a different way. So year-over-year, if you look at every single one of the accountability indicators by which the state department of education meas measures our performance on the left hand side in green, New Milford public schools increased in 16 categories out of 22. That's a big deal and that's great to see and we're proud of that fact for sure. Um, at the same time, you see that in six categories, year-over-year, we have decreased. And so, all the work that I showed you in the previous slides, our instructional improvement plan, our instructional core, our ontrack work is meant to increase those scores. And so, when I come to you again next year and when I come to the board of education, there really should be 20 or 22 on the lefth hand side and only two or three on the right hand side. That's our goal and that's what we work for every day. Here are some additional highlights. And I don't expect you to see all the pictures, but I'll tell you what some of them are. So, across all of our schools, now don't forget we have five schools plus we have the Lichfield Hills Transition Center. So, we have students who are essentially prek3 all the way to

22. That's in our school district. All of those students have leadership and service opportunities. We make sure of that because we know contributing to the community is one of the most important things that any child or any student can do. So on the lefth hand side there, those are pictures of students doing their service work and doing their leadership work. This year we won the silver award. So we were on the AP honor roll for advanced placement testing. Um and that had to do with our number of exams taken. We had 71% of our students who took AP exams get a three or higher. three or higher generally gets you college credit. And we also had a high percentage of students scoring the very highest of four or five. So that placed us on the silver honor roll. Um again, that's a big deal. We have 46% of all of our high school students are involved in athletics. That's a nice big program. And over 80% of our students in grades 6 through 12 are involved in at least one club, activity, or sport. Um, and certainly we strive to increase that because we know how important those co-curricular activities are. Um, and then on the right hand side you could see a little fellow there. He's doing his reading work. Um, and the children on the bottom right are doing the same thing. So, we've been recognized for what's called the science of reading work and our laboratory classrooms by the Connecticut State Department of Education. So, we've had other other schools come and visit us. um assistant superintendent Miss Hollander has presented at the state level to explain that what we're doing with our lab classrooms and our science of reading. Again, this slide is an awful lot of pride and demonstrates the hard work of our staff um and every single person who works um certainly for New Milford public schools and more importantly the unbelievable support of our board of education in some there's the what would have been the fixed cost if I just came in and said here are my fixed costs I'm giving you a 4.68%.

Instead we're at 3.20%. We worked very hard to get to that number. Um, and you can see that the 3.20% is the lowest uh percentage that the board has presented to you um in quite some time. I'll never not take my helicopter pictures from the last slide. So, they're always going to be there. That's I can assure you of that. That's it. Dr. Paul,

thank you. Chairwoman Serich. Uh, a couple things before we move on to questions from council members and board of finance members. Some other things for those that are in the audience and those that are watching on TV are new members of board of finance and the town council. Uh, there are other components that aren't in here that I think we should be cognizant about and they're headwinds that we all face with the budget. First is Dr. Colorado, could you let the public know what ECS is?

Sure. So, ECS stands for educational cost sharing. Educational cost sharing is a grant that's provided to every single school district in our state. Um, and what that does, um, is it provides money to communities for educational purposes. It has not been funded or increased um, in the last 10 years. So, Olga, I know you have your computer. Uh, can you look up ECS funding? How far back can we go? Could we go to 2017?

Or could I'm Do we have it? I'm just wondering. I don't know if Anthony may have it. You got it. is a question. So, how what's the what was the amount of ECS funding in 2017? We actually received 11,700,000.

Okay. And in 2017, what was our total budget? Do we have that available anywhere? Sorry throwing that on you, but

you're the money person, so should be 101 million and change 101 million, right? Yes.

So, and we got 11 million. I'm just using these as rough numbers, right? So that's about 11 that's about 11% right like as a ratio about 11% to our budget right so let's move to what the budget proposed if passed by our uh citizenry what would our budget be today would have been upcoming year 128 million

okay so what would be 11% of 128 million 14 million. So the differential is about $3 million delta, right? That's about right around there. So just so the audience understands, the state of Connecticut is shorting a town of New Milford just this year alone, three million bucks comparative of what funding we got from from the state in the year 2017. Three million. Now let's take a number ne last year Murf of 2 million. Let's even go lower, right? So 2 million delta difference. So there's 5 million. Let's go another 2 million, 7 million. The reason why I'm bringing this all up is the state of Connecticut, this is, as Dr. Parlott said, is a huge problem and headwind that we all must face because they're shorting us as a community educational dollars that we could use for our budget. And that's a headwind that we must all face. Uh, one of the things that I suggest is we all talk to our legislators, the governor's office, and let them know that this is money that's much needed. That ultimately we as taxpayers, we have to fund it and continuing to not give us the ratios that we deserve, even if we're going back then, right, Anthony? 11% now, you know, millions and millions of dollars. I'm just saying that so the public is aware that these are headwinds that we have to we have to figure because you have to provide the service, right? So providing the service, well now you're going to need to to front the cost. You're going to need to figure out how

you're going to pay for it and if the state isn't going to help us with our obligations, unfortunately it falls on the town. Another thing too, headwinds wise as well, uh, some other revenues that we did receive before years ago, Sherman School, I believe at one point, right Wendy, we got almost a million, right? Back in the day, almost a million. Now I believe it's what, 300? 465.

465. And that's because population, the district like all over it is is Wayne. But that's some headwinds that we need to understand that some of these things are out of our control when it comes to revenues. Uh Dr. Paul, I want to thank you. I'd sat in on some of both virtually and in person uh to not only um the budget process that you went through, but also your strategic plan that you went through the board of education. And uh one thing I wanted to commend you on myself was that sometimes you have to give bad news, right? Sometimes you do or challenging news and how you go ahead and do that just as you did on your slide here. Some things everyone needs to work on. So I commend you for that and coming up with a plan uh to do so. So a big thank you uh for that. um question I uh pose to you kind of right out of the the gate so to speak is where do you see the difference in the student and I'd asked you the same thing before at of the board of ed uh I believe it was strategic plan meet what do you see as the difference of the student in we'll take 2017 to the student in 2026

I mean I'll answer that in two ways for certain Certainly um there are still students with skill gaps from from the hybrid learning and not being in school for some time because of the pandemic. Um and certainly those students are still cycling through the system. Um and so there's still some catching up of skills we have to do particularly in reading and math. There's no question about that. Um, I know that, um, I've done a lot of reading about students attention spans, um, and why we're seeing students with shorter attention spans over time. Um, and there's a ton of research. Um, and I bet some of you have read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Height, right? And, and the impact of screen time on students attention spans. um even small children of two or three years old on an iPad um wires their brain for a certain kind of excitement and a certain amount of dopamine in their brains. Right? So, uh we're addressing learners whose brains are a little bit different, who have shorter attention spans. Um and so it's it's part of our work to build their stamina um academically and making sure that they're able to sustain their learning over time. And it's not just quick hits of videos um or video games that might be certainly fun to do um but don't necessarily increase always their math literacy skills, their their social learning. So I would say those are the two biggest areas.

And I know one thing that I know you've been really honing in on is, you know, college is not for every student. And I know you're providing a lot of the resources for those that want to advance to higher learning. they could take college credits. And I know kind of um one of the goals that you set is for uh those that may not want to go to college to get into the workforce. If you could kind of tell the council, board of finance kind of what those what those steps that you're you guys have taken to really hone in on that for uh our students.

Sure. So that uh you didn't put me up to putting the portrait of lifelong learner up there, but a lot of it starts there. Uh and making sure that these are qualities, characteristics, and skills that no matter what a student does, whatever their interest is, whatever career path they pursue, these are things that are going to assist them to be um outstanding citizens of our community. Uh so at beginning in grade six actually we get students to start thinking about what are some various career options they might pursue and then what courses might they take in order to to bolster that and to get them ready for whatever they'd like to be interested in. So we're building that out as we speak. Um and so by next year we will have four fully built out with what are called career pathways. Um particularly in business, healthc care, education um and the fourth one I can't remember off the top of my head but I'll think of it. Um but that is to get students. It doesn't mean, you know, if you if you're in the education pathway, you have to go into education, but it allows you to explore an area of interest and allows you to take certain courses over your time um both in late middle school and in high school that help prepare you to that end.

And college take college courses, saving them and parents money uh because they're college accredited for those that want to move on to secondary education.

Sure. So yeah, we have partnerships with uh Yukon and Westcon particularly. Um and the beautiful thing about that is that either the the credits are free through grant funding from the state. Um or they're very low cost. So that we have students at New Milford High School taking college courses for a total of $50, which is an unbelievable savings, especially if you have students children in college like you know you and I do and we know how much they are. Um, so yes, we have numerous um over 15 courses where students can gain college credit for a very low cost or free floor. Katie, did you have the first question?

I just had one question on the one of the slides. The uh let's see, you were talking about the I put my glasses on here. There was a a list of uh various people for that you said some people were going to be brought in but then not and some were let go and I just you saved about a million dollars on I can't remember the title that you had at the top but it was a nice list of you didn't read it all. I just was curious what the amount of people that were going to be new versus those that you decided to let go. Do you mean this slide maybe?

Nope. Go back. It was way back in the in the beginning. It's You had a lefthand list of things and you didn't read them all. You said it wasn't worth that. What didn't make it in? Yeah. Oh, back. Okay. Requested personnel and items not included. So, yeah, those were things that were requested from the principles, right? So, okay. And that's what I wondered. It said items not included. So there wasn't anything that this was all what somebody some teacher somebody wanted to to do. Sure. So when we meet with each school and department they propose items to us. Right. And then we keep the running list of what's in and what's out.

Right. Okay. So other than the fact that you use that to reduce which is great. What sort of you can't get into the Meyers here, but what impact is that going to have on, for instance, a music teacher wanted supplies for a new course. Um, is that, you know, in a scale of one to three, does that three mean the kids can't do anything or is it just something they go they don't get into as much? So, this would mean that would mean that we would add a music teacher which would allow us to add additional programming. Okay. So, the existing programming that we have at Scatakoke will maintain. Yeah. It'll keep going. Just means you're not going to get a new person. A new person had new supplies that would go with the course they would teach. Okay. So, that's what got reduced.

Correct. Yep. All right. And this the first time you've ever done that or you do that every year or with these? Yes. Uh since I've been here, I've done that. Yes. Yes. Okay. That's just I understand. Thanks. Any questions, Walter? Yeah. Dr. So um on the high need uh snapshot in the multilingual yep the large increase there percentage-wise how's the dispersion through you know K through 12 is it concentrated in one area or is it not just

we can we can get that and send that to the council and to the um and to the board of finance. I can tell you exactly how many students multilingual students we have at each school but it isn't concentrated in one place. No. Okay. And the second question I have is not on this uh snapshot, but it's one of the things you're rated on. It's chronic uh absenteeism. Do you have a percentage of the students that are chronically absent or truent? We do. I can get that for you in one second. Yes. Okay. Uh it's definitely down. It might be 16% overall and it used to be, but don't quote me on that. Let me look. You think it's 14? I can get that quickly

and then someone can ask another question. Last year or it's definitely down. I don't know the exact number off top of my head, but I'll get it. Is it a steady reducing? Uh it is indeed especially uh right after COVID. It was very high for every school district. Yes. Presentation. I'm amazed and just incredible job that you all do. It's just I'm so grateful to you. Um I just wanted to talk about um how you're covering the mental health um needs of the students like the breakout of psychologists, social workers, LCSSWS, you know, throughout the district.

We certainly we can get that for you or information. Um I can speak generally about that. So uh we're fortunate in New Milford public schools, we have school counselors, um using the old term guidance counselors. We have them in all schools K12. Okay. Um and very often in school districts you don't see K5 schools having school counselors the way we do. Um certainly also we have psychologists uh we have social workers um across the schools. Um and don't forget we also have our school-based health center. Um and so that's opportunity for families if u they think their child needs additional mental health support that is a clinician um that that a person can sign up for an appointment with. That way the parent doesn't have to come pick up the child, bring the child to a doctor's office, and then bring him back to school. Um, it's found right into the school itself. But I'll get you the number of the breakout for each group.

Question so far. Go ahead.

First of all, thank you for your presentation, Dr. Thank you everybody for coming in. Um, we know you guys do a great job. Uh, I have a couple questions. One about the uh the bus transportation. You say you're into the fourth out of the five years, right? Uh, the fourth of five years of the contract, correct? And and the bus transportation thing is something that you always see like on social media where people aren't happy like parents aren't happy with things that go on with the bus company. Are you, you know, thinking of holding them more responsible? Are we looking into to replace them or are we going to look him to hold them more accountable for the for the future contract or

So, um I'll answer that in two ways. Uh first, um so just so you know, Mr. Mr. Jvenoni works with transportation as well along with u being director of fiscal services. So particularly over the last 18 months we worked very closely with Allstar Transportation to make sure that there were um not as many late buses. Yeah.

To make sure that their level of service is what we would expect. I know that they had some staffing changes in their management at the busy yard. Um and honestly we've seen tremendous improvements. Um over the last year, um the amount of late buses that would be an hour and a half late, this year we've had none. So the late buses that we have this year are only 15 minutes late. And sometimes that's unavoidable. There's traffic or there might be an accident or something in the road. Um and so so we're very happy about that. We've seen a a vastly improved level of service um for the bus. So they're moving in the right direction.

Oh, indeed. Yes. Now, keep in mind, so because that's a a contract of some size, right? It has to go out to we have to post a request for proposals as we get closer to the end of the fifth year of the contract. So then we will see who will bid on new Milford bus service and that allows us to if if we get more than one bid then we can take a look at what vendors we get and that allows us to make an informed choice but that's a little bit down the road. And uh another question I had, you know, I personally come from a background of a vocational school uh at the I saw at the high school and I was very excited for that uh some of the program like the carpentry uh program that you have and Mr. Jamaica was talking to us about um adding a culinary program and you know that's very exciting because uh there's a lot of you know the children sometimes they're just they're wondering what they're going to do and these type of programs that's what you know I I believe that's what we need more of. Uh so do you have any other programs that you have in mind that you you might want to implement in the future at the high school?

Well, one step at a time as always, right? And so, first of all, we're very, very proud of our wood shop. Yeah. Um, and our Woods curriculum. We have a new teacher um in there. And so, he's very experienced with creating projects for students. Uh, and so we're looking forward to the day where they can actually have a little business where they sell items that the students make. So, that's going to be great.

Uh, we are indeed looking, we're at the very initial stages of looking at a culinary classroom for the high school. Um, that would be tremendously exciting. So, we're just at the point of getting architectural and engineering services to figure out what that might look like and more importantly how much it might cost. So, that's where we are at the culinary classroom. Um, and so then going forward, so the culinary classroom would take some time. Nothing happens quickly. Um, and then in my mind going forward, but it would be five years out would be looking more carefully at manufacturing technology um, and how we might include that within the high school. But for right now, we're very proud of Woods and we can't wait hopefully to have a culinary classroom uh, in the next two and a half or three years.

Thank you. Well, and thank you Superintendent for a wonderful presentation and more importantly for the wonderful school system that you're running. Uh my kids and my stepkids have really enjoyed the school system and benefited from it. Um and uh for the first seven years that I was here, it seemed like we went through superintendent after superintendent after superintendent. Uh they're so frustrated with the system of funding the operation that many of them fled. and I I feel like we've been waiting for you and and and we're thrilled to have you and you're doing extraordinary work here. Um I disagree that the state is shorting us. Would I like to see the state get more money? Absolutely. But when you compare it with a percentage of our budget, we determine what our budget is. So, and the reality is the responsibility of educating our kids. These are our kids. That's that's our responsibility just as it's our responsibility to provide the firemen and the police department and everything else that we budget for. And I would love to have more funding from the state, but if we got zero dollars from the state, it would still be our responsibility to give our students what we want. And I'm concerned that the amount that we're spending per student actually seems to be low in comparison with all the surrounding towns. I wonder if I came to this town purposefully knowing that it had an excellent school system and I was drawn to that. But if I saw that other towns in the surrounding area were investing more in their students, I might have been inclined to go somewhere else. And I I just feel like the more we invest in our school system, the more we're investing in our town. And I get deeply concerned when we um you know look with such strict scrutiny over, you know, how much we can reduce the budget by when I I I would rather see us investing in the budget because I think it would would draw people to this town to enjoy the

wonderful benefits of the school that you're running. Um, yeah, I every year I say I I would love to see the board of education budget increased. I I hate when it's ever been decreased and um I agree with you that, you know, it's it's very important. Our kids are our assets and they're our future. Um, I want to ask you some questions about the ECS. It's been flatfunded and many towns obviously across the state of Connecticut are experiencing the same problem. Do you have any thoughts about and they've been talking about revamping it. Do you have any thoughts about that? Anything we can pass on to our legislators about

I mean that's legislative action to be honest with you. So that's I know it's that's legislative action. They they have to decide to increase it or not. So um yeah that's those are my thoughts. Yeah. Revamping it. We got to be smarter. Yeah. There's a formula that's involved. Um, and I know that they have people looking at the formula for how they decide the allocation per school district. Um, but again, that's something that that is determined at the legislature, right? Yeah, I know that. But, um, I just wondered if you had any thoughts on how they could revamp it that might make it a more equitable system.

Possible legislation in this new uh session that they asked that they're talking about. There's a big push uh uh from municipalities, also from public at large uh to really fund it. And I do fundamentally disagree, Ari, with your comment because we all pay state taxes. So, we're paying those state taxes. They should be giving us more of our fair share for our education. And as we talked about before, if you just go by those 2017 to 2020, we just took the delta of 11%. I just used it as a random number. If they just kept that delta at 11% as our budgets grow, that's millions of dollars that the district could use to fund things. And to me, uh I think which would be great is um pay attention. I'll push it out uh once we get more information about when possibly they bring that bill up. Uh and then we can all advocate for it as best we can. Obviously, as you said, Mary Jane, it's up to the legislature.

Yeah. But I think the more we all can be aware that there's opportunities uh to get addition additional revenue um that's we're already paying for it, so might as well see if we can we can get it. Walter. Walter, there's another uh companion bill uh going through the legislature or being proposed on increasing special ed funding. It's separate from the TS. So that's something else we should be keeping an eye on.

Brian, sorry. Oh yeah. So is your does your question mean the per pupil expenditure? Are you asking that question? All right. So I can give you I can give you that in one second. All right. So this is 2025. That's the most recent.

Do you have 2708? Yeah. $20,78. is uh the per pupil expenditure. So within our district reference group um I mentioned that before. So that puts us at 17th place within the 24 towns of our district reference group. After you I would I'm sorry. No, go right ahead. Then I'll go this budget. No, no, no. That's right. Now yes. You know, we talk about increasing budgets which is wonderful. It's it's taxpayer dollars indeed.

Which pays for the cost of education. Uh right now the Department of Education indicates that we're closing in on a trillion dollars to educate children from K through 12. The average cost of teaching children throughout the United States last year was $17,700. New York City was $30,000. Now we spend all that money but yet there are so many countries who surpass us in education and I apologize I do not mean you've done an excellent job so just step aside um Singapore South Korea South Korea 99.5% of all their high school students go to four-year colleges Japan Norway Finland, the UK, all ahead of us. And I don't spend half of what we spend. 25% of children going into high school cannot do simple math. Universities still need courses in remedial reading. I'm looking at primarily New York. And why? Because I spent most of my life there. All the money that they spend, they're up to $40 billion in the cost of education. Yet they lost 22,000 students last year. And yet private, parochial, and charter schools surpass public schools in education. Now, don't get me wrong. I believe in great raises for good teachers. I have

four teachers in my family. My son has a doctorate and he teaches advanced courses in bio and science in high school. He teaches in a college to students who are going to become nurses. My daughter after 30 years in teaching history and and economics the last 11 years she was chair not only of the middle school in which she taught but of the high school in which she didn't teach. She was chair of the history department. Her husband after 30 years teaching math. Their daughter is in her seventh year of teaching. So I'm very proud of I'm very proud of my my family but I also believe in four words that all my working career I lived with goals success accountability and merit. A lot of places that doesn't go because some people don't like those words. I congratulate you, doctor, on what you're doing here. I was not going to raise a point at all until raising budgets came up. It comes a point where we have to watch how far we're raising budgets because it's the taxpayer and these are taxpayers taxpayer dollars is what pay government doesn't pay for anything. We pay for it. So if you want to keep raising budgets, just remember whose pocket it's coming out of. Be very careful how far those budgets go and be careful where we raise that money. Again, I apologies

that the average college freshman come. So that goes back to your point about Tik Tok. Oh, indeed. Yeah. Reals and social media and stuff like that. And I wanted to defend your point on the ECS. It has not inflation and since 2017 probably more inflation. So it should probably be more like 11 million. So it's probably more like 20 million. But the real point I wanted to make just things added on what I really wanted. Can you go back to the highs of this? Sure. Let me think about where that is. It's this way.

There you go. How do you compare to the other schools in our district reference group in those in those categories? Um, hold on for one second. I'm curious higher or lower higher in some lower in others. I just I don't know. Um, if I can't get that in two seconds, we'll send it out. But okay. Um, I do want to

I'm not ignoring your point. Okay, I just want to answer the question about absenteeism first. So 2122 the school year we are at 22.9% of all students are chronically absent. That means they miss uh 10% or greater of the school year. So the school year is 181 days. They miss 18 days or more. That was um 2122. 22 23 down to 19.7%. 23 24 down to 17.2%. um and 24 25 down to 14.7%. So um we know we still have some work to do there, but we're definitely trending in the right direction and um yeah, that's it's good to see that we're down that much. Uh just so everyone knows, the state target is less than five. You have to be five or lower to get the most number of points as part of your indicator. Uh let me see if I can get that for you quick,

Joe. Uh, I don't have it right here, but I can get it. I could probably get it in five minutes if there's other questions. You can answer it later. That'd be great. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions, Katie? already. Um, so you just answered one of my first question was going to be about the what the absentee amount was as it went through and but I would like to know what school would you say is the least amount and the most amount. So go by age for absentee high school have more kids out all the time chronic

or it's it's kind of even there is no there's nothing that's surprising. There isn't one that jumps out. which has youngest children, right? Sure. K2. So they stay home and say, "Mom, I'm not going six." Or Yeah. I'm not going. Okay. That might be one thing they say. Well, there's a lot of other reasons I know. Yeah. So, um, another question is, um, you know, the United Way does a lot of advocating now in Hartford. As a matter of fact, today I spent two hours on the phone and we were going listening to all the various things that are happening and not happening. And we're going to Hartford all the time. and you know a $28 billion budget and they cut something that might be $11,000.

Yep. I mean that's like a less than a gnat and I don't get that. But uh my other question was in the past years I'm trying to think might have been 15 years ago I don't know there was in the high school a a program that was done by a teacher to uh for daycare to start to learn about what daycare was all about. Tiny tights preschool. So do you still do that? Indeed we do. So that's part of the education pathway. Okay. Um, and so in order for somebody to do that to figure, you know, they kind of got a good taste of what it was like to do that whole thing, which of course we know we need. Do they have to do other programs or is that a unit by itself? So that's

you say it's part of the ED I know I know about the pathways, but so is that part of a pathway that you must complete or so that there are two courses. You take child development, so you get the theoretical basis of how children work. Um, and then you take, if you'd like to, you take the Titan Tides preschool course. So that is that's to get them ready for wanting to work in a daycare or any part of education. Yeah. There are plenty of of students in there who are interested in elementary education or even secondary education, but they like working with kids,

right? Because that that is that time and I I I think it would still be true today. There are, you know, students who look at that and think, "Wow, that would be really nice." because when you're a student and a teenage you know sometimes you have an affinity some not always affinity to younger kids you say go away but um that I saw that with my own eyes and I would never have believed it if in my time that people would say oh yeah I really want to learn how I can run a daycare not but so well you know here but I'm glad to hear that you're doing that and that's a pathway yeah see I I am not able to keep up with the pathways and then the other thing uh that I wanted to ask was about the question about the buses Um, I know that there are uh you have we're the largest town, etc., etc., etc. So, but I see buses that are the large buses and I know the road they're going on and they don't have very many kids in there.

Is there a way with this uh particular company when I was a kid that, you know, they used a smaller vehicle just because there were five kids to pick up. So, why have that big bus? They I guess it was a program where they paid the people to to take the small whatever it was van. Do do we can we do that with the company that does the busing now or are they totally in charge of how every student gets moved? They decide the routes and they decide how every we don't tell them which buses to use. Uh they have a certain number of small buses at their disposal

but those buses are driven by their people. See what used to happen was on say the road I live on. So, there were 10 families, seven children. So, somebody's aunt or uncle or whatever said, "Hey, you know, I got insurance on this uh vehicle. They'll fit. I'll bring them to school and pick them up." Became the driver. Is that possible to do today? Because I see buses go by with two and three kids. So, if if people on a street want to do that, they can do that. That's not something we endorse. No, I'm not saying you should endorse it, but does the bus company have any way to think about that? They have bus drivers. The law says that we have to provide a seat on a bus for every child.

Yeah, but if there's only three children on the street, why are they taking, you know, why should we have to pay the the bus driver in a huge bus using a lot of fuel? It can't be used someplace else. And we know when that happens when a bus breaks down. I just it's nothing that you I'm not saying you should take care of it, but I'm wondering about the bus company because it seems to me like all the bus companies are sort of just the gods of the buses and they don't allow you any liberty to do anything. Yeah, I would say there's a certainly a legislative angle there which is to make to let school districts let people opt out of busing and the legislation doesn't allow that now. But there could be legislation that says, "Hey, I'm going to opt my kid on transportation for the whole year. That would allow us to change routes."

You see the number of people that come to school in cars and the number of kids who picked up in cars and I wonder how there's ever any lack of buses because there's so many. So there must be something going on. I don't know. Not that you want to do it now, but it's something that I think people come and ask me this question all the time. Why do I see four kids in that bus? I I don't know. Call the bus company. I don't really know. But so we have to offer a seat for each child. And so if the route has 30 40 kids on it, then they assign the large bus to it, but then sometimes only 10 kids get out. Well, mom's taking them. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Well, I thank you very much for everything you've done. And I I enjoyed the uh information here and uh I think all the teachers here are pretty darn good. Fantastic staff. Really lovely. Um may I ask answer the question about free and reduced lunch? Uh let's see. So we are 12th out of 24. So the state average of and this is for 2425. It always lags a year. Um the state average just so you know is 44.8%. 8% of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch. And so that puts us in our district reference group that puts us 12th out of 24. Right?

Right in the middle. Any others or you couldn't um No, special ed would be different. So the state average of special ed identification is 17% just so you know. Okay. And that would take me I would have to do a little research on that. Okay. Maybe I will do that. For sure. Yeah, we could do that.

Yeah. So, uh getting uh back to the educational cost uh sharing uh contribution from the state, the real reason why they can't do it as a percentage of the town's budget is because that would reward the most affluent towns and not provide enough funding for the less affluent towns. And the goal would be to make sure that all the children in the state get educated adequately. So, it can't be a percentage of the town's budget which would be totally under our control based on the revenue that we generate here which is going to be different from other towns but uh getting back to accountability for the schools I too agree in accountability for the schools and I think the schools are doing a fantastic job uh on a very very razor tight budget and I think that should be rewarded and I think investing in the school system is an investment not only in the future of the children of this town our children of the town of New Milford, but it's also an investment in the home values of this town because it will draw people to this town based on the school system. But if we keep uninvesting in our school system, it will deter people from coming to this town. And if we do not approve this budget, we're going to lose our superintendent. And if we go through another series of superintendent after superintendent after superintendent, no one is going to want to send their kids to be educated in this town. Well, I think what's great, and we'll talk about this coming Thursday, is the property reval. It's got a good point and a bad point. Good point that Ari just said is people want to do people want to live in New Milford? Well, absolutely. How do you know? Your property values went way up. And how do they go way up? Because of comparable sales. What are comparable sales? That's people buying houses. So when they go to revalue your house, they look at the comparable sales and

they're way, way, way up cuz they want to live in this great town. And as far as the ratios are, I was just talking about that in 2018, using that as just a delta point why I picked that out of the air and asked, well, at that particular point in time, the state of Connecticut said to the town of New Milford, we're going to give you 11% of what your uh gross cost is for a budget. That was a delta point we used. If you look at it now, as Joe had said, we're way under that. They just kept up with exactly how everything goes. That's millions of extra dollars that could be pumped into the town and the district. And I'm just saying my own self as a resident of New Milford, I would hope that the state instead of giving away stuff that they were just giving away, all sorts of other stuff that just as everybody at this table had just said, maybe they should give more concentration of those extra fundings that they had, which was billions upon billions of extra dollars, that they could have taken that and just fully funded the ECS. And that's just not coming from the Milford. That's coming from lots of other towns.

That's right. And I'm just saying it could just take all of us, right, Jenny? Could take all of us a minute or two, right, to our legislators, right, to the governor. And the more people that do that, hopefully they'll understand that and that be some extra money that could come into the towns and then into the district. Are you talking about the $500 million of state surplus funding that was set aside for things like SNAP benefits and homeless services and healthare and those kinds of things? I mean, is that what you're referring to? Saying that that should have gone to fully fund the

No, what I'm saying, Ari, is uh they had funding that I'll give you an example. They provided uh free passes to museums. So, I'm saying maybe some of those free funding to a museum, maybe that could have went towards higher education, maybe that could have went Yeah. Maybe that could have went towards paying down some student debt as uh our uh younger people are going to be enslaved by this day debt. So, I'm just thinking the way that they that they put it that way. Joe,

Ari's right. Good a wellunded school system does increase home prices. people want to move to Milford, but a million through the roof also makes people not want to move to Milford, but it's a taxpayers. Yeah, I think it's a any any other question

back in the floor. um with some surrounding towns uh having a a different problem that we have overcrowded schools for example do you believe that we have a an issue where kids that aren't from New Milford uh are coming to New Milford schools and if yes is there any way to uh let's say investigate a little more to to to not have that go on in the miler

so what another will add to the packet that we'll send out is we have a full process for making sure that the people who register for school here actually live here. Um, and actually last year we were lucky to get the funding for half of position that that half of her whole job is just doing residency investigations, looking at the property transfers in the paper, seeing if people are moving from one place to another and if they're staying here. Um, sometimes people say, "Hey, I think so and so doesn't live here." that allows us to launch an investigation into residency. Um, as we go forward, and this year is a good example, everyone who was entering grade six had to prove residency again, even if they started in kindergarten. So, we're going to expand that to every time a student switches school. So, if you go from second to third, you're going to have to prove residency again. If you go from 8 to 9, you're going to have to prove residency again. So, we have a whole process for that. Um, and a half of a person's job is just that. Any other questions?

All right, seeing as there are none others, thank you Dr. Colado. Thank you, Chairman. Everybody, Anthony, thank you very much.

Second. All in favor? Thank you. And a motion for the town council. We learned what you're gonna say. We're picking up on it till Thursday. Thursday. Next Thursday when we do the the budget deliberations here next Thursday or recessing. All those in favor? Oppose? Any abstensions? Thank you everyone.