Thank you all.

I am it is 6 p.m.

I am calling the City Council ad hoc for the education budget to order.

I am confirming, I'm confirming a quorum.

Up here, I am Holly Robinson.

I'm the chair of this committee.

To my left is Councilwoman Andrea Gardner, Councilwoman Cheryl Wallace Smith, Councilman Joseph Britton, and Councilwoman Candice Fay.

I believe we have some ex officio members, City Councilmember Lou Giordano, City Councilmember Mike Flanagan, and I believe I saw City Councilman Mike Henry.

Is there anyone I missed?

Oh, sorry, Billy McAllister, City Council member back there.

And from the mayor's office, Mayor Roberto Alves, Taylor O'Brien, and from finance team, Dan Garrick and Joanne Stark, and then Dr.

Casemiro, thank you for joining us.

I'll give you an opportunity to introduce your team when we get there.

Oh, and I'm sorry, the Board of Ed chair in the back, Louisa Britton and other Board of Ed members.

Thank you for attending.

I apologize for not calling you out.

So I just want to get this rolling a little bit because I know there's a lot to go over in a short amount of time.

So just for first of all, let me kick this off.

I want to thank everybody for attending.

The presentation, our structure will basically be the uh the public schools presentation, follow-up with some QA by committee members, um, hopefully an opportunity for the other council members and attendance to ask some questions if time allows, um, and then additional discussion among the committee as needed.

Um, our role tonight is to help the entire council understand the education budget that's before us.

Um if this could be framed topically, I think we're trying to reconcile numbers by separating and understanding the one-time costs versus recurring costs.

Um, understanding how prior surplus issues, um, sorry, I have to mention that, you know it'll come up.

Um, surplus issues uh were being connected and corrected structurally going forward.

And then how we are hoping to identify the risks and obligations already visible for next year's budget so we don't talk about a cliff again.

Um my goal is about clarity and confidence.

I know that there might be some um uh focus on trying to relitigate prior years or or prior mistakes, and I think that if we can focus on lessons learned from that instead of relitigating it, it would be really helpful.

Um so I just wanna thank again, Dr.

Casemiro.

I I know that you kind of came into this at a time where things were a little messy, so I appreciate you and and Mike Weaver for sticking it out.

Um I also want to do a shout out to Joanne Stirk who has done an amazing amount of work working closely with Mike Weaver to kind of piece together the city budget needs along with the Danbury Public Schools um open door policy.

So that was a big shift, I think from years past.

So I want to thank you for that.

Um I know we were still chasing perfection, but let's be proud of the progress we've made so far.

With that framing, I will invite the superintendent and please feel free to introduce your team and any board members I missed to uh present to us.

Thank you.

So thank you for all of that.

Uh I would like to introduce my team.

Of course, I'm uh Kara Casimiro Superintendent.

This is Mike Weaver, our CFO.

Um, I want to say thank you to uh Mayor Alves and his team.

It's been a wonderful uh relationship so far this year.

We're very excited to present our budget and also to uh talk about some of the things that we're working on.

Um we're here tonight with our uh many of our cabinet members uh and central office staff as well as our board, we are a board chair.

If I can go through and name them all, we might be here for a little bit, but I want to thank everybody here uh for attending.

There's been a lot of broad support uh for the work ahead.

That's been a lot of difficult work uh and challenging work to uh correct some of the issues that we have been facing.

I think when uh we first took over, Mike and I.

Um I'm not sure that we quite knew how deep some of those issues ran, but we have been spending a great deal of time um addressing some of those issues in great partnership with the city for sure.

Joanne especially has been a godsend um and through the audit process, especially has helped to shed light on on best practice and ways forward um and has been a great educator for our team as well.

So um thank you to the councilman for having us, councilmen and women tonight for having us.

Um and with that we can get started, and if you want to hold questions to the end or feel free to jump in, however you prefer to manage the the flow.

Yes, I prefer questions for the end unless there's something pressing, if we can do it through the chair.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, as you have in your budget books, our board of education is requesting 175 million dollars, which represents 2.99 million dollar request at a 1.75% increase.

So a little bit about our district.

I know we have some new council uh council folks that have joined, so bear with me if you know some of this information already.

But for those who are not in the room, it's great to understand our demographics because it does play a role in some of our requests.