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.

Um we have our Board of Education members.

I must say before I go forward, uh, we've had a great our new board members have come on and have been very supportive, and our team as a whole has been great.

So we're having some amazing dialogue, so it's a really good feel-good group at the at the moment uh for about improvement and making sure our school system is on the right track.

Our vision uh for Danbury Public School Systems has always been to advance all learners, but even more so in recent years as we're looking to achieve and really accelerate growth in teaching and learning, and also to provide opportunities for our students.

Our mission, the most pivotal word in our mission is the word transformational learning experiences.

That is something that has been a cornerstone of improvement, engagement.

It's part of the uh our strategy to reduce chronic absenteeism and to bring greater prosperity and upward social mobility to our students and their families.

Our strategic plan centers on a few key areas improving teaching and learning processes, making sure that our staff are well developed and equipped to deliver high quality instruction to our students, our ability to attract and retain high quality staff to make sure that we are growing our talent pipelines and bringing in the very best that we can.

We've worked very hard on school climate, it's a very important goal, making sure that across our 20 campuses that we are thriving, our students are uh growing in their ability to adapt, and we've a strong focus on social emotional learning and civic growth and character.

Meaningful collaboration.

We have worked really hard to develop strong ties and relationships with our city partners that we're thankful for.

Um I think the communication has increased over time, but we have set goals around making sure that we are staying in good communication with one another and now at the council.

And in terms of resource allocations, we know in the last few years that making sure that we are seen as uh a body that is fiscally responsible is very important.

And so that remains a goal to make sure that we are managing taxpayer resources very responsibly and effectively.

So a little bit about our schools.

Uh we have 11,397 students.

That number changes almost on a daily basis, but has hovered around this number here for the last couple of months.

Um we have had a peak, and I'll go through the slide in a moment, of about 12,000 students.

So we are down, and I'll go through where those uh where that enrollment uh dip is coming from.

We have two early childhood centers, 13 elementary schools, three middle schools, two high school campuses, one high school, two campuses, and two alternative programs, and that would be ACE, the Alternative Center for Excellence, and reach and endeavor.

We have the one of the highest percentages of second language learners in the state, both percentage-wise and by number wise.

We were at one point almost at 38.

We are now at 36 percent.

We are at 54 percent economically disadvantaged, and our students with disability uh percentage has hovered around 15 percent.

And while that number has has remained stable, the needs of the students that we have have changed and become more significant.

So the percentage has stayed, students have come in and have gone, um, but those needs are on the rise.

For those of you who've been here uh for a while, if I added a few more uh years to this chart, um you would see a steady increase that looked uh like a climbing hill.

This looks a little bit more uh like a like a plateau uh until you get to 2425 and 2526 current year.

As you can see, we went down from 12,223 at peak in 2324, and we are now hovering around 11,400.

Um, some of that is due to what is happening in the community.

Um, the preponderance of where the students that that um where the numbers have dipped fall in the second language learner category.

So there is definitely some correlation to to what is happening in our community.

And here's the chart of multilingual learners, and you can see sorry about that, thank you, it's steady growth uh from 2018-19.

And you can see, sorry about that, thank you, steady growth from 2018-19.

And again, if we added more years to this chart, you would see the Hill emerge.

But as you can see this year now, we're at 4,098, still a significant population, still one of the very highest in the state and very concentrated, but it that number has changed.

And that will come into play when we talk a little bit about grants and some of the things that we're thinking about in terms of you know potential uh risks that we'll have to mitigate down the road.

Special education students again remaining relatively stable, although the needs have changed, and of course, special education costs have skyrocketed with seems to be somewhat unchecked in that area.

Not a problem for Danbury alone, it's a problem across the state.

So we added a chart for staffing that we haven't actually put into the budget book before, but I thought it'd be helpful to have that in there.

Um it looks a little different than maybe the way that the when we send this information over to the city, it's packaged a little bit different, but we tried to break it out so that there's a little bit more clarity and transparency around the different groups.

Um so you see them here.

We have 1,846 employees, and then you could see from 25 to 20, the 2526 school year to the 2627 when we opened up our uh larger campus that that were some some growth there in our staffing that was necessary.

Okay, did I go one too far?

I did.

Okay.

And then one of the major hurdles, events, significant milestones has been the opening of our academies at Danbury.

We're extraordinarily proud of this effort.

Um, the effort also represents an intense collaboration with the city, um, particularly the engineering and facilities teams in in the city with our teams as well to help uh get that campus open.

And I had a true appreciation for uh the knowledge base and also the commitment that folks had.

This was just not an ordinary building, this was a commitment on the way we're gonna change the future of education in Danbury.

So it was a very special project.

Um this is a project that people across the state are taking note of.

We're getting a lot of calls about this, um, the model that we're creating and the opportunities that we're creating, and it's not just an educational model, it's a community model, and one that we should be serious about investing in together.

As you can see, we have seven academies, uh not including our freshman academy, which is on the main campus, and right now across these pathways, we're building incredible partnerships and opportunities for students to earn industry-recognized credentials and align those with real true workforce needs that are out in the community so that our students are informed and engage in career-connected learning.

We've had some very nice success, so we are good stewards of the taxpayer dollars in the sense that we are working very hard at making sure that there are some outcomes to the work that we're doing.

We've had four schools of distinction, and we've been producing some schools of distinction almost every year now for several years.

This year we have Great Plain Elementary School, King Street Primary.

We had an opportunity to celebrate them last evening, South Street School, and Western Connecticut Academy of International Studies.

But we are looking to scale that and scale that means effort and again more increased opportunity for our both our teachers and our students.

Outside of the four schools, and I have to refer to my book because of my it's hard to see.

Um, outside of the four schools, uh, we were very proud of the fact that we moved our accountability index two and a half percentage points.

And while that doesn't sound like a lot, um, that's an aggregate number when you're moving up a several categories across the system.

Um so we increased by two and a half percent, and we also uh decreased chronic absenteeism by 9.2% since 2021.

We are now well below the state average, which is a tremendous feat, particularly for an urban district, particularly for a district that is under strain with what's happening.

So we there's opportunities for students to just simply stay home.

And um they're coming to school because they feel safe, they feel cared for, they feel loved, and they know that their education matters because our teachers are telling them every day.

Our graduation rate, this was a wonderful jump up for us, has risen to 83% up from 77%.

That is significant.

We have 100 students that have earned the seal of by literacy, our by literacy is a superpower, multilingualism is a superpower.

We fully embrace that here in Danbury, and we're going to be encouraging and supporting students and earning that distinction as and to be proud of that distinction.

We have about 1,000 almost 1,400 students that will we were expected to earn some type of industry recognized credential.

Students are engaged in a tremendous curricular experience right now in their electives and pursuing those credentials.

We rolled out our art core science of reading program, which represented a significant investment.

We had a huge front loading investment just a couple years ago using ESSER funds to kick start.

And it was the state really urged every district, mandated every district to choose one of five programs.

We're happy to say that we think we chose well, and that the curriculum and the programming and training that we've chosen to undertake has yielded some some nice growth down in early elementary.

The high school gets a lot of uh a lot of alkalades, right?

We're doing all these fancy things at the high school.

But our base, our foundation is at elementary.

So we are simultaneously building our base so that by the time students reach our high school, they could take advantage of all the accelerated opportunities that will be there.

So we have to do both at the same time.

And right now, 63% of our kindergarten students performed at or above benchmark.

So that was a significant increase from years past.

Okay, and uh we are very proud.

Um those of you who may have participated or seen to be the proud owner of the Connecticut State Teacher of the Year.

Um that's not the first time that we've had that distinction.

Um we've had principals of the year, Connecticut Principles of the Year, Connecticut Assistant Principles of the Year, Danbury continues to shine, and we like to think that we're developing a nice pipeline of amazing people who um continually step up on a day-to-day basis for the work that we're doing.

Um, just one other thing the the um expansion of K STEM.

You will see in here over the course of the next couple of years a major investment and effort in expanding STEM and pre-academy opportunities for our students, so that again, students are not just walking into the high school blind and walking into these opportunities for the first time.

They're we're building excitement and building those pathways at a much younger age.

Our middle schools will be one of the first middle schools to have pre-academy experiences, and we will likely be the first elementary uh school in the nation to backward design uh this plan as well.

We have an incredible, none of this happens uh in isolation, just in the classroom, we have an incredible family center led by uh Dr.

Ann Mead.

Um we're building those community partnerships, um, and I won't go through everything on the slide here, but we do a lot of work in supporting uh families with food insecurity and a lot of needs, um, which is all part of the work that we do in the school system.

Um we have a lot of families that have been served, um, and they this organization and and the center and the staff that are there really helped facilitate to build capital for the parents to help the parents build capital in the school system so they know how to navigate the school system and access uh on behalf of their children.

So I won't go through the whole list here, but there's uh this is a we're very proud of this list here and the city's a huge thank you because 95% of what's on here is what the city has done for us and with us uh to help start to move some of the conditions and and repair over the last couple of years that have been highlighted.

And so between our facilities team that have engaged in a tremendous amount of repairs and the city, um I'm pleased we're on the move, and just a maybe two years ago, we were having some conversations about um fighting over who's responsible for what, and and that that that conversation has changed.

It's a true collaboration.

And now into the numbers, which is why you're all here.

Um but before we do that, I know that there is an elephant in the room around surplus.

I know that there are questions to answer about that.

Um, and before I get into the ask, I think it's responsible to make sure that you know what it is that we're doing to address some of the concerns that you've had as taxpayers, as community members.

I know that you've heard from your constituents.

I know that they're asking the same questions.

What are you doing to address some of your some of the issues that have surfaced as a result of the audits?

Um first I can say that the audits for as uh rigorous and uh challenging as those have been, have been illuminating two areas of trends and patterns on where we have needed to make improvement.

Um, and again, I think heading into this um not having that roadmap in in our first budget cycle or two uh was problematic, and so having that now allows us to be able to uh make those course corrections as we go.

So Danbury has historically budgeted budget to budget, and um the perhaps without the level of scrutiny and analysis needed to make better decisions, tighter, more efficient decisions.

Um we flowed year to year.

Um we never had huge amounts of money and swings with which to it was we rolled forward, we held on to what we had.

And I think once the season of ESSER and COVID and ARPA and one-time funds rolled in, um, that greater scrutiny was needed.

But I don't know that there was enough due diligence just given what was going on.

We've also turned over five CFOs and in a tight time period.

So I'm holding on to this one for dear life.

That's why I made him sit next to me here.

There's actually a chain between us, he's not going anywhere.

Um but another big problem and where we uh that showed showed up in our audits uh was where our vacancies, which we knew we had levels many unfilled positions, but with those unfilled positions also comes uh benefits associated benefits that were have been reserved.

And we have been uh holding on to positions in anticipation, hoping, praying, trying to do recruitment for people that just simply haven't come.

And last year, I forgot which council uh council person uh said, you know, why are you still budgeting for that for all of them?

Do you have to budget for all of them?

And um, you know, I think at the time in my mind, is like, well, we need all of them, and we do need all of them.

Uh the issue is that we that the pattern has demonstrated that they don't they don't all come.

And so, how do we hedge against a portion, at least a percentage of that, uh knowing that they're not gonna come at any given time in a large district, there is a churn of staff that you'll have on the books that are not there.

And so we're trying something new in the sense that we're going to hedge against a percentage of that number and say these folks are likely going to be agency staff next year.

Let's not benefit, let's not budget for their benefits.

Um, these other ones here, we have to still continue to try like uh the Dickens to try to find folks or subs that we're gonna have cost, and then there may be a percentage that um just simply won't come.

And those are the ones that we'll we'll talk about those a little bit further in the presentation.

Um we have always uh maintained the the uh in our benefit projections, uh the most aggressive benefit projection when you get a projection we're self-insured.

Um when those projections come out, there's sort of the the high, the the medium, and then the low projection of where the the variance and tolerance could be.

Um we have looked at those benefits and are now taking a little bit more of a conservative approach, particularly because we are well um stocked in our health reserve, so we can afford to take some some tighter risks in those areas.

Oh, sorry, I am talking away.

Thank you.

Um the other thing is uh that we've done is uh far more uh while very time consuming intense scrutiny of department budgets.

If you didn't spend it last year, you need to make a real good case as to why you might need it again this year.

Um again, some of those department budgets kind of sat idle because other grants came in and supplemented, and there needed to be some retraction of those, and then obviously after one-time funds put back in.

But we've adjusted department budgets and especially around unspent purchase orders.

So for those uh who understand the purchase order process, if someone takes out a hundred thousand dollar purchase order and is not checking in on it and only ends up spending ninety thousand dollars, all of a sudden in June you've got ten thousand dollars, and you probably don't have a great plan on how to spend that effectively.

So uh we have really tight controls over that right now and building that process, and um, Mike finally has a secretary, and um everyone is getting those purchase order monthly uh adjustment um edicts right now.

Um, and the last thing is we've had these really large swings in federal and state funding, massive millions of dollars worth of swings.

One-time funds love to have it, wreaks havoc in budgets.

Um, so you know, we think that we're heading into a period, um, although we would love to have um more funding, it is uh sustainable funding is is really the most attractive to us because it helps keep things stabilized.

Um in that funding is Alliance, and Alliance took a big acceleration last year, accelerated the final ECS uh what Danbury was due.

Thankfully, that was a nine million dollar jump, a big jump, and then this year it everything stops.

So uh there's legislation that's being discussed right now to try to acknowledge the cost of living, contractual increases, alliance in particular is a very uh heavy salary um uh grant that holds a lot of our our staff, and so when we have contractual obligations and alliance is maxed out, the general fund then has to have to take over.

Okay.

All right.

So uh here's our budget overview.

I won't go through everything again.

This year was uh general fund was at 172 million, the request is 175, which was results in the 2.9 for a 1.75 increase, and we can explain some of the uh some of the parentheses in there in a moment.

Mike will be doing that.

Um part of our small ass, I've had some board members and folks ask why you know why are you only asking for 2.9 million?

How is that possible when you have contractual increases that account for X amount?

Um again, we believe right now that we are in a in a reset year, a reset period of slowing down for a moment, taking stock of everything that we're doing, having a really tight, super tight ask, as tight as we think we we could go, um, having taken some steps to one time steps to at least mitigate and reset, but also knowing that there are some reserves as backup should we run into some trouble.

And what I mean by that is um for those uh who may not know, there have been surpluses and new legislation has allowed districts to keep up to 2% of that on the district side.

The rest of the any money goes back to the city.

But over the last couple of years, that number totals uh almost $9 million.

And so, should we run into an issue?

I would not have to come back to the city.

We don't want to have to use this as truly rainy day, um, but that there is there is some tolerance there should we need it.

Same with our health uh stop loss reserves is is quite healthy, and we can afford to take some risks, calculated risks there as well.

Our budget to budget driver.

So uh contractual increases are about 5.4 million, um incrementally some new uh positions at West.

We're adding not adding as many as we we think we've had to add, and that's through the due diligence and the work of good scheduling and making sure uh having a handle on balancing out both campuses and using a staff as effectively and efficiently as possible.

It also helps that we don't have a growing enrollment at the moment because that usually is a much higher ask.

We're always adding staff to handle the enrollment.

Right now, that has leveled out, so it's really just the addition of the seniors that are heading over to West next year and meeting their course requirements between both campuses being split.

Um we have $500,000 in there as a as a placeholder and an offset for what we think will be a title grant uh reduction.

So why we're a little concerned about that at the beginning of the year is whether or not we were gonna have certain grants because of what was happening at the federal level.

Um, it was questions about Title I, Title II was supposed to go away.

So uh that was the initial uh concern as we kind of rounded the corner into December and January and our numbers, our enrollment dipped.

Um, the concern now becomes around formula-based funding, which we are very heavy with because we have a high a large amount of grants that we rely on, and especially with our second language learner population, that falls into a higher formula percentage because they're second language learners, economically disadvantaged, and a good uh fair amount are could be also um we have about uh I think I forgot maybe almost 500 students that are duly identified at this time.

So both special ed and second language learners.

So that represents you know more funding.

So when a population like that leaves, um the funding goes goes with them as well.

And so we're waiting to see how that affects uh some of our our our grants.

Transportation, 2.7 million, and I have this.

We have a slide that goes into the breakout of what make up these.

So I'll go a little try to go a little bit quicker.

977 for tuition, um, 1.5 for special services, 321 for other, which is a combination of adult debt and some miscellaneous, and then um in here, all of that is offset by the benefit reduction of reducing the amount of people that we are uh accounting for, and uh the way that we're also counting our uh way that we are projecting our benefits.

And then we had room in alliance uh to move 2.75 million to absorb the increases that were in alliance and to move 2.75 million dollars into that grant for next year.

These were there was a many, many contracts negotiated this year.

Um, as you know, recruitment and retention is paramount because the cost of turnover has been very high in our district.

Um I won't read you all the percentages, um, but we do have uh one more contract to go, the reopener of the paraeducator contract, uh, which was done through memo of understanding just a year ago.

Um, one here, just a note the nurses contract, it looks a little on the higher side, so you might have questions about that.

That represents an increase in their work, expected amount of time that they're working, that which we were paying out anyways in either overtime or per diem.

So now it just reflects in the contract, which is actually more attractive to what we're actually paying people, was not reflected in the contract.

And so, as a recruitment tool, we wanted to make sure that it was it was listed in there.

New positions in general fund.

So, again, we've stabilized with the enrollment, and uh very few, even though this seems like a lot, there's not as many positions as needed for the second campus because some of those students are coming over and some of the teaching staff is coming with them.

Um and you can see the different positions here: special education, security, um, some special areas that are needed to round out um first some graduation requirements, um, some counselors, et cetera.

And we did add in here um new positions that we're putting into a lines just for transparency.

You can see um that we did offload some of those positions that we would have asked, we were able to get those into general fund.

Okay.

Um so this is just a more detailed breakdown.

I'll go quickly through this.

Uh this is the title grant offset.

So those are the different types of grants that we uh are concerned with that are formula-based, if you will, transportation.

You can see where that $2.7 million request comes from.

That's the additional buses for DHS West expansion.

Students are coming from all over the city.

Um, our STA contractual increase, which we are beholden to for the next five years at least, um, and then the daily buses and sped transportation.

Transportation is very expensive right now for everybody.

Um, the cost of field trips, the cost of runs, um, student that comes into the district and has a special need, might need a mini-bus, a mini-bus is uh $90,000 to add a mini-bus.

So that can happen several times a year in the middle of the year for for folks who might need special transportation or accommodations.

And then uh sped tuition increase.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Professional services, 1.5.

Those are uh some of our nursing agencies.

Um and then adult ed cost year, so our adult ed program is growing, and the 321 represents Danbury's portion of the cost share relative to other towns that are also participating.

And uh Rick Rayucy is doing an amazing job with that program, and it really benefits not just the adults, but the children that that we serve that we teach.

Um, and again, they're they're doing a lot of parent advocacy with helping navigate the school system.

And then Mike's gonna talk about the benefit reduction because it's a little bit more complicated, and he could break down how we achieve that $6.79 million dollar savings.

Thank you, uh Cara.

So uh up here you'll see the negative uh six point eight million dollar reduction in benefits.

Uh all the way to the right, you'll see there are numbers that are uh positive and negative.

So positive is a year-to-year increase and negative is the year-to-year decrease.

Uh the first line is um 115,000 increase, and that's just to uh anticipate the increase in salaries for the folks that we do pay social security for.

We don't pay social security for all of our um all of our staff members, but for the ones that we do, uh we notice that we are running slightly unfavorable this year, so this is just to account for that uh for the following year.

The next portion you'll see Cigna Health.

Uh, just want to take a moment to point out when we when we talk about benefits or we see benefits uh on the on the PNL statements, it's not just health.

There is health and dental, which are through Cigna, but it also represents uh long-term disability and life, and we also pay for the benefits for the teamsters, which are not included in the Cigna.

That's uh something completely separate.

But the the next four lines you'll see Signa Health.

Um we withhold from our employees based upon their contract a certain amount to cover their portion of the benefits.

So there will be uh in increase as we're discussing right now, Kara and I, uh, in the amount of withhold for each of the uh staff members according to their contract.

There is also a pharmacy rebate that we get in comparison to the previous year's budget.

The the consultants are estimating that the increase in the rebates or the negative offset will be an incremental one million dollars, uh, but I believe the number is 2.8 for fiscal year 27.

The the fourth line here is kind of in conjunction with the second to last where it says dental, and this is really the head count reduction.

So as we take away from the overall head count that we're budgeting for those open positions, it doesn't make sense to budget for the benefits for those folks.

So there was an overall uh reduction in uh that's associated with the head count reduction.

Uh in addition, uh in previous years, uh the consultants uh Gallagher, they give us a margin of error of about five percent.

They call it a fluctuation margin.

Um and typically what we've seen if you look at the the last few years of historicals, we don't need that.

Um so we asked them to be more aggressive in their approach and to remove that 5% fluctuation margin in addition to the head count.

So you'll see that there's a minus fluctuation margin of 1.2 there.

There is going to be, as I said, uh a small increase for the Teamsters employees, and then uh the long-term disability and life.

And then the long-term disability and life, there is going to be a smaller decrease, and that's just based upon expected premiums that we get through working with our partners in HR and the third parties that provide the insurance.

Okay, so just a little bit more about how we achieve some vacancy savings.

So on average, if we did cook a district snapshot in December, so we just kind of froze a moment in time.

There was about $6 million.

It's not totally $6 million because it's a snapshot of a person during a time period that they're not employed in our district.

$6 million in vacant positions.

These are hard to fill, a lot of turnover positions, general churn in the district.

So you have a science teacher that comes in and leaves.

There's a period of time where you have a sub in the area, maybe you go three, four months, and you have another person come in, somebody else leaves.

But there's still a number on the books that is not being utilized at any given period.

And so that was the that was what became a target for us to keep an eye on and to say can we can we do better in this area?

Um so of the six million in the vacant positions at the time, um, and again, this goes up and down every single day, just like our attendance and everything else.

Um we had 1.1 million in in vacant critical positions that we're keeping general fund, step up aggressive efforts to recruit and and and retain.

Um and then 2.5 2.75 million in vacant critical critical positions that were moved to grants, that we are still aggressively trying to fill those positions, but we're taking them out of general fund, not to clog up the general fund, move them to grants when the grants open in the fall.

Um, however, many are still remaining that are vacant, we have to make some decision points on those uh on how to revise them in the grant and and use that for another priority that we have.

And then um we know um predictively that many times, um, particularly with IEP-driven uh mandates, that no matter what, we have to find someone to cover a particular role uh for a student uh in need, and then we have to use agencies for that.

And so for as much as I don't want to be using agencies, they are a reality in this staffing era, and uh so we're trying to be proactive and responsible to say we're likely to use 1.7 million given our past history.

Um and so therefore, for that amount, we don't need benefits, uh so we are not going to uh plan for that, and so that's additional savings as well.

So, you know, of of uh of a snapshot at any given point in time, we think um you know we're gonna hedge against between seven and ten percent to say likely not to be filled, even though we would give it our best effort and use that as a as take the savings.

And again, this is our first time uh approaching it that way, so we're let you know how it goes next year.

Um just a quick snapshot of our DPS uh budget comparison relative to some surrounding towns and other districts that are like us.

Um this is a little bit of an anomaly.

Some of my superintendent friends were not happy with our 1.75 because they get lots of questions about that.

How is you know, anyways, you know how that goes, but um you can just that's just more for your your information.

Uh when it comes to grants, we are heavily dependent.

228 million is our total district operating expenses, 172 million general fund, 56 million in grants, so almost 25 percent.

And of that, 9 million in federal and 46 million, which is mainly alliance, uh, and other state grants, which accounts for the 56 million, and you can see the proportionate share that alliance takes up uh in our grant profile.

And in alliance, again, that is a heavily salaried grant.

Um, we have a tremendous amount of staff in there that are pretty core to the functioning of our district.

They are not extra.

Um we social workers, all of most of our kindergarten teachers are in alliance, uh preponderance of the DHS West staff, um, you know, and academy staffing, certain staff that are in there to fulfill strategies that are required, uh innovative strategies required by the grant.

So we have 26 million in salaries, benefits, and other the other really represents curricular materials, your testing materials, all of our power school, um, all of our major programs are paid for our contracts, are paid in in alliance that support our district.

And I won't read all the federal grants, but there's nine million, and you can see all of the amounts there, Title One being the largest, and then IDA following close behind, and then our list of all of our state grants again, alliance dominating uh dominating that page as well.

And we have small incremental grants that come and go all the time.

This is just a snapshot of them.

Our McKinney Vento that is for our homeless grant.

That is a number that is on the rise in Danbury, unfortunately.

And beyond the grant, which is a very nominal amount, there are other needs for those students that we make sure that we try to take care of.

So looking ahead, you know, our budget and our ask assumes that our enrollment remains stable and our health profile remains stable.

The labor market trends remain as as we think that they will be, um, that we're able to handle and tolerate some um some level of emergencies, and they always come, but nothing too significant should would likely be handled in this budget.

Um sped tuition is always uh is can be quite volatile.

So right now, if we've you know, we we think we have it uh projected where it's going to be with a little bit of tolerance, um, but that those things can change very quickly.

Um my main concern is around changes around federal uh legislation and anything that's formula based, formula funding based, given our decline in enrollment, which is really a first for us in Danbury.

Um Alliance is flat funded, and for the last five or six years or seven years, Alliance has saved you know us and and taxpayers um you know that additional ask.

So um we're hoping that legislation comes through, but given the fact that we we're held harmless on alliance right now.

So if we were to, if there was a loss of funding there, we would not get less.

It's my understanding we would not get less than what we currently have.

However, with new legislation, uh the ECS formula, which everyone is waiting, you know, with baited breath to get that bump up, because Danbury lost students, we have a long way to climb before we hit the threshold where we where we would be held harmless.

Um so I don't know that we would enjoy the top up that everyone is is is hoping for.

But that's remains to be seen, and there are folks working very hard on that to make sure that that doesn't um hurt our our a school system like us.

And then uh health sure health insurance, um, you know, less worried about that because we do have a healthy reserve.

Um, but the health insurance in particular is a one-time savings.

And so we won't, you know, we're gonna work from that new base.

That's our our foundation now, and we'll work forward, but we won't, you know, a lot of the savings that was achieved in this budget uh will not likely be again next year.

And then lastly, um this was uh we've been we've are proud that we're able to put a three-year budget on the table uh for you to look at.

And again, the further out you go, the less uh accurate it it has the potential to be.

Um but we think that that is uh a fair number to start talking about um predictively so that we can be getting those conversations of how do we all position ourselves, how do we continue to do work on our end and how do we partner with the city?

Um that um you know that nine the nine million and ten million, you know, are we almost at double double digit numbers there?

Um but again, you know, the offset of alliance, the ability for that to alliance of alliance to absorb its own increases, those days are this is it.

This is the last of the run on that, unless something changes.

So I just want to make sure that we're clear, you know, clear and transparent about that.

That's a potential uh risk for us as well.

Okay, the fun part now the questions.

Well, thank you very much.

And I will keep my follow-up limited so the other committee members actually have an opportunity to speak.

Um, but I forgot to thank you before in my prior ramble that in in prior years we had talked about presenting from a projection to budget rather than budget to budget.

So I really thank you for doing that.

And one of the other things is that I think we really came down hard on you guys for not being able to show a by location budget or by object budget.

So I just wanted to point out that I don't know how much work went into this, but the fact that we can actually look at, thank you, uh Mr.

Weaver, that we can actually look at this by location is a big leap from where we were.

So I really appreciate the fact that that was a collaborative effort.

You can't do that without HR partnership because there's there was a lot of tagging and cleaning, and they just don't magically appear with a sword.

You have to make sure people are coded properly.

That was, I mean, and that's helpful.

And I think from a even what you mentioned from a PO perspective, it is helpful to kind of see where things are.

Um I I think there, I do have a little bit of agenda when we talk about these recurring, you know, positions being funded in you because it brings back the ESSER memories, right?

Being funded by um potentially ending either alliance monies or grant monies.

Um did I hear you correctly when you said you're not sure that even if the ECS formula passes in the state that it's really gonna make much of a dent?

You know, just here that is, you know, I had some conversation I worked closely with Erica Haynes.

Um that was that was a conversation that we had was that if you know, particularly if our enrollment declines, you know, again, at the moment it's my understanding that that we're be held harmless with our current funding.

That could change down the road.

Um so if if that's the case, we'll we'll be in serious, we'll have some serious decisions to make and uh it would really cripple us.

We're not heavy on staff at all.

Um and even just to be clear, this budget represents a stabilization in my mind budget.

Get the act together, continue to monitor where our trends and patterns are coming from, reduce the ask.

Uh it'd be hard pressed for me to come to you for nine million dollars when we're turning up nine million dollars in surplus.

I get it.

That's why we're you know, we kept going back to the table and making sure that we got down and really looked at everything that we possibly could.

Um but it's but we're not flush with staff.

We uh we're one of the only districts in Connecticut in our size with our needs that don't have we don't have assistant principals in every elementary school.

We don't have enough support staff where we need them.

Um I came out last year and I talked about those 45 pair education that we need to work with our youngest, neediest kids at the at the earliest point of intervention so that the gaps do not continue to grow as they move through the system.

I still need those 45 paras.

Make no mistake about that.

I need we need them.

But again, until we were able to really understand our trends and patterns, sit down, do they make some hard decisions about how we benefit how we budget benefits um and and gut checking on the number of staff that we want to come but then don't come.

Um, you know, beyond that, um, you know, Alliance holds a lot of our core staff, essential core staff.

And I don't know how, even with our enrollment that has gone down, um, someone said, Well, we then you need less staff because you lost five or six hundred kit kids.

Well, incrementally across the school system, 20 campuses, 19 campuses, multiple grade levels, you're losing, so it makes it a little bit more comfortable and tolerable tolerable in the classes.

So a small group instruction that used to be 15 kids, which is not a small group, is maybe down to 11 or 12, which is still not a small group, but we're getting there.

Um so no, we're not at a point where we can start laying off staff.

We might be able to build some more efficiencies, all right, as if particularly as this trends down.

If we start dipping down into mid-10s, obviously there's could be some restructuring that we could definitely look at.

But incrementally right now, it's it's enough to bring a little bit of relief across the system in certain classes, but it's not enough to say we don't need the staff.

So I say that to just be really clear that we need more staff than even what we have to serve students.

Um that's something down the road that you know we'll we'll continue to talk about.

But again, this is a reset year for us to um rebuild our foundation in the way that we budget.

Thank you.

One more follow-up question.

How many so what's what's the actual number of current vacancies?

And and how many of those are it changes every single day.

So at the time that you know, you could you could we could have redone this budget 300 times with that model of how many vacancies it does, it changes in swings.

Um Terry.

Do you have a number ish?

How many vacances?

Current vacancies.

So by seven months are all together.

All together, about five.

Right now.

Right now.

Because we took a lot off book that are that we're counting for.

We took a lot off book.

So that are not staying on the books.

And I'm assuming that the SPED teachers are gonna cost more than always.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um so thank you.

I might have more questions, but I'll try not to hog the microphone anymore.

I will um defer to any of my committee members that have questions.

Councilwoman Gardner.

Thank you, Councilwoman Robinson.

Um very impressed with the budget and how um how large it is this year.

I mean, there's been well over 10 years of a lot of people in this room fighting for more funding to education, and it's uh very rewarding to see this.

And I know there's challenges.

But um, I know from uh reaching out in the community, uh, especially when I'm uh canvassing and I come to a uh door where there's high school kids.

Every the kids are just so happy and proud of their their school and they're excited.

So that's how I can measure really the success of um all these initiatives.

Um I have one question to start, which is um do we have a number for the um per pupil spending?

So that comes from the state um publishes that 16,000 something.

I I could have I could pull up the exact maybe around 16,000 per student.

17, yeah.

Yes, Mr.

Mayor.

Okay, here we go.

Uh those numbers that we get, I think you're referring to the rankings, uh, are usually a few years behind too.

So to get the current number would be a couple years from now.

Um but we just certainly moved up.

Um we made tremendous strides there.

But we won't have an accurate number for that, and you usually partner with uh CT school finance uh that organization for that.

It's about 16.

And I I just say I was interested in that because I recently um was uh learning about uh educational program in Alabama that's really done well in literacy and in elementary schools, and um in the course of that uh learned that their average per pupil is 14,000.

And I was uh kind of surprised because I think of where we started with under 12,000.

Um, you know, just less than four or five years ago per student that um where we are now is a significance yes, right?

So I I thank you for all the work and your team and the teachers who continue to teach our wonderful students.

Thank you.

And hats off to the board of ed for working on this very comprehensive budget and giving us the information that we need.

Thank you.

I just I will say we have a strong team that fights for Danbury every day.

So those incremental numbers that go up, they're not they don't come out of anywhere.

There's a lot of lobbying legislative conversations um that help to make changes similar with what the ECS formula, like Danbury has a very strong team to advocate why, and and we're a good example of why we need that changed.

So that's a team effort with that.

There's a lot of people that are pulling for for increased funding.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Uh Councilman Britton.

Thank you, madam chair.

Superintendent, how are you?

How are you?

Great to see you.

Um thank you for this presentation and to everybody that was involved in it.

Um I I thought it was very refreshing uh to see the discussion and how it evolved um, you know, from your office and the board of ed and everything, it was great.

Um my question um kind of stems back to the very beginning of your presentation, and you alluded to it, uh commented a little bit on it, but with the enrollment decrease, um so it was a pretty it's a pretty big number um for this year.

And I, you know, you mentioned it was issues in the community, and I think we all know that these are students that have unenrolled, but they uh mostly due to probably the inflammatory um immigration rhetoric at the federal level.

Um and I don't think these students disappeared.

I think they're still here, they're just too afraid to go to school.

Um so my question and how this pertains to the budget is when the balance of power shifts inevitably, um, and let's assume that these students re-enroll, which I hope they do, because I know they're still here.

Yep.

Um, would projecting out a few years, um, are we still in good shape with how um programming um the table of organization and everything moving forward?

I know you mentioned this is kind of the stable budget, but just you know, big picture wise, do you still feel comfortable that we're in good shape moving forward, assuming that these kids come back?

Correct.

So it's it's a it's a great question, and it's also an argument not to knee-jerk and start reducing staff because we're down a little bit.

Um, like I said, it makes our ratios become a little bit more tolerable, but we've been pretty pressed with you know, crowding and things for many years.

Um but you know, my goal here is okay.

So if we're our numbers are down right now, first of all, our staff works incredibly hard at reaching out and connecting with families.

Um many of our families have self-deported of the ones that we're talking about.

Um some have moved to other places that are not so high profile where there's a concentration.

Um but then there are my fear and your fear that they're that they are here and somewhere and not getting an education.

So not only will uh if they do come back and we hope they come back, they're gonna have gaps in their learning more so than even when they left, all the more reasons.

So we're not touching and and you know, right now, if we have a few less kids in the classroom, we'll take the win on the advantage of more increased contact time with the other students who are here.

Um and over time, if the if the trend continues to dip down, we have a host, some of these folks can will be repurposed to students, student supports uh in the building because we need them.

Um so we're not we're not looking to lose staff.

Um we're but we're holding the line for the moment.

I appreciate that.

Um Madam Chair, if I have a couple of things.

I'll give you one more follow-up.

One more, that's all I need.

One's a good one.

Okay, so for special ed.

Um so I know special ed um for those that aren't like super super in the weeds on education is sort of a hidden cost that is just not fully understood by kind of the mainstream public.

Um I saw the tuition costs for a million dollars that went up.

Could you just maybe expand on what are those outplacements?

Are those what would some of them are outplacements?

Some of it is part of um the cost of now doing doing business.

Um so but we have had, like I said, the some of our students, the population has state the percentage-wise has stabilized, but some of our there are needier students.

Um, and so a combination of in-school supports outs uh out of district um is always very expensive.

Transportation is a driver as well.

So pretty typical.

These are, you know, again, we're not the only school district that are dealing with the the issues.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, madam chair.

You're welcome.

Any oh, yes, councilwoman.

Hi, superintendent, how are you?

Great, thank you.

So when I first um looked at the budget, I um being a person who looks at PL and balance sheets all the time, right?

So I looked at it and I said, okay, you're absorbing 12.5 million, right?

In totally unexpected um cost, and then you added in 17 brand new staff staff members.

So then I thought um somehow you're only asking for 1.75% increase.

So I'm looking at it like, huh?

This is interesting.

So thank you for being transparent and explaining how you arrived to that because looking at it at first, looking at it from a balance seat standpoint doesn't make sense.

It didn't make sense.

So thank you for um explaining that.

I do have one question though.

Can you detail exactly how much of the 6.79 million benefit reduction comes from an actual head count?

Yeah, versus what you are thinking um health care is gonna um it's gonna cost.

I guess we're hedging our bets against no one getting sick or anything like that.

Or well, we again we have I like your gamble though.

I respect it.

Yeah, I don't like to say I'm gambling with tax for dollars.

So that's not but it's it's it's a risk assessment.

Um especially when you're self-insured.

Um you make those decisions all the time.

It's like a full health managing your own health care plan is a it's a full-time job and entity by itself.

Um but because we are flush in the reserves, which we're required to have, we we're maxed out there.

And so we we do have some tolerance if we were to go over that is what it is for.

Um we think we have it, but again, this is this is the best uh this is the first time budgeting in this way and coming right up to the line.

And I think I think we need to come right up to the line to see, you know, to to to test a little bit how we're what where we're at, but we do have um the benefit of having some reserves as backup to make sure that we're not putting a burden on the city should should we need to you know have a have an incredible health um expense year or something like that.

So uh back to the question.

So how actual head count reduction, how much of that comes up?

It's okay.

Uh you want to just flip to that one?

Oh, sorry about that.

Can't see anything this way.

That was there we go.

So you'll see up here we have uh 2.4 in the uh what I'm calling head count reduction for Signa Health and then uh 400,000 for dental.

That is not only variable cost.

So yes, there is a reduction per uh FTE, I would say, but there's also fixed cost component to the to having the Cigna plan, right?

I refer to it as a we're paying Cigna for the pleasure of being Cigna and adjudicating our claims.

So there is a small a small portion of that um that that is uh part of the administrative or fixed cost.

Uh I don't have the particular number of FTEs off the top of my head.

I want to say it's a 30 something thousand when you have your number.

Yeah, it's right, it's roughly about 30,000 uh per person.

If I may, through the chair follow-up, just the last one.

Last one.

Um so what happens if the healthcare projections are God forbid wrong?

Do we have a contingency plan?

Is there a backup?

We we monitor them very closely.

So every every week, Signal will go in and debit our bank account for the actual expense.

I go into the bank, I pull that number and put it into a spreadsheet, and I project out for the remaining uh the remaining periods in the fiscal year, what that's gonna be.

And then I'll go in and I'll take the uh actual monthly amount that we pay for the administrative overhead and I'll project that number out, combine them together to get my own projection, and then on a uh what uh per month we meet once with Gallagher, and they take uh a separate uh approach from their actuaries, and they come out with what they think the number is going to be.

And uh so I can't on a monthly basis, I'll monitor those two numbers to make sure that the projections are close.

And um month over month, we're extremely close to the projections at Gallagher's actuaries.

Uh we also have a stop loss plan.

So we do have uh, you know, so that there is a there is a max to exposure uh for high claim costs as well that we have extra insurance.

Okay, thank you.

He's a keeper.

We think so.

I I just have one quick follow-up question, and I apologize, Councilman Faye, but I I think one of the um the conversations that we had in this room two years ago was um the projections for savings on benefits that went completely um astronomically sideways, which was one of the issues.

So I'm assuming that you already know the answer to my question, but I'm gonna ask it is that how Mr.

Weaver and how Gallagher is working on this along with Cygna, I'm assuming that that exponential swing that we saw be really, you know, what put us over the cliff two years ago.

Is you're working to prevent that from happening.

Can I answer?

Um so yes, so one of the one of the, you know, when you add a lot of staff into to a school system, right?

There it's new behavior, new health care, like how how does this group uh, you know, what are their health care costs?

So um, you know, right now that you know, over the course of this year, we have a sense of how this particular group with all of the new folks coming in, um, what that looks like, right?

This is a a group, what their the health profile of your 1,876 staff members are.

Um so that's that's important.

Um we keep tabs on that as well, so we always have a sense of um, you know, where there's we have conversations, there's high claims.

Um, this is what's happening.

Here's how long we think this could last.

Here's our tolerance.

Um, so we do have monthly meetings uh to talk about that risk analysis and those projections.

Um, but again, we we uh I believe that's when we increased our stop loss insurance as well.

So that was also part of a meta again.

I have to double fast fast check me on that one.

Um part of the mitigating strategy at that time that is still carried forward as well.

And and we do look at that stop loss uh on an annual basis with Gallagher and say, okay, well, we went from 200 to 250,000.

Does that still make sense?

Do we lower it, do we increase it?

And uh this last year it was uh decided to to keep it at the 250,000 number.

Is it some on the same point?

Okay, one quick follow-up.

Um thank you.

Um this is in regard to um the you're at the higher limits of this flush.

You said just the the um the reserve is flush.

So at maximum, it's maxed.

Was that not the case previously in previous budgets?

So we're required because we're self-insured to have a certain number in the reserves.

Um, and so we are at the max of that of what we're allowed.

So if we had an if we had excess uh to put it, we built up the reserves because there were some extras.

Um but we can't put anything else in there if we wanted to right now, is my understanding.

It's maxed out.

And just a quick follow-up.

So it's because this is maxed out, and that's a side that this is almost um like a collateral against the benefit.

It can be, yes.

Like you could it's to me, it's a little bit of a safety net.

Yeah for the for risk tolerance against a self-insured plan.

Thank you.

Thank you for your patience, Councilwoman Shay.

The microphone is yours.

Thank you, madam chair.

Dr.

Casmira, I just want to say thank you to you and your whole team and the Board of Education, not just in the preparation of this budget, but for the hard work that you guys do every single day for all of us and our youth.

Thank you.

I know we all appreciate it very much.

And I wanted to extend my great appreciation for how accessible and available you have always been to me, to everyone.

Oh, can you not hear me?

It's it's a it's an eternal problem.

Um you're incredibly accessible to all of us, and we really, really appreciate what you're doing each and every day.

And I love the phrase that you use tonight, the reset year.

That makes sense.

I can't imagine the mess that you stepped into when you took this job.

And um, you're really doing a really, really awesome job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have an incredible team.

They all showed up here tonight, they work very hard and um a lot of long hours and in work.

So I want to thank them, and I want to thank the board for um great collaboration.

Um Luisa is our new leaders and great job, and we had a lot of conversations about this budget, a lot.

So um, you know, we're on a good track, and we've got a really good group sitting behind me right here that I'm very proud of.

Thank you.

Any other um questions from the committee itself before I go to X VCU members?

Um, I also just want to put a plug in that I do look forward to us having continuous conversations about sites and facilities uses because I think we're gonna have some ongoing conversations about where to help um share some costs and division of responsibilities there.

So we will be meeting um probably not this summer, but in the fall.

Sure.

Um and I do appreciate you guys working with me, especially the Board of Ed.

Um, and I realize that the councilman Cuello was here, he snuck in.

Is there any um questions from our other council members who are in the room?

Councilman Cuelo.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that, and I want to extend uh my gratitude to you as well, Kara, for all the hard work you and your team do.

Uh if nothing I've learned that I appreciated that more over the last four to five years with Michelle being there and uh how well you've done as far as turning it around.

So thank you to everybody.

Thank you to the new board of ed members.

I know it's a long there's some long nights and a lot of meetings.

So if anybody told you you only meet once a month, not true.

So but uh with that said, I do have a couple questions, if I may, uh, through the chair.

I know certain dates change with regard to the money that uh municipalities get reimbursed for with enrollment from the uh say state.

Like what is the last date of say student enrollment if a person joins a school?

Obviously, is it January that you you get that head count, but we get reimbursed if you can address it.

That's called the October 1st collection.

And that's when our enrollment you know fluctuates by you know multiple kids every day, and at certain peaks and times it goes a little higher and lower, but the every district gets time stamped on October 1st, and that's the number that's used in our formula based funding.

So however many are on your your role on October 1st, that's what the state uses when they calculate um your portion of any type of formula funded grants um or anything that's based on student enrollment for the for the next year.

Okay.

Thank you.

And if I may just a follow up on a couple of items.

I'll give you, I'll give you a short leash.

Go ahead.

Mike said I could take his questions, no problem.

He's quiet tonight.

Um with regard to the reserve.

I mean, obviously before, you know, we were here when we had those nine, eight million dollar reserves, which were surprised to everybody, right?

So now we're past that.

And I know a lot of it was probably tied to health and you know, benefits, et cetera, but you're still holding on to that reserve.

We're in years prior to this, you know, uh we didn't have that state statute.

That money would come back, you know, to the council, and from there we would say either reallocated based on your needs.

So did you guys not consider with roughly nine million dollars in reserve, three million each year to keep uh this budget when I say flat, not flat, but not increase it and use the reserve.

And I'll explain to you why, because I'm not trying to cut any money from education just to remind everybody that we cannot fund education for a dollar less than the year we have in the budget prior, even if that enrollment drops, 500 kids, 200 kids, whatever it is, we're mandated on that.

And there's a lot of people in the city on fixed incomes, right?

And that our starting port now is gonna go from whatever, 172 to 175.

Did you guys take any consideration into that?

And the other question was do you have a breakdown of where that money came from in the reserve for those three years for a better explanation?

We get a lot of phone calls.

I could tell you that, right?

That people that may have kids in the school system that want to spend more money, probably more from others, at least to me anyways, that don't, and they're concerned about that growing number.

So if you could elaborate on that, I'd appreciate it.

Sure.

Um so we did take that into consideration.

As I mentioned before, I I would not show up here asking for the same amount that we've turned up in surplus.

Um we we staved off double digit ask through this deliberate diligent process of analyzing the budget, analyzing our benefit pattern, how we how um you know responsive we've been to adjusting those numbers over the years, and then making some deliberate choices around staffing, um, who we think will be here and who likely won't be here and budgeting differently for those.

And so this budget reflects that effort um in the and and taking into consideration that nine million, which was predominantly salaries and benefits.

So the majority of what came back in these audits was that you're over budgeting in salary or or not that we're over budgeting for salaries, just the people didn't end up coming.

And so you end up with vacant positions that are sitting on the books that you have to uh you have to react to.

Um in addition to that, there were some smaller issues around purchase order and controls um that we're we're on top of.

We're not perfect, we're not there yet.

We're we're we're heading there.

We're doing a much better.

We have a long way to go.

Um, you can't correct um quite frankly, the mess that we inherited overnight.

The city can't correct what they inherited overnight.

It's a process.

There's structural changes that need to be made.

There are bad habits that need to be broken.

There are processes that need to be placed and best practice need that need to be learned.

And when you do that in an environment of turnover and instability, it becomes a challenge.

So we're trying to write the ship, stabilize the staff that we have, hold on to good people and the team that's sitting behind me to make sure that we don't lose institutional knowledge every other year in how we do things.

Um our ask is is very much reflective of a responsible strategic response to what has been happening.

Um it's a fair ask, it's a tight ask, um, and it's a it's an asset that I'm proud of and that the board is proud of as well.

Thank you.

Let me just clarify if I may.

I didn't say that it wasn't a fair ask.

I think I can appreciate when I saw the book and I went through it and I sat down with a few people.

I understand where you guys kind of haunt and pecked and hedged on certain things, and it's a it's a different outlook of, you know, you guys were thinking outside the box, obviously.

So we definitely appreciate that.

I just didn't know, and like I said, in years past, if you guys would can we we've never had that reserve, right?

All I ever heard was we never have money left over.

There's been small amounts of money, maybe 800,000 that the council's committed back to you.

So we we we have an obligation on our side too, right?

And I and I and I appreciate everything all your teachers do, the success of the high school, nobody promotes it, you know, uh more than a lot of people that are on this council, and and I can appreciate that more so of the last few years, and I'm glad to be a part of it.

Um, you know, approving whatever funds that you guys need doing on our part.

Um but with that said, not having the access to those reserves in the years past, you guys, that that's that's a lot of money to ask of individuals to just keep raising you you get you're basically getting everything you need in your ask with the way you've kind of restructured your budgets, et cetera, and thought processes.

I just would ask you to consider tapping into the reserve that we never had before, right?

To just keep that.

So um that I I and thank you for that clarification.

Um, but it's it's also my understanding that so this this the reserve sits on the city side.

So there's a two percent um that legislatively and more recently is allowable.

It's sort of the plus or you know, you're I call it the plus or minus two percent.

You definitely don't want to be the minus two percent, because then we would be back here for a different conversation.

But it's uh sort of a margin of error that the city that the school system is allowed to keep on this school system side without coming back to council.

And it but it does have to go through board board purview to use that.

So it has to be you know a specific reason for that.

But on the city side, the city retains the the remainder of that surplus.

Um so I don't control those funds.

Those those go re get returned back to the city.

Um and the city has the authority to apply those funds in the way that they see fit.

Correct.

That was referring to the two percent, just to be clear.

Yes, what I was referring to.

Right, but that also raises our our rate.

So if I do tap that, it actually increases our base.

So we we don't want to use that unless we really have to.

Yeah, and I just want to clarify that, and thank you, Councilman Coelho, that I think we're having just want to clarify the question because I think there has been some some press and some concerns about the two years of surplus that we've seen on the school district's budget.

So basically what I think you know we're we're talking about is okay, we've we've increased taxes or we've you know seen this larger budget from the the public school system, and then all of a sudden there's been these two audits um or three audits, I'll say, and there's been a surplus.

That is not the same thing as the two percent reserve.

Correct.

Correct.

And I just want to make sure that we understand that that two percent reserve is basically your insurance policy for from the perspective of of the fact that we're self-insured.

Correct.

And it's it's statutorily not mandated, but correct.

That's part of the I just want to clarify that there's a big difference between the surplus that we've seen, yeah.

Um that we acknowledge uh was was due to some misforecasts.

Um, but the reserve actually is very different from perspective of of what we need to retain in there.

Councilman Coella, I I do appreciate your question and your commentary on that.

We we're we're here acknowledging the issues and challenges that we've had, and we understand the burden on the taxpayer very much so.

I feel again, I've spoken about extensive family that I have in the area, they're business owners, they own houses, they send their kids to our school system.

So it it is it is an intense conversation at times around uh the tax burden.

And um, you know, we we I understand your your question and and your concern.

Okay, and I think you've done a great job on this budget with regard to the way it was presented from what we got say four or five years ago prior to you being there.

So I understand why you want to handcuff him and tie him to a chair, so you can't go anywhere.

Thank you.

Um any other ex-ficio members that would like to ask any questions.

Seeing none, I'll try your minds.

All those in favor of the motion, please say aye.

Any opposed?

My vote is an aye as well.

Um the motion carries um any motion for adjournment.

Thank you all very much for coming tonight.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.