Meeting transcript
Budget Seminar #1
January 3, 2024 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
Board of Education oh, no, you're good. Okay. Alright. Right. Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to welcome everybody to the Andover Board of Education special meeting, the budget planning seminar for today, 01/03/2024. I would like to any comments from the public? I don't think we have any other members of the public. Okay. Alright. So topics to be discussed, the budget building seminar ground rules. So I just would like to just kinda go over the the ground rules and the the purposes the the purpose of these seminars. You know, it's to keep the board and to keep everyone informed of the budget process and what and explain what goes into every line item in the budget. I know Steve Bus had this idea. We've been doing it the last couple budgets, seasons, and what we do is we just break down the budget section by section. And we go over every line item, and it's an opportunity for, everyone to really understand the budget process and what goes into every line item. We're gonna have these, next couple, Wednesdays in January. This one is today, January 3. We have our regular board of ed meeting next week, January 10. We're not gonna discuss the budget at that meeting. And then we will, have another budget seminar on the seventeenth, one on January 24, and then one on January 31. And then we will have a public, meeting on February 7, and our goal is, at that point to have a kind of a rough draft of the budget to, to present to anybody that comes to the meeting, so we can discuss it. And then our goal is to, vote on the budget, on February,
fourteenth. These are ninety minutes. We have a hard stop at ninety minutes. They are taped. All of the slides that Valerie is gonna go over will be posted on the AES website under the, BOE tab. They will create a new budget 2024 tab where all of this information will be there. And if anybody any members, or if any members of the public have any questions about the budget, we do have a dedicated email, aesbudget@andoverelementaryct.org. So we can, anybody can send in questions regarding the budget, and we'll be happy to answer them. I think that's it. Valerie, do you have anything to add with the ground rules, or did I miss anything?
Celeste, if I can go ahead, Steve. Just kinda on the ground rules as to how each of these are gonna go, which we had discussed before, is, number one, a hard hard stop with ninety minutes. And the one primary thing is we're gonna stay focused on the topic that was brought up. We are not going to deviate. We because every topic will eventually be brought up. So the goal in order to keep make our time frame is at any point, you know, Celeste being the chair moderating the meeting can say, hey. That's we're gonna cover that at another time, so just to keep us on topic.
Yep. And, actually, Steve, thanks for saying that because that reminds me. At the next meeting, we will do a brief recap of what we discussed at this meeting. And tonight's topic is we are going to talk about curriculum. So then at the next budget seminar meeting, Valerie will just do a quick recap of what we discussed here, and then we'll go into the next topic for the next meeting. So thank you, Steve, for bringing that up. Valerie, if you're ready to go, take it away. Alright.
And, Val, while you're pulling something up, I just wanna make sure I didn't miss anything. We we haven't gotten anything yet that we should be looking at. Correct? You're gonna just share something. Okay. Awesome.
Alright. Remember, I can't see you guys now because I'm sharing my screen. So so you'll have to interrupt if you, have a question because I won't be able to see. Raise your hand. Okay?
So okay. So this is just the first informational meeting. I'm sorry, Val. I can't see it. Did you already share it?
I did. Is that even me? Was it just No. Yep. It's still you, Val. Hold on one sec. Zoom wants to do something weird. Hold on. Please don't let it update now. I know. That's what mine did before I started. Tell me if it worked. Just you? Work? No.
Oh, this Zoom. Hold on. Excellent. It says Zoom would like to hold on one sec.
You share it with me too. I can always do it if you want.
Oh, tell me if it does it now. Looking good. Yep. Yep. You're looking good here. Okay. We got it. Thanks, Val.
It said Zoom Zoom wanted to do something, but I told it no. Okay. So this is the first of our informational, sessions here, as Celeste said. And so, the topic tonight's gonna be a little bit limited. This is probably the easiest topic for the for the evening because it's it's not the largest percentage of the budget, but it's one that kinda lets everybody know, what drives the curriculum and the instruction, within the building. So oops. Okay. So I wanted to start with just a a couple of things to, kinda give kudos, to what's going on here in terms of curriculum and instruction. For a while, we focused a little bit on COVID. We focused on the the things that we had to ensure we regained after, the March 2020 closure. I want us to look just very briefly at the academic growth. It's very strong. The enrollment is strong. The staff professional development is strong, and staff retention is excellent. We are really truly one of the few schools, not only in our local region here, but statewide, that can say that, not only did people stay,
but when we did have openings from 2020 until now, we were able to fill them with highly qualified people. And so I feel very, grateful for the fact that our, our staff is full, and we haven't had a ton of openings during the course of the year where we had to fill in with substitutes because that really does affect the academics, and that affects, staff development to making sure that, staff is is prepared to implement instruction. So when we look at academic growth, I know that Taylor had presented this earlier in the year. We looked at our SPAC scores. And although, obviously, we're never where we wanna be exactly, we were very proud of the fact that we had about a 10% improvement over the year before, and we do attribute this to curriculum and instruction.
We've had more differentiated instruction and individualized learning opportunities, which has allowed us to take a more laser focused approach to the strategies that are utilized within the classroom. We had an increased number of activities, for both remedial students, grade level students, and enrichment opportunities, and I think that this has made a big difference. All curriculum revisions and changes have been aligned to things that are scientifically based, things that are evidence based, just very thoughtful in nature. Not necessarily expensive, just thoughtful in nature. And that's been instrumental in the success of our students. Looking at benchmark assessments and other data points have also helped to drive the instruction, not just focusing on one point aspect scores, not just focusing on one grade, not just focusing on the the students of their cookie cutters within the middle, just really making sure that we look at a lot of different data points to drive the instruction. And one of the things that I'm really proud that Taylor and the teachers, we have a great learning teams going on here right now. They have grade level planning that occurs weekly, where the second grade and third grade teachers will get together. The fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers will get together and really make sure that we look at both, you know, vertical and horizontal alignment with our curriculum and instruction. Everybody kinda knows what's going on in everybody else's classroom and how they can reinforce and assist one another. If you're a third grade teacher, how can I make sure that I reinforce the second grade and the fourth grade at the same time?
Grade level planning is not the only meeting that occurs. There are data team meetings that occur, weekly. There are grade level collaborative gatherings, and I call them collaborative gatherings because they don't always take place, in tailored office. Sometimes it's planning periods where teachers are elsewhere sharing and modeling. SRBI meetings, which is that scientifically research based interventions, these meetings are very important to make sure that we are looking at, students and meeting them where they are now, but not keeping them there, making sure that as soon as they meet a certain benchmark, they move on. And, of course, the PPT process for special education. Progress since last year, when we look at enrollment. We're always very proud of this. Not that we have everything to do with who moves into the town, but I do think that, having a good school, having a good program is something that does draw people into the town. You know, in 2020, when I got here, you know, that was really the lowest enrollment for us. We were at, like, one seventy four that year. And there were a lot of factors
that drove that, including COVID and including some people that were at that time still homeschooling. In 2021, the enrollment had grown a little bit, It was slow and steady to one eighty three, and we always had that goal of 200. In 2022, we hit the the goal of two hundred, and we were holding steady there. As of October, November, I'm sorry, of this year, it says October here, but a couple started in November. We're at two fifteen. And we anticipate this enrollment for next year will be a solid two fifteen, and we absolutely think there's a possibility, when we look at k and k enrollment, that's that's our strongest, grade level right now in terms of numbers, that there's a possibility that we could be looking at two thirty to two thirty five by the end of next year.
So in the long term, this not only affects us, but this does affect the middle and high school as well. And, again, we're here to try to support them as our kids move up. Our classes are bigger that are gonna be moving up. Right now, they're at their lowest as we were years ago, back in 2020. And so the AES population of three year olds, preschoolers, all the way on to grade six, we actually represent 60% of all of the students in pre k to 12 now in the town of Andover. So, it's great. All of you know when you come into the building for events that it's so nice to see hustle and bustle of the kids again. So so we mentioned that because
we really wanna look to make sure that we continue with, the stellar, preschool program that we have now that's gonna feed into k and then one. This is likely to secure enrollment moving forward in the future. When we look at professional development, professional development has been very purposeful. Not that it wasn't in the past, but I think with Taylor and the leadership teams that we now have in the building, we look to make sure that we're not just going through the process. One of the things the board of education does is support our calendar. And you know two years in a row now, we've been very thoughtful in terms of looking at those PD days, as really important to the development of the teacher who's in the classroom with the students. And so we never want a staff member to walk away from professional development and think, well, that was a waste of my time. We want them to walk away and say, I'm really excited to implement some of these things that I have learned. And so we've been focusing on the science of reading. I know we mentioned this at the last meeting. We talked about the waiver that we had put in. When we look at the science of reading, what we're looking at is those five tenets, the phonics, the phonemic awareness, fluency,
comprehension, and vocabulary. And just for anybody who wasn't at our last meeting, when they did look at our waiver, they said, you know, we agree that the program that you have now, not only checks the box, but is is a strong enough program in phonics and phonemic awareness and fluency. And, the only thing they did want us to make sure we focus on moving forward is to creating a a little bit more robust at the k three level reading comprehension vocabulary. So that's really where the professional development's going for the science of reading now is making sure that we make that even more robust. For social emotional learning, we are and we will continue through the 2425
school year to focus on zones of regulation and PMT training. We know that it's not necessary to train every staff member on PMT, which is de escalation strategies and if ever the need arises, for restraint and seclusion. But we wanna make sure that everybody within the building, because we are, in essence, one giant cohort. We wanna make sure that everybody has all of the professional development opportunities should they want them. So everybody who's required or mandated to have the PMT training has it. And anybody else who wanted to attend, we also made sure that they had that opportunity. Just like with CPR, which isn't on here as a PD, but any of the safety professional development. Of course, we have staff that must have it, and then we offer it to the rest of the staff. And as you guys know, that professional development has also spread down to grades five and six who are also
CPR and first aid trained and certified. We continue to train in sensory integration and the use of our sensory resources for our kids. This was a huge growth area for us to recognize that it wasn't just OT and PT and special education teachers and social workers that could benefit from being trained in sensory integration because, our classroom teachers are with a fair number of our students that may need some of those strategies on a regular basis. And so that continues to evolve as we move along. The NIAC accreditation is in process right now. Normally and historically, here at AES, we had the preschool that was NIAC accredited. And through OEC as well, we have guidelines, but NIAC accredited. And we made the decision about eighteen months ago that, we really wanted pre k and kindergarten to be accredited. I felt that it not only gave us a little bit of a feather to our cap in that department since, really nobody in the area has a kindergarten that is accredited. But I also felt that that further aligns in terms of curriculum and instruction to making sure that we have, a pathway, that we have a curriculum. There are people that think, well, kindergarten and pre k, don't they just play? Well, actually, there's play involved, and there's professional development that, a lot of our staff have attended, but, there is
a method to teaching, play and instructions. So, I'm very excited about this. I know that this accreditation will go through in the next, year, and so we will then have accredited pre k and kindergarten classes. And I do believe that that is one of the reasons why, you know, we've gotten a lot of, calls about what our program offers because I think we're top notch in the area. We have been and we will continue to focus on building number sense and computational fluency as well through the number talks. Math is gonna be a lot more of a focus next year. Not that it, wasn't equal to reading this year, but the mandates for reading kind of made it so that we had to put that a little bit more on the front burner. But math does continue in terms of professional development as well. So curriculum and instruction within the budget. It's funny because this is so very important. If you ask the teachers, this is one of the most important things for them on a daily basis. However, it it really is the smallest portion. It's less than 1% of our overall budget. The current total is roughly about $29,000 spent on curriculum and instruction, not on staff, not on salaries, directly on just curriculum instruction. And when we talk about those kinds of expenditures that are related directly and solely to curriculum and instruction, these are things like manipulatives. In a math class, for example, the things that they use to help them learn a strategy. Consumables. Consumables mean things that you use, like a workbook. That's the simplest form, and then you would have to replace.
So they are utilized in this particular unit or this particular budget year, calendar year, school year, and then they need to be replaced. New initiatives that are brought about, enrichment opportunities, books, content specific supplies, science supplies, ELA supplies, math supplies, fees for student participation in curriculum related activities that that come up. For example, we do, have a fee that's associated a student fee that's associated when our musicians with music attends the conference and perform there. There's a fee that we pay for that. So this area is also one of the reasons why we're looking at only about 29,000 currently is because this is the area that's also most likely, in my opinion anyways, to be supplementally supported by state grants, by student fundraisers and activity funds, by the PTSA where they will oftentimes speak directly to the teachers and say, kinda what do you guys need for your classroom? It's usually something that falls under curriculum and instruction,
by parents, usually through donations. Hey. We've got these extra, you know, pencils and pens, and we've got things of that nature that we thought maybe you could use in the classroom that our children have grown out of. And through, specific grants, like the Right to Read grant, which is what we currently, have been given to implement, a new reading program, to to to use with our existing program. So this grant, for example, I'm gonna show you two of them. I have the grant management system, and this shows you f y 2024. It was received for the fiscal year 2023, and ARPA are the funds. Their grant is called Right to Read, and we were allocated 13,000 to put toward whatever new program it is that we do invest to further that reading comprehension component
and that vocabulary component. And I show you this because, I also want you to know that ARP, ESSER, they have been godsense for us in the last few years, since COVID in terms of outside funding sources. And so as everybody probably knows, they are drying up soon. And another twelve months from now, they'll all be gone. And so we will have to look again at our curriculum and instruction, at the end of 2425 school year, and that will be one area that this conversation that we're having will be very different next year. It won't be that it's $29,000, and we don't necessarily need to invest in in that going forward. So this is what we do have to spend specifically for reading. That's the other reason why I put this one on the screen is it's the small town right to read and the ARPA right to read. So if we utilize this money for the approved reading programs, then they will reimburse that expense, but it can't be used for anything else. And so sometimes I think that's a misnomer for people as well. They're like, well, if you have all these grants well, they're very specifically earmarked like this one is. It's a right to read small town grant, and it's a reimbursement. And so, we're confident that the new reading program will be covered, under this,
and so we're not going to be putting that as a suggestion in the budget. But I just kinda wanted to share with you and anybody else who winds up watching this that they are very specific and earmarked. So if somebody was looking at our budget and they're looking at our monthly financials, they'll notice numbers. They'll notice numbers on the side, and any newcomer will look and say, oh, what are all these numbers for? So you'll notice that all of our categories, our objects, our functions, they all start with zero zero two. That's not gonna change regardless of what our expenditure is.
The next line there, the one zero eight, the six ten, the six eleven, that tells you what the object is. And tonight, we're gonna be looking specifically at curriculum and instruction. Well, there's not one section of the budget that says curriculum and instruction, and it's all listed right there. Those expenditures are kind of peppered throughout the budget in different places. And you can find some of those $29,000 worth of expenses in each of the categories that I have listed there. You may find one in one zero eight, one in six ten. I'm gonna show you them in a moment, but they'll be peppered throughout. Here's an example of when Terry gives us the monthly report, the one that comes on two pages. This is what I'm talking about. You'll see it starts with zero zero two, and I highlighted what one zero eight is. When you look at one zero eight, it says extracurricular. You'll see that that budget line item for the adopted budget is $6,100. The $6,100 is actually contractually. I know this one's come up in the past because on the financial, expenditure report, underneath extracurricular, when it's expanded, it says coaching and clubs. And I remember a citizen saying, coaching. Like, do you guys have sports? It's a different kind of coaching. It's a curriculum and instruction type of coaching of others. So it's not sports related, but it is extracurricular. Now one of the reasons why we've been very lucky as to not have to increase this even though there are clubs and activities that are by contract and the teacher's contract that we have to offer, for example, yearbook,
is because we've had the after school program last year and this year. And because we've had the after school program, we've offered some extracurriculars that were covered by the grant. This line, if we put everything by contract in here, two years ago, I believe it was 12,000. And as we got, were the recipients of different revenue sources through grants and we were able to have them legitimately covered by the grant, we were able to reduce this. I mentioned that because if there is no after school funding after next year, this may be another category that would be affected by that. Because right now, it's being positively affected by the, revenue source. If you look down a little further, you'll see general supplies, which, as Celeste mentioned at the beginning, the general portion of it, will be broken down a little bit further in one of the other topics. But for our purposes, we look at that six ten. And when we look at six ten, we just separate it out into what affects curriculum and instruction right now. And if we look into that section, it's not really big at all. We have world language supplies. We have supplies for PE, the for the music, for the art, for third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. It's not ideal, and Terry and I have talked about this. And even before Terry was here, Sherry and I had talked about this. This budget has looked the same for a number of years, and a lot of those categories probably should be merged together, because it's not often that we buy something for, let's say, third grade in the sum of $300 where we're not also buying it for another grade, especially, for example, since we have a two three combination right now. So we probably could put all of the curriculum and instruction general supplies in one line,
and going forward, but, the overall expenditure itself is not a large one as you can see. The only thing that we do separate out, if you were to look at this section, and I've highlighted it in yellow here to make it easier, but the only thing that we do separate out, which is also somewhat antiquated, is we separate out books. So ELA books and periodicals, science books and periodicals. Those are separated out, those textbooks. We probably don't even have to do that anymore. It's just always been done that way. So moving forward, that would be something that I know Terry and I are gonna look at. All in all, again, we're talking about about, $3,000 per content area for the overall there. I've included books and periodicals in this line for a reason, $6.40 there. That normally would fall just simply under library, But I did wanna point out and mention once again that this is the category where we tend to have other revenue sources. And I know that PTA, board of ed members, parents have all worked together with us to do the book fairs. And so very oftentimes, there's money that comes in from the book fair. Some of it goes to PTA, and oftentimes, the library is the, recipients of some of the donations of those books. And so it's worked out that we've been able to do some funding. But there's only $1,500 currently in the budget, which doesn't buy a whole lot. But, you know, right now, it's working solely because we have the other revenue sources.
So we'll take a quick look here. And then as I go through real quick here, the different topics, in terms of curriculum, I know that Taylor is on. So, when we're done with the, next few slides, if anybody has specific questions related to, each of the content areas, I'm sure she'll be able to answer them for you. When we look at our current reading curriculum, we have the core reading program. This is that core that due to the science of reading and the mandates, we will have to choose, one major umbrella. We will still be able to supplement with what we currently use, which is foundations for the k through three, and we're focusing on k three here simply because that's the mandate.
We utilize Hegarty as a supplemental approach for k one. We do also have a variety of interventions and SRBI strategies. Your children may be using the UFLI. They may be using OG, Orton Gillingham. They may be using curriculum that's related to Wilson, and word connections. Not every child in the building is utilizing those interventions and, SRBI strategies, But foundations and Hegarty would be supplemental to k through three. Where we are in this process now, the board of ed will be hearing much more about in the coming months, but we're looking at, piloting, one of the ones from the approved programs list. And I know that Taylor and that team have been working diligently right now to try to figure out which one's best for us. Maybe it's wonders that's best for us. Maybe it's bookworms that's best for us. You know? Maybe it's interreading that's best for us. But they're looking at neighboring communities that are a little bit like us, not only demographically, but in terms of our student achievement, and trying to figure out which one will be best for us. But, again, once they figure out which one we want to pilot, any of the materials that need to be purchased for this, for just for reading, will be able to be funded through that ARPA Right to Read grant. Additional resources that we do pay for, Storyworks, Lexia, and RazKids. And I will say a little, you know, kudos there to Christina and to missus Caraboni. They work with Taylor every year to revisit at the end of a year which resources are being utilized, which resources do teachers prefer, which resources do students prefer. And over the past few years, sometimes
they say, know you what? This one is no longer serving our need, so we don't renew, and that comes off. Or they would prefer to use this, and so we supplement with that. So in some schools, unfortunately, they they get into something like Lexia, they say we're gonna keep it forever. Whereas kids, like, keep it forever. And that really isn't the way the process works here when we reevaluate the curriculum is all of those additional supplemental materials are looked at on a regular basis as well and decided whether or not they're useful. Just like years ago, they had newspaper subscriptions for every classroom. Well, once the kids stop reading the newspapers, they got rid of it. When we look at assessments, it's the same process. We look at what serves the needs of our students in terms of the assessments. We currently have I Ready. We have FNP, Fontus and Pannell. We have IDI, the kindergarten inventory, DIBLES, sight words, and unit assessments. And the data then is examined from these assessments at those meetings that I mentioned earlier, and the teachers and the leadership team can look at, you know, what would we like to continue to use that's useful moving forward, and what do we maybe need to revisit?
DIBELS, for example, is one of the assessments that is approved through our reading grant. And so what we know we have to order for DIBELS for the 2425 school year will be ordered through that grant. So that's another thing that we had to take into consideration when we figured out what would we need to add in this category. And DIBELS wasn't one of them because we have a a funding source for that. The writing curriculum. The core writing program, the new program will be language arts. They currently use TC units of study. This is gonna be something that will be revisited
as the new reading curriculum, is piloted, to see if there's something else that, maybe better fits the five tenets that we spoke about in reading, in in the writing curriculum. They use patterns of power and words their way, and they do also use the I Ready and on demand assessments, in writing. Current math curriculum. And, again, this will be one probably more heavily visited in another eighteen months once the implementation of the new, science of reading approved programs comes in. But k one uses the common core standards. Grades two and three uses illustrative math, which is fairly new. This had been piloted, only recently, and it seems to be something, that is working. In grades four through six, they last year this is the last year of goal math, but the plan moving forward for 2425
school year is to also take the illustrative math and move it up. So it would not just be a two three program. That math program would move all the way up through six. It seems to be something that is working for the needs of our students. And just like with reading earlier, there are interventions for students as well as SRBI instruction. So just like we talked about Hegarty and we talked about some of the other supplemental materials, Those will follow soon in math. There are things that are used in addition to illustrative math. Science and social studies follow the NGSS standards. There's only two grades, only one in this school. The other is the middle school, that are tested currently on science. So, there is a little bit more leeway in terms of the curriculum for science, and social studies is not a tested content area, but there are new standards that are approved by the State Board of Education recently in social studies. And as soon as we are given them, they will be used to build more effective social studies curriculum here. We will have to refine, what we currently use. We're aware of that. But, that's gonna take place during the next school year, when we really can look at the meat of what the new social study standards are, what's different, what's the same.
And the resources, I'm sure the additional resources will continue to be used. The Scholastic News, the BrainPOP, and the Mystery Science, they seem to be very popular year after year, but we may wind up having to integrate some newer, materials if what we're currently using, is not as closely aligned to those new social study standards. But that'll be down the pipe just a little bit. Additionally, let's not forget, everything else that falls under curriculum and instruction. All of our students received PE instruction this year, and they will, of course, next year. Health. We have health at at all of our grade levels. We have music. Arts, enrichments, we still have continued with the sign language that we started in 2020 as an enrichment program. Spanish is offered to students in grades two through six. They do have a library, and all the students have access to all the resources in the library. A fair amount of the resources for library are also integrated into our four, five, six cohort as
Melissa winds up working with those students on research projects and things of that nature. The makerspace in STEM is embedded programming into 45, six Wing right now, and the other students still have access and are able to utilize, that room. And so the units that take place at the lower, grade levels under four, still occur on a regular basis. And, again, Makerspace and STEM have been the recipients, this year of some of the materials that were utilized. We do a lot with science and social studies in the after school programs, Makerspace and STEM. You guys know miss Hazen is one of our most popular after school science programs. But we also have miss Fraser that's been doing some programming after school, and so we don't return that stuff when the after school program is over. It stays here. So, again, there are some things that we're very grateful we've been able to acquire as a result of the enrichment activities that we have after school that will remain here and be utilized next school year within the Makerspace and STEM classroom. And then, of course, access to technology. At one point, everybody had Chromebooks, and we still have Chromebooks, but we've been integrating, as revenue sources have allowed us to iPads into the building. There are, you know, three locations within the school right now that utilize them on a fairly regular basis. And we have the robots with Makerspace and STEM and with some of the programming that miss Fraser does and other tech resources. So, as those grants have come up, we've absolutely taken advantage of them and used them,
to make sure that we had assets that we could utilize within the school in the future. So how are curriculum and instruction communicated to the family? How is progress shared? I think this is really important since I know this is, you know, one of the goals and the responsibilities of the board of education as well. I would not ever want anyone to look at what we just talked about and say, I have no idea what goes on in there. So this past year, we really made sure that we started to do a lot more with something called seesaw and sending messages home to parents, but, we do have a variety of methods that we utilize.
Families can access, student achievement daily through interactions with the teachers and the staff. We have other methods, parent teacher conferences, communication through school messenger. Here within the building, the utilization of the student information system, which is PowerSchool, report cards, seesaw emails, our school website, social media, and phone messages. So I think that we are really moving in the right direction on making sure that we keep up with the changing needs of all of the families side. Seesaw's probably the newest and the most effective this this year because you can send more than just, written messages. It allows you to send other things as well. So all of the other enrichment programs, that have been, you know, so popular this year that I know the board has a lot of, parents on the board, and, some of the other people who may watch this will say, oh, yeah. We've really loved those this year. Those are grant fund grant funded, and they will end the summer of twenty twenty four. We're gonna continue to seek other sources of revenue to continue some of those extra programming. Him and hard about whether or not we build this into the general fund, but I'm just not certain where we would put that in terms of a line item without knowing exactly what it is we're purchasing. It's hard to say, well, we're gonna build in a couple of thousand dollars to do enrichment programs if we don't have a plan. So I'm just hedging my bets that there will be other grant opportunities when these, do dry up, will not affect our curriculum and instruction. They would be the enrichment activities that we're currently,
experiencing now. As Celeste said at the beginning, we have utilized once again the email address that we had last year and the year before, aesbudget@andoverelementaryct.org. Any questions or things that the public would like to know that they can't find within each presentation, this is an email that I do check on a regular basis, and I will be forwarding it to the board if there are any. We got one last year, so I'm hoping this year to get two or more. That would be wonderful. So any questions from any of the board members?
I have a question. Yep. The what is curriculum coaching of others?
You mean, like, in that line item where it said extracurriculars? So And you because we don't have sports teams, so there's no coaching. So what what is the curriculum coaching of others? And that's actually a question every year that someone asks. So in a teacher's contract, for example, if a teacher attends professional development and then they come back into the school community and they share it, by contract, there's a set rate that they're paid. We can't just say, you know, hey. Wanna stay after and share this with the crowd. Their union contract, and and most union contracts do for teachers, so I don't want anybody to think it's an oddity, says, you know what? If Taylor were to say, that was a great workshop. I'd love for you to share it with the staff. That person would prepare and be the coach for the rest of the school on that particular topic, and their time would be compensated. And there's a rate in the teacher's contract that says this is what they get paid, and it's not an exorbitant amount. But that is why that's in there, Celeste, because, anybody who does union contracts, you know, should should be aware that if there's something by contract that needs to be offered, it has to be in here so that we've planned for it because we know that it could happen. That number, as I said, it was 12,000 a few years ago, and we were finding that more staff were attending some of the professional development. More of the union clubs that existed after school were actually taking place in our after school program. So that's all it is, Celeste, is just simply anything that is in there. And that does happen, and, you know, we've been fortunate,
that we have had some staff that have come back just with this fantastic experience at a professional development opportunity said to Taylor, I wanna share it. And if they share it, then they're compensated for their, presentation. Okay. Thank you.
I've got a couple of no ones. If you guys are ready for me Yep. Go ahead, Steve. Alright. To start, when I looked at all the line items, so there were a total of 11 different objects that you brought up. Currently, when I look at the budget as of the end of November, seven of the 11 are less than 2% encumbered. So as we budget ahead, and out of the seven, four of them have zero encumbrances. So we're here we are halfway through the year. We're getting ready to plan next year's budget. And I get they're not big items, but how do we know how much we're expending and what how to plan for next year? When do those get used? Because I saw even the previous year,
as of June in the previous year's budget, four of the 11 ended up with 0% encumbrances. So
Yep. Do you So, Steve, that's a great let me start with that one because that's a great question. Just like, for example, if you were to look at one zero nine, which is summer school. When the budget fiscal year starts in July, we come to our August meeting, and it says 100% spent used. And everybody goes, what? How could you be 100 used in that line item? We haven't even gone back to school yet. Well, because it was summer school. When we look at a lot of these, Steve, because it's curriculum instruction and it's planning ahead for the next school year. It's consumables. It's manipulatives. It's those supplies for the classroom.
They won't be ordered until the spring. We haven't even gotten to that season yet because we wanna know, did foundations work this year like it has for the past three years? If so, then as we get closer to the end of the school year, we order it for the following year. We wouldn't wanna order it in November because what happens if in December, Taylor gets some assessment results and says, you know what? This isn't working for us anymore. So because, Steven, it's not a lot of money, but because it's basically supplies to teach with, because it's curriculum supplies, we do have to wait. That is one that we're probably not gonna use a lot of until we get later in the school year. So I'm glad you brought that up so that people could understand that. That one is not one that's gonna be continuous on a month to month basis. It's gonna be purchased all at one time.
And it's it looks like that time is typically at the end of the school year. Is that
It is. Yep. Because remember, teachers aren't here over the summer. By contract, we we say, please, go take a break. And so we make that assessment. Usually, we start to look in, like, February or March. We look at we've got about three quarters of the year done. We look and see. By then, we also know, a little bit better the makeup of the classes. Will I have 25 kids in that grade, or will I have 13 kids in that grade? So that we know really when we're placing that order, what do we need. And that would be when they'd be ordered so that they're ordered. Oftentimes, they don't come in in June, because every other school district is ordering them as well. So, they'll come in, you know, during the course of the summer, but they need to be ordered by the end of the year. So, yep, those would be the line items. This would be the 29,000, Steve, definitely for sure that you really can't start to take a a very effective look at what it is you want to continue into the next year until about February.
And am I correct? Assuming this is one of the ones you're talking about where we almost from a variability standpoint, I mean, at our level, being able to discern how much third grade versus fifth grade supply you need when you bud you budgeted $502,100. Would these be ones that you're talking about possibly might make sense to combine and just say classroom supplies so you can give us a number that's more steady?
Yes. Because yep. As I said, if we buy, you know, an inter reading, if we buy a wonders, if we buy a bookworms, we're gonna place that order for k to three. And so, you know, absolutely. Now, again, the reason here, Steve, why this actually you know, at the end of the year, what saved us is, in this department, we would have been anticipating right now how many thousands of dollars is it gonna cost us to buy a new program, but we have the grant. And so, right now, we know, that what's in here right now is looking very good. It's looking very steady. Terry and Taylor and myself have sat down and had a conversation, and we're like, what's the variability here? Do we think that this is gonna increase significantly? And you're right. It's 29,000. But do we think it's gonna increase significantly for next year? And this might be, spoiler alert, probably the only section that I can confidently say going into these
budget workshops informational workshops that I feel very confident that we will be able to make sure that we get all of the curriculum and instruction needs and supplies either through the rest of the grants that we have now that are expiring at the end of the year or through what we have currently in the budget.
Alright. So and one of the other things you touched base on earlier, but I'm trying to see where it's at covered in here, was the current accreditation of the kindergarten through NIAC. Is that going to be so number one, can you explain if there was a cost associated with that, and then what the benefits are to offset that cost?
Yep. So there's a very small cost for, the accreditation process, and, we would have had to do it anyways. So that was already in our pre k thought process, our our costs there. And as you know, you don't see pre k normally in here because pre k has traditionally when we had the the couple classrooms, was traditionally funded through our smart start grant, through our school readiness grant, and through our tuition. And as you know from the meetings that we've talked about, that's the explosive grade right now, which we're very happy about in terms of enrollment. It's not gonna double in cost for us to go through the accreditation process. Because when they come here and they accredit us, they go through our classrooms. They don't say we're gonna charge a double in an accreditation fee because you now have one more room for us to look at. So in terms of that cost, Steve,
it isn't significant enough for us to worry about that. Now were there other costs and will be other costs in the future? Sure. A conversation I had had with Taylor, for example, we were looking at, when they do do an accreditation, your room has to look a certain way in kindergarten if you're gonna be kindergarten accredited. You have guidelines. For example, I'll give you one that sounds boring to other people, but bear with me. I don't think it's boring. When you walk into a preschool room, you have to be able to see all your little guys. And so the furniture height has specific requirements. You have to be able to see over the furniture so that you can see your students in the room. Some of the kindergarten rooms have had furniture that would be too high, a bookshelf, for example, that's too high. So what Taylor's been doing, and she's had a lot of assistance, and so I I credit everybody, in in the downstairs with this, is as part of, our self evaluation, that's what they do is they go downstairs and they look through the room and they say, what do we have that meets the guidelines?
What do we not have that we have to make sure we get? Now we do have a few things that will need to be purchased there. However, when we look at what our grants are that we have currently available to us and what we will have next year, we do think that some of those changes that need to occur to make sure that our kindergarten rooms also meet the, guidelines for accreditation, it wouldn't be significant enough for us to have to put in the general fund going into the 2425 because we have other sources. Now we do know that there's a possibility that with the explosion, we could wind up in a year with four preschool rooms. If that happens, Steve, that would definitely be a conversation for '25 where we say no longer can it be self sufficient. There's just too many classrooms. And so that would definitely be something. But for this year,
we're not looking at significant enough increases over and above what revenue sources we have available for pre k and k. For the pre k and k. But so what
other than you know, maybe just you know, I understand, I guess, I it's good. But for layman such as myself, what is NIAC accreditation? How does that make this district in in the kindergarten level better? Like, what how do we get our whatever investment is or long term investment back by being NIAC accredited in kindergarten?
So it gives families, a guideline. You know, it's kinda like when you go to a doctor and everyone says, yep. I'm a doctor. And you're like, okay. Like, what makes you better than everybody else? And they really start to tout their credentials, which they should. They should say, well, I've done this surgery, Steve, a 100 times. You know? And a 100 out of a 100 times, I've done it successfully. What it does is it allows families to be able to see that there have been a set of guidelines that have been established by the office of early childhood, OEC, that there is a set of guidelines that have been clearly established by NIAC that says, we look at your curriculum. We don't just say, what do you do there? We say, what do you do there? And these are the things that we think are important in the growth and the development of three year olds, four year olds, and five year olds. This is what we'd like to see in your curriculum. And for you to be NIAC accredited, you have to prove to them. You said, why would this make us better? We actually had a family that was looking at our program, and the, one of the parents said, you know, I really just I just want my child to play. I want them to have that experience in preschool where they just play. And the other parents said, I am really interested in having my child play, but I'd also like them to learn.
How can you show us that you're meeting the both of our our our needs? And we were able to say, well, here is what NIAC accreditation is, and here are the guidelines. We need to make sure that the students are, learning about health and hygiene, making sure the students play areas. For example, include if you walk into any of these preschools, I'd love to take you on a walk. Or kindergartens, you walk in and you go, this looks like the room next door, and it does look like the room next door because there's an area for dramatic play. There's an area that meets the needs of science experimentations. There's a math area. There's a writing area. There's a reading nook. There's an art nook. And so anybody who thinks that the preschool and the kindergarten curriculum in in our building, it's not it's gonna be NACA accredited, is not, very definitive. It is. They absolutely are planning out playtime in these areas and what that looks like. Taylor, do you have anything that you wanna add to that? Because I know that she is knee deep, maybe even head deep right now into the accreditation. So what did I miss?
I mean, you you said so much. I just wanted to offer two things. The state is, really working to incentivize incentivize districts to become NIAC accredited because the standard is so high. So they actually did just confirm that they're covering the cost, the fee for accreditation for districts, so that's great for us this year since that's our year. The other thing I will just say, everything Val said is true on the research and developmentally appropriate, but, anecdotally, even this year in our current kindergarten and some of the the big shifts we've made from the NIACC guidelines and the research, we already have just seen a big impact in our classroom. So the kids are really engaged in this developmentally appropriate play, but as Val said, making tremendous growth academically too because it's engaging.
It's just really at their level. And I think, we we even had a family that said, can we pay tuition to stay in kindergarten if they're connected? So I think they're just seeing this, this also, crossover between pre K and k can be very easy for pre K to feel like a separate entity, because it feels different curriculum wise, but this really kind of builds our lower school, our pre k k, and grade one, even though there's not NIAC accreditation for grade one. It carries over, so our lower school feels very connected, and those skills build from each two years old to nine months all the way up to, seven or eight. So we're we're already it's a lot of work, but we're seeing, the benefits for sure. Thanks, Taylor. Thank you.
Sorry. Can I follow-up with on Steve's question a little bit? And I'm not saying from an outsider looking in, right, what you're saying is great, and the the curriculum sounds awesome. Right? However, what I would wanna know as a parent is what Steve, I think, was getting at was that return on your investment. How does I mean, you can institute that curriculum without accreditation. So how does that accreditation make the school district scores better? Or, like, what what is the database evidence that tells me that this is important?
Sure. So we don't have standardized testing in kindergarten. Right? So I can't I can't tell you that, the standardized scores are greater. Will we hopefully see as the kids move on and increase continue to increase in our in our standardized scores? But one of the pieces of NIACC is accountability. And so I think, you know, we can, yes, implement the program, and we can do this curriculum. But what NIACC does is says, but you have to do it to a standard that's up here all the time and prove it. And that's important for us because there are a million details, right, that we deal with in a school, teachers, day to day. But I think the accountability piece, we build large portfolios.
They come and visit. We also are in a grant with ISConn, our RESC, and they come monthly to support our pre k and k now. So we get additional professional development support because we're going through NIACC, which we wouldn't if we weren't in that process. So it benefits our teachers as well because they're continuing to be in, you know, cohorts with other districts that are in this process. So it builds their capacity, and, again, that accountability to high quality instruction with what's developmentally appropriate. And I think as the state continues to provide mandates mandates, they're also talking about play based learning and putting that into law. And so there's a lot of pieces that we wanna be ahead of the curve and really as knowledgeable as possible
because it's very different than teaching fifth and sixth grade. And teachers, we remember, are certified often a wide range of grade levels. So really providing more specific professional development, but also that standard of instruction is is important to us, and I and I I think important to the board.
Well, no. That that you got to my answer without, like, the availability of development, the availability of grants that wouldn't otherwise be available to me would be return on investments. Well, I think that's the type of thing that we would want to express as important and happiness.
Any other I'm sorry. Steve, are you do you have any more questions, mister Paz? I think I'm good. Thanks a lot. Okay. Thank you, Taylor, for the explanation. Appreciate it. Does anybody else have any questions? I don't see any any other board members have any questions for Val or for Taylor on this particular section. Sorry. I did have one other
Go ahead. Yep. Looking at the time. Can we pull up the account IDs again? I just wanted to
To have that to have Valerie, can you go back and share your screen?
Or put paste them in the chat. I'm just trying to, like, tie out with the last expenditure report, and I'm I'm
I I can't remember, like, 50 numbers like that. No. No. No. That's good. That's that's why we're doing these. So is this with which one? Is that the one you want? Okay. Okay.
Yep. You'll find them in 108, six ten, six 11, 1213, 14, 640, six forty one, 42, 44, and 810. And it's not all of them within those sections, Brie, but it is a fair number of them.
Okay. Does that help right now? There could be other
things in those sections that are not tied to curriculum. Is that what I understood? Okay.
Especially under the supplies section because, that includes all of the general supplies. So you'll see there's $40,000 worth of supplies in there, but they're not all curriculum and instruction. Alright.
You good, Brie, or do you have any other? No. I'm good right now. You're good. Okay. Anybody else? Does anybody else have any other questions, for Valerie or for Taylor? Okay. None. I'm hearing none. I don't see any other, any members of the public, so we don't have anybody there. Thank you, Val. Thank you, Taylor. I appreciate it. Unless anybody has, anything else, if I could get a do I need a motion to adjourn for this one since it's a special meeting? I don't think officially, but go ahead. Okay. To adjourn.
Okay. Thanks, Steve. I guess all in alright. Good. Caitlin, we'll second, and I'm all in favor. Aye. Aye. Alright. Aye. Awesome. Alright. Thanks, everyone. We