Meeting transcript
Budget Seminar #2
January 17, 2024 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
Yes.
We are recording now. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Alright. Good evening, everyone, and, welcome to the Andover Elementary School Board of Education budget planning seminar. It is Tuesday, Wednesday, 01/17/2024, and, we are here today, to talk about the, the budget, this year's budget. Just some ground rules, to go oh, there's just a couple ground rules to go over. The purpose of these meetings are to keep keep everybody informed, to keep the board informed as well as, you know, the the town of the budget and what goes into every line item. We've decided to kind of break down the budget into sections, and we're doing these workshops to for everybody to get a better understanding of the budget, what goes into the budget, and, more importantly, what goes into those line items.
Our goal is to have a budget to vote on on on our regular board of ed meeting, which is gonna be on February 14. We have a ninety minute stop, so these meetings will end at, you know, in ninety minutes. This particular budget meeting, are going to talk about special education supplies and preschool, and if anyone is interested or has further questions, we have a dedicated email address, aesbudgetandoverelementaryct dot org. So with that, I will hand it over to Valerie, who I believe will kind of recap what we talked about last time and then go into what we're gonna talk about tonight. So thank you. Shannon, you're just joining us. You didn't miss anything. I opened up the meeting.
So if you could just help out with taking the notes, that would be great. Oh, yes. Forgot about that part. Thank you for reminding me. You're welcome. Alright. Valerie, without further ado. Okay. Can you see me?
We can see you, and we can see your presentation.
Yes. Okay. Great. You can see the screen. That's the most important part. Alright. So this is the budget seminar informational, for the 04/25 budget. Mostly in this section, you'll see it's special education, some supplies, and, I'm gonna talk about pre k even though some people may be looking at their budget right now going, I don't see pre k in here. Nope. You don't. But I thought that we need to have a conversation during this particular informational about that, so that's where I'm starting. Okay. So to recap, session one, we talked about curriculum and instruction in session one. The actual dollar figure is very small. It's less than 1% of the overall general fund. So we were really, informing more or less what was driving the curriculum and instruction, mandates, special education, things like that. But the overall cost was only about, $29,000 in the budget for that section. We talked about the fact that there is a new reading program and that there will be enhancements and that they're mandated, but that we're very lucky because looking at the 2425 budget, those mandates are grant funded, which you never see. So that was something that was a nice change. The curriculum remained robust and strong at every level. We talked about professional development and the fact that those opportunities are embedded in our calendar for staff, and they reflect mandates and new initiatives, SEL related as well as curriculum and instruction,
and that all staff were subject to professional development. And I wanted to keep that block in there from session one because when we get to talking about salaries, that then would, definitely be something that comes up again simply because more professional development for staff that, our ten month staff, is gonna mean something in the next session. So because of grant funding in the current year, we had ended our first session with no increased potentials to, the curriculum instruction line item. So now when we start to talk about special education, everybody knows this is one that varies from year to year significantly. It's not one that we truly have much control over. Special education services aren't optional. And, of course, we wanna provide everything that's needed for our kids. But quite frankly, we really have to look at this, from the point of view of the fact that we are legally obligated to.
So when we look at our, itemized potential, expenditures for next year, that's really not an area that we have much control over. Because of our obligation, we don't get to look at those lines and say, perhaps we could eliminate a service, a supply, or a resource at will here. That just isn't one of those that we can do. And all of the services that we currently provide are required services. We don't have any extra things, like, that that are not, something that we use on a daily basis. Without giving too much information away of our students, I can give you some statistics about what our special education looks like here at AES. We currently have 25 students who qualify for IEPs,
and there's three referrals in the process. Doesn't necessarily mean we'll go up to 28. It just means that at any given moment in time, when we look at those numbers, we oftentimes are looking at what's called a referral, which is completely normal, in in every school district. We have 22 students that have what are called five zero four plans. Now if anybody doesn't know what an IEP is, an IEP is an individualized educational program. It means that, it was decided by a team that included parents and educators, other, support services. It was decided that there were services that were required for a particular student who had a disability. That's an IEP. And so once that document, which is a legal binding document, is created, again, we're required to provide those services. Not that we don't want to. We do, but we are required. The difference in a five zero four plan is a five zero four plan, and we do try to cover this every year for those people who don't know, a five zero four plan is also a legal binding document.
And it has modifications and accommodations in it for a student who is in need. But it isn't the same because it's not a student that has a particular label of special education. It could be a situation that's temporary in nature. If a child breaks their right arm and they are, right handed when they write, we may potentially have to go to 504 and say, how is this person's program going to look different because they can't write for the next six weeks or eight weeks? Or maybe it's a severe situation, and, it may be longer than that. So a five zero four plan is, again, a legal binding document that requires services, but, it is not necessarily a child that has been labeled special education. We have 40 kids that also participate in something called SRBI, which is scientifically research based interventions. And what that means is that the particular student may be having a little hiccup in their curriculum or instruction. Maybe the majority of the class has moved on to something, and they just require a little extra. I people spend their whole careers really investigating SRBI and knowing the ins and outs, so I don't wanna narrow it down to a minute. But in short, I will say that SRBI is kinda like a short term situation where we give something that's usually less than twenty six weeks, where we give something that is extra curriculum and instruction at a higher level, to a particular student to kinda get them over that that that hump, to get them over this situation where they're just having a difficulty. And, again, I feel terrible trying to, you know, wind up saying what SRBI is in a matter of a minute or two, but,
those students, and this is the reason why I mentioned that, those students, are gonna change from, time period to time period. So if I had a list right now of 40 kids participating, in twenty six weeks, it could be 15 kids. It could still be 40, but they're different children. And so we do have to have staff that address those needs. But, again, a caseload could vary from time period to time period, and we do have to plan for that. So although not all preschool or kindergarten students require remediation or intervention, the other thing I feel I need to point out is that it is during preschool and kindergarten that we oftentimes do more screenings, observations, consultations, just simply because they're younger, they're new. And oftentimes, this is what drives us to see, is this a child that might need an intervention? Is this a child that may need something more? Or is this a child that potentially winds up, red flag for potential learning disability? So I say that because a lot of times people don't understand, when we look at kindergarten and we say we had 10 screenings, but we didn't wind up with 10 students that required an IEP or a five zero four. They're like, explain. What happens here? Why do you have somebody that had that many tests to do? It's because it's it's us doing our job here within the building to make sure that the, identified red flags are addressed. We also do receive students in our pre k and next year, our our our pre school and our pre kindergarten program. We do receive students through a program called birth to three. Let me close this door one second just so you don't hear the vacuum.
Birth to three is a program where, families might have already sought out, some services for their infant or toddler. And the birth to three program then will make recommendations to the school when the child comes in at three years old. And we then would implement them and continue with monitoring and servicing the child, from birth to three on through. Early intervention, we've always said is vital, and I think one of the best things Andover did was to, make sure that we had the capacity to address our kids earlier. So what types of services do we provide? I think this is important for people who either don't have school aged children or have never had a child in their home in need of services. General academic services to meet the goals with a regular special education teacher, a regular teacher, math, reading, any sorts of those things. So sorry for the interruption. At least we know the custodian's working on cleaning the wrong ones. Sorry. We require, in some cases, social work services. And so we definitely have to provide those to our our students here. We have occupational therapy, which we call it OT. That's what occupational therapy is. Physical therapy, we provide psychological services and testing. We provide speech and language, and SLP is a speech and language professional. Paraprofessional assistance to students who need that. Busing would fall under here because very oftentimes, that is part of a program for a child. And it could be through an IEP, and it could be through the five zero four process. Either way, busing is often something that falls under the umbrella of special education services, whether it's to another facility or to our own.
Outplacement services when they are necessary. Adaptive technology, which means that sometimes there are students that need specialized things, specialized, pencils, specialized computers, specialized desks, anything where we have to adapt the technology that we currently use with our traditional students. And I put nursing services on here. We won't be looking at the nurses specifically until we get to the the salary section, but, we do have certain students within the building that require things of our nurse that other students do not. And therefore, that would be, a special education service. So when we look at, you know, how do you figure out, Valerie, year, exactly if you have the right mix of hours for these professionals. Like, how do you know if you need a full time person, a part time person, somebody that you hire out? We look at those IEPs. We look at the five o fours. We look at who the students are that are currently being serviced by our professionals, and we say, will next year bring about the same thing? Will it bring about more hours, less hours, a different professional, kind of where we are with this? Currently, if I look at our legally binding documents, our 504s and our IEPs, I know that there's a total per week of eighty one point five academic hours where they need to work with somebody other than the classroom teacher. We know that there are twenty three point five hours right now, anticipated for next year
where they need to work with a speech and language provider, twelve hours where they need to work directly with the psychologist, six point five for a social worker, eight hours for an occupational therapist, and four hours for a physical therapist. Now I put this slide first. These are the direct service hours. And no matter what field you're in, you all know that there are the hours where you actually do your job, and then there are the hours that you have to do all of the other things that are associated with your job. And for these service providers, what does that look like? They look like this. In addition to the time when they are physically one on one with the child or two on one, whatever, it is that that they have, on the, binding document.
These are the other things that those providers need to do to prepare to service the children. They have to attend those meetings, the PPT meetings, the planning and placement team meetings. And on a particular student, there could be one a year. There could be multiple a year. There could be eight a year depending on whether or not it's it's a new student here, depending on if changes need to be made to accommodate those students. Screenings, evaluations and testing, written documentation and reports, classroom observations and communications to parents or to other service providers, other responsibilities, and then things like to train classroom staff on implementation. So if there is a particular method that they are utilizing to address a student, an accommodation or a modification, they need to make sure when they aren't there with the child that everybody else that comes in contact with them knows exactly what the game plan is. And that if there's adaptive technology, for example, that they know how to utilize the adaptive technology. And so all of these other hours, they can vary from student to student depending on the needs, but all of these other things are worked into and in addition to these hours. So somebody could say, well, Valerie, I see only twelve hours for a psychologist. Why do you have a psychologist three days a week? Well, because when you add those twelve hours to these things, that would be the amount of time that we need to provide. I can assure you that we absolutely don't have a single service provider, that is not utilized fully to their capacity. I think we actually could could easily say we need lots more hours for any of them. But realistically speaking, you know, they have a lot of other things that they need to do over and above just service the children directly.
Okay. Okay. So jumping right in. What areas or where can we find, special education in the general fund budget? And we all know every month. You know, as I said, every month, last time, we get this document. This is our financial report. And when we look at the financial report, we see it in two ways. We see the short version that Terry gives us, which is only two pages, and that's just, like, the headlines, the highlights, categories. And then she gives another one, which is roughly, 10 or 11 pages long, and that one then breaks it down a little bit further. This right here, because I wanna kinda give anybody who's interested in looking a little bit of tidbit of information as to where they could see it. So you'll notice that it all starts with the numbers 002. Throughout our whole budget in Andover Elementary School, the first three numbers are 002. The next row in the account ID tells you kind of the overall category. If it's a one zero one, it's salary. That's gonna be no matter what the next numbers are that follow it. The 101 is salary. If you look at the third column and the fourth column,
the umbrella here, it's 000000. But when we get a little bit more specific, you will see hang on one sec. Let me go back. You will see that the third column really will tell us, with a little bit more certainty looking at that, is it a special ed item? Is it something that is maintenance related? Is it something that is, insurance related? So as we go through here, I'll point that out to you so that anybody who is looking at our budget at home will certainly be able to pinpoint those and not have to go back to this to find the exact numbers. So this is page one. The yellow highlighted ones we had talked about last time. The orange highlighted ones on this slide are where you would find things related to special education. And the second page, there's only one. And that computer section might include things like that adaptive technology or specialized, applications that need to be put on certain students' devices. So, let's take a peek. These would be the categories. If you're looking at our budget, you'll notice zero zero two is where it starts. We have two sections of one zero one, and you'll see one of them, the third section I highlighted here in red so that you can see, 1,200. 1,200 is always special education in our budget. So the 1,200 spot there, if you're looking at our budget, those are special education teachers. Because we're talking about, some things that's, like I said, adaptive technology, which falls under tech first and then adaptive,
that next number could be different. So if you look these up, you'll see that I have more than half of them here that are 12 hundreds, but then I have a few in here where there are some special education stuff, but it's not a 1,200. So as we go through, if anybody has any questions when I get to the end, let me know. But I gave you this slide so that you could find them without a problem in our current budget. So the things that and we always say it's an itemized expenditure is what a real budget is for the following year. It truthfully is us,
trying to, take what we know, the information that we know, and plan for the next year even though we all know that sometimes unexpected things happen. One of the ways we did that, as I said, was to look at those IEPs and say, this is what we definitely know unless the child moves or unless we get a new one or unless their plan changes. Changes. Here are some other things that we have to look at as well. Those IEPs, those individualized educational plans, they renew on an annual basis, which means every single year, we have to have a meeting by law. We have to sit down as a team with the family and not only update them, but look at how well this plan is working. Does it need to be adapted in some way? Every three years, by law, we have to have what's called a triennial review. And a triennial review requires us to do a lot more comprehensive testing than we would any other year. And I mentioned that because the school as small as us, we don't have all of those test takers necessarily on staff. And so, sure, if there's psych testing that needs to be done, we do have a psychologist that works here part time. If it's social work testing that needs to be done, again, we have somebody part time. But every once in a while, the comprehensive testing will require us to have something that's not necessarily the norm, and we will have to go out to consult and say, hey. We don't normally do that, so we will have to go to somebody. And it's usually somebody that we've consulted before, and that may be something that will be added to our anticipated
expenditures for the next year. So the special ed department works really hard to make sure that going into the planning of this budget, we absolutely, have those numbers. They say, hey. You know, Holly, Val, Taylor, don't forget this person's triennial review is coming up, and it's going to require this and this. And we say, got it. New equipment this year. We do know that we have some visually impaired students and that there is some equipment that will be required for them. Some of it, we actually rent. Some of it, we can get with no cost through a state agency. But other times, it's stuff that we, again, are required to purchase, to make sure that those students have the resources that they need. We also do have a physically handicapped student that, we can anticipate, not necessarily every year, but certain years, sizing out of equipment. I say it's like when you have the little tiny chairs for the preschoolers, and then they get older, and we have to give them bigger chairs, and then bigger chairs when they get to sixth grade. Unfortunately, the same thing happens with some of our equipment, especially if it's adaptive in nature for special education students. It will require us to replace that because the child or children using that equipment, has sized out of it. And oftentimes, that's expensive. So we do our best to try to get that on loan or to rent it if that is more cost effective, but it's not always the case.
And then we do have to anticipate that because those service hours increased, there's gonna be some slight increases to some of our service providers just simply because of additional time, not necessarily their rates going up, but because there's additional time required. So, salaries are contractual. We know that. The teachers contract, they have one more year left to their contract. So that line is fairly easy for us to anticipate for next year because the 2425 budget year, we do already know. That, contract is set for teachers to be renegotiated in the fall. So at the end of next school year, this time next year, when we are anticipating what the budget will look like for 2526, then we may see some estimated changes because we're we're not gonna be sure. We're gonna have to go by whatever the trend is. We do have the noncertified, which is the paraprofessionals, nurse, secretary, and custodians. That contract is going to be, negotiated fairly soon, and that one is for the 2425 school year budget. So the ones we know here when we look at the 1011200 special ed teacher line, All of our special it it says teacher or single or singular, but it's plural. So our special ed teachers, we know what the increase is contractually to that line. It's $7,090 for next year for everybody who falls under that line combined. We do know the one zero two line there, which is the next block down, will be an anticipated, increase of twenty six twenty. And when we go down to the one zero six line, which are the subs for those people,
the anticipated, increase would be a thousand dollars. Now understand, we do have a very set rate for substitute teachers. However, we kinda do have to guesstimate based on the information that we have because when a staff member, has a life event, hypothetically, has a life event and they're going to be out, If they have sick time, vacation time, personal time, they still get their regular paycheck. And in addition to that, then we are covering a person to come in and substitute for them. So if you make $500 a week and you are out all week, you still get paid $500. And then somebody else coming in to cover for you receives a paycheck. So if we know of anyone who will be out on leave due to, a family circumstance, due to a medical circumstance, due to a childbirth, those are things that we do have to anticipate for the, long term, not a day or two, but for the long term. So that always plays a factor as well.
Okay. So sometimes people, like, kind of get confused with summer school, versus summer camp during, the summer cool program, things that we've gotten grants for. Summer school, it's called ESY, extended school year. Extended school year is for only a few students. Going back to those IEPs, they are students that, for whatever reason in their IEP, it is required that we continue some or all of their services over the course of the summer. Otherwise, it would be detrimental to them to come back in the fall with that big of a gap from the end of the school year to the start of the school year. This is every school district. This is not unique to Andover. And so we do have to make sure that those services are provided during the summer. And, again, you'll see we've always had a very small budget of $22.60 because, our needs were not significant
for ESY. We do have a few students that their IEPs now require us to have some more services in the summer for them, and they are mandated. That isn't optional for us. We also because it's required, even if we have a grant for like everybody knows we did last year, we will this year, to have a camp with cool, that isn't a service that can go through that grant. You can't put through somebody who is offering speech services to a student once or twice a week. It's it's two different things. We still have to provide the speech services for that particular student, whether they participate in that program that's funded, through a grant or not. So it does require us here in that, one zero nine section to put a small increase in there. Three high need students have a $3,900
increase, in our estimation to the one zero nine line item, and the total increase then would make this $69.40. So if we added the $22.60 and the 3,900, this is where we would wind up. So, that is to our best guess. Let's hope that this is, gonna be enough. But if I look at what I know right now, I think it will be. Okay. Contracted service providers. Contracted service providers are not in one of our unions, so they're not under the instructional salaries where teachers are located in the budget. So we're looking at the three twenties here. So zero zero two, three twenties. You'll notice under the 1,200, which is special education, we have the professional ed services,
but then we also have psych services, OT, PT, and, I didn't highlight the bottom one because they're professional services for the board. These vary significantly. When I first came here, we actually didn't have many students at all at that time four years ago that required physical therapy. And I know that, my the very first budget, which was the former supers budget that I came in working on, that line was, less than $3,000. But since then, some of the needs of our special education students that have come in that we've been able to service within district instead of outside of the district, have increased. And so when we look at those IEPs, we're looking at, respectively here, 5,000, 8,000, and $7,000 increases to three of those four lines. The only one that won't require an increase is psych services. And the reason being, our school mental health grant that we received this year will cover that through next school year. So I say that, because I do want you guys to understand that, it's not that we have no increase to psych services. It's that they're being funded someplace else. And so next year, that would definitely when the grant is over at the end of next school year, that would definitely be an area that you could expect to see increases. They're just covered right now, and so there isn't a reason for me to add them in.
When we must consult or hire, a particular service provider that's not on staff, that's that line right there, that you just, we just talked about in terms of 1,200. It's three forty, 1,200, and it's special ed other professional services. BCBA, which is a behaviorist. We don't have one on staff. We don't normally need one on staff. Somebody to come in, as I mentioned, adaptive technology. We don't have an adaptive tech person on staff full time, so that may be a potential consult. It's 4,000 a year. That's about a thousand every quarter. And so it is not a significant increase, but it is an increase for us. Maybe something down the road, that we do have to consider potentially, seeing if, maybe one of our neighboring towns who has a part time person, We may consider some kind of a contract, a shared service with them if that number goes up. But now for $4,000 a year, it it didn't seem prudent for us to try to sign a a contract for a whole school year. So we do this on a case to case basis. An increase of $1,500. You'll see transportation here. It's the same line item, but it's 0000 for regular transportation and 0009 for SPED transportation.
If a student attends an out placement program, we do have to provide transportation. If there is a student with handicap needs that attends AES, we do need to provide, transportation as well. And we currently rent one of the town's buses. We pay the driver. We pay the gas, and and we, rent one of the vehicles for the wheelchair accessibility. So this line is for multiple children, but it does need to go up by $1,500 to accommodate that because we hadn't had a fully signed contract with the town to know what that cost was going to be a year ago. And so now that we do know, this line does need to go up by 1,500. Good news is that this next section, we have, a big savings too. So I've had to give you, you know, a little bad news along the way that we're gonna have increases here and there. The magnet schools, I know we talked about this at a town meeting either last year or the year before. There was somebody that, was actually surprised. They didn't realize. If there is a student that is an Andover resident and they attend a charter or magnet school, not a Catholic school or a parochial school,
not a private school, but if they opt to go to a charter or a magnet school, it is our responsibility to pay the tuition. That's, again, universal across the state. And so I've heard people say, well, that's silly. Nope. We would have had to educate them if they came to AES. So we are still responsible for educating them, their their tuition cost in another district. Their regular education and special education costs, we are responsible for just like we would if they came here to AES. I've seen these budgets huge in in small towns before, and and it's very difficult. Right now, we have 18,000 in that line for magnet schools and charter schools fall under it as well. Normally, I would say that we would have to go up, but there is a piece of legislation right now that could make it so that it's a zero increase for us with the goal at the state level of actually allowing us to get a reimbursement for that. Hasn't passed yet. But whether it's, you know, our budget or Ram's budget next year, that will be an area that we'll look at as potentially,
a reduction if that legislation passes. The outplacement and special ed costs, we knew that we had a couple of significant, tuition payments here for various students. We had a reduction to this line for next year of 96,000. So it won't be $1.70 in there. It will be, 74,349. So this was huge for us in this particular line. And you'll notice another 1,200, under travel for $300 down there. It's $5.80, 1,200. That won't change. That does need to stay in there even though some years, we don't use the $300. People say that's silly. Why is it in there then? Because by contract, if one of the special ed teachers attends a workshop outside of AES, they are, allowed to put in, for that. And so, we do have to keep that in there because, if it isn't covered by some other source, a grant or something else, we would have to provide that. And so for accuracy, we've kept that in there. So the six tens here all the way down, these are supplies.
And I know we wanted to take just kind of a quick look at the general supplies area as they pertain to special ed. So we looked at the instructional supplies, but there are some special education that are in the general supplies. We don't need increases for them, but I do want you to see where they are. I know Terry and I have talked before to the board about kind of, consolidating some of the grade ones, the k one, two, three, four, five, six for $304,100 dollars and put it all together because, so often, we buy things for the school. But I wanted to just point out to you that, partway down in the middle, I put an x next to it because it didn't come out, orange. I don't know why. It's $6.10 $1,200.00 $0.00. That $3,600, now that cannot go into curriculum and instruction ever because at the end of the year, we have reports that need to be filled out for the state where we have to itemize what our special education costs are.
So the instructional supplies for special ed, even though it's only 3,600 in the budget, they have to remain separate. The same thing there with social work, and you'll see a little further down psych and speech and OT. They seem like not that large of supplies, but we do need to separate it so that when we run that report, we can give an accurate number to the state of what our excess cost was as a result of special education. So those will always remain there. Okay. So preschool. If you looked through the whole budget, you know that there are no line items for preschool. We've been very lucky since the inception of preschool, full time here at AES, that we were able to take advantage of school readiness, grant funding, and, Smart Start school funding. That's huge. Not every district has school readiness and Smart Start. Some have one. Some don't have any. We also are, a tuition based school, sliding scale, but a tuition based, program. So historically, we had no expenditures for preschool in the general fund budget at all. In other words, it it was self sufficient. It ran itself. It paid for itself. This year, we added back a third preschool out of need to accommodate our own Andover children.
We knew that, we were gonna be full, and we were getting some of those, as I mentioned before, birth to three students, and we had no place to put them. So we knew that we had to add back a third classroom, and that is the largest growing population of Andover students in the town all the way through grade 12. We are looking potentially to expand again. However, it is way too early for us to know if we would be able to expand and still be self sufficient with tuition alone. So HIM didn't hold on this one. Didn't know if it was something that we wanted to put in as a potential expenditure, but I didn't even know what we'd put in there. So instead, because we won't really know until late spring when registration comes in, it'll be more accurate then, but it won't even be 100% accurate until the school year starts.
So we'll already be, you know, two months into the budget season I mean, to budget the new fiscal year. If we had unused slots that were available, to our extended, program, we could fill them with out of towners, and those out of towners would be full tuition rate. Our current rate is $600, so that would be $6,000, for a student if they were here full time for the whole year. So we really can't, you know, with full transparency, that line item right now because we really do not have enough information or data to know what we would put in there. I know we've talked to the board about what the worst case scenario would be this year in our current year if between now and the end of the year, we aren't able to secure more grant funding or we don't have full tuition payers. So we've talked about that at another meeting. But if next year we face the same thing and there are no other revenue sources, if need be, that is an expenditure that the 2% nonlobsing account could be used for. So rather than put in a number that we really do not have accurate information for, I'm going to leave that out.
And I feel confident that next year then in the 2425 school year, we would have a good trajectory of where we're going with preschool to know this time next year if we needed to add that section or not. So I didn't wanna put it in for the sake of putting it in. So the overall anticipated increases, now that we've looked at this section is if you add together all of the areas that I told you we would have potential increases due to the increase of service hours, due to the salary increases for the special education line items, that added up to $44,550 roughly. You won't hold me to that number till we run them perfectly. But then if we minus that $96,000 decrease that we will definitely have in that line item for outplacement and special education, This particular section to the budget, we should see an overall decrease of $51,450. So that's the good news because the first section that we looked at with our first informational budget seminar, we're anticipating 0% in terms of those increases. This one, we're anticipating a decrease of 51,000. So I hate to have a spoiler alert, but the most expensive things are always in every budget,
salaries and insurance. So that'll be, at an at another, time here. But, we're in good shape. We really are in good shape here. And so we've gotten a little bit of luck, in terms of, loss of expenses not being replaced with other expenses. So that's what that looks like. I can go back to any slide if anybody has any questions. This, once again, as Celeste mentioned at the beginning, and I'll have it at the end of every, workshop here, aes budget at andover elementary c t dot o r g. I can tell you that we didn't get any correspondence from the last one to this one. I looked five minutes before we started tonight. And so I welcome anybody to send whatever they need to, to this particular one. So is there any questions where I need to before I stop sharing
where I need to go back to a slide? I'm not sure if any of you have specific questions. I do have a couple questions. I don't know that we need to go to a slide, but I guess my first question is on the preschool. I know you said that's generally self sufficient. We're not adding it into the budget, but I guess my question is for transparency. Why, I guess, why wouldn't we include the costs of the program and then the money that we're getting from the grants and tuition? Into the budget? Yes. I mean yes.
Well, the budget is, itemized expenditures from the general funds, and the reason why it's never been a part of this budget,
you know I under yeah. I mean, I understand, like, we're not voting on it, but I would just think that we would want to show
the town, like, what we're doing to offset costs as well. Right? Actually, Brie, it's funny that you say that because you're our new liaison to the school readiness council, and I see Taylor smiling over there. That is actually one of the things that you guys do at those meetings. So, you'll have those reports to bring back to the board. Because remember, we didn't have a school readiness liaison from the board last year. So, now that we do, Brie, those reports are given at those monthly meetings. And if you want, if you bring them with you or I can get a copy for you, we'll start adding them to the minutes every month when you do an update for the school readiness liaison, and that's a great idea. We'll just add those school readiness reports redacted if they spoke about a particular student or family. But, yeah, absolutely, we could do that. Okay.
Like, their financial report.
Yep. Yep. Go ahead, Brie. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No. You can go. I'm good. Oh, okay. What is the 90 what is the reduction? What is the $96,000 reduction? What is that? Special ed tuition. Remember, every time a student is
So was that student timed out or aged out? I know you can't speak
We no longer have to pay that tuition. Okay. We no longer have to pay that tuition. Right. Okay. It's a savings of a tuition bill that we're not receiving
Okay. Anymore. Got it. Okay. For next year. Okay. And then, I know that we were I know that for the certified teachers, we know exactly what they're gonna be making because that's contractual, so we know that for this year's budget. And I know that we are going to be negotiating the noncert. So we are I'm I'm assuming that we're not gonna know what those numbers are going to be by the time we vote on the budget, or is that wish ful thinking?
We probably will not know because the negotiations begin after February 14. Okay. We may know prior to the town meeting and the referendum. And if there turned to be a significant difference one way or another, that's something we could talk to the board of finance about making an adjustment on. Okay. But generally speaking, we didn't Terry and I didn't put no increase into this budget. We looked at what their increase was last time, what the trend is right now in the, state to the region, and we looked at what the teachers increase for this year was because most of the time, they mirror one another, for the most part. Not necessarily always, but, and we we used, you know, the the best accurate estimate that we could there. But that union has 14 people in it. And so, thankfully, that's not as large as the teachers' union. So if there is a discrepancy, it's not gonna be as big.
Okay. So but if there is a if there is a big discrepancy, once things are negotiated and settled, then we'll have to bring it to the board of finance to adjust it. Okay. So right now, it's just based off of trends, what you're seeing, what what their increase was last time, and then it was made an estimate an educated estimate, if you will. Okay. And then just getting back to the the the five o fours and the IEPs, and this is just just for my own kind of education. The way you explained a five zero four, it kind of sounds like it's almost kind of circumstantial, like that five zero four like like the example you gave if some if they broke an arm, and but eventually that arm's gonna heal, and then they won't need those those services.
So so, yes, that is, that is some of the, 504 Okay. There are other 504 students that, and I'm not speaking about even just AES now, Celeste. I'm just speaking in general so that we're not you know, giving away any any information. In the past thirty years, I have had students that were actually, given a label from a doctor. But because whatever disability it was they had, it could have been an academic situation. It could have been a social emotional situation. It could have been a physical handicap situation. Because of whatever it was they were diagnosed with, it didn't interfere with the acquisition of the curriculum instruction in the classroom. It didn't necessarily require, the depth of an IEP is the best way that I could describe somebody. So, you could have a student, for example, that has a label of ADD.
They could have an IEP because of other circumstances. They could have a five zero four. They could have nothing. It depends on, each case. It depends on whether or not they're able to access what goes on in the classroom, whether or not they're able to access the curriculum and instruction without assistance or a smaller level of assistance. I actually ten, fifteen years ago in my career, I had somebody who was diabetic who had a five zero four because the the the accommodations and modifications that they required with that particular diagnosis were extreme. And so I probably didn't even know that I had had 50 other kids in my career that were diabetic that didn't ever require a five zero four, but this one did because it interfered with acquisition on a daily basis. So can a student
can a student come off of an IEP or come off of a five zero four? Okay. So it's not forever. It's not forever. Okay. So with that, though, then it's really, you know, you do obviously, you know the students that you have now, but there might be students that are coming in, and then there might be students that are are on one of those, but then then doesn't need it anymore. So those costs fluctuate from, you know, during the year. Okay. And then just the the the triennial review. So you said all IEPs are reviewed annually, and then there's a a triennial review. So is the triennial review all of the IEPs,
like, together, or is it or is No. No. No. No. So every so let's say your child, Mary, is this year, put on an IEP. They go through the process, the referral process. It's determined that, because of your child's disability, they require these accommodations, modifications, additional services, and an IEP is given to you. Yep. During that process, Celeste, we will have tested your child to determine that. Three years from now, we're gonna use that as our baseline and test your child again. Three years from now, we're gonna do it again. Every three years. So the dates are different. So there are Every okay. Yes. So there are students whose triennial review of the 25 kids with an IEP, some years, maybe there's only two. And you're like, okay. We're not gonna require a whole bunch of maybe this is the year we have 20 of them. So that's how you have to look because oftentimes, they do require, extended,
more comprehensive testing that maybe we don't have on staff. Because it's a three year re okay. And what and and that leads me to my next question. What what would be some examples of that testing that we that we don't have?
So, and, again, we look at those dates. So before we did these numbers, we looked at the dates and said, how many kids have triennials this year?
So How how many do? I'm sorry. Tell you that. No. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So But what are some of the ex nope. No. No. No. I didn't know that. So what are some of the examples of, like, the testing that we don't have, like, in house that that that we need to outsource, that we need to contract with?
Behavioral assessments at, a higher level. You know, if we need somebody in the building to do, what they call an FBA, a functional behavioral assessment, we can do that here. Okay. If we have a situation where a child is exhibiting behavioral needs that are beyond the one person in here that could do testing, they may say, it's kinda like a doctor. You go to your your physician, your general physician, and then they say, hey. I've been doing this thirty years, but this is your heart, Celeste. You gotta go to a cardiologist. And you may need a cardiologist once in your whole life, so there's not one in your doctor's office. You're gonna have to go see somebody else. So behavioral things, students with physical handicaps, it may require, as I said, we don't have a person here whose primary job is dealing with students with visual impairment and blindness. So that would be another situation where we would have to, get somebody from the outside. Sometimes, it is a situation where the testing has to be performed for on a student in another language if their first language is not Okay. So you have to do you know what I mean? So Yep. Every situation is different. If we knew 100% sure, everybody would have those people on staff. So it does vary. I would say that during the course of a given year Taylor will shake her head yes or no. During the course of a given year here at AES, we probably have three to four situations
where we might have to go outside and have somebody else come in and do some kind of That sound about right, Taylor? Three to four a year? Okay. Yeah.
Thank you. Not too frequently. Okay. Just just curious. Okay. Those were all the questions that I have. Mike or Shannon, do you do you have anything?
This is Shannon. I just was curious. I know that we used to have an idea that or just an an average that an average cost of a magnet or charter school tuition was about $5,000 a year that we would pay for that student to go. You just I I know we can't say per student, but do you have an average of of what that looks like? So is 18,003 students going or five students going?
Is it about So it would be that average, Shannon, that's a good question. That average would be three for 18,000. Because a couple years ago, you're right. Tuition was pretty much a flat five depending on where the kids went. Now it's pretty much a five to seven. And, again, understand that, if a child requires anything else while they're at that school, we also have to accommodate that. Okay. So but, yes, 18,000 would be for for for an estimated three. Thanks.
And if if a child from Andover goes to a private school or a parochial school, we we don't pay for the tuition because that family's assuming that family's paying the tuition, the private tuition.
Yes. We don't do private school tuition. Okay. Okay. Alright. But just know the magnet charter schools start in kindergarten. So there are Andover residents that attends charter magnet schools that are in kindergarten. And I say that because sometimes people look at our budgets and say, well, their numbers never seem to change in that line item. Right. Because They're hanging in there. They're there. Yeah. Kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, all the way down through. Right.
Jerry, do you have any questions? Or Mike, do you have any questions? And then I'll open it up to for public comment. Can't hear you, Jer. How's that? Perfect.
Thank you. No. I have no questions. I think Valerie did a great job of explaining it. And, unfortunately, it's it's nothing you can fool around with. Right. You you have to supply that service if it's required. Right. And so it's really, it is what it is. Right. Yep. I'm all set. I don't have any questions. I've ex I've lived through them.
Thanks, Jerry. Mike, do you I Mike, I don't Mike, are you there? Do you have any questions for, for Valerie?
Yeah. I'm I'm all set on my end. I I think I'm, I'm good in regards to this section. Okay. Thank you. That's the key. Yes.
That's the yeah. You know? Makes it a little bit easier to understand. Yeah.
Thank thanks, Mike. Okay. I saw Kimberly Persson, but now I don't see her now. I'll open it up to to public comment. Okay. I don't know where she she went. Okay. One last thing before we go, that I didn't mention in the beginning is that, all of these slides will be posted. I they'll be posted on the school website under the BOE, under budgets. I know that, Valerie and Taylor are working, with our web page designer to put that tab on, to to put these slides on because there is that they have to go through and make sure that they're,
ADA accessible. So there is some finagling that has to happen. So it's not as easy as Val and Taylor just opening up the website and putting it on there, but they're working with the the with Eastcon to do that. So but if anybody were to send an email to the aesbudget@androverelementaryct.org and request those slides, I'm sure, Valerie, you would you would give them to them. So does anybody hearing no other further comments, I think we're good. Valerie, thank you for your time, and, we will see everybody, next Wednesday for our next, budget meeting. And the topic will be, at that point, will be salaries and benefits and insurance. So thank you, everyone. Have a great evening. What's what's the tougher one. What's that? The tougher one. The tougher one. Bye. Thank you, everyone. Have a great evening. Thank you. Same to you. Bye.