Meeting transcript
Budget Seminar #4
January 31, 2024 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
Here we go. Here we go before I get alright. Thanks, Taylor. Alright. I wanna welcome everybody, and there's Caitlin. I wanna welcome everybody to the Andover Elementary School Board of Education budget workshop. It is Wednesday, January 31, and we are here. And, we are going to talk about, facilities and maintenance and, other miscellaneous line items that, were not covered in previous budget meetings. Just a couple ground rules. The purpose of these budget workshops is to inform the board of what goes into our budget line by line, and it's also, available for the residents of Andover to understand what goes into our budget.
We will be also reviewing briefly, recapping what we discussed last week, which was salaries, benefits, and insurance. Our goal is to vote on this budget at our February 14 regular BOE meeting. We will have our last budget workshop next Wednesday where it will be a public forum for anybody and everybody to come and ask questions regarding our budget. We do have a dedicated email address, aesbudget@andoverelementaryct.org for anybody who wants to ask questions about our budget. And I know we did receive one, and I believe Val, you'll be talking about that. We also will be posting our PowerPoints. They are posted. The PowerPoints are posted. The meeting, the the meeting recordings have now been posted on the school website under the board of ed tab under the minutes and agendas. All of them are there.
I did ask Val, when our proposed budget will be, posted so we can look at it. And, again, other members of the community can look at it. And Val indicated that it would either be posted Friday of this week as your goal, if not, no later than Monday of next week. And that will also be under the board of ed tab in the school website under minutes and agenda. I think that's it. Those are the ground rules. And, Valerie, take it away.
Okay. Let's see. Let me make sure that this is the right screen. Hold on. Yep. Okay. Okay. Alright. Screen. Here we go. Alright. Can everybody see it? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I can't see you guys. So alright. So, in reviewing, what I thought would be most helpful in case somebody missed one of our other informationals, is to kinda go through and quickly review by showing the highlighted areas of our regular, expenditure report that we use monthly, our budget, because this is what people are used to seeing. So, we've already covered the ones that are highlighted, and the ones that aren't highlighted are gonna be the ones that we look at tonight. So if we review what the the areas are on the first page of our expenditure report, there's salaries there. When we reviewed salaries, we talked about the fact that, teachers' salaries are at a 3% increase. So all of the teacher salary line items in each of these account IDs, each of these objects
would wind up a 3% increase. We are going to, estimate this 2425 budget with the same for the noncert union even though that will not be, the contract will not be negotiated and signed before we adopt this budget. On the second page, we had talked about special education and summer school in addition to those salaries. And when we talked about that, we talked about summer school needing a little bit more, for services. Again, we talked about contracts already being negotiated in the administrative line with those three. We're mid contract for all three of those positions, so they are already negotiated as to what the increases are in this section. On the third page, we had already talked about pension and that being, MRF pension for our municipal employees, which are in a noncertified union. We did talk about benefits last time and how our whole consortium would be going up 16 and a half percent and that we are planning for, a 16% increase for teachers because their contract, when it had been renegotiated last time and this is their last year of it, that it was a half of a point increase this year on their end for responsibility. So we can do it for 16%. Can someone mute, the person that's not muted, please? At the bottom, they're in professional educational services. When we did special ed, we talked about each of those sections, requiring the increases because we had an increase of services with the exception of psychological services, not because we didn't have an increase in psych services,
but because that was a grant funded through that mental health worker grant. On this page here, which is page four, we have most of the areas on the top that had already been covered. We talked about professional development. We talked about, the other professional services that needed increase, which was just special ed, the three forty twelve hundred line item. The rest of them were zero. And we will talk about the four on the bottom that are not highlighted in just a moment. We will talk about that whole four thirty section because that falls under tonight's category. We talked about transportation. When we did special education and the bus contract, the bus contract had yielded an increase for us of about $6,500. This was a 6% increase for year one, and that contract is signed by all of the superintendents in our area now, each of our towns. We talked about the communications section not having an increase in the five thirties. We will talk about advertising and printing in just a second. Where our biggest savings for next year is in review is that middle section, the five sixties. We had a $96,000 reduction, for an outplacement in that outplacement special ed line. Under travel, these are in here because there are certain things in people's contracts, where we have to pay mileage, especially when they go to, professional development training. But that, based on what's been, needed year to year, we didn't need to put an increase there. And then we did spend one whole evening talking about,
special education curriculum and instruction and supplies. One of the things we did note was we don't love the fact that in our budget right now, a lot of the, supplies are separated by grade, because we don't normally purchase a lot of our supplies that way. But, that night, we did, decide that those supply items, those lines would have 0% increases to them, simply because we do have other sources of of supplies right now. We have some instructional grants that will cover some instructional supplies. We have our summer program that's grant funded, and we have our after school program. And so any increase that we would have needed otherwise are covered through those programs. But the bottom of the six tens there, we'll talk about tonight. We'll talk about electricity, propane, and heating oil. We did cover no increases to the supplies on the top because of read to write grants.
Again, the rest of the supplies. We will talk about six fifty there and whether or not there's an increase that needs to occur for computer and media because we did not include that solely when we did curriculum and instruction. Dues and fees. Dues and fees, we talked about briefly, when we were looking at this before. However, for the most part, they don't really increase on a yearly basis. Whatever the caps fees are for superintendent, we pay half. That has an increase for next year. The principal's dues and fees to organizations, these are organizations that came for the board of education, that have maintained, the status quo for the last couple of years, so there was no increase there. And so when we look at the ones that weren't highlighted here that we wanna really specifically take a quick look at tonight are located here. They start at the 3 forties, and they go through the 6 fifties, and they include one or multiple lines. So I'll stop back at those now so that we can take a look at them.
On that first page there on the bottom, it was cleaning services, facility cleaning, and cleaning and grounds, as well as the lunch program, the $3.40 on the top. Our lunch program hasn't changed. We do still, contract to Covent Food Services. That's a shared service agreement. It's their food service people. We get a good deal. We actually do get a good deal with Coventry. Coventry keeps, a running record of money in, money out, unlike other agencies that we could potentially contract to, for example, EastCon. If we contracted to EastCon, for anybody who's not really sure how our food service works, if we contracted to EastCon or another, organization such as that, there would be a flat fee that we would pay for their services, let's say, $30,000 a year. We would pay them that fee no matter what. And I can tell you that during COVID, when there was a lot of extra money coming in for rebates,
anybody who contracted to those, agencies did not receive additional rebates. All they received, was the regular, whatever rebates they received for free and reduced lunch programs. But the increases, when more money was being given to districts, districts, we didn't receive any of that. I do contract with them in my other districts, so I do know that that was a little frustrating. With Coventry, they are more than fair with us, which is why we renew with them every year. When extra money comes in to Coventry Foodservice as a result of their partnership with us, they credit the majority of that money to our bucket. So if we received $3 an extra a child during COVID for lunch the lunch program, they put that in there for us. And so we were very lucky that, during that time period, we were reaping some of the benefits of those increases. Those rebates are not coming in anymore. However, because for a little over a year, almost two years, that free and reduced lunch program was extended, they were not dipping in any further to our funds, which meant that there's a small amount that could be carried over in that account. And when we carried that over, it made it so three to four years running now. Our lunch program line item here, that 34310,
33100, has not had to increase at all because of our relationship with Coventry. So I wanted to put that on the record because I know that, as a lot of the other expenses go up, people might wonder, how are we not paying more if we're paying more for the employee that works in our kitchen, if we're paying more for food, if we're paying more for repairs? Because we had some money that had been accumulated that Coventry as a partner allowed us to keep in there and utilize for the next year. When we look down at cleaning services, these are not just regular cleaning services. These would be things that are not done, let's say, on a daily basis. When we have to have, for example, rugs cleaned that happen on a schedule periodically, this is the other cleaning service that would need to be called to come in to address things that are not cleaned on a regular basis here. And so we can see them right here. I made it bigger for you. Four thirty, this section here, this is the bulk of our regular just repair and maintenance of the building. Some of these lines over the years seem repetitious to me. However, Terry and I have talked about this and potentially kind of pushing some of them together for next year, but some of them were created because we had contracts with agencies. So for example, you'll see there that there's one that says, facility cleaning services, and it was a thousand dollars. That one was, at one time, created, and I don't know why there are so many in here, but created because that was in addition to
their other account. For the most part, you'll see when there's usually April to May, when we contract to some of them, April to May, and then actually July and August for some other ones, you'll see that there's some, movement within the four thirties. Terry moves, let's say, the thousand from there to the other line, and we'd like to streamline that at the end of this year moving into next year. The only one that we are a little bit short on now in the April because of some of the changes that have occurred in repairs and maintenance over the last eighteen months is going to be the twenty six twenty one line there. If you look, it says r and m, repair and maintenance for HVAC. We found that all of these individual lines here,
we had, been servicing things within the building for regular repair and maintenance, but we had been avoiding some of the bigger ones. If you guys remember, maybe six months ago at one of our board meetings, I had brought you a report where we had had the traps all, examined. All of our our boiler traps, had been examined, and they had given us a very diagnostic, informational about each of those traps. They were fixed, and no longer outside my window or a few other windows did we see with our heating system a lot of that, like, I called smoke, but a lot of the, smoke coming out of the, steam traps where you could see a lot of, exiting of air. Once those were fixed, we know that we're gonna be more effective and efficient. We then to make sure that we don't wind up in that situation again where it's four or five years before somebody comes in and does a diagnostic a comprehensive diagnostic, we made sure that, with our HVAC system, our heating and cooling system, that we added a number of things into our repair and maintenance so that that
project that was done this year wouldn't have been done in vain. We can track and see just how much more effective and efficient we are. Maybe it'll affect how much oil we use this year. We don't know since it's so new. But the service contract that we signed with one of our vendors that is able to service us in a few more areas, That contract for the 2425, it'll go in the 2621 line item there on the April, but that contract itself was going up. And because that contract was going up, that line item will need just under 5,000 more dollars in it, for the repair and maintenance. The rest of them, we're fine with, but that service contract will appear in that line this year, and so that 10,000 will turn into 15.
That's the only change on this page. Whoops. Okay. The technology repair and maintenance. We have the two sections here. The 4322580 line, at one point, this was where all of our Eastcon was. And a couple of years ago, when we had excess tech funds through COVID relief, when we were replacing Chromebooks, when we were increasing the efficiency of our, Internet and doing updates to our Internet, we were able to take a big chunk of our Eastcon costs and cover them with technology grants. As of this June, the lowest technology grants are gone. And so that 23,000 now isn't enough to pay the full boat for our Eastcon services as they relate to tech, repair and maintenance. And so that line right there will go up to cover the cost by '16 because our contract is 39,000. And so we were at one point, we were paying them in full out of our general fund. And then as I said in these last two years, we pulled out what we could to get it covered someplace else. That's where we made some some cuts. So that 16 will appear in that line so that it'll equal 39. No increases are needed in the area of, advertising or printing. We had increased to accommodate certain changes that were made curriculum wise in that twenty two thirty line for instructional related tech. We had increased because we had lots of other manuals that had to be printed up,
our reopening plans that had to be shared, our safety plans that had to be shared in color on certain sections. We had, last year when we had the waiver out and we didn't know whether or not we were gonna be replacing instructional materials, we had a fair amount of reading materials, instructional related materials that were printed. And so, had we not now solved the waiver issue and decided that we are moving on with another reading program, I probably would have had to up this section again because we do make so many copies and printing material for teachers. But for next year, it should remain status quo.
How did you get that number? Like, out of all the other budget numbers, you have $75.62 13.
So that one would be where they would go through, Steve. When people make copies, it's tracked on our copiers, and it's, one copier, I believe, is tracked just by someone's code. So I have a code I punch in. Everybody else has a code they punch in, and there's a report that we receive on everybody's codes monthly. And then those monthly charges are on the bottom of the bill. And we know, Steve, for example, is their one grade. And, actually, we've utilized these reports before where maybe it's one grade that tends to have an increase this month in what they're copying, and then Taylor can go and speak to them or answer the question for me. Usually, knows the answer as to whether or not, something had to be printed out. So for example, a couple of months ago, I knew a particular teacher had been printing. And I went to Taylor and said, hey, Taylor. Can you tell me why such and such printed, you know, 3,000 copies this month? And she said, yes. They needed these white binder materials that needed to go with the curriculum,
and this particular teacher printed them out for the whole grade. And I said, oh, okay. But that was what happened in the current year.
We're budgeting to the to 13¢. Like, that's where I'm
confused. Because, Steve, the best number that we can utilize is looking at the trend that we have with our bills. And so if we add up the twelve month worth of bills and that's where they come to, that's the number that's in there. So because you're right. Normally, it doesn't have the pennies on any area unless you can take bills and add those bills up, and that would be where those numbers would have come from. And on contracts, that makes sense. I guess I'm just confused because this is still an estimate because if they print one more copy, are we gonna be able budget item? You're right. It is. It could go up or down by a bit, but that's where those numbers come from for the copier. Because I think it was years ago I thought the same thing. And then I said, how do we know how much? And they said, there's reports. And we started to look at the reports. And we get those reports monthly, so that helps too for us to see the trends.
So understand. But I guess my question would be, we know that everybody's getting hit with inflation a little bit hard. I why aren't we assuming some rise in cost
based on Because there's because, BREED, next year, there will be some integrated materials that we get from the new reading program that the school selects over the summer. So whereas now, there are certain materials that do have to be printed because we don't have, interreading or bookworm. There will be some material next year that will be provided from the manufacturer that we won't have to copy. We just don't know how much yet. So I I I can't decrease it because I don't know, but I know it won't be more. This has been the toughest year when it comes to instructional material that needs to be printed because we didn't have a chosen box set curriculum for reading. We were waiting for the waiver. So it could go down, Brie. It just wouldn't go up. And I wouldn't know that now because they haven't selected the program yet. Once the program is selected, they will have a better idea. That answer your question? Yes.
Okay. And, again, remember, these are our estimates. So if I know it's not gonna go up, I'm gonna keep what's there until I know how much it would go down. And I don't know that yet. Okay. In the June, where are we? In the June. Oh, this is, this is our page seven when we look at our monthly custom expenditure report at board meetings. Again, here, the facilities HVAC supplies. The one thing that we struggle with on that one is that there are new mandates that we are receiving from the state, for what it is we need now to report and to comply with when it comes to ventilation. Once all of the mandates are and the criteria are kind of written in stone, there should be at some point the ability to apply for funding for that that isn't out yet. So for us to continue with the mandates that have been given to us in the 2122 school year and into the '23 calendar year, we do have enough things like the filters. Whether or not we need to change that with the new mandate, we're not certain yet. And if that happens, there should be the ability for us to apply for additional, HVAC money to comply with those mandates.
So in terms of what we need currently for filters, we're okay, and we're in compliance. In speaking to the guys in terms of any additional supplies that would be needed, what we currently order should suffice. The only difference would be if we are heavily traveled over the summer in terms of building usage. And if that's the case, those custodial facility cleaning supplies are built into a summer rent. So I don't anticipate an increase to these line items. Electricity, propane, and oil. This is always the one area that we keep our, we hold our breath for and see what's going to happen. We did discuss this a little bit at one of the board meetings, heating oil. We've had two very mild winters so far in terms of heating. However, the price that we locked in for this year was a good price,
in what we were seeing last year at $3.10. What we've locked in for next year is $2.97. And so because we've locked in $2.97 for heating oil, should next year be a little bit less mild? Terry and I have discussed the usage, and we still feel like we'd be okay with the $1.00 7, even if we used a little bit more because it would be cheaper. The other thing we also don't know that I mentioned a minute ago is with a more efficient system with the, repairs and maintenance to the traps, we don't know if that's going to affect our usage or not. We are gonna be watching that all year on a monthly basis to see if the amount of oil that's used on a monthly basis is less. And if that's the case, then after the winter or at least at the end of the winter this time next year, we would have a very clear understanding for a combination of savings in cost per gallon
as well as the work that was done on the traps as to where we would sit in terms of, a trend for the next year. For electricity, we do receive the two bills. The bills that we receive are the Eversource bill and the Constellation bill. And, again, because that number is so specific, what we did was we went through the, average cost of Constellation, which is what saves us with Eversource. And those bills ranged from, give or take, I won't give you the pennies, but anywhere from 4,500 to 6,000 when we paid those. And the average then came in at about 5,400. And so if we do that and there's no increase at all, we will wind up in the 71 to $73,000 range. But since we don't have any, anticipated increases, new anticipated increases, to go on, right now, we kept it exactly where it was with no increase. As for this propane line, this propane line, you'll see it's only 1,200. This one, I believe, only services down by the kitchen, and so there's not a whole lot of use for us in this propane, line here. And what we've looked at for the last couple of years I know Eric was helpful. He actually when we paid this bill one year, he said, hey. You guys may wanna consider actually purchasing your tank. And we did look at that in purchasing the tank, from the company, and it really with the amount of use that we have in the propane, it really wasn't worth it to shell out the money
to go that route. And so we've just simply been paying as we go. This gasoline line here, the $26.30, this is just for, like, the equipment, the mower, things like that that we have here right on the grounds, and that gasoline, doesn't range, much higher than $250. This diesel line here is, sometimes different for us. Could go up or down. Normally, when we sign a contract with Dime, we sign a contract with them for our heating oil and our diesel, and we sign it with the town. What's different this year is the town, by the way, uses a lot more diesel than they do oil, and we use more oil. We have our two tanks. We have the one the down the preschool on the gym. And so with the diesel, the only variable for us here could be that we get we don't we get billed from the town. This is bus diesel. This is for our buses, and the town sends us a bill. The town didn't opt this year to go in and contract with Dime the way we did. They said the reason why they didn't do that was because, they were planning to make some changes on the town side to, kinda use less fuel and and go more green. And so, their their plan, hopefully, on their end, was gonna be put in effect early enough prior to the winter that they wouldn't have large consumptions of oil. So they opted. They told us just to go ahead and sign our contract,
with Dime, which we did. So based on what we think the town's price will be, the $16.02 46 should remain status quo for next year, in terms of buses. But, again, we received that bill directly from the town. So should something change there, we would be able to speak with the town on that one, and see what they wound up with as a price if they locked in a price or not.
So can sorry. Can I ask a quick question? So the buses, these are school buses we're referring to, or is this the the bus that we're using? No. No. School buses. So how does I guess, how is the we're sharing those with Ram. Yep. So how are we calculating? What is our fuel cost? What is, like So the town has their
diesel expenses for everybody, and they distribute it. They levy it based on usage. So if a bus drives, Ram in the morning, they keep their mileage. Then they drive us. They keep their mileage. Then they drive Ram. They keep their mileage. They have a log. And in the end, it figures out basically how many miles the town bills to Ram and how many miles the town bills to us. So we don't calculate that, Brie. The town does. And we found that they've always been fair in dividing it. We didn't have particular months where we saw big differences, so I trust the method that you're they're using is is working. And then they send a bill over to Terry, and it's our portion. We don't it's not $50.50. It's just our portion. If it was $50.50, great. If not, then RAM pays what they need to, and the town bills us for what we need to.
How did you can you go on back? Sorry. Yep. To the actual heating oil. You know, we went down 13¢ a gallon roughly. I know in the past, we budgeted for 30,000 gallons. Like, how did you actually use a number? Like, we're just saying, last year was good?
So we well, yes and no. We did sit down and figure out what our 30,000 that we normally would budget for would be. And then as I said, Terry can go back through our bills and see, if it was a mild winter, if it was not a mild winter, were the coldest days, the days that we had no school, and figure out what we should be increasing this by. And for this purpose, for our informational, we didn't feel that we needed to add an increase to this. We felt that we won't go over the one zero seven eight, and, therefore, if we're coming up with an estimate that's a good solid estimate, the one zero seven eight was a good solid estimate because we may be a couple of cents less. But for two years now, we've had milder winters than we had prior to that. So, we didn't go penny to penny here, Steve. We just didn't add an increase there.
Difference would be roughly, think, like, $5,400 or something. Mhmm. And, you know, we're going down 13¢ a gallon. If we are leaving we continue to leave money left in here and then price goes down and we start cutting that budget and just saying, nope. You know, price is going down, but we need the same amount we needed last year. That that to me is a little bit of a problem. I think we need to do a calculation that determines this not going well, we determined that we're not gonna go over it, so keep it as it was. We use less, and we need to spend less. You're right.
What you guys would have to decide is, is it worth it to take the 5,000
out? And if we have a colder winter next year and that line goes over, where would we take it from? That that would be my concern for the 5 Yeah. Understood, Val. But I do I mean, I would imagine we have some historical data of a cold winter and how many gallons we've used that we can use as a baseline to make that calculation. Or or we could use, you know, an average of five years knowing that the last two were mild. Right? Like, you don't have to just
Right. And if we use those calculations, we absolutely are within 5,000. Mhmm.
Yes. Because I know I I and you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know how many gallons the estimate was. But I know in the past, I thought 30,000 was roughly around that, and 30,000 gallons brings us eighty nine one hundred. We're up to almost 3,600 36,000 here. So I don't that's just wanna know what the number is if this is based off of a number.
Okay. I'll get those for you. I'll bring them to the to the next meeting. Okay? Okay. Noted. I will get those for you. Okay. That was this one. Okay. So the computer and the media section here, we did not include this when we did curriculum and instruction, because generally speaking, this would be the one area where you would expect that if you go two years without an increase, what do you do when you need more devices? And the only reason why we can go another year is because the devices that have needed to be replaced or purchased for new student population have been purchased through ERATES. ERATES is, a program that we use for rebates, and it's not available every year that you get the rebate rebate. But when you do, they offer you, the assistance. A couple of years ago, we had received 30,000, and that's how we were able to in make sure that, implement the the full school one to one devices. There is still some money left to that original 30.
And in speaking to Nick, who is the person that services us through EastCon as well as Christina, the use of the E rates in the next eighteen months should cover the cost of the new devices, the upgraded devices, and any repairs and maintenance. And so that is the only reason why I'm not adding to here. This definitely is something that Nick is working on with us to make sure that he's got that five year when you don't have any e rates, what is your what is your timeline for replacing? And so during the course of this year, we definitely will be speaking about that at a board meeting in terms of the the the five year replacement.
So is that is that the average we're getting on devices, five years?
Nope. It would depend on the device. It would depend on if it was a Chromebook, if it was an iPad, if it was a a desktop or a laptop. We do still have some desktops here, and it depends on when they were purchased. We have a large chunk, Bree, of them that were purchased at the same time, obviously, in 2020, when we received COVID relief money and E Rate money, so that we could offer them to all of our students. So they won't all be on the same five year plan. Mhmm. There'll be a big chunk of them at one time that that And then I guess that was my next question is,
one, you know, is there any sort of warranty? And I would imagine it's probably not five years. So is there a process for replacement under the warranty? And if not, like, how do we
just It depends on the device. I'm sorry? It depends on the device. Because Chromebooks, there are Chromebooks that can be purchased for as little as, you know, $2.97, $297. When they break, you replace them. When they, they have limited warranties, which is great. We tend to use those with certain grades and not other grades. We do have some iPads in the building. And, iPads, if they were purchased with the AppleCare, which the majority of ours are purchased, with protection under AppleCare, when they need to be fixed, they're replaced by the AppleCare. So, you oftentimes then get two lives out of an iPad. And when iPads need to be replaced, not our old old ones, but the newer ones, not necessarily brand new, but new to us, they oftentimes have a rebate. So, potentially, if there were five iPads that were ready to be retired, at certain times, Apple would offer, a program where they may give you $99
back for each one if you, purchase a new one. So those programs vary from time to time, and sometimes that is the incentive of when you would, repurchase them if they're coming to the end of life. And so we do have, a representative that, services Andover Elementary School, an Apple specialist services Andover Elementary School. And so, Christina and, Nick, our EastCon guy and Taylor, are able to have that conversation with them about what's up and coming.
So that isn't in for this year, but that is absolutely something that we're gonna look at for year. Yeah. No. And I guess, is it is it spread out along among all of these line items, or is it or is the bulk in
The bulk of of it would be here or in special ed. Okay. Because there are some devices, that were purchased through special education. There are also some devices that are, one to one with specific children, and so they follow them. When they follow them from one grade to another, that means replacing one for the the grade that they are leaving. And so and all of our equipment is tagged and inventoried, and so we do have a list of when they were purchased, what the depreciation is. We have a revaluation for them. We have that big book that I share with the board yearly that has all of our equipment in there. Yeah. I mean, I guess what I'm getting at is five years for a Chromebook seems like a really long time.
I I guess, are we really I imagine that stuff is gonna start to fail going into this year, and are we really postured appropriately to make sure that we can cover the the
cover us. Right? For the 20 for the '24, twenty five year, yes. Because I have already spoken with our tech people. For the 2425, we are covered. Some of our other things that would fall under tech in another district, like we have our Dash robots. We have some stuff that's in our makerspace. We have three d printers. A lot of that was acquired through grants with our summer and our after school. So I'm not talking about computer devices. I'm talking about other tech supplies. We've been able to replace with those grant funds. So where, you know, we may have been looking at a makerspace and saying, yeah, that three d printer is four years old. Since then, we've replaced that with another three d printer that has come through a grant program. So if we're not talking about devices, if we're talking about other tech things, tech related Mostly devices.
Yeah. We've been able And I guess my other question is if you're you're thinking, like, enrollment of, like, 214 kids, right, in a Chromebook per kid roughly, right, we're we're looking in the 60,000 range. I guess my other question would be, why wouldn't we start to slowly transition some out so that it's not all hitting in one year?
Well, we have because when we've had opportunities with Erates or other funding, we've made sure to bring in Taylor could probably answer this one question, but we have brought in iPads when we could get them. So we have done some transitioning. Taylor, which grades are using the iPads?
Yeah. So four, five, six, we do have one iPad cart, which we're utilizing. And then currently in our k one, we are using iPads. And I'll it's funny. When I first came to Andover, I initially was like, wow. Our Chromebooks last a lot longer here than I've ever seen. And I will just say, Christina does a fantastic upkeep job. She doesn't let one button get stuck. She's immediately on it to get that fixed to take, you know, advantage of any warranties, anything like that. So our tech does last well. Our kids do a really nice job taking care of them. And at the same time, even when a, you know, a piece of equipment isn't broken, we certainly want it to keep up with the times, which can be challenging with Chromebooks as they get older. So adding in the additional iPads has allowed us to make sure that we're keeping the newest Chromebooks, so the ones working the best with our older students, whereas our younger students are using, like, the touch features more easily in an iPad. So we're in really good shape for next year with devices.
Thanks, Tim. Okay. So those are really all of the unhighlighted, areas, that we needed to talk about. The increases we saw, as I said, 5,000 to the HVAC contract from the 10 to the 15, and then the increase for Eastcon where we had taken that out and used other revenue sources, the 16. So for the ones that we're looking at tonight, that would be an increase of 21,000. Last session, when we ended our last session, our third session, we were looking at a potentially anticipated increase, after all of the additions and the savings of 95,000. So what I anticipate in those final numbers for Monday's proposed budget to be sent, would be $1.16 $6.50, which would be an approximate increase of about 2.75% over our current budget, if we keep everything else status quo and not, you know, pull any resources. So, which I I think is very fair and reasonable. I will tell you that right now in the state, we are looking at increases from, three to 12%. So, I think that this is a very responsible number. One of the things that I did wanna add to this, I'm gonna go to one slide.
I know, Celeste, you said Val will touch on that. And I did touch on it a little bit in here, but I actually wanna draw attention specifically to it. We did receive a couple of questions, via an email in our, budget email. And just to make sure that those questions are covered specifically, the first one was something that we had talked about not only at a board meeting, but we had spoken about when we were talking about curriculum instruction, special ed, and preschool. The question was about whether or not we would expect a third less kids to be in kindergarten next year simply because September, October, November, and December was gonna be the change. The cutoff instead of December would be September, which is a good question. I know a number of people have asked how districts are gonna be affected. Every district is affected differently, And every district is affected differently simply because, we can't make the assumption that children are all born equally
distribution wise in every month. So we know that more babies traditionally were born in, July and August. August. And post COVID, there are a lot of babies born at the same time because of conception dates. So I did answer that question to, the resident who sent that in that if you look at our enrollment here, currently in pre k, we have 43 children in pre k and 21 kids in kindergarten. There are only three children that we know of that would potentially be in question for that September to December and over children, September to December change. And what it's done for us is increased more interest in pre k, but it it really isn't going to change our kinder numbers at all. The question that was posed was, will it give us a third less
kindergartners? And it won't because we only have three kids that are even in question about whether they would go to pre k or kindergarten. The second question that was posed to us was about those curriculum lines, like ELA and math books, social studies books, repair and maintenance, and cleaning, and looking at things like electricity and gas and heating. And exactly what Steve just asked was whether or not, we were gonna put increases in there. This person said, I'm not advocating that you spend more, but, how are you keeping it the same? Aren't there increases to those lines? And I did explain that it isn't just a cut and paste, that we do look at other factors. So in terms of curriculum, we mentioned, getting some funding for reading, and so us not having to increase the curriculum lines. And I did explain that things like the COVID, the ARPA money, that really did help us out a lot in terms of and it's coming to an end, you know, in this next year, but it's helped us a lot not increase that line because a lot of our cleaning supplies and things were, as a result of,
being able to get them with COVID and ARPA money. The other question that was asked was there was a third question in there. And this person was lovely. They said that, you know, they know there's a lot of things that aren't within our control. You know? And so they get that contractual, you know, with teachers and things like that. But they wondered about, for next year, about the per pupil spending. And I know that that comes up a lot with people. People look at the state website, and they pull a number off. And everybody's usually within 500 to $2,000 on a per pupil spending, but they don't, kinda look at the rest of it. They don't look at how the taxpayer is impacted by that number. For example, we have a $4,200,000 budget right now. If you divided that by the current number of students, that number is lower than what people are looking at at the state website. I also did remind that it's not just taxpayer dollars. It is also ECS dollars, and, we get a little over $2,000,000 in the town of Andover on ECS dollars, which is educational cost sharing, which is money that's rebated rebated to, the town for educational spending, in pre k on up to 12. So I did wanna put this on here. This will obviously be in our minutes as well for the, February meeting since this is, you know, something that, is included every month in our agenda.
To notice that if you look at February of last year February of last year, we had a 198 kids. The year before, a 100 because we're in February. A 194 kids. The year before, a 181. And so in the last four years, we have increased by pretty close to, 10% of where we were. And so I I do wanna remind people that a 2.75 potential, depending on what the board votes on, but increase in keeping some of the other areas, at bay the best that we could, is is really despite the fact that we do have an increase of enrollment. The other thing I wanted to point out, and I did ask Rosemary to add the charter magnet school number on there just simply because another resident had asked me, and I know this does come up every year, about children that go to other schools. So I did just wanna take one second and reiterate that we are responsible to educate every single child that lives in the town of Andover. That is whether they're here in our building right now, in pre k to grade six, whether or not they attend an outplacement program that a special education PPT determined was in their best interest. And if a child attends charter or magnet schools, there is a tuition bill that comes to us. Even if we never had that child, if that child never attended school here. If they reside in the town of Andover, we are legally responsible to pay that bill. The only
bill that we are not responsible to pay for is if the child chooses to attend a private school and they were not placed there educationally by the school district or if they attend a parochial school by choice. Other than that, those choice schools of charters and magnets are our responsibility to pay tuition for. So I just definitely wanted to, bring that up because I do know that sometimes people are unaware
that if somebody attends one of those schools, we do receive the bill for that. And, Val, just to piggyback off that, because I know there's some new board members and anyone else. Went back and looked. It was one of the big things about the pre having full day pre k was when we got people into the pre k, you can actually see that magnet school line item go down as people are beginning at a younger age. They're coming in. They're staying in Andover, and we're not paying for them to go somewhere else. And, typically because when one person would go, their entire family often gets so you could have three, four, five. At one point, I think we had up to it was, like, eight or nine prior to the full day pre K.
And, Steve, the other point to that is there's legacy in those buildings. They like to keep siblings together. So even some of them that are tougher for the kids to get a placement in, once one child in the family is placed there, there's preference to siblings. And so you're right. Oftentimes then, you know, they opt not to join us here. Even when they're in preschool or kindergarten, they opt to to join that school, So for school choice. So any other questions?
I have more of, like, a general question about the budget. And have we done any analysis or trend analysis about how accurate we've been over the line items as we've gone through this over the years? Like, is there a line item that we're consistently, like, 10% off on, or has has any analysis been done to determine how accurate we are?
Well, we do look at where we wind up having transfers at the end. I would say and, you know, I'm Terry and I can talk about this this week for the next meeting. So I just wrote it down. But, Brie, I would say in my four years here that, there are lines at the end that wind up over or under, and we borrow from the others. But I I can't think of any one that's consistently, one that seems to be always under or always over. Because we usually fix that for the following year when we looked at when we looked at our actuals. I think for the most part, you know, our office and the board has done a good job of really trying to, you know, fix anything that we see from the year before. And that's why it's important every month that we look at the, financial statement at a board meeting so that we can see where we are with things and at the end adjust. So I would say there could be, and Terry and I will take a look at that,
but none that comes to the top of my head that I would call consistent. Alright. Thank you.
Do we know I know it's it's hard, but do we know so we get a bill from those magnet schools. Right? Or we get a a monthly bill or a quarter, and then and then we have to what is that? It's a monthly? Or It's not monthly. Monthly. Not monthly. We we get it,
usually, we would get a bill for them twice a year, but it depends That's right. In it depends on when that child enrolls. Okay. Hypothetically, if a kindergartner enrolls right now, we'll get a bill for the rest of the year Okay. For that particular child. Okay. So
Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Valerie? Caitlin or Mike? Or
I think my only comment slash question would be kind of going back to what Steve was asking in terms of the oil usage and and looking at number of gallons, maybe, like, as an average over the past five years and recalculating that line based on number of gallons, not, like, a a financial number. Okay.
Shannon to confirm. Oh, I'm sorry. This is Shannon. Just wanted to confirm, are we meeting in person with the public next week, or is it another Zoom meeting?
I I think I believe we decided it's gonna be another Zoom. Okay. Yep. How about you, Mike? I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Jerry, how about you? I'm okay.
Thank you for it. You're welcome. And just getting back to the oil, and I know you made note of it, Valerie, that you'll get us those numbers. Will you get us those numbers before the proposed budget, or is that gonna be something that we can talk about? Okay. Alright. And so then if we need to make an adjustment, we can make an adjustment and have it ready for the for the final meeting on the fourteenth. Okay. Alright. Alright. Does anybody have any other questions? I don't see any members of the public, so we don't have anybody here, any members of the public here. Does anybody else have any other questions or comments? No? Okay. Terry, no? Okay. We're good. Alright. Thank you. Okay. Hearing none, thank you, Val. We appreciate all the hard work that you have done creating this budget, putting it together for us, and taking the time to make these PowerPoints and explaining it. I know, personally, it's been very helpful for me, and I I think I shared that with everybody here. So thank you. Hearing no questions, I will say goodnight,
and we will see everybody here, back on, February 7 for our public forum. And I know, Valerie, you're gonna get those the oil figures and also post the proposed budget either Friday or the following Monday on the Andover School website under the board of ed, under the minutes and agenda, that were that's where the proposed budget will be. Right? Okay. Alright. Alright. Thanks, Val. Thank you, everyone. Have a good evening.