Meeting transcript
Special BOE Meeting
January 26, 2026 · Watch on Zoom · All meetings
Ahead and get started. Go ahead. It
is 07:02, and we're gonna call this special meeting to order. So first up, in terms of opening statements, this meeting is specifically about the board of education budget for the upcoming school year, which would be 2026, 2027. We're not talking about anything else aside from the budget, for this upcoming school year tonight. And then, in terms of opening statements, I don't really have anything in particular, aside from kind of where we have been so far. So when we get to public comment, just make sure that people, keep it specific to, the budget. K? In terms of communications, there was a FOIA request, for the superintendent's contract, and I I believe that will be done at our next in person, board meeting, which would be is it February 11? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I guess we'll move on to the budget. So Val and Taylor, you guys can take it away.
Alright. So I tried to make sure everything was on Taylor's end there just to make it a little bit easier for us as we go through. So let me just adjust this here. Okay. Whenever you're ready, Tay. Okay. So this first slide, you'll see it says Andover Elementary operational budget, school in 35 School Road Facility. So a little bit about that first. For any of the board members that, know, you haven't been with us long, we don't love that word budget. And we don't love that word budget because what it really is is, anticipated expenditures. That's what Cade will tell us to use as anticipated expenditures. Because unlike a budget where, let's say, you are out looking for a house and you say somebody's not there we go. Taylor, thank you. Out looking for a house and you say we have a $500,000
budget. Somebody's not muted. I can't there we go. Thank you, Taylor. You're out looking for a a $500,000 house, and that's your budget. You've got lots of options. And for us, when we look at this, this is our anticipated expenditures. They are things that we are anticipating having to spend money on with no other options there. And so we don't love that word budget. Also notice that it says school and 35 School road facility. It's an operational budget. Unlike most other school districts, we have an operational, not an operational, and a capital budget. And so oftentimes, in almost every other school district, they're actually presenting two anticipated expenditure reports. One is operational, one is capital, and then they merge the two together. Go ahead, Tay.
I apologize when I came out. I just need to reshare. So sorry about that. Let's try again. You can see me now? Yes.
Perfect. Okay. You can go to second one. Thank you. Okay. So the who we are servicing, the kids, who we're servicing, let's look first at enrollment data expectations for 2627. Again, they're anticipated. We do anticipate that for the 2627 school year, the numbers for k to six will be 200 students. Although we aren't addressing preschool in the budget, that would mean that we anticipate 70 preschoolers with a total count in the building by the end of next school year of 270. So by the end of next school year, that building will have 270 by our, estimations within the walls of the building. When you look at our enrollment data, you also always see that there are three currently, students that we financially support at other facilities. That is the charter magnet students that's in our budget. That bill doesn't go to the town. It comes to the school. And if a student is placed in another facility, most of the time, we're referring to special education students. That bill obviously comes to us as well. So we're gonna talk about the enrollment data for a second. The other thing is to notice that the data for our increased growing enrollment is also heavily supported by not only the monthly enrollment reports, but the town of Andover's POCD, which if people don't know what that is, that's the plan of conservation and development. It's ten years,
and it's supposed to look at the trends for everything town related for the ten years. Luckily, this year, they are right now creating one to plan for the next ten years. And in it, the document recommends that the town plan for a 26% increase that we currently are experiencing and moving forward for the elementary school enrollment. Excuse me. And they cited the data to support our growth and our strategy. So if you wanna know where to find that sorry, Taylor. Go ahead. You can move to the next. I'm gonna show you in a second. So these should look familiar. At every single one of our meetings, we look at enrollment reports. Those are in our packet every month, the board of ed packet. This is the current year's enrollment report. And you'll notice that right now, there's 259. You'll see that this is the one that we looked at the other day with, grade six being at 29 currently. The placeholder for us where we want the other class is the second class, right here in this spot right here. Now you'll notice there's two in every grade. And when we show you the other enrollment reports, you'll see that, actually, we used to have three in every grade. So let's relook at those enrollment, documents that we examined at, the last board meeting. We started with 2010, and I'll post these separately on the website where we have the budget information just to say enrollment reports in case anybody's looking for it.
Back in 2010, you'll notice, sure, there were 334 kids in the building at the time, but k through sixth grade with the exception of fourth at the time, there were three sections to every single grade. And so you'll notice at that time, the, classrooms, the goal at the time was 15, and you'll see that there were never, 20 students or more. When you look to twenty eleven, you'll see at that point, same thing. They were still there were a few less students than there were the year before, but they were still nursing three classes for each grade, kindergarten on up, except for fifth and sixth. They did not get to the point of 22 students or more, but they did have two classes, one of twenty and one of 21. And the next year, you'll see the same thing. There was one time in 2012
where they did have a class of 22, and then the next year, they had a class of 22. But other than that, the majority of, the early years there, were under 20. It's not until we get a little bit further, as Taylor's scrolling, you'll see stop there. Yeah. In 2015 2015 is the year that most mirrors where we are now. As you can see, there were 259 students there. So we are about where we were exactly ten and a half years ago. So you'll notice that there were two to every single grade there and three to grade five and grade six. So we absolutely, were on trend back then to make sure that we kept those classes 20 and below. And then you'll see that it wasn't until and we had a reduction to twenty nine, two zero six. We had a reduction in students, one ninety eight. This year here where I have circled, this was the year of COVID, that twenty nineteen to twenty twenty school year. So they were only in school that year till March. So as those classes emerged of '22, it wouldn't have been brought necessarily before the board of education. I don't know exactly when that twenty second child entered the school to know,
for sure. But at that point in March, there were 22 students enrolled in each of those grades. I entered, at the end of that school year. And you'll see after that, we did go down to single sections in each grade. And you'll see that we had combination classes in the other years if you move there you go. Right there. We had in twenty twenty two one combination class, and we had a class of 22 because we were only at 200 at the time. So we were not unnecessarily adding sections. That year, we did have an extra section for grade one because they had been, out for COVID in pre k and k. And then the other years, you'll see, we kept the classes as large as we could, trying not to add the teachers because when we had a decrease in the the the budget, this was where we wound up
with the deficit. Okay. Here she goes. Okay. So slightly lower, Taylor, so that I can see the current right there. I just wanna show you, in 2526, our current year, from August to January right now, we've already gone up 10 students. We started the year at two forty nine, and January, we're at two fifty nine. So thank you, Taylor, for that. We can go back to yeah. The second thing to address with enrollment then is not only looking at the enrollment numbers to know that, yes, in fact, we are growing, and we're growing k six. I know that there was, you know, some thoughts out there that we were only growing, in in the numbers prior to kindergarten, and that's not true. We've had, more than 40 students in k through six.
The other thing that I wanted to point out was that plan of conservation and development. And, you know, I I would like to just give a little kudos to John for having put this together, the town planner. We did have a conversation prior to his draft to make sure that things were in here and that and that they were accurate, and he was wonderful to work with. I wanna point out a couple of things. In chapter three there, they have the vision and the goals of the town of Andover. And the goal of the town of Andover, we envision an Andover that provides economic, housing, educational, recreational, and civic opportunities that maintain the community's excellent quality of life. So the town has already made a commitment to making sure that we have the vision and the mission of the school when we put together this plan of conservation and development. The other thing that I have there, that's the cover. So if anybody's looking for that, you can go back to the board of selectmen. The last meeting, it was in their packets, the draft. On the right there, what you're looking at is the the the the charts that shows you the 2010 time period all the way through to, 2025. And this shows you that, yes, the last ten years, it went up until 2025, so 2010 to 2025, and now we're gonna go '26 to '36. The plan of conservation and development is every ten years. So you can see that sure. The first five years pre COVID, I'll say, the numbers were headed in in this direction.
And then from 2020 on up, we've made, slight but very interesting, growth. Go to the next page, Taylor, because I wanna make sure I use the words exactly the way that John used them. Between 2010 and 2020, student enrollment had declined significantly at Andover Elementary School. However, starting with the 2122 school year, student enrollment has been rebounding. And while the overall student population in the 2425 school year was 27% lower than it had been in 2010, there was a 26% increase since 2021, which in part is attributable to the decision to accept enrollment into the pre k program of children who are residents outside of Andover. In doing so, the school district hopes to expose students and their parents to the high quality of education and encourage them to relocate. That's exactly what's happened too. If you look at the numbers on the town side, we are very lucky that almost all of the home sales, not all of them, but almost all of the home sales in the last couple of years have been families coming back. So that vision and goal of the plan of conservation and development,
it's working. You can go to the next one, Taylor. Okay. I'm gonna try to keep my voice, the whole thing. How do we fare against towns like ours with spending? Our per pupil spending has decreased compared to our Durban neighbors. Again, every time I look at these, I tell people my little preface is I don't love the per pupil spending number. Everybody knows I don't love that number because for small town like ours, it it doesn't really show you what you're spending per student. But it is a standard number, and it's standard across all the DERGs. And so because it is standard across the DERGs, we wanna make sure that, we do show it. I I know a lot of people, rely on this number as a comparison from year to year because from one town to the next, at least it's an apple to an apple. So DRG, DIRG, stands for district reference group. And in the state of Connecticut, they go in order a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, I. And it is towns that are like yours. So we fall into Durg C. And if you look at these pictures, you will see a lot of the towns that either border us or are similar to us in our area and then other areas that are compact in the north, east, and west corner and then also, in the valley. So you'll see there are 30 towns that make up Dergsea. And in the year twenty twenty two to '23,
the average per pupil spending was 22,332. Now little, reason why Hebron is the one that's highlighted here, and I mentioned this at the board meeting, is because these charts were put together by the Hebron Board of Education and the superintendent using the state data. So I didn't wanna steal theirs and highlight ours, because they were made by them. State data, not our data. You will notice in 2022 to '23, we were number 11, out of 30. And so I can find us right here. So that meant we were just about at the average. We were twenty two thousand eight hundred and thirty two. Now if you looked up this formula, the reason why I don't love it is if you have outplaced students, large numbers of them, that sways this number. And if you like the town of Andover, if you have a lot of other expenditures associated with your budget, like the largest building in town, those things get added too. And it sounds like you're actually spending that per student when in reality, you're oftentimes spending it on the property. So in this case, we were 11 out of 30. If you look the following year, the 2324 school year, we dropped. We dropped from 11 to 17, which I know some people will say that's great. We're spending less per student. But if you look at this list, we're the only town that was contributing less to their education than the other towns. Every single one on this list, if you compare them from '22 to, '23 to '23, '24,
obviously, the, cost goes up from year to year as the budget goes up. In our case, it didn't. We can go to the next one. There you go. So we went from 11 to 17. And if you look, we're we're the only one, as I said. So I think that this does go to show, that we are starting to be behind in our spending. And last year, we did give a list of anticipated expenditures, and the list of anticipated expenditures for us was an eight and a half percent, and that was cut down to 5%. So we did kind of already start this year in the whole because we couldn't avoid those expenditures. We did add the fourth and fifth grade teacher. We kinda started the year three and a half percent in the whole. And I think the Durg information is important to the board of ed so that we can see that we're being behind the eight ball there. Taylor? If we just look at our past budgets, not the district reference groups, not comparing us to other towns, If we just look at the expenses, to the town for the school in the past ten years, the investment, it's not what the taxpayer paid. We'll talk about that in a minute. We have to consider ECS dollars. But in 2015,
which I already showed you on the, enrollment report papers, that would be the year that was most similar to where we are now in terms of student enrollments. They had, what, two fifty nine then. We have two fifty nine now. Our budget then was 4,320,000. It had just been reduced from the year before. And if you'll notice, it was reduced that year from the year before. The next year, we made zero investment in the school. The next year, we reduced the investment. The next year, we induced reduced the investment in in the school. The next year, we reduced the investment. The next year, we reduced the investment. The next year, we came in with a zero. That was a number of years where we were not even meeting
the increases contractually to our obligations to people that worked there. We were reducing. And if we reduced and we had expenditures that went up, that means we had to be reducing it from someplace else. So we've slowly been whittling away at all of the opportunities within the school, at curriculum, at development, at the facilities, at everything because those numbers were decreased. From '22 until now, we have had small increases. But if we look at the last ten years, all of those combined have still only equaled a grand total of $244,000. Not per year, a grand total of $244,000 over ten years. So I mentioned ECS dollars because I'm surprised every year at the number of people that tell me, Valerie, I have no idea what you're talking about. What are ECS dollars? Or people, especially at a town meeting that will say, well, our tax dollars pay for that 4,560,000, and that's a lot to come right directly out of our pockets. So I did just wanna mention that the town does receive, and we always have, to offset the cost of the educational budgets, plural, meaning ours and Ram's. It's k 12. Educational cost sharing dollars, and ECS dollars go directly to the town. They don't go to the school. It is for them to put toward the two bills that they have between us and RAM. And that's just over $2,000,000. So I don't think the town actually has a formula for how they divide that.
I don't think it's a per pupil. I've been told by the town every year that it just kinda goes into the general fund, and they use that 2,000,000 to pay for us every month and to pay for RAM. So if we do that and we say, it's a million and a million. It's important to know then that there's a million that's coming off that budget before it hits the taxpayer. So a $4,565,000 budget that we currently have is actually going to the taxpayer as 3.56 because they're granted the $2,000,000, a million and a million, which would mean that it would be about 17, which is still a lot of money, but 17 per student. Okay. So I mentioned at the beginning when we say anticipated expenditures, and I and and I made sure on the first page it said Andover Elementary School and 35 School Road. So what else is paid from the AES budget? All of these things. The academic needs for every student, the mandated special education requirements and services. And I use the word mandated, and I really want people to understand that that is not a choice. That's the law for compliance purposes. And there is no ability to cut those services. They are required. And as a matter of fact, they have to be reported out separately. So at the end of the year, they have our budget, and then we have to file a report that says these are the number of special education students. These were the services, and this is how much money we spent so that they know that we are meeting our mandated requirements
for our special education students. The contractual obligations to every employee in the building, the insurances, and all of the benefits. So we have life insurances. We have medical insurances, which is the huge one, and then all of the other benefits that are within the contracts. All board of education expenses and legal fees, Transportation, including transportation to other facilities, our students that are out placed, we are required to either provide the transportation or pay for the transportation. If we have a student that has a program that takes them to another facility, we have to provide that transportation. If we were to have a student with special needs that required a separate transportation, we have to pay for that and for handicapped needs as well. So all of that falls under transportation. We also share a transportation contract with Hebron, with Marlborough, and with Ram. So that contract is a a collaborative. Tuition for Andover residents to the other facilities. All supplies, not just instructional. They are all of the supplies that we need, including facilities, repairs, and maintenance. Technology. And technology is not just devices. They are other services as well. The maintenance and upkeep of our technology as well as we have a fair amount like we're doing right now with online things. We have a fair amount of technology services that are web based. Utilities, the use of the town vehicle for special ed is separate contract. Repair and maintenance for the largest building in the town of Andover, and then all of the utilities related to the use of our facility even when we are not in session. So a lot of people don't realize that nights, every night and weekends,
we have the rec, program that uses our gym. Pickleball is there. Town meetings are there. We get used very, very regularly. And we also do have a separate, like, oil tank just for the gym. So we do know how much that costs us to have that, and currently, we're not charging. Got it, Taylor. Thank you. So drivers for this budget season, they're the same. Very oftentimes, it's salaries and it's benefits. Those are the two main drivers in special education services. We are involved in an insurance consortium. The town made that decision, not the school. The town made that decision over a decade ago. We have a pretty successful consortium. It is the town of Andover and the board of ed, the town of Hebron and the board of ed, the town of Marlborough and the board of ed, RAM, and So there are eight entities that make up our consortium. And this year, the increase to the premiums is 15. Now that won't affect the town side as much where there's only a couple of people that are on insurance, very small number. So it it'll be a a very small increase. But for us, we have a large number of employees in the school, and so that is is a big increase for us, that 15%.
I will tell you two things. Number one, I've spoken with, probably four dozen, other districts, and they have varied insurance consortiums and or the state partnership. And 15%, unfortunately, is the norm this year. I know the partnership is 12 to 15, they've been told. They haven't actually given them the answer yet. I heard, down in the valley, 20%. I mean, it is it is 15% right now is unfortunately the norm. The other thing to know is we can't shop around. The board of education can't shop around. Since the consortium is the eight of us, that's not an area that I can say, well, let's go see if we can get it cheaper and maybe lower our cost. That's something that the town has to support because we are all together a part of that. We don't have any options there. There's no cutting that. Special education services, as I mentioned, when we are figuring out our anticipated expenditures, we go through the number of students that we have in the building, what their services are. We go through the hourly rates of service providers if we have them for the particular students, and then we get the number in the end. Again, not a negotiable number. And then the need for the second grade six classroom. That, current sixth grade population is at 29, and the current fifth grade population is at 26. And then the contractual salary obligation increases. We do have contracts right now for the next three years
for all the people involved. So that's good. So we know actually moving forward. So let's take a look at these anticipated expenditures. Taylor, if you can put these up, and I know all the board members, I have sent them out to you so that you had a copy right in front of you. And then this will be posted, after the meeting. Okay. So a little information here. When you look, whether it's monthly at our, financial report or if it's annually at our budget like this, you'll notice on the left hand side some numbers. Every single, line item, starts with 002 for us. That doesn't change as you move down. Then this next set of numbers tells us whether or not what the the category is, whether or not it's salaries, whether or not it's utilities.
You'll notice one zero one on the top. That whole section there on one zero one, those are salaries. The next one, the third section tells finance, tells Jody that it's a subset of one zero one. You'll see it starts with the ones there. And so if you are looking through here and you hear, ever at a meeting, somebody talking about, you know, one zero one, 1,200, They're referring to where it is in the budget. And, you know, Jody puts these numbers into, our financial software so that she knows which account, things are coming out of. Okay. So you'll notice as we look down, we have the 25 adopted budget, the 26 adopted budget, and then the third column is the new column. It's the column that we're recommending for the next school year. You'll notice only one major thing that jumps out there in addition to the, contractual increases for, the teachers in this section, and that is school psychologist.
So school psychologist is not a new position. Someplace else in the budget, and I'll point it out to you, was where the school psychologist was located. That position for the past couple of years, this is our only person that's there that's our, support staff. We do have somebody that's there part time through AHM for social work, but we, unfortunately, are limited to one mental health provider that's that's within the building, under this contract. And she was covered under our mental health grant that expires this year, in part, not not fully. We moved her up here because further on down, you'll see that, she was placed in special ed. And moving forward, she will be in the teacher's contract, not down there in special ed. So it's a movement from one place in the budget to the other. The only other increase in hours there in this budget, is speech. There's a slight number of increase in speech hours there. The second section there you'll see is contractual increases with para support. And this year, there was a new para for special education. So that's why that number seems a little bit high. That was one para that wasn't there before and their contractual increases. That pair already exists in the building right now. That was a vacant spot from last school year. You will notice this coaching and clubs here. In the teacher's contract, they have spelled out that if there are certain clubs that exist, this is what they get paid to do them. And when we have the, after school grant in effect, we haven't been using them fully. And so at this point, we had been dwindling that one down a little bit. At one point, it did say 12,000.
That was what would have been in there if all of those clubs took place. Last year and the year before, it was down to 6,100, and now we do have the after school grant this year in a small capacity. But since we do have that after school grant, we don't anticipate going over the 3,100 at all in the next two years. So that one's reduced by 3,000. Let's see. 0% there for an increase for summer school, which, by the way, summer school is only a special education program. It is not a regular education program. It's just to meet the needs of a student's IEP, which is why there's such a small amount in there.
Let's see. 0% increase, in the rest of them on this page until we get to the salaries, mine, the principal, and the finance, director. The increase of the three of them combined is 18,000, a total of 6%. When you get down to the group life insurance, pension, and retirement, you will see that that's a 7% increase there of 16,000, but you'll notice a couple of changes. The numbers in there are exactly figured out by the finance office based on our current employees. That pension, it's not a teacher's pension. We don't pay for teachers' pensions. We pay the MER for the MERS like the town does for municipal employees, para paraprofessionals and people in the non CERT union. We do not pay for pension for teachers. The retirement there that's dropped from 15 to zero, again, that's a contractual obligation because when a teacher retires or a para or anybody in that union, there's a certain number of days if they've accumulated unused sick time that they get a portion paid out. So that usually has to stay in there because if a person who's eligible for retirement retires, then we have to have that money available to pay out the promised benefit to them. We did move it to zero for next year. We're hoping, that there are no retirements. It doesn't appear that there will be based on the staff that's currently there, so we're gonna take a risk on that one. But that one is, contractual. And tuition reimbursement, we do have a few young teachers now, so we do know, again, that is a small benefit that's given to teachers in their contract, and we anticipate $1,200
being used of that this year. If you move down to the benefits line item there, that's, insurance and the other benefits. There are 12 payments made during the course of the year, to the spring group for our insurance, and that is where we will see the 15% of that strictly going toward the medical benefits. Under the three twenties, that's where you'll see the $48,000 gain. That is that school psychologist, you'll see it's gone down to zero under psychological services that got popped back up to the one zero one section at the top, 45,000 of it. And then you'll see a fair amount of just bare bones. No increases to, board services. No increases to the professional development and staff training. No increases in the next section to the other professional services in the 3 forties. As a matter of fact, we've reduced by 9,565. And we felt we could do that in a couple of places there, whittling away a couple of thousand dollars wherever we could. The board services, there won't be a contract that's settled this year. So the recommendation to have that one be 15 18,000 doesn't need to be there. We've dropped that down to 10. Under the admin, let me make sure I can read this now without my glasses. Under the admin technical services there, you'll notice we went from 12,000 to 6,000 there. That's admins in there. Admins is the, financial software system that we have, and 6,000 is what we need for Edmunds. So because the other six, didn't get used for this year, we've taken that out.
The school lunch program. Now you've always seen 20 in there if you look through four or five budgets before us because that's always where you need to be as the worst case scenario. You can stop right there. The worst case scenario there looking right here. But when we looked back through, especially post COVID, now the trends are just different. We weren't paying out, the difference in the end. What happens is we have Coventry Foodservice. So Coventry Foodservice oversees, Andover. We have two employees in the kitchen, and we have expenses. We have our food expenses. We have all of our kitchen expenses. Coventry puts all of our expenses into a bucket and says Andover owes us for these. And then they put all of our revenues in a bucket, and they say this is all the revenue that's come in from the free and reduced lunch as well as people buying lunch at school. And at the end of the year, if they don't even out, either there's a little money left or we owe them money. And, traditionally, it was always safe to assume that what we owed them wouldn't go over $20,000.
And in the last couple of years, it's safe for us to say if we put 5,000 in there with the amount of, lunches that are purchased and the number of students that, do receive free and reduced lunch and we get that money back for that, 5,000 should suffice. So, we have kept the 5,000 in there. And then the only other one there that is of note that people might wonder because it's a high one, the 9,000, that one for personnel, that's PrimePay. That's where we, do our paychecks out of. So, our contract for prime pay is in there. But we were able to whittle that one down $9,565. The next section is our repair, maintenance, and facilities, and operations. Operations. And you'll see that we've kept that constant at 78, thousand 500 from this last year. Not saying that doesn't mean we won't have, a time when we potentially will go over. And in the future, we're hoping that at some point, we'll be able to look at a budget that is both operational and then, capital. But for now, we are keeping that solid at zero. Hopefully, in the future, we will be able to move these items to a capital budget. Okay. We can move up just a little bit more. Thank you. And you'll notice the only increase to the next section, mine's colored and yours is not. So let's see. Oh, somebody will ask about four thirty two, that instructional technology repair and maintenance, because those are large numbers too. That right there is our service contract with Eastcon, the 43. Our service contract with Eastcon, they take care of all of our techniques and our web services. We do not have a full time
technology administrator in Andover. And so they send somebody either one full day or two half days to troubleshoot and deal with all of that for us. And so we have continued to contract with them, and EastCon is our RESC, our regional educational system. Then you'll see the transportation costs to which I was referring. It's regular transportation and special education transportation. And, again, this involves transport transporting anybody who has a need to have an additional bus. This would be any program that's outside of, Andover Elementary School. Library software, I'm sure that one kills the library and that we're not able to put that in this year because we do need a library software program. But if any parents are listening, we're gonna hope to try to fundraise for that this year because she really does need an upgrade, but we don't have that in this year's budget.
18,000 in the middle, if you're wondering what these kinds of things are here, these are, licenses, for things like Seesaw, CEN, which does our Internet, PowerSchool, School Messenger, E rates. So all those wonderful things that told you all that we were gonna have a snow day today. All of those things, all of those messages that go home to parents, all of those things. And PowerSchool, by the way, is our student information system, which we have to have a student information system. The second one on there, where the $10,000, is located, these are not just for postage and print, but admin communication as well. So, sure, it does include the Pitney Bowes, which does our materials that we send out through for the post office. It, you know, puts the postage on there, our our postage machine, and new so. But it also includes Zoom that we utilize throughout the school and, obviously, in this meeting right now. The third one on there will remain at 10,000. This is, licenses and, fees, admin tech. What falls under this line, the biggest thing is Frontline. And Frontline is our system that we use for employees and our maintenance and care of employee documentation. I know in here also is one that's used throughout the school called BrainPOP drive. I drive Apple. Those things are in there as well. Okay. We did get rid of, because we hadn't used it for the last couple of years, the $500. I mean, it's small, but the $500 for advertising. The 9,000 in the next one, under printing, that isn't just like, wow. They make a lot of copies. When we switched
the curriculum, especially for reading, there was a a large component for curriculum and instruction that required photocopying materials and or buying books. But for now, photocopying materials, it was a new initiative. And so although we switched to Xerox, for a savings last year of the '81 to get to 8100, we do have a a large number of needs in terms of reproducing materials for the classroom, and so that that's definitely, been in there. On the second section there, $5.60, you'll see the magnet schools. Again, any Andover residents that attends a charter or magnet school, that tuition bill is sent to us. It's in our budget. It doesn't go to the town. And we confirm, of course, that they are Andover residents. And then we do have one outplacement there for the 74,350. But there was a reduction in the, specific tuition for the magnet school, and so that's why the reduction of $3,000
is there. And then you'll see the rest as we move forward. All of these supplies, be it gym, music, art, instructional supplies, we have not increased any of these line items. So it there will be nothing new that will be added, for next school year to any of these line items. As a matter of fact, there was a very small, reduction where a reduction could be to that line, of a thousand dollars. The next section, the $6.22 section there in the middle, you'll see electricity, propane, heating oil, grounds, and diesel. That's our utilities section. And in our utilities section there, I know some people may look and be like, how do you not have an increase for next year? We don't have an increase in there budgeted for next year for a couple of reasons. Number one, you'll notice heating oil, for example. I know everybody's heating oil goes up, but we did lock in at 10¢ less
than this year. And so even if we do use a little bit more oil than we did this past school year, well, the current school year, there should be a small savings there. And I know that we will talk about some other energy, efficient measures with the board, but we did go over in electricity last year. But this section here for utilities, electricity and propane and heating oil and and, grounds, they evened out. So we're anticipating that that will happen again. The diesels, the buses. You'll notice the next section again, no increase to textbooks, no increase to periodicals, any of the curriculum related materials. We've kept that exactly where it is, and in the tech the tech section as well. We are on the the next page there. Okay. The largest things that someone might be interested in, anything, you know, that's not just, you know, a thousand or $2,000, I would say the one that usually jumps out is $6.50, 1,200, which is tech supplies for special education. These will include some materials that are testing materials. So in the fourth grade, for example, we administer the OSAT test, and that's administrator administered to every fourth grader to determine, which students will wind up being recognized as talented and gifted. The WIAT or WIAT test, was a part of this 9,000 this year, Edmark.
So there are specific reoccurring costs year to year that we know we can anticipate the 9,000 in the next year. And then the 3,200 under student assessment, I know a lot of parents are familiar with I Ready and benchmark assessments that are given within the classes multiple times a year, and so that is in that section there. So when we get to the bottom, we can see that we are looking at new expenditures, anticipated expenditures of about 11% more of 04/1991. Taylor, can you go to the next one? They could always go back to this one. Thank you. Okay. So where do the percentages stand at this point? We've just shown you on the bottom, $4.99 is 11%. If you look at what, I guess, we could say are human expenses, the salaries of all of the staff combined throughout the budget, including special education service providers, of that $4.99, it would be about 6.6% of an increase of that 11%. We're not talking about specific line items. We're talking about the 11%. All of the benefits, including that 15% increase to the medical insurance premiums, would give us about 2.9% of the 11% increase. Transportation, including special education, would give us about a half a percent of the 11, and those three combined are 10. So all of the other needs combined would be just under 1% for us to equal the 11. So people who aren't percentage people, if we can do it look at the next slide, these are rough numbers then.
Because I do know at the end, if if it were me, I'd look at the four ninety nine, and I would say, okay. What are we getting for the four ninety nine? That would mean that about 326,000 of the increase of $4.99 would be salaries throughout the budget, including the special ed service providers. About a 150 would be all the benefits, including that medical insurance increase. 20 about 24 k would be the transportation, including the special education, and that would be what makes up that 11%, that 499,000. So none of these expenses they're all anticipated. So none of these expenses can really be cut. We already reduced to the bare bones of all of our known expenses. We've been doing that. If we think back to the slide that showed reduction, reduction, reduction, reduction, only 224,000 over or 244,000 over the ten years meant that we were already cutting expenses. So we really are at that point where there isn't anything in that budget that can be cut. Federal grants have dried up as a lot of people do know, and the state grants moving forward are scant. The biggest lot of money that the state has for the twenty seven school year are limited to early childhood, which is not in our budget. So it might help us with our preschool program, but it won't help us with our general fund. And I can tell you that it saddens me because everyone knows how much I love to fill out grant applications. I do. But we are down to really our title grants and our IDEA grants.
Those are the ones that are gonna remain intact. But the salaries and the items that we use title grants and IDEA grants for are already in there. They're not in the general fund. So, for example, if there is a a piece of a salary, an interventionist, for example, that we do pay out of a title grant, you didn't see that in here today. That already exists in just the grant. We've already moved it over. The next one. Okay. So, what can we do to try to avoid 11%? If the board wants to avoid that 11%, this is what needs to be discussed at the February meeting. And there are a variety of things that can be considered. One, we can look to move the outplacement, to the 2% nonlapsing account, and that would reduce $4.99 by 75,000. Of course, it would mean that having the nest egg in the 2% will be gone because we're not anticipating this year or next year any more money to go in there. So you can take it out of there, but then there would be no replenishment. It would get the budget to a nine three to go to town meeting. We can plan to drain the shares from the Norton School Fund. It's my understanding that there's at least 70,000 in there. We have 1,330 shares in there plus some dividends and some interest. If we looked to do that and counted on that money, we could potentially look at a seven seven for town meeting.
We could plan to act on the energy audit incentive immediately and have that done for July 1. It didn't cost us any money. It's free. So rather than kick the can on that, if we do that, maybe between that and the solar, we could safely pull 10,000 out of the utilities. That's a point two. That would bring us down to 7.5 if we did that. We can charge the town for half of the oil costs for their share of the use of the gym. The current last three years, it's been 10,000 in oil. Not sure anyone wants to go down this path, but I'm throwing it out there because that is 5,000 that we are paying for nights and weekends that our children are not utilizing yet.
That would only get us to 7.3, though. We could discuss larger charges for the gym use. I do know the community center was discussing that, and they'll be collecting revenues of about $200 per use. So, again, not sure if this is where people wanna go, but I'm just throwing ideas out there. Or we could keep that budget as it is, and forward an 11. Taylor? What happens if we don't get the money that we need, the $4.99? We will have to cut teachers, and, pink slips are inevitable. If we merge classes, those numbers would mean the largest classes not only in Andover history, but in our region right now and elsewhere in the state. Not everywhere in the state, but a lot of places. Just know that we would be looking at class sizes that would be 24 to 28 no matter which grade we looked at. A reminder, we've talked about this before that studies show that, 22 and over is not ideal. We do have a responsibility to academic success, and we are seeing that now. We are seeing the students rebound because we opened the fourth and the fifth grade class. So I believe to eliminate that would be reckless. It could also mean that, you know, an increase in special ed costs if the classes are that big. A regular education teacher cannot meet the tier one needs of their students if they are simultaneously
at the same time providing tier two and three interventions or addressing behavioral or social emotional plans for multiple students. No grade in AES, by the way, is without special education needs or high needs students. And I know because I had a conversation last week, so I know that some people just look at those numbers, and they say, you know, well, let's just lower the ratio. I had a conversation last week with the first selectman, and he did say to me. He's like, Valerie, you know, I mean, let's just look at the numbers. It's really hard to imagine, you know, like, 12 to one ratio or things like that as opposed to a 23. And the the best analogy that I could use at the time is, you know, numbers are deceiving if you don't know anything about the topic. And the example I gave was that we have 30 streets in Andover, 30 roads. And right now, there's five, people who work for Public Works. And so if you look at that, there's six streets, five streets to each one of them. It would be silly of me to say, well, let's just reduce. Let's take 30 streets, and we'll drop down to four public works people. And then they'll have seven and a half streets apiece.
Or if we go down to three public works, now it's 10 to one ratio. Because as he pointed out to me, he said, Valerie, the streets aren't all the same. He said, there are streets that are miles long. And the best thing that I could do is to say, yes, and not every kid is the same. Because putting 24 kids in a classroom with some of the needs that our students have, they're not all the same. So I do urge people, if that is where the conversations go, to just understand that in the long run, there are serious repercussions for trying to consider our class sizes over 22, and it's never been done in Andover. We always keep those classes at 22 or less if we can. So so, Taylor, I think that's the last one. Was that the last one? Oh, here we go. So where we go from here? February 11 is the regular board meeting. A budget needs to be voted on at that meeting to adhere to the timing of the new charter requirements. And then after that, for any people out there who are maybe new to town, it goes to the board of finance, and they will make comments and suggestions or recommendations,
but they can't alter the board of ed's budget once it is voted upon. That budget, your budget, board of ed, goes directly to the town meeting. The residents will who are there in person at the town meeting will vote to move that budget forward to the referendum. If it passes that referendum, then it's set in stone for the next school year, and we would begin July 1. If it doesn't, then it bifurcates, and it gets voted on separately from the town, but after the board of finance decides what budget they would like to move forward to try to pass at a second referendum. The board of education and families, they don't have a say after bifurcation in what the board of finance decides to to move ahead for the second time. So I just wanted to make sure that that was in there. So I think that's it. Caitlin?
Yeah. So I think we'll move on to discussion. So I I feel like the easiest way to go through this is probably for us to go section by section, And then anyone on the board of ed who has questions about that specific section, we can ask them in order. So so first section, if we go through the what is it? The one on ones? My for teachers, salaries, instructional tech salaries, school psychologist. Does anyone have questions on that section?
I know it's a lot to digest. They'll probably Anna?
Val, so I think a a major point of contention and something that I would appreciate your further explanation on is the need for the sixth grade teacher. I understand all that you talked about tonight. I think two things. When I look at the fifth grade class coming in, if I divide that in two, we're at about thirteen and fourteen students in a class. Is that right? Okay. And then I look at the fourth grade class, and it's a a similar size, a little bit fewer, and we don't know how many kids are gonna move into that. So we're setting up a a new sixth grade teacher, but then also needing to look at future classes as far as the need for that. And I know we've moved teachers around between different grades to facilitate the needs of the students. But just to explain further, I mean, I think what what you've told us, and I just wanted to give you the opportunity to further elaborate it on it if you wish, is exactly what you just described as far as your discussion with the first selectman, and that is
you know the students coming into the sixth grade class. And while we can't provide any details because of the size of the class and whatnot, you know their special needs, their special education needs, whatnot. And that, I think, is in part driving your belief that we need another sixth grade teacher. Is that accurate?
That is three quarters the way accurate. Absolutely. Everything you said is true. If you guys look at our enrollment summary every month, you will see that, first of all, let's pretend, you know, that we're just looking at that end number. Forget about the two individual classes before. There are currently, yes, 29 students. These 29 students were 29 students last year as well in fifth grade and sixth. So Taylor and the teachers have the data that shows how hampered the success of students are when you have a class of 29 kids. And it's my responsibility and Taylor's responsibility and the board's responsibility to look for the academic success of the kids. And we see that in a variety of ways. We see that in the benchmark assessments that they take multiple times a year. We see that in the SBAC scores and the next generation science scores. And when we look at those for the students that the last couple of years, unfortunately, had large classes, we are not seeing the growth that we should have seen until this year. When we took and put fourth grade into the two classes and fifth grade into the two classes, we are starting to see that growth again. And so we have a responsibility, a legal responsibility also to make sure that we are providing that for these kids. And so, Shannon, I mean, we would have 26 minimum kids
in sixth grade next next week. You're saying so let me just just clarify because I hadn't even thought about that part. So they've been in two separate classes and benefited significantly, it sounds like, by being in two separate classes both in fourth grade and fifth grade, and we need to continue that for these classes upcoming to have two separate classes for the sixth grade.
Yes. Because in fourth grade, if you look, that was the class that we actually had, the two three combo. The merger. Yes. Yep. So those two classes can't be merged because those two existing classes that would be next year's fifth grade, there's 37 of them. So that wouldn't even be an option, Shannon. Right. But the fifth grade, that's gonna become sixth grade next year, we would have a minimum of 26. K. So I understand that sometimes it's like, okay. You know, a 13 or a 14 or a 15 class seems small, but when you only have two options and your options are 13 or 14 or 27 or 28, You don't have a choice in between. A couple of years ago, we had that in two classes, second and third. So I did create a class where instead of adding a second and a third, we had a combo. So we did that for two years to make sure that we were not asking the taxpayer for another teacher when we didn't know what was gonna happen with the student count. Keep in mind too, by the way, that if you look at this year, we started in August with 249 students. We now have 259, and we're only in January. So to John's point, the town planner too with POCD,
we are gonna be moving up. So we're looking at this in January right now for next year. And we're saying, well, if you did that, the class would be 26. It would be bad, but we could have one or two more kids move in, and then you're at 28 with the special needs of the other students. And so once you're over 22, you also run the risk of what happens then if you need to have a paraprofessional. Now you are spending the money on a paraprofessional, and their salary and if there's benefits involved could equal 60,000. Right. So a starting teacher salary, not including the, MERS or the MRF, would be that. K. So, Brie, thank you. Anyone else have questions on that section?
Yeah. What grades go ahead. Sorry. One of the things I wanted to ask or maybe verify, if you reduce teachers or you don't add the teacher, do do we then run the risk of actually needing more outplacement services or having more kids move to magnet schools?
Well, the magnet school part, for for me, I don't I don't know the program there enough to know if that would attract our our students. I don't know the answer to that. But, Brie, yes. In terms of class sizes of 22 and higher, as I said, the teacher can't, I use the triangle for tiered instruction. If you think about a triangle, the classroom teacher has the bottom. All the kids fall to the bottom. That's called tier one instruction. It is what they do for every student. And when you have under 22 students, you can usually a good teacher can meet the needs of all the students 22. But if you throw in even one student that has additional needs, the middle, tier two, they need you to stop and offer a little extra assistance. They can't always meet the needs then of the tier one or the tier two students in that classroom. And so, yes, to answer your question, very oftentimes, you do get students that fall behind and are in need of other services. You do also then get referrals, not necessarily students that will be special education, but you do get, hey. How come you've got this student falling behind and everybody else seems to be doing okay? Oh, because there is just is not enough time in that class to meet the needs of all of the learners.
So, Brie, it's a very real thing that the larger the classes are, the less you're going to meet the individual needs of all the learners. It's just a fact.
I have a couple questions. I don't know if they're for Valor or for Jody. The differences between the version of this budget you guys gave us on the fourteenth and the one that we're looking at tonight are fairly significant in this category. So I just wanted to make sure that those are correct numbers. The teacher's line is about 30,000 less. The speech teacher is about 22,000 less, and the school psychologist is about 10,000 less.
It is. So, as I mentioned, when we look to see what once we got the allotment of the title grants and the IDEA grants, figuring out exactly how we were going to spend them, because this section is a big ask, we were not able to fund the fourth and fifth grade teacher. As you guys know, the 160 that was taken last year, we said we'll move it to the 2%. So Jody and I working together to say, what can we do with what we have of title and IDEA grants to fund some of the teacher, salaries? And so we're out of there because they're put now into the grants. Now that means that we don't have those grants for other things. Right. But that roughly $60,000
is is money that is will be funded by grants, and that's why it's not written in? Yes. We reallocate it. K. Does anyone else have questions on this section?
I do. What is is there a dedicated para for the sixth grade?
No. There's no no classrooms have dedicated paras. The paras are assigned to needs of students. So, Marcy, the way it works with paraprofessionals is, and, again, these are the paraprofessionals that work with k six that are in this budget. You will have a paraprofessional perhaps, paraeducator that is assigned one on one with a particular student if their IEP, says they need someone with them at all times, or you will have a variety of students. Maybe there's three or four students that require para assistance at some point during the course of the day. So those paras will have schedules that say they go here or here or here or here. And so there is no para in our district that we don't have room para, if that's what you mean. No. For kids. Sure.
Yeah. So if there's any special need, you know, fifth graders that are going up to sixth graders, they would come with a pair. And
Not necessarily the same person, but, yes, the pair of support would follow them. Awesome. So the sixth graders, they're gonna be getting
they're they probably have different they're a little different than fifth graders. Right? They have they split up into different classes, and they move around, don't they, to different sections, map, art, stuff like that? Yeah.
Yeah. And and then they're also gonna be preparing themselves for middle school, and middle school can be quite an adjustment. So I would think that you would wanna keep the larger classrooms so that they could adjust to that. And, you know, you don't wanna be cuddled on them. I'm sure the sixth grader will be Graham is 13 in the middle school. I I can speak to that as a current middle schooler parent.
My kid doesn't have a class at Graham that's larger than 14 kids, and he actually has a class right now in which he is one of two kids in the class, which is kind of insane. But the class sizes are actually smaller at RAM than what his were at AES for for pretty much all of his time at AES. Wow. That's surprising.
Yeah. But but it's actually not if you look at, Hebron and, Marlborough's elementary schools, they actually have recommended class sizes listed on their websites. I I know Hebron does, and I'm pretty sure it's 22 or lower. Like, if a class goes over 22, they'll split it into another class.
Over 22, Caitlin, is that somewhat detrimental number in an elementary school, which is why when I showed you guys all of our enrollment reports, I only circled from 22 and above was because that seems to be the magic number is to try to keep it 22, or below. That's probably why they have that listed. What
about the school psychologist? That do we have, data that shows how much we actually use that? That seems to be a high number.
So the school psychologist is actually the only, support, staff that we have there. A lot of schools have a part time or full time, paid psychologist, social worker, BCBA, which is behavioral interventionist. The fact that we only have one is huge. We do have a couple of days of the one from because as a town, we are required to provide, like, a resource to the town of Andover. And when the town pays their bill for AHM, it does come with small number of services for the children, and they provide those services within the building. So a person from that's with us a few mornings, and she's not in here because that's part of the contract. But other than that, the school psychologist is the only one, and, that is actually unique. We we should have more than one person on staff. What do they do? They not only provide direct services to the kids. They not only provide, one on one mental health services to the kids as necessary. They do small groups. They do testing. She does all the psychological testing for all of our students who have IEPs, not just for their regular meetings and their annual meetings, but by law, you have to do triennials too. So every three years, every special education student that has an IEP is required to do a battery of tests, and she's the one that has to do them. You're essentially doubling this line item, though. Right? Well, We said if you look further down, you'll see 48,000,
dollars, eliminate or 45,000 eliminated under psych services in 03/2140. And the only reason why we had a half there was because we had been dealing for three years with a grant that we received that was a mental health grant, and that was paying for the additional portion of our school psychologist for three years.
So anything that's paid by a grant is not in this budget. Correct. If
it's, like, a known grant that that you've already received or that you are guaranteed to get. Which is why
in past years, if we were lucky recipients during the course of the year of a grant, and we were allowed to pay for something that had already been put in the budget, that's where a surplus comes into effect is because if, for example, Marcy, all of a sudden next year, they offered a mental health grant again, and they said, you can pay for your current school psychologist, we would say, great. And we would pay for her, and at the end of the year, we would have that money left. But that's not how the majority of the grants work. But post COVID there, we did have an opportunity to apply for technology grants and mental health grants. Those were the big ones when they yielded us some surplus a couple of years in a row.
Anybody else from the board? Anyone have other questions on the one on ones? I'm I'm all set. Thanks.
I did have another question. I noticed the, library salary increased quite a bit. That looks like more than 3%.
So, again, there was a portion of the librarian that was taken out of a title grant from title four, and so it returned. We did have a portion of of the librarian that was paid elsewhere. It's a veteran teacher, and so, it's not a brand spanking new teacher, but we did have a fair amount of that that was taken out of a grant, and we don't have that anymore.
Well, speaking of veteran teachers, we we have a lot. What are and what is they they're getting what is the highest paid teacher? I mean, they gotta be close to 6 figures?
They do have to be close in every district. Yep. And, if you want, at the next meeting, I will be glad to provide the teacher's contract so that you guys can look that up. It is available. But I will tell you that, our teachers are not paid, in excess of any of the other districts around. So we are not known to be the highest paid district. So, I'd wanna throw that out there before anybody assumes that our teachers are overpaid. They are not. No. I didn't say that at all. Not at all. I Like, for all the people that are on here, I wanna make sure if they look at our contract and they compare it to other districts, they will see that, it is almost comparable to the other districts, not even quite where, some of our neighbors are.
K. Okay. Does anyone have any questions on the one zero two, which is a paraeducators for special ed? I think we kind of already touched on that briefly. The one zero threes for the subs. I do have a question on here just because I know, like, last year, there were a few maternity leaves. Or is there any anticipated, like, increase in need for substitutes or long term subs for the upcoming budget?
Yes. We do. We we have a a nice flow of new Andover Elementary School babies that will be coming along, and we have already tried to, incorporate that to the best of our ability.
Okay. So that is incorporated into the numbers on the budget currently. Perfect. Anyone else?
Actually, if we can back up to paraeducators, those those went up quite a bit too. Did we add some?
Yes. There had been a vacancy for one, and, that hadn't been filled. And, yes, so this is one more than what was in last year's budget. We actually had two a need for two, and then we had a special education student move. And so, when that happened, we didn't have to replace the second one, but we did have to replace the first one.
And the pairs basically go with another with a with a student or a group of students that need extra help. Is that how it works?
As I said a few minutes ago, it is sometimes that they are one on one and sometimes that they service multiple students during the course of the day. And
what happens if if you find that you don't really need all the because this is for next year. We know what
based on the students' IEPs, we know exactly what's needed next year. Actually, usually, Mercy, it would go the opposite way. We would have somebody move in and potentially have a need that we hadn't anticipated. So those are usually the surprises with the budgets, not the other way around. But, yep, we do know what the needs are, for the students for next year. We've already gone through the IEPs. How many kindergartners are we gonna have next year?
We are anticipated to have for next year between '24 and '28. Thanks.
K. Does anyone have any other questions on the first page of the budget printout?
On the whole first page? Yep. Did you say we were gonna have some coaching clubs? I know you had cut that in half. There's
certain ones that will continue that are qualified as clubs, but the other ones, have kind of been mixed in with other after school programs, and the after school programs are covered by an after school grant right now. So it's our understanding that we would have half of the number of ones that we normally would in terms of our anticipation for next year. Is that after grant? Spend that full amount. Sorry.
Go ahead, Kate. I was just gonna ask, is that after school grant, was that for next year as well, or is that only for this year? But, again, it was only the 50,000. Nothing. Yeah. It's the smaller amount.
No. So we have a $50,000 grant for after school? That's how we pay for our after school program. Okay. I was just wondering. Anybody else on this page? Okay. We'll move on to page two.
Actually, I had another question. Hang on a second. It was the when you had mentioned the $15,000 for the retirement, I was trying to get clear clarity on what that is. You had said it was when they, when they don't take their sick leave or or vacation, and that carries over. Is that what that is? So,
hypothetically, let's say a teacher gets fifteen sick days a year and they don't use them. They can accumulate up to a certain amount. And then after their twenty five years of service, there is a certain number in the certified contract as well as the noncertified contract that says you can get 10% of up to so many. And so, when they retire, paid. That's standard with with all of their contracts. And when someone retires, then there is that small payout. We don't anticipate this year based on the age of the staff, based on the number of years in, based on who's told us. So we don't anticipate that there will be one this year. We're just gonna hope that they, they all remain with us through the whole of next year.
But that's what That's been that's been in the budget for a few years now. Right? The 15,000? And it hasn't been used. Right?
There was a portion of it that was used with a noncertified retirement, last year.
But there's You had a certified retirement a couple years ago that we used more than what was budgeted for. Yes. So Yes.
So is there a is there a fund, or do you keep can you keep that aside, you know, for that particular reason? It stays in the budget for that reason. Yes. It just stays in the budget. But, usually, there's I mean, for I don't know how schools do it, but,
sometimes you have it designated, and you just kinda keep that in an account so that you have that money instead of it getting spent on something else. Nope. Because our budgets our fiscal budgets are done from July 1 through June 30, and then all the funds roll over. So it has to be new year to year since our budgets are one year and everything rolls over. And so Marcy, you'll see when we get to the end of the year,
whatever we may not have used from a certain portion of our budget, we might be asked to move to another portion of our budget. But as Valerie just explained, we only get the use of that money per fiscal year. So we don't we're not allowed to set it aside in a in an extra account, to accommodate for that.
Gotcha. Yeah. The the only place that we would have to take that from otherwise would be from our 2%. Like, we don't have other funds the way that the town has multiple funds that they just can put money into on a budget year to year.
And, Marcy, I don't, I mean, I don't know if you're you're tracking this, but it's zero for next year.
Yeah. I see that. And I was just I was kinda looking at the budget earlier today, and I was, you know, I was looking at how we could save money because the increase is pretty high. And I know that the, school increase, you know, was so high last year, and I was just trying to look at places that we could save money. And when I started thinking about you know, because you had said, look. You know, we don't wanna have to use that money. But if we if we had, you know, some of these, higher paid teachers retire and then we hired, you know, new teachers, there'd be a lot of cost savings there even if we did have to spend the 15,000. You know? Because what's a a new teacher starts at? Yeah. I I don't know. I I haven't seen the contract. So I know there was a, a quick form that showed what teachers started at and what their interest is each time, but it seemed like there would be a lot of savings if we had some retirements,
even if we paid them the 15,000, like I said. I would have to beg to differ a little there because a very big amount of the reason why the school functions the way it functions is the expertise of these classroom teachers. And if you take a veteran's classroom teacher with the skills that they have, that they bring to the table in teaching, in classroom management, in the ability to in the case of this current sixth grade class that has 29, there is no way that if we didn't have two veteran teachers that worked up there in grade five and six
Actually, four, five, and six, all three of them there. There is no way You're not not even gonna have anyone handling that many students next year. Hey, guys. I I hate to kinda cut you off, but we we kinda need to stay on task. It is about 08:30, and we're on page one of five. So do you mind if we move on to the next page? Uh-huh. K. So on page two, does anyone have questions about anything on page two? The biggest increase on this page again is within the benefits section, which is an 18% increase.
I think she explained all the changes on this page. Correct? She explained everything on this page from what I can see? I believe so. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't have any questions. Okay. Thank you, Sharon.
I don't remember you mentioning other professional services board. The 11 10000?
Yes. This has gone up over the years when we had contract negotiations where we would have to have a lawyer at those, teacher negotiations or the noncert negotiations, and usually that's a few thousand extra. We don't have one next year. So to reduce it to the standard would be fine. This is for the lawyer, the 10,000?
That's part of of that as well as, the other things that we've taken out of this line is the the, professional services in terms of the the convention. We've taken that out of there for people Board continuing education for board members.
Right. But $10,000, that's what I'm just asking what that is. That's some lawyer?
Include anything legal that we need during the course of the year and the professional services for the board.
There's a lot of lines that say professional services, though. What what professional services exactly?
That's this whole section. They are professionals all the way on down
in the three What professional services do we get besides an attorney for the board?
CABE and professional opportunities that they take like their professional development in November in attending the conference. And the summer.
And in the summer. So conference in the summer also.
K. We have board continuing education, like a board retreat for all of us to figure out our goals for the next year, and we usually have someone come to facilitate that for us as a moderator.
Okay. Just like with PD, that's required for teachers, paras, and others. It is required for boards of education as well. Anybody else? Similar with fiscal?
Other services for fiscal? Is that this It's not CABE for fiscal. It's CASBO, but yes. Okay.
And then I wanted to ask, how many employees? Because the last one is payroll services. How many employees do we have?
Jody, how many people do roughly 50, would you say? K. I don't know the exact count, but I'd say around there. Yeah.
They handle all the tax component of it as well. Does. Yeah. That's a a big lift.
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Less than five, and I have one. It's just easier. Page three.
I have some questions in the in the April. I know last year, we ended up transferring a lot of money, to cover costs in this section. And so I just wanna make sure, the way that it's written right now, are any of those costs from from last year's budget that we transferred things that we need to be aware of for next year? Were they onetime expenses? I don't quite remember exactly what they were all for, but I know it was over a $100,000. So, Julie, what do you have a lot of changes there.
Has that transfer sheet on, deck for February 11 because we'd transfer a 112 at one point, but we didn't use the 112. There was still somewhere between 40,000. Was it 44,000?
Yeah. You used 80. Of the one twelve that you transferred, you used 80, and I think then we still had 40 or 50
left in that account. And yeah. And I and I know some of that stuff was not for, like, ongoing expenses. It was, like, something we have to do every, like, five or eight years or something like that. But Part of the, bit that was left at the end was from that line, Kate, from the transfer line. K. Does anyone have other questions on page two?
Well, the HVAC 17,000, I I was trying to figure out what that was.
That's HVAC repair. You know, we have we just you know, I can sum from this year. We had a damper actuator go or the heat in one area is not working, and it's service calls to come in and, figure out what's going on and why the heat isn't working.
So we can is the system? Is there a contract in there with them as well?
Yeah. And there's annual, yeah, annual maintenance contract as well. Yep. I don't know the year of the system, RC. I I mean, I do know, Scott Leduc is very proactive, in really trying to, you know, get parts and and things. And, it is an area we are are looking at for future budgets, as I mentioned. But it's, you know, it's an old building, and I think the HVAC, you know, it I'm sure town hall also has any school I've worked in, you know, HVACs are it's it's a big it's a very big building. So Yeah. 17,000 is probably a a very That's with moderate estimate. Yeah.
Annual service contract with them as well. But this is one area that, not necessarily for this year, but for the following year, we've already started to work with our contractor, who does our our regular annual, inspections and our quarterly inspections to start to get quotes, to start to figure out what we'd be putting together for the next year, eighteen to twenty four months down the road. So we know that that's gonna pop up, if not next year, the following school year. We're working on that.
Yeah. It made me wonder when I saw the, the energy audit, they had mentioned wrapping the pipes and how much that would save. And I kind of wondered why we don't just go ahead and do it and hire someone to you know, why do we have to wait for, you know, them to do it and maybe someone in Thank you. Because that was recommendations
to say, let's do it before July 1. It's it'll definitely be on our next regular meeting as a topic of discussion. I if you remember correctly that night, there were several people on our board that were not comfortable just moving forward and saying, let's just do it. So Well, I I didn't mean with that company. I just meant, you know, ourselves. I mean, we have other companies that work for us. And
you know? Because it costs money that we don't have, and it's not in the budget. So do you have other questions on page two? No. Thanks. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to page three.
I had a question about transportation. I guess I never realized how much that fluctuates and perhaps it has historically, and I haven't noticed. And so I see that it's separate from special ed transportation. So is that, like, one twelve a solid number, or is there are we in danger of going to the $1.37, or will we get lucky and, you know, save $20? Like, how solid is that number, I guess?
I can speak to that, Val, if you want. So I looked at the contract, you know, and I looked at the we have three bus runs, and we pay $204 per bus run. So it's based off that contract. And I think what actually happened last year because I questioned this because this year, we're going to be over. And I think that was an area where when the board had to cut, when your budget did had to get cut, you took from that area. So that 87,000 that is in this year's budget is not enough. It is not going to cover the bus, the buses for this year.
Got it. Just like the electric, it's one of those spots where you shaved from and you're figuring out how to pay the bill? Yeah. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Thanks. Thank you.
The the last version of the budget that we got, that was 120, and now it's $1.12. Why the difference in that?
We have field trips from there, so, that was one reason why we we were looking to shave this budget as lean as possible. So we any cushion we had for field trips is taken out.
Okay. So So I think I asked this in August, and I'll ask it again. But I know with enrollment up, is there a risk of needing a fourth bus? And then I and then I guess and another consideration too, I know they're gonna be doing the the the bridge on Long Hill, which I imagine is gonna start creating similar issues to the Bunker Hill issues. So, I I mean, what are we doing to avoid kids being on the bus for hour and a half with only three routes?
The the fact of the matter is for us to add a fourth bus adds over $30,000 for that one bus run. And so since I've been here, we've been dwindling this down to say we're not having that fourth bus run and use the difference once we did have special education needs, transportation needs to and from RAM, and the outplacement. But if we did as as as the board, if you guys wanted to discuss that, adding that fourth bus back in would mean over $30,000.
Are all three bus runs close to an hour total? I feel like that might be true. Yeah.
With the changes over the past couple of years to Bunker Hill and a few other places, I do think that there have been times when it's been close to that. Mhmm. There was a change in where the buses could turn around, and the one location that one of the buses was allowed to turn the bus around became unavailable for them to, and so they had to go quite a distance to turn around and come back, and that added about fifteen minutes to one of the bus runs. Yeah. I I followed one of our buses
all the way into Bolton the other day. Up to yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Up to Munson's, pretty much. Right? Yep. Yep. All the way in there.
So, I mean, that's always going to be a separate school related issue there. But for us to add in a fourth bus, it's over 30,000.
Is is the special ed transportation that's in the budget related to the outplacement that you were possibly looking at taking out of the budget because it won't be a reoccurring expense, or is that separate?
So that actually is a very small component of it. We do run three we have three I'm just making sure I don't give any details. We have three student needs that would fall under transportation. One requires specialized transportation, and, therefore, all of the expenses associated with that are in here. One requires midday transportation. It can be any vehicle, but we rent the town vehicle. And the third one requires reimbursement to a third party for transportation because it's done at a third of the cost of getting a bus solely for that student. So there are three special situations that fall under this transportation line item for individual students plus the three buses through DATCO to take our
regular routes to and from school. So taking taking the special ed transport off the budget would it is it is an expense that will be there again next year and the year after, like, for a while. Yes? Yes. K. That's why I only recommended the tuition be considered. Yeah. Does anyone have other questions on page three?
Are we happy with the Eastcon service contract? I guess that's what the, the instructional technology repair.
Yes, Marcy. We've been very lucky with them, for a variety of reasons. They they know the school. They've been there. They often come and perform troubleshooting and have a relationship with a fair number of our staff members that try to troubleshoot on their own within the school. Over the years, they've been able to kinda bundle services for us at reduced rates because we do use the RASK. So when we needed to have worked on over and above that contract, the rates were less than they would have been to go any place else because there's, what, eight resks in the state. And, you know, it's LEARN, it's ACES, it's CREC, it's EastCon, and they are partially funded through the state and federal government. And so their responsibility is to the region to which they serve. And so the prices and the service that we get through them, we
are we are very happy with the service. We did look at that. I can't remember, Jerry or Shannon. You you guys might remember how many years ago it was. We we did look at, other providers and, like, compare costs, and it was the best option at the time as well.
Yeah. Usually, they're significantly different. And the biggest thing that I know made a difference was the fact that EastCon was able to come into the school, at least one or two days a week, whereas the other was, to even make it close as far as cost was all remote.
And they're an That can make a huge difference. They're a regional educational system. But when they because there's a PowerSchool problem, they deal in PowerSchool. All of their programming is through educational, centers. So if we were to hire a computer place that doesn't deal just in schools, very oftentimes for them to make that transition is a lot of hours to figure out our seesaw. They know seesaw. CEN, they know CEN. Power school, frontline, they so they are educational technology driven. Mhmm. Okay. Anything else on this page?
Okay. We'll move on. Actually, sorry. So so we have admin technology repair and maintenance is 43,000, and instructional technology repair and maintenance, 10,000. And then we have instructional technology license and fees. Okay. I guess, like, I guess those two I'm not quite sure of the difference. What? $18,000 one on the 530-2230 line? No. The the, 4432.
Right. So one is for the actual service, the contract with them. The other one is for our web service contract. And then the 18,000 is for the individual licenses and fees for the programs themselves, Seesaw, CEN, PowerSchool, School Messenger, E rates. So the 43,000 and the 10,000? Correct.
They'll they are? 43 goes solely to EastCon. Oh, that's Eastcon. Oh, I thought it was 10,000. No. No. No. 43. What is the 10,000?
That would be the other web services, that, when they put together our, website, those sorts of web services, the additional services that come with that, not our our general contract. So, like, a couple of years ago, I can't remember which board member actually was working on it. Was it you, Kate? It was me. With well, it was mostly Taylor. But With getting that year, it was spent solely on getting the website revamped. So we do have those services when things have to be posted on there.
So Do you know Jody, do you know how much money we actually spent in that last year? Yeah. I was gonna say I can't tell you on the 10,000 exactly what,
you know, company it was, but I looked at those two areas in-depth to see what we've spent over the past two years, and that is what we spent. So to be to be honest, I I would love in future budgets to maybe condense some of these accounts because they are all kind of all over the place. But when I did look at all those accounts to try to find some savings, I could not. We I looked at the past history of the past two to three years,
and that was what it was. Great. Thank you. Anything else, Marcy? No. Thanks. K.
K. We'll move on to page four. I know other people probably have questions on this page. I guess my biggest question, as opposed to what, the budgets were for the June, like, all the electricity, propane, that whole section, what were our actuals for those years? Like, how far off were we from what the budgets were?
Jody would have the actuals, but as you know from last year, we we were over Yeah. Sections.
But when they took the sections except for diesel because that's, separate, we don't get that till the end of the year, from the town. But when we added the other ones, we were above on one and below on the other, and we merged the utilities and came with the 201062 number. Okay.
So and the thing is is I didn't think, Kate, that even going back six or seven years would make a difference. Since this year, the change for us is with solar, we're starting our trend again. Yeah. If we do do, the, other Eversource with RLE, that would start our trends again. So, as long as in the end, we knew that the $2.00 1 was gonna cover the expenses this year because they went from 200, thousand to 261 to $2.00 1, that's what we're gonna hope for this year is to be still in those range and start collecting the data again after our upgrades.
Okay. And then, the heating oil within this section, that's where you guys were saying that you know how much is specifically for the gym and how much is for the rest of the school? Because we have two separate tanks. Yeah. So ground tank and there's the gym tank. And the gym much of the 103,000 is the gym? 10,000.
10,000? Yeah. Okay. Anyone else have questions? Okay. We'll move on to page five. Anyone have questions on page five? Okay. Does anyone have any other questions that they didn't ask so far or any comments they'd like to make before we move on to public comment? I'm all set for now. Thanks. Thank you. Jerry, you good? You're on mute, Jer. Jerry, you're on mute. Put your thumb up or gotta click on mute. Is that it? Yep. You got it.
Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to say, out of all the board members, I think I'm the only one who's a teacher, who spent a life career as a teacher. And as I look through the budget, it's well worth it because I look at this not only from the perspective of a resident attacks, but I look at it mostly as a teacher because I've been in the classroom. I've worked with parents. I've worked with administration. I've seen the bus issues that can occur. I see the social issues that can occur. The student issues that are there, the maintenance issues. Being in a classroom where the heat doesn't work when I was teaching, there was no fun being in that classroom. I couldn't change the thermostat, and it was 60 degrees in there and getting colder. I think that this budget is a fine budget that, obviously, Valerie put a lot of work into. She's she's covered every possible item here. And I think that it's really to me, I don't have questions because I lived it. And I lived it for many years. Not this particular budget, but the one from my district that I worked in. So I just like to assure people that we're not being frivolous or wasting money. When we're investing money in education, it is just that an investment. And I feel as though if if Andover wants to become an up and coming town and they want to offer general people, general general population looking for a home to purchase, they can know that Andover is, if not the best, one of the best in the areas, and it's because of what we put into education. And that's the only thing I wanted to say,
but I I really feel this is a family that we can invest in.
Thank you. Jerry. Brie, Sharon, Shannon, Alicia, Mercy, you guys have anything else you wanna say before we move on? I just wanna thank, Valerie and
Jody for all of their tremendous work. It certainly, is very well explained and supported, and, I understand it a lot better, than I even did a week ago. So thank you very much for all of your time and effort and, for all of your, responses tonight. It really helps us understand it a lot better. And, to me, the reasons why we need to increase the budget, not having done so, very much, for the last decade. Thanks a lot.
I just wanted to thank you for explaining the budget in detail because I learned a lot as well. And I also wanted to, just say that I I feel that it's very important to add another teacher to keep the classroom sizes small because that's part of the reason why Andover gives an excellent education to the kids. It's very important.
Thank you. I also wanted to let you guys know, I feel like for myself, this is the first year where I thought that I saw the earlier version of the budget and then actually saw change in progress in different categories. And I personally really appreciate the effort that you guys have put into trying to see which grants like, how how you could take money out of a section and put it into a grant that you know that that we're going to get and and see those areas go down in cost. Because I think usually when the school budget is presented, people don't see that work and that behind the scenes effort to try to make the categories be less than what they are on paper. We just see the the final product, and you can't really change you know, we can't invest more or less in the cost of a teacher on an individual school year the way that you could to fund a purchase that you might make in twenty years.
So I I appreciate seeing the the in between work.
Well, next year, we'll make sure to share all of our copies with you because usually, done the five iterations before it gets to you guys. So thank you, Kate, because in the future, we will do that. We'll actually be able to show you the whole process. Yeah. Thank you. Before you get to public speak, I just wanted to say one thing while it was on my mind. Yep. And it was for tomorrow is a delay, just so that everybody knows, and school. And we do want to, make sure that we thank the public works guys for getting to the school today in case we went in at a regular time tomorrow and helping get rid of the 16 inches that were piled up there. So
Yeah. The the roads in our town are actually decently better than they are in Glastonbury and Hebron because I speak from my experience today. So they did an awesome job for sure.
I do wanna say I I do appreciate, getting the budget ahead of time or at least the draft. I know it has changed, and I and, again, I do appreciate some some of the changes that were made. And I know it's an attempt to, to keep the bottom line lower. And I am a little concerned with 11% increase. I think that that's gonna be a tough tough pill to swallow for the townspeople. I know a lot of people are struggling, and, you know, there's, you know so we we need to be, we just need to be cognizant of that so that, you know, we can be sensitive and, you know, doing our best to try to help with the whole situation because I know it's not easy. So k.
Everyone else good? We'll move on to public speak. Just one quick thing, Kate. Thank you for pointing out what you did earlier that, you know, there's a lot of iterations to developing this budget because you're right. You don't see oftentimes that it's already been shaved. With that said, I just I do have a concern that, you know, if one special education student moves into town, this budget is so tight from what I can see. Like, that makes me nervous because one special education student, high need student, could really, you know, make us not be able to pay the electric bill. So I'm I'm concerned about that, because because, again, I don't see anywhere you can take. I don't see anything that you could take to make up $80.90, $100,000 to educate another special education student. So I'm concerned about that, but I do appreciate all the work that's gone into it to get it down as low as possible and hopefully still be able to meet the needs of our kids. So that's it for me.
Sure. And that's why we have the 2% nonlapsing account, which is why you just a great explanation as to why we have it. Yeah. Yeah. To take care of that need because it absolutely is for emergency reasons. And while I greatly appreciate, Valerie's efforts to try to get our budget lower and absolutely appreciate what Marcy said, which I know we've tried to do and be cognizant of every year, we also have to, you know, have that 2% nonacting account for that very thing, which is, if it if we zero it out, like you said, we we run the risk of having to go back to the to the town for an additional appropriation. So, I'm not in favor of totally zeroing out our, nonlapsing account for now. Agreed. Yeah. Thanks.
Okay. We will move on to public speak. Elizabeth Partridge? K? No comment at this point. Okay. Diane Grineer?
Very interesting. Thank you very much. I applaud all of you. I realize that you're all volunteers, most of you. And, thank you for, taking on this task and, all the time and effort that you put into these things. Though I don't have any children at the school, the it are it is my tax dollars at at work here, and, I appreciate your efforts to keep the budget low. And, I found that all all the questions and, answers here were very enlightening, and I thank you very much for all you do for us. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. Kathleen, anything else?
Happy birthday, Diane. I can't believe you're on a board of ed meeting on your on your It's your birthday.
Oh, thank you. And, also, more importantly, this is also national peanut brittle day. Important way to celebrate birthday.
Kathleen, I think that's Bill DeRozier's. It is. Bill and I just will reiterate. We all said thank you for all the hard work, and I know this is is hard, and I worry about the same things. You know? One little blip in the night is such a tight budget, but that's why we have the the nonlapsing for. So but thank you all of you for your hard work, and, it was very enlightening tonight. Thank you.
Thank you. There's a phone number here. That's (860) 989-6988. If you could say who you are also.
That's me, Carol Lee, and I just would like to say thank you. Very well presented budget. Thank you. Liz? Thank you. I've got nothing for now. Doris?
Good evening. It was very informative and concise, so thank you for your professional integrity and, the personal investment in each and every Andover child and Andover's future. Thank you so much. Thank you. Jen? I am all set. Thank you. Kim? All set. Thank you. Mhmm. Nick? I'm all set. Thank you. Christina?
Just thank you to Val for presenting the budget as it is. Mhmm. Amanda?
I just wanna say thank you for explaining the budget. I appreciate everybody's hard work. Mhmm. Godwin?
Thank you for putting together a great presentation and a wonderful budget and keeping kids first in our community. Kelly? All set. Thank you. K. Ed?
So my question is, it seems in the past where we've had some contentious conversations at the town budget meeting, I'm been trying to think of suggestions to make from a messaging standpoint of how we can do better communicating oh, there we go. Hi. How we can do better communicating some of the things that came up today that I felt were very useful. So for instance, one of the things is, you know, maybe we should be preparing our students to step into larger class sizes, at RAM, which I assumed that they were larger as well. And I was very surprised to find out that they are much, much smaller. So, you know, some of the things that Valerie put together, I think, are really helpful, like the the chart of comparing us to other schools even though it's not necessarily apples to apples. But,
I'm sure that you were doing this, but I think the the as much that we can do to demonstrate the work that has been done to really try to limit it? Because as you're going through it, Valerie, I was just like, I don't understand how we could not increase supplies costs for teachers. Like, how are we not you know, paper cost everything costs more than it used to, and yet we're not increasing those budgets, which means that the teachers don't have as I know this is silly to say, but glue and scissors and all those kinds of things. But now I see why you were trying not to, because also we need teachers, and there's just so many things that are fixed required costs as well. So I'm actually gonna think about it and see if I could give the board any suggestions if I think of the I think it'll be very, very important for us to do our best to, clearly and calmly communicate to that meeting for as much good as that'll do, for some folks, but so that we can maybe avoid some of the misunderstandings as we can anyway.
I I will say this now. I don't think the date for the town meeting is set right now. It was supposed to be the same night as our board of ed meeting, and the first electman did tell me that they were going to move it. But we are hoping to have a board of education, just informational meeting just prior to the town meeting to kind of explain things possibly in more detail because, yes, like you said, people just don't they don't attend this meeting. They come to the town meeting, and then they don't understand anything beforehand.
So thank you. Oh, that's a great idea. Who see? Hopefully, it'll they should just publish. But the meeting starts earlier, but it is what it is. That we're working on it.
Have we done this before? And I don't know how many people besides myself actually read the paper, but, I wonder if it would be beneficial to put, like, a a piece in the paper, maybe after that meeting, but soon before the vote just to explain some of the broad we have. Okay. I assumed you had, but I wasn't sure. Amber?
Oh, thank you so much. This was very informative. Thank you. Mhmm.
I think that's it. If I missed anyone, please let me know. Okay. So our next, regular board meeting for the board of Ed is February 11. We will likely have a, committee meeting, for the bathroom committee prior to that, but I don't have the date for it yet. We're hoping hoping for sometime next week. So we'll keep you guys all posted on that. Okay. We can adjourn. It is 09:05. You need a motion to adjourn?
I don't know. It's what we do. It's a special meeting. But if you wanna make one, sure. Oh, absolutely. Motion to adjourn. Second. Second.