BOARD OF EDUCATION

SPECIAL MEETING

BUDGET WORKSHOP

Derby High School Library

February 11, 2009

6:30 P.M.

Opening Ceremonies: all rose and pledged allegiance

Roll Call:

Present: Jodi Chevarella, Ken Marcucio, Sheila Parizo, Jim Stadt, Kim Kreiger. There is a quorum.

Absent: Brad Tobin, Margo Bondi and Rebecca O’Hara

Also present:, Superintendent Dr. Stephen Tracy and Business Manager Nancy O’Dea-Wyrick

Mrs. Parizo explained the budget process and how they have arrived at this point. It is more complex than just keeping the budget the way it is. There are contractual obligations, non-bargaining personnel will not receive raises this current budget. Health care and special education services will see increases. The Board of Education has two roles, provide the best education to the children in Derby and the fiduciary obligations set forth by state and federal mandates as well as contractual agreements at taxpayer scrutiny and expense. Staff and faculty lay offs are on the table. Services and programs will be impacted. She asked that people contact their legislatures in Hartford, the Tax Board and the Mayor who have historically under funded the Board’s budget requests consistently.

Public Portion

Libby Maldonado – 4 Cedric Place - The Co-president of Irving School PTO. She said she has a son in second grade at Irving School. She understands concessions need to be made, but not with the teachers or with the curriculum. She wanted to know if the Board has looked into a Financial Advisor. Is there only one medical insurance? These are concessions that can be made rather than the teachers and curriculum. She wants to know why the City has two financial advisors. The City needs to come together.

Chantal Haefele 65 Hillcrest Avenue. She is a mom of three with two in school. The children are our future. The teachers we have are wonderful. She also feels President Obama wants to create jobs and Derby is taking away one of the most important jobs – our teachers. Also, she heard certain parties and positions are taking cuts such as the Superintendent to better the education of our children.

Sharon Toscano – 40 Atwater Avenue, the Treasurer of the Irving School PTO addressed the board. We need our teachers. Has the board looked into taking athletics in the high school away? She has heard about taking it away from the middle school. Let’s keep our teachers and paraprofessionals. She also doesn’t like world languages being cut. You need that to go to college.

Dawn Grippo – 12 General Wooster Road. She feels very strongly about keeping the teachers, because when the economy improves it will take ten times as long to get them back into the system. She feels the board should keep the teachers instead of the $107,000.00 for professional development. If the economy was fine, go ahead and add it. Don’t add things that weren’t there as well as the $50,000.00 student evaluations. We’ve lived this long without it. The board needs to think about taking things that haven’t been there out before taking away what’s already there.

Linda Green – library specialist at DHS/MS. On behalf of all three library specialists she has a letter summarizing why it is important that Derby have a professional library staffing level.

Mary Beth Adanti - 41 Chestnut Drive. She has two athletic kids. Sports for kids are a big deal. It creates a balance across the board. Also, the technology class should not be taken away. Technology is the future. She has heard there may be changes to the all-day kindergarten program. Mrs. Parizo asked that people not listen to rumors as the all day kindergarten has never been discussed.

Manual Espaillat 70 Ida Avenue. He asked if the board has asked the teacher’s union to make some payroll concessions. Dr. Tracy said he cannot comment on that in public session but he appreciates the point.

Tracy Hayden – 10 Franklin Avenue. She is a teacher at Irving School and a parent of two children. She purchased a house here a year ago. She doesn’t want to regret that decision.

? Third grade teacher – Irving School. She also has children in the school. She does not live in Derby, but she chooses to bring her children to Derby. She doesn’t want to see how far we have come that it goes down hill with losing teachers.

Mary Beth Adanti 41 Chestnut Drive – What would happen to the students taking technology and world languages? Would they be forced into unsupervised study periods. Can we try and push for some type of early retirement? Dr. Tracy said technology is not all being taken away.

Keely Edwards – literacy coach at Irving School. She attended a language arts meeting where area reading, English and language arts teachers get together. Derby has come so far in the area of literacy. She feels they will get so much further behind with these cuts.

Public Portion closed. Once the workshop is completed the public portion will be reopened for comments.

FY 2010 Operating Budget:

Dr. Tracy laid out an overview of what they will accomplish at this meeting. February 17th the board will be receiving Dr. Tracy’s official recommended budget. The next meeting will be Saturday February 21st at 9:00 a.m. at a place to be determined. February 26th will be at the H.S. Auditorium where the board will adopt a budget. March 2nd the budget will be delivered to the City. The Tax Board will then review it and the final review will be by the Board of Aldermen.

Business Manager Nancy O’Dea-Wyrick will present the budget format.

There was talk about significant changes within the budget. There was discussion of the current bottom line $17,371,000.00 not counting grant funds (Title 1 and IDEA). This will be an increase of $771,000.00 or 4.6% over the current year operating budget. This is a draft that will keep changing. Grant funds will also be discussed. They will also look at the proposed budget by location (school) and then the cost of opening the new Derby Middle School.

Nancy O’Dea-Wyrick presented the budget by location and program pages.

There are the four schools, the central office, special education office, maintenance and operations, information technology, adult continuing education (only happens if there is a matching grant from the state), system wide services (buses) and St Mary St Michael nursing services.

Nancy then showed the program pages. Each program reflects by school: salary, non personnel costs and grants if any. It also shows the FTE’s. It will also show the benefit costs by school.

There was over a 16.5% increase for health insurance and through negotiations got it down to 12%. It is now down to a 10% increase at a savings at about $50,000.00.

They have increased unemployment allotment from 35,000.00 to 98,000.00.

Degree changes by contract have resulted in a decrease allotment from 32,000.00 to 14,000.00.

The life insurance coverage came in at 12,000.00 from 23,000.00.

Nancy handed out information on the budget school by school. There are significant differences in the per pupil spending level.

Nancy went over the projected operating budget of the new middle school which will open sometime during the 2009-2010 fiscal year. The budget assumes the building will be open for the full fiscal year. At some point with the guidance of the building committee there will be an estimate made of when it will open. Then the number will be adjusted. The school right now shares an assistant principal. Should the new school have their own assistant principal? They also share a guidance clerk. There will be a need for more custodial care.

The cost to maintain the gas fired turbine will be almost 50,000.00, but Derby will save money. It will also cost 200,000.00 to feed the turbine. There is an estimated savings of 178,000.00. The turbine will generate the electricity for the middle school and will also generate some of the electricity for the high school. Nancy said there was an extra 20% in the electricity line to run the (chiller?) at the architect’s recommendation to do that.

There is a line item of 4,500.00 to move the 7th and 8th grades. The 6th grade would be over the summer with in-house staff custodians.

Nancy distributed the updates and explained the detail of the pieces that add up to 17.4 million.

Mrs. Parizo asked board members to bring suggestions to the meeting on the 21st.

Jodi Chevarella said the gate funds were asked for from Mr. Orazietti in November. She wanted to know if there is enough in there for the middle school sports. It cannot be used for library books etc. It is the student athletic fund.

Mr. Marcucio said maybe we could look at cross country for co-opting with Ansonia or someone else that is dropping this course.

Jodi said the board could look at eliminating department head positions. They have no supervisory skills, they do not do evaluations or supervising any teachers or over seeing any curriculum. There only role is to say how many pencils you need. There are six department head positions. Mr. Thompson had said that role is not that efficient right now.

Jodi also asked about the assistant principal position at the middle school. That should be re-evaluated after the first year.

Instead of the IT squad, Derby can look at kids earning extra credit through technology more on a volunteer basis versus paying people coming over the summer and do that at 20,000.00.

Jodi also wanted to look at the clerical position for Human Resources as far as filling that new position. Also, the auditing service to review the test scores, she feels the principals did a good job versus having an outside agency do that for us.

Jodi also feels there should be smaller group sizes in classrooms.

Kim Kreiger said the thing that jumps out for her are all the new initiatives and being able to look at figures and be able to retain at least one library media specialist.

Public Portion

Fran Gallo – principal of Irving School. If you cut teachers you are severely limiting the ability to serve the kids. Two years ago, grade three turned in solid CMT score. They made AYP every year up to the year before that. When the second graders got to grade three, they did a remarkable job. Last year, third grade was cut to two. Two fourth grades with 25 in each class. You can’t control the mix and there were too many children for the workload coming at them. Last year, Irving did not make AYP, because of the fourth grade class that passed in third grade, we lost ground. If you cut teachers, one of the grade levels will be cut, most likely grade six. That is the third grade class that did well. If the paraprofessionals who provide remediation get cut, does the sixth grade not get the paraprofessional or does the fifth grade?

Sally Bonina – 6 Mohawk Avenue – principal Derby Middle School. When the principals submitted their budgets, they did so with their priorities first. Her priority is not finding 30,000.00 through gate fees and putting it to re-in store her athletic program. Her priorities are to keep her teachers. She is offended to hear can we take this 30,000.00 and put it there and taking away programs that have improved the performance of the students in the school. The assistant principal provides many things to our children. She wants to go on record as saying the 30,000.00 is more important to put in academics as opposed to sports.

Linda Coppola – principal Bradley School. The hardest part about cutting this year is there is nowhere to cut. They had to cut so much last year. Any new ideas or initiatives were cut. We just have teachers and para’s and books. She has seventy third graders going to two fourth grades. On paper she is losing three teachers, but she has to cut four. She is going to have to go down to two second grades, two third grades, two fifth grades and two sixth grades to get that fourth grade in. The morale is horrible after these workshops. The St. Mary’s factor is not being talked about, they are on shaky ground. There are seventy students enrolled in that school from Derby.

(No Name) presented some ideas for thinking outside the box. Maybe Derby can be re-negotiating some of the bus routes currently being used. Nancy O’Dea-Wyrick said she is looking into it. Derby can do it with the same buses, but we would have to shift the start of the school day. (No Name) said it is unbelievable to her that she has to order stuff out of catalogs. She has offered her time to go to Staples or Wal-Mart for other departments. She paid 11.00 for a football, when she could get one for 3.00 at Wal-Mart. She also wanted to know if the fields can be sold for names, like the pro’s do. She also wonders if businesses could adopt programs in the school, like the adopt a highway program. Dr. Tracy went to Lowe’s the other day to see if they would be interested in the sponsorship of an enterprise center at the high school for student businesses. They are very interested. They sent over 1,000.00 worth of wood.

Dr. Tracy said there is 6,000.00 for a grant writer to go to work looking for things like that.

(No Name) said fundraising for a paraprofessional or a program that would have more benefit for the kids is another idea. Also, there is a choice for 22-26 paychecks a year. If everyone was required to take 26 paychecks, the City could get interest on that money longer. Interns costs about 11,000.00 a year. The substitute account is often times a bone of contention. If we were to recruit people to substitute for the school system and in lieu of pay they would get benefits for the year. Benefits for an individual costs 8,000.00. Many people want part time jobs or jobs in the school system because they are not necessarily the bread winner in the family, but need medical benefits. We could advertise to work in the school system for the school year for benefits as a substitute teacher. Finally, we need to encourage people toward retirement. This person could receive benefits, a percentage of grants brought into the school system at a quasi-site for that position.