The Board of Education’s CIP/Facilities/Finance (BOE CFF) Subcommittee went over December’s itemized estimate report, along with facilities updates, during their Tuesday, January 27 meeting.

For her financial report, Director of Business and Finance Tanja Gouveia said the BOE spent approximately $7.1 million for the month of December. Year-to-date, she said they have an expenditure of $41.1 million, with $38 million encumbered.

This leaves their current balance at $12.4 million.

Gouveia said they have about $12.1 million in anticipated obligations, leaving them with a projected year-end balance of just over $309,000 — expending 99.66% of their total budget.

The bottom line, she said, is that they are doing pretty well. Gouveia noted they did not have very many changes over the prior month.

Their balance did increase by $46,627, which Gouveia said can be mostly attributed to their Excess Cost Grant.

The certified salaries category showed a deficit of $83,104. The certified teacher account was reduced by around $105,000 — $40,000 to cover teachers on leave and $63,000 attributed to a transfer request.

“So we did see an increase of teachers on leave,” Gouveia explained. “And when teachers go out on long-term leaves, the district has to backfill them with substitutes and we have to pay them a teacher’s rate ... so that’s why this account has been reduced.”

Salaries continues to be in a strong position with a balance of $206,000. Gouveia said this is mostly due to their non-certified account, which has “pretty much been the theme the entire year.”

This stems from the district’s unfilled positions, including one in the business office and some in paraeducators. This also included one in custodial that went unfilled for a while, but has since been filled.

Gouveia noted one thing the business office has to do is manually recalculate all of their para positions due to the equity adjustment in January.

That line item is $102,000, which Gouveia said “might be a little high.” She feels the number will come down and that, once they manually recalculate every para, the line will likely be adjusted.

Gouveia said recalculating will take a while because the business office is still short-staffed.

“So it might take all the way through February, but the money is in all the salary accounts, so we are looking good in this area,” Gouveia explained.

Benefits saw very little change, according to Gouveia. They have $7.6 million in their anticipated obligations. However, this number will change as they have not recalculated the district’s FICA, Medicare, and pensions yet, which typically happens around March-April.

Contracted services, Gouveia said, is always their “wild card” area. Currently, the category has a deficit of $126,000 due to behavior therapist (BT) contracted services, which average about $300,000 per year.

Year-to-date, Gouveia said they have spent $180,000 in these services, encumbered $40,000, and anticipate another $100,000 in expense.

“So as much as I hate saying that, I’m not sure what else we’re going to do. We’re going to request another transfer at one point to take the contingency account and move it up to BT services, but we’ll do that later on in the year,” Gouveia explained.

Moving on to supplies, Gouveia said the electricity line item is looking pretty good since everything that happened last year with the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) “has been somewhat mitigated.”

However, they are now seeing a deficit in natural gas. Over the past month, Gouveia saw a 73% increase in demand for natural gas.

“Of course, some of that has to do with the time of the year ... but it was pretty unusual,” Gouveia said. “I looked back at historical trends, and I haven’t seen anything that high.”

As a result, Gouveia increased the forecast a little bit, hence the deficit. She said this is to try and capture anything that is upcoming, but hopes it will back off for the next couple of months.

Reed Solar Panels

Facilities Director John Barlow provided an update regarding the solar system at Reed Intermediate School.

Around March 2024, Barlow said they received some calls and complaints about the building’s roof leaking.

Barlow said their roofing contractor went out there many times and determined that the leak was coming from under the solar panels. The solar system was originally installed by a company which sold it to the current company that owns it, Onyx Renewables LLC.

While Onyx Renewables LLC came out to the site a few times, Barlow said the company was reluctant to remove the panels because it was concerned about its loss of revenue.

Barlow and his team then spoke to Public Works Director Fred Hurley, who Barlow called instrumental in getting the solar system put onto the roof.

Hurley recommended the company AEC Solar, which installed solar panels for Newtown Municipal Center and Head O’Meadow Elementary School, to remove the panels at Reed. This way, the district’s roofing contractor would be able to make the needed repairs.

“And upon doing that, what we found was a very bad installation of the solar racking system, which is causing the water to leak into the building,” Barlow explained. “And per [Onyx’s] contract, they are responsible for the roofing repairs.”

Afterwards, Barlow and his team went “back and forth” with Onyx on the issue. Barlow said he sent lots of pictures and information to Onyx, but the company essentially refused to pay the $11,000 in bills for the roofing repairs and the solar removal.

In the meantime, Barlow learned when the solar system went on the roof, there were a number of times that the building’s main breaker had tripped.

“So it’s a 2500 amp main. The building would go dark, the generator would come on, and nobody really had a clear path to what was causing that,” Barlow said.

That was until Barlow went on the roof with the solar team to remove the panels and learned an inverter had shorted on the roof. They inspected the inverter and did not see any damage. However, when they attempted to restart the inverter, it took out the main breaker for the building.

This confirmed the solar system was causing the issue, and so Barlow and his team brought Onyx back again. Even then, Barlow said Onyx did not seem to be interested in wanting to deal with the main breaker issue.

Barlow and his team had a meeting with Hurley and First Selectman Bruce Walczak, and are having the town’s attorney draft a letter to send to Onyx and “put them on notice.”

“We are attempting to work with the Town because really they were the ones that were instrumental in putting this whole system on the roof, to see if we can come to a resolution without having to expel $11,000,” Barlow explained.

Barlow noted that there are seven pages worth of back and forth e-mails between him and Onyx, so the attorney has a lot of information to go through.

Barlow also said the Onyx representative he had been speaking with felt the two areas of the roof where the solar panels were removed were probably installed at the end of the work week, and that is why the installation was done as poorly as it was.

“There was dead silence on the end of the phone for a period of time when he said that,” Barlow said.

The good news, Barlow said, is the roofing leaks were fixed. He added that they will be readdressing these issues as they pop up because the solar system should theoretically have another ten years of life left.

High School Tree Removal, Middle Gate Bathrooms

Back around mid-December, Barlow said they had several large tree branches that came down and damaged some staff members’ cars at Newtown High School.

The trees that fell were the white pine trees planted around the perimeter of the school, according to Barlow.

He said they had money in the capital non-reoccurring account and received three estimates addressing the issue; all three prices landed around $35,000 to remove 150 trees.

Barlow said the trees by the parking lot near F-wing, along with the trees where students park by the front lot, were removed over Christmas break.

“They have to do the remainder of the trees along the roadway, right where the big oil tank is, and then they’re going to go across the front of the stadium where those big trees are,” Barlow explained.

This work, he said, is expected to be completed over the February winter break.

Barlow said there were three bathrooms currently under remodeling at Middle Gate Elementary School. All the tile work was finished for classrooms 24 and 25, which were simplified and made “very clean.” They used a large subway-styled tile on the walls, put a single green band around the room to break the tile up, and used a smaller tile on the floor.

These are all sealed so as to keep urine out, which Barlow said can be a problem with children around elementary age.

They also did a remodel on the main bathroom in the school’s office, which is also partially used by the nurse. Barlow said they freshened up the tiles and put some new fixtures inside.

Master Facilities Planning Committee

Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said they are planning to create a Master Facilities Planning Committee within the next month, and that she will meet with BOE Chair Alison Plante to figure out the composition of the committee.

The key question for the group, Uberti said, is whether they want to pursue a proactive strategy to manage building infrastructure costs, given the overall conditions of the schools’ environment.

In order to make that kind of decision, Uberti said they are going to need guidance.

“The committee is not going to be able to just figure this out on their own,” Uberti explained.

Since Uberti said this exceeds her level of expertise, she spoke with a number of superintendents in the area and found that a lot of districts are going through similar issues.

According to Uberti, many schools in the state were built between the 1930s-60s and are, for all intents and purposes, aging out.

Uberti said the committee would first convene and digest the facility condition assessment done two years ago by Bureau Veritas and the recent ten-year projected enrollment and space capacity study done by Consultants MP Planning.

Where it gets tricky, Uberti said, is what comes after: deciding how the district will manage its building infrastructure costs.

Some districts hire a building construction consultant, some move straight to a request for proposal (RFP) to guide their options.

While Consultants MP Planning ended their presentation saying the district should come up with a vision for what it wants, Uberti said she “doesn’t totally agree with that.”

“I think a case can be made for a number of different configurations, and to think we could just decide internally what that could be without reliance on data, cost, feasibility, and location ... [the path] is not that clear here,” Uberti said.

From building to renovation, Uberti said whatever direction the committee moves toward will reflect the desires of the community.

Plante said they hoped to get the group started late February-early March once they get through the budget.

=====

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.