I should have written that 22. category and we have seven students at magnet schools that we are still responsible for when we do our IPS in our account uh related services speech and language pathologist again we're very similar you do see a greater increase as you head into secondary because as far as the case loads go because many of the students have smaller amounts of times that are required on their IEP you may have 18 students at CES who require speech and language on your caseload but they may be receiving speech three or four times a week um which is a far greater quantity of time than if you have 31 children who maybe have one times 30 minutes okay so that kind of explains some of that difference there for you um School psychologists we are heaviest at uh Huckleberry so we're really hoping with the caseloads that next year we can take a look at um how we even that out a little bit between our psychologists that will all be in the building together uh School social workers I know it looks um a bit funny that CES only has eight on their uh caseload right now but when we are in the very early Elementary years that's where we're teaching our social emotional skills right in the classroom social workers are pushing in to to do small lessons it is actually part of the curriculum and standards that we teach those social emotional skills so I would expect it to be lower it does give the social worker much more time to also support families as they're coming into the public schools and with any needs that they may have at home so it just looks a little bit different at that age OT occupational therapy and physical therapy remained pretty much the same from last year and then this is my new preschool addendum that I just added for you one of the things I wanted to make note of and make sure that everybody was understanding is that October snapshot is much lower than we end up with at the end of the school year so 2020 2021 you added 16 students in preschool last year they added nine students into preschool and this year we're starting with the the 16 but what I wanted to note was that we already have 25 evaluations that we are know that we must complete which is very close to the numbers we ended with in 2021 2022.
and we'll try to stay on top there um so that's kind of continued with with electric and alternative fuels another one that'll come there for you um and so on the flip side we already talked about the electric bus in Middletown uh we just received last year uh Connecticut Volkswagen uh oxides of nitrogen uh mitigation Grant through Connecticut deep so we'll be procuring 10 well we already Advocate uh 10 electric type c buses um they're on on the ground we'll talk a little bit about difficulties with infrastructure that are associated with that um yeah yeah sorry great question I would I will get to that but uh so a type A type A so there's a Type A you don't need to worry about type B so don't don't worry your brain about it it's actually happening right yeah yeah sure yeah well actually let me just let me just bounce forward there you go back up there you go uh so type A it's on an automotive chassis 29 I think is the largest Chevy four chassis so if you see it with an automotive chassis you know as Scott said probably go up to about 29 passengers okay um and then the larger buses which is all but two I believe in Cheshire for the larger buses that have the dog nose in the front that's a type c and then a type D the door will actually be forward of the front wheels is how it's definitely have a flat nose yeah Transit style Transit style so and a b just for your you know edification is they don't really make them anymore but you actually have one that when they were making them in Cheshire it's just a giant one of the A's it's like a 35 passenger but it looks it looks identical it's just a bigger tvw yeah oh yeah so the mainland people you know is the type C yes yeah yeah that's okay conventional yeah okay yeah and then so just again type A Automotive chassis type c is really the only one you'd have to worry about that looks like this and then a type D is a flat nose and it can either have the engine in the front or in the rear the ones in Chester have rear edges and just to make things really complicated they also call a type c a type one yes type type c and type one is exactly the same thing a type one is C and D A type two is A and B got it don't ask me so type it and type two if you swear so type one upper left type one type two and then that's how I yeah or STV yeah same thing so these type ones One Tattoo St type 1 and type two you see in all of the contracts in in Connecticut um elsewhere they're called ABC yeah interesting um well yeah and STV student transportation vehicle or a van it's essentially a a non-school bus used for transporting uh this could be a car too yeah um anything so it should be nine passengers or less um is an stb elsewhere they're called Massachusetts they're called 7D Vans after the legislation yeah overseas them all right and please do just jump in with with any questions as we go here you don't have to cover that engage talk about uh the Italian electric uh do we have a little bit more um some of the issues that we're at just to give you the preview on that we have the buses we have the Chargers um the switch gear that's required to uh to upgrade the the uh the service um is back ordered was back ordered when we ordered it by 52 weeks a year so it's still back ordered by many weeks and haven't gotten much of that day so that's kind of a just an early lesson on the importance of you know especially with the supply chain being what it is today being absolutely on top of uh you know things like infrastructure infrastructure especially um and having it ready to go be planning everybody's thinking about the bus but the real key is in the infrastructure yeah um and not to get too into the weeds but yeah the the switch gear is back ordered but you still have the utility that needs to come in and provide enough power that's true right so there's that's another so just yeah just to kind of give you a little bit of so when we ordered the buses you know we knew we had to order the Chargers and we kind of notified eversource that we're getting these buses and didn't know to ask the next question so the switching gear is what essentially connects the pole on the street to the charger because you've got to have you know basically like a Transformer like you have maybe in your neighborhood same kind of thing so you're connecting the the service to the charging unit and so we went you know we actually got the buses in early we got the Chargers in we called eversource and they're like well okay we have to order the switch gear it's gonna be 52 weeks and we're like wait what yeah was this in the past year yeah this is ongoing luckily we've got six other chargers that we already had um but the Chargers that we actually ordered for those buses are still sitting in the warehouse because we can't hook them out um so we're able you saw the charge we've got in the building now but yeah we were able to we were able to yeah because we had power in the building at our corporate office we were able to hook Chargers up to that building directly without the switching gear but it's a process and it's this is why we're doing this and why we wanted to be out front because we didn't know we didn't know right and now we're learning what we don't know yeah I could be losing my or something they gave the impression that if we wanted to do this they ought to be able to make it happen from the road to bus within a few months now things change if you've got the equipment so I mean you just said 52 weeks just to order the stuff now you get it in order maybe you're done in one week okay that's the last yeah that's the impression I got too is if because we've got as I said six other chargers that are hooked up right to our building in New Britain um and that was no problem at all because we didn't need whatever the Transformer is yeah exactly it's how much service you have and and you know what kind of charger and I think Kevin will probably get into the different levels of chargers it's the switch gear though that's Europe that's on our side of the line I wish I'd put the diagram that's on the connect or the EPA clean School Bus program that shows like what's on the Utility side of the line which isn't covered by that particular Grant and what's on our side of the line you know a switch gear and so we're using our one now put all of these electric Partners uh together you know we are using one of our electrical service contractors to order from Electrical Wholesalers the the distributor um I think it's actually Square D is who manufactures it got Square Deal or G there it's G Equipment um all right so back well part of tonight was really to kind of get everybody on the same page that's a little knowledge base yeah that's why I know but that's great this is important I appreciate you sharing it yeah yeah for sure um and we'll get into that even more uh in a little bit because those lessons are very important um so there's also 74 propane buses uh operating in our Fleet um I already know that to 100 yeah 100 it's 100 of our new Canon Fleet um East Hartford has some yeah we've got six in these parts yeah um on the dealership side uh we are selling our first electric bus for a non-deco customer um to be delivered soon the only problem infrastructure um so that is on site now hopefully to be delivered to uh RSU 13 in Maine um we've applied for 140 electric buses for customers across our New England ALR under the EPA Cleveland School Bus program uh we have a dedicated electric Specialists on staff as my dad noted we have a six DC fast Chargers that are installed at our dealership location um they'll be accompanied by seven and seven because some of them are dual Port um to support our 10 electric buses um and you know as I already started to allude to assembly full line of electric Partners to you know work with us where where we have holes so everything from vehicle manufacturers we are a vehicle distributor uh to the utilities uh you need to have site developers which luckily we have our own site development team in-house through accelerated Property Management uh Electro electrical equipment distributors um should have said electrical equipment manufacturers where dge financing electrical service contractors contractor charging station manufacturers start charging station Distributors Network integrators the software that that connects the buses to the Chargers and you to the Chargers and what's what's happening with them so as you can see a lot of stuff that goes into this ecosystem you know it's not so different from uh the ecosystem that has already existed around like around around diesel uh for example it's just you know everybody's been used to that everybody has a diesel tank you know everybody has their fuel distributor everybody has their their Vehicle Manufacturer where they go for service all of that stuff now has to grow up around electric yes Tim when I look at this list here what I might take away from it is you are hoping or planning to be the general contractor yes that is my point is that believes fandom some of the stress is trying to organize this stuff yeah right that's that's exactly right yeah we as you'll see it's it's complex you're exactly right we want to be the general contractor you know we want to we won't be in control of what of what's going on you know and have understanding of what's happening to be able to protect our customers be able to protect ourselves um as you'll see though everybody is trying to be a lot of different things uh simultaneously so it's not cut and dry at all of like who's running this thing and that is something that you run into of you know okay who's doing the engineering drawings is it is it the the electrical equipment distributor is it the installer is it the the manufacturer is it the charging station distributor we've run into that already um and so UH responsibilities are not always clear but yes we do want to you know kind of have a full idea of the big picture and be the one bringing in all these Partners can I just yeah that going back to the I guess the people who bought the buses prior to discovering the infrastructure issue isn't that well luckily it was us [Laughter] um yeah oh yeah so wouldn't that be in the initial planning stages prior to purchasing yep but again absolutely so one of the things that's happening is that people are deciding that they want a vehicle so it is also what happened with with our bus which is there are supply chain issues that if I ordered a regular bus today I wouldn't get it for just about a year but I see bus really would like to get to increase their market share on electric buses so they're they're turning around these buses in a much quicker timeline than we expect so our buses rolled off about two and a half months after we ordered them which is you know as you can about eight months earlier than we were expecting them and it's getting that right especially in you know the supply chain that we're in of you know okay do I wait to order it when am I going to get it if I wait when am I going to get the bus if I wait to order that well and the other thing to answer your question what's driving a lot of this too at least the initial stage is when grant money is available everyone wants to jump on the Grant and you don't want to miss the grant opportunity so like in the in the case of Maine they had grant money available they said well we've got this grant money we've got to spend it we've got to buy a bus okay we've got the bus and the bus came in before we expected all right yeah now we got to figure out where to plug it in you know so for the horse yeah it's well and it's it's a function of things are moving very fast right you know especially with funding it's just and when the funding's there you're not going to say well yeah you know I'll call you next year when I'm ready it's that people are taking the opportunity to get it I just worry about yeah we need more funding to fix yeah yeah plan ahead right yeah absolutely um and then I'll add just because we want to be the general contractor our real job is as a bus dealer is to sell the bus so we've got the bus you know if they want us to help with whatever we're willing to help with with anything but if they ask us they order us a bus we're going to get them the bus to be clear against the people at home and I think I know the answer you own our school buses right correct okay and the employees work for danco correctly not judging Public Schools that's right we already have we already have a great deal of trust built into this relationship yeah yeah yeah yeah and and you know it's different with our Fleet of course because there we do we do own the deal we can decide who which Partners we're bringing you know we don't own the deal necessarily when it's a customer who's just buying a bus from us all right uh so we've already talked about it a little bit but our experience with electric to date so just want to get some lessons out there um of what we've seen and make sure that you guys understand the lessons from that so our type A Electric bus is unreliable and service is lacking um support on the type C however has been better so far our lesson from that is that especially early on well always because hopefully the brands will be established by the time we we have to buy you know a type a bus but use established brands that can back back their products like IC Bus I see buses is owned by uh Trading Group or Volkswagen um they you know there's a lot of backing that's ironic there's a lot of uh backing that's that's going into this you know there's a lot of money what are they manufactured uh Tulsa Oklahoma um so yeah Trading Group which is Volkswagen owns Navistar which is based in Chicago which owns IC Bus so I see Buster saying is a is an established leader it's the old Navistar absolutely how many do you know how many electric bosses they've actually put out because I thought it was like only a thousand I don't have that statistic what I will tell you is that icbus has been behind you know it was upset we like to be leaders we haven't been able to because companies like lion and bluebird uh and Thomas beat us beat IC Bus to the market um I'd like to thank and it seems to be bearing itself out that they didn't want to rush into the market they wanted to make sure they got it right before it's before entering um but I don't know the answer of how many exactly these electric buses are on it's definitely increasing a lot their large deployments have been in British Columbia and California in a few different areas in California uh so we're rewarded 65 Grant coverage for Middletown New Britain uh that's huge as you'll see in a bit that puts us pretty close to you know the similar cost profile to diesel when you can get a 65 on your vehicle and your infrastructure um so you know there's money out there to fund these projects it's necessary it's vital um and it's not always going to be there so take advantage of it um uh we're waiting on Switching gear for both sides I think we talked about that one uh enough but be ahead of the game on infrastructure um should be replaced before the buses are ordered think about that way more than you think about the vehicle but as much make sure you think about it install DC fast charge at the dealership location about four weeks so we talked about how much easier that was we had 480 volt three-phase power at our dealership location which we don't have at our Middletown and and New Britain Fleet locations so if you don't need a service upgrade that can be very helpful then I think you're saying what that there is one school at the bus depot yeah but Highland School does have 480 volt three-phase guess why was built in 71 and we had electric heat in terms of in terms of order evil does that have any impact on the time it takes to charge of us just curious like so the the DC fast charges that we use only work with with 480 volts so that it'd have to be stepped up um if you only had 208 or 240.
and we felt like 250 when we put when we um when we spoke with a couple of uh regionally similar districts 250 was we felt The Sweet Spot to start with we don't think we should have to come back to the board a year or two years from now we may have to but we think 250 is about where we should be yeah um when would that what graduating class would that be implemented with thank you we would this is an Antiquated phrase but we would grandfather people or classes in as they they joined our high school ranks so this current eighth grade class would come in with 250. one of the um issues I'll say Loosely that we still need to work out is how that aligns with our alt dead campus and the credits back and forth but we have some models out there that we know work and we'll be trying to to work our way through those any other questions Eileen um not so much a question is a a comment I uh was around decades ago along with you sir um and I do remember that um we we got information about Rocklin specifically is what I remembered are they the one of the 250 examples that still so they've been there for a while and it seems to have worked for them at Duty one of the concerns that um that I had as as we got started in this was the down time for especially the seniors who may think oh well you know a Hiatus by by doing the shorter thing and then move into college or a four-year University college experience and got hit with oh my gosh I do have to get up at eight o'clock and I do have to you know be on task for more hours and so I do support the increase um that's enough I do support the increase okay all right I got a question Madam president um it may not be at all germane in fact I think it probably isn't to this agenda item really uh other than you've mentioned we've talked about people not being there seniors and juniors having a period off basically um is there any way to ensure or encourage that they actually are doing something productive and not just going off to recreate somewhere during that time ensure is a tough word I think encouraged and actually show them the the advantages of staying engaged even even for eight periods we realize the flexibility is important to the bottom line I know Jacqueline's going to make sure that that happens um however realistically if they want to be competitive for a UC track or a CSU track or even some of our trade school tracks they may still need to stay in schools eight periods because for example manufacturing is a significantly impacted program at Butte College and if they aren't showing how they're highly engaged in their in their studies manufacturing or welding they're not going to be eligible to join that wait list and if they do stick around that's a financial negative for us right yeah a little bit they that student would then have to be put into a section that we have there so as long as the student takes six of eight we still get okay um so that's the minimum they would have to take in order to get average so they attendance funding for that and that allows that flexibility thank you I do want to ensure that we are not going to be encouraging students to only take six or only take seven just that there is that flexibility if there's something else that interests them during that time and they would need parent permission to sign up on their schedule 100 unless they're 18.
I think that any questions so we will move on you don't have questions about my kids okay so let me get serious here and move on I think Dr Dave wants to go home okay okay so um Administration report I did want to report on test scores which we're proud of and there's a little HIV report to you so you can move to court building programs okay and so so uh curriculum and programs Kirk thank you investment I would like to look for the motion to move action items recruit e13 Mr Becker yes yes Mrs McDevitt yes Mrs Reed yes goodbye to Dallas Mr Walker yes District Operations 10. under District Operations would like to move items E1 [Music] second yes yes yes yes a question on you sorry did you say just the Personnel is just the district's performance review the Cusack there's a task I'm sorry [Music] but my question was what this person else said did you present the district stories why all other categories are 100 Personnel is 70 and I've been through the numbers all the time I can't figure out why yeah so I'm gonna say no foreign okay yes this is me yes Mr right now yes and visitors business are permitted to comment on agenda and economy I just want to one bring to the board's attention um I can work with Mrs Carlson over the past couple weeks um you know Brielle does not recognize and observe a lot of holidays um like Jewish holidays and my family is actually an Interfaith family my husband's tuition on Catholic so in the past my kids were younger we'd just take them out you know to know attendance is not good deal as they gotten older become a lot more complicated because there's nothing a lot of work on this little bit and so we've got them in so one of the big things that happened this year and this is across the most wonderful Community responded promptly she reached out to the staff is that the order being scheduled tests on those holidays um pictures were also scheduled on Yom Kippur this year so that was difficult my daughter did not want to stay home due to the fact you know classic picture so that was a little bit of a strong event so we sent our kids when I'm looking to see is that the policy could be made that when holidays that are not observed there could be like a no homework policy to put it because it's very important to people who you know celebrate to promote their families and to celebrate with them so put it on record but understand that it does affects you know we might have maybe 10 Jewish kids in Brielle and I understand that but it's also very important to our family and you know Mrs Carson again I want to thank you to put that out to the staff but stuff is still in place and stuff's still good my kids were so excited to do those things so I just want to see if maybe we can look at something like that and let this current policy for that but it's not there's not a corner policy that I'm aware of I'll certainly consult uh legal uh obviously from the Technologies there but I just want to apologize for personally that your water was [Music] you've got you know like the bottle [Music] that's right that's exactly it and I don't think the teachers would mind foreign standpoint [Music] first thank you for coming and training your concern it's important as we all know that um but particularly from a curriculum standpoint I think well understood here but religions who are better yet faith is fundamental to who the artist doesn't matter what paid credit is fundamental to who we are it's a building blockings to our virtues how we act accordingly according to those virtues to each other we know that we've made Extreme shrines over the last couple of years we do recognize that my third grader came home and said they celebrated now they they discussed it I asked what he did and I think he thought about it celebrated which was a huge surprise so I know it's recognized we know that we've made great strides but to your point special [Music] well I'd like to think that the teachers as a whole here they're very conscientious I think personally just from my experience it's hard for me to take sticks at features on different levels of of inclusive in diversity inclusivity and Equity because it's it's a force uh but but like you said it's something that we should strive to constantly do better on and something that I know we're part of our curriculum discussions thank you thank you and um or attention because sometimes the less parents come out and shared those concerns sometimes we don't realize you know I recall that this is going back some years when a parent had approached us a Jewish Family and they had some of the board members may remember this and they spoke about the holidays and how the holidays are not recognized or um and they weren't looking for a Dale they weren't looking for those things to be taken all but just to be included and so um during the curriculum um you may have been with us um during the meeting that's when Miss Carlson said well we're going to really make an effort and include the center of account how important and um and then we started doing that we started including into the calendar and uh having those discussions and um but when I think when you're saying about the homework and the test um I think that that can be done I think that it should be done even if it's like you said there's probably maybe 10 Jewish kids it doesn't matter if it's one or a hundred one this is part of inclusion and diversity and we have to be sensitive to other religions and other and other races and so I I don't see why in Chris and I spoke about this these were in agreement with if you know it's a holiday and this is something really important to this child and learning about their culture and religion and important for us to be sensitive and aware of that and say well this is weak let's make sure we're not going to have a major project or a test or some and just just being Mindful and where and I think stration comes in to remind every year when there's that they should be sensitive to the amount of homework and projects and all them all forgiving um and when I spoke with Chris um you know I was you know Chris took action and I liked that and it was one of your staff members and I can't remember which one it was but they sent out that information to the entire um the all the staff members I'm sorry for cursing with you know better than me but um so it was information about the religion the holidays and all of that so I thought that that was important that um that information was sent down to everyone in Korea you tell it to be appropriate to the Improvement school calendar every year it will be appropriate to I like this apologies so that's so it's very good apparent to faculty but we get from the state the number of holidays in a year and there's actually over 200 sure is when we know that there's a population of Industry understanding members lots of holidays it just us reinforcement I'm asking if you're appropriate to including some of them on your ends are highlighted it's part of that infusion of EDI into the curriculum not just through an observation of a basic holiday you know normalizing those holidays into everyday masses and I know that that's being done I know that Jim is from uh can there be improvements constantly never ending uh and and this is one example that we're sure does that answer your question the message calendar we have a couple of calendars yeah so we have we have a digital calendar which I mean I don't remember any holidays other than our days [Music] the most important thing though is like what you're referring to which is just making like letting letting the faculty and staff know that hey these are on these holidays it's important for us to not this is not before not have testing not have pictured it when we're looking to schedule a picture day so it's it's less hyper I mean this is my by interpretation of what you're saying yes of course recognizing it in calendars but it's more important that we recognize it in the actions that we take which are say okay no no homework on this day or the day yes what's appropriate especially you know some of them a couple of a couple of days so just recognizing that piece mostly for faculty and yeah sometimes things get kind of Forgotten don't get me wrong I have off and my goodness also works out loud thank you all right and so um moving on to discussion more than ever a discussion discussion and so payments of bills here but motion that the board authorizes over Bill's list and then secretary is authorized to draw Awards of the treasure in a total amount of 1 million 600 1 322.65 second foreign yes and there will be no executive session held this evening after the conclusion of regular action board meeting foreign [Music]
um so that tells me that we may have a larger increase this year oh questions any follow-up well I do have a question or two that maybe I should just ask a numbers question if I don't if you don't mind on the top of the third page there was the speech and language Pathologists numbers and it it looks like it's one and a half uh uh speech and language in the high school and this is it half of it is shared with WMS right is the half in the two for WMS or is it is it on top of the two it's on top of the two so they have two and a half it's not quite a half because it's a half time position where she picks up additional students in both of the buildings so it's a so you just counted all of the halftime position because it was very hard to determine if it's a 0.1 a point two it's flexible depending on what's needed okay and as most of that person's caseload at the high school um no it's actually mostly at the middle school right now okay okay so actually in actuality then the Middle School caseload is lower at the moment at the moment in the high school is higher right okay um the second is just a request sure for our ongoing reports it would be really useful to have the prior year caseload numbers absolutely here right because you're saying it's the same as last year but it's just we don't have that absolutely useful and it looks like there's plenty of room to do that and I can certainly also um send you a copy of that because I have that and then my third question was our public speaker at the beginning asked to know what's going on at ELC um could you comment on that okay so um in ELC we range uh from five students to nine students in the classrooms very honestly it just may be the makeup of the class so the the grade the cohort sorry um we may just have more students in the fifth grade than we do in the ninth grade there are some years we have none in the ninth grade who move up so it's really dependent upon the age of the student and where they are in the cohort but that's where the discrepancy comes in I do think you know we work really hard as well at the elementary school to make sure our students are in the least restrictive environment which would be with their general education peers um and so you know the smaller number in CES would mean that the students are in the least restrictive environment at that point if they need further time outside of that classroom is when they would start to move into ELC okay and and since the beginning of the school year have there been significant changes in either the number of kids in the ELC classes or the Staffing no no there have not okay yeah so the caseload's been pretty consistent through the first two months very consistent okay okay anybody else have questions okay Bob I'd just like to uh make sure it's clear uh similar to the enrollment report the caselo report as Amy mentioned she was talking about thinking about the budget for next year and taking a look at this and doesn't think the case loads as in Prior years because we've really invested in special education and added special ed teachers or we've added speech and language Etc the the halftime or Coda um this is a budget driver so we always need to be looking at this carefully so again the reports that we're providing feed into our December budget presentation and so next uh meeting we'll be talking about class size reports and some of those things so it's just very important that we don't just have these annual reports because we like to give these annual reports they have a Absolute Concrete and immediate impact on our budget planning and this one is just this whole topic is very hard to do a projection of it's easier to do big enrollment projections this one's really hard it is very difficult and we could have students um where we would very happily exit them because they no longer need the support that's always our goal so you know we have students come in and we have some students who exit every single year I don't think there's any other questions I'm sorry you said the 20 that moved in with an IEP is that reflected I'm sorry if you answer that already is that reflected in the numbers it is reflected to 33 yes and at center or is that at Center School you said they're at both uh Center and Huckleberry okay and you don't expect that to impact the budget no because we had a night a nice large clasp that left in uh this particular year that cohort that graduated so it really evened us out but I will keep an eye out as we move forward because we do seem to have a lot of families moving here which is a nice thing for all of us right thank you thank you thank you thanks Amy Bob Mr checo walked in okay so it might be a good time um we'll just uh yeah I do think it's a good break point because the next topic will go a while I think right um so uh I'd like to make a motion to move that uh the Candlewood Lake Elementary School building project in its entirety to uh be our next item on the agenda second moved and seconded all in favor thank you all right so um Mr chekhog now you owe me one so uh we actually have there's three topics on here um no three topics I'm going to do them in and uh you know over there um I'd like that the first we'll have Mr checo give an update on where we are on the new school we've had quite a bit of discussion over the last 10 days I'd say we've had quite a bit of discussion yeah I'll check on chair of the municipal building committee um we've had quite a bit of discussion look we all know the Candlewood Lake Elementary School it's um it's progressing it hasn't been without its uh trials and tribulations we've had material delays we've had the lazy Roofing we've had uh thankfully we haven't had much of a weather Delight we've had some good weather which has helped offset some of this but it's a you know it's an ongoing process and it's like in true construction form nothing ever goes you know right according to plan and you know right out of the gate when we started digging on that site we hit a large amount of what we call unsuitables so it was soil that we had to take out and replace um you know that kind of started off the the tone of the project and we overcame that um but with that we've moved along it's moving along nicely um but again it's not going to be looking like December is going to be the move-in date um we actually you know Bob John and I have uh discussed this over the course of the last 10 days quite a bit we have asked the construction manager for a list of deliverables for that date and in looking at that and with some material delays that I'll get into in a moment we would be moving the kids out of a school which is actually a perfectly good school into something that's lesser finished and you know looking at those Optics it's just not a good plan to disrupt the kids and move them into something where there's going to be a lot of activity and it's lesser environment or lesser educational environment than where they are now and one of those things is flooring and we learned last month that one of the largest flooring manufacturers in the United States Armstrong Flooring um when chapter 11.
um DC fast charges require More Voltage if you have more if you have 480 volts you can get a more powerful DC fast charger um and then it will will uh charge much faster in terms of how how long it takes to charge it's a relatively simple in theory uh equation there the batteries are measured in kilowatt hours so the Max uh kilowatt hours that we have in IC Buses is 315 kilowatt hours so you take that you divide it by the number of kilowatts that the the charger can output so if you have a 60 kilowatt charger 300 kilowatt hours divided by 60 kilowatts should take five hours to charge now that's theoretically you want to put a little fluff in there because the the system's not always going to want to give 100 um it's going to want to trickle charge when it can um and you know it's it's an intelligent system that's learning so that's the capability that it has but it doesn't necessarily mean that it'll charge that fast so you know that comes out five hours maybe say six hours to get from zero to 100 miles is it got on the charge uh the so we have a 210 and a 315 kilowatt hour uh bus um the 210 goes 135 miles the 315 goes about 200 miles um we actually took one of our buses our it's a three-string uh 315 kilowatt hour buses to Cape Cod for a an industry event that bus traveled 191 miles um without a charge so which is the best in the industry but they were nervous to how to push the bus I was I heard this story I was very very nervous I wasn't really happy we charge it up at a charge point in America charge please or charging station for 40 bucks two hours so what's it typical what's our average root length here in Cheshire for about 80 miles a day I I built in eight miles yeah when we go into the okay you have this okay so 80 miles would be the three morning routes and the three afternoon yeah yes that's right yeah both all three two years full now let's make things a little bit more complicated you know Kevin gave you the formula for charging the boss the interesting thing is it's not a linear line yeah so for whatever reason I'm not an electrical engineer but the bus goes the bus will charge from zero to eighty percent a lot quicker than the last 20 percent the last 20 takes the longest time the impression I've gotten from somebody somewhere is as you're getting more is it so electricity is electrons and it has real Mass but yeah so so I mean to answer your question I've never heard that yeah I can't say that's true I have no idea but I can tell you when you plug the bus in it's not like filling a gas tank that you know you fill your gas tank kind of linear it'll go from zero to eighty percent fairly quickly and then that last 20 percent takes a lot longer and so the advantage in the school bus operation is you know we've got time between runs that we could plug the bus in so if you don't need the full hundred percent to complete your route you're okay and well I don't know if we get into it later but the Chargers they're called smart Chargers in that you can do all kinds of things when you when you have a bunch of vehicle Chargers strung together including charging them at night when the power is cheaper or you could say you know there's four buses I need you know that bus to be a hundred percent but I only need that one to be 80 so you know charge that one first and then that one and so you're not drawing all the power at the same time there's a lot of I mean and and also when you plug that bus in it's also talking back to IC which can monitor the status of the bus and the batteries okay so it's it's a lot the one thing just to add to this conversation time to go and that's going to this in depth at all but what you're talking about I think also it reminds me of the concept of vehicle to grid which basically for people who are watching uh vehicles are great basically is saying buses are not simply a cost but it's a potential Revenue Source or a cost offset to the school buses because electricity is based on yeah we're not quite there yet but yeah I mean no no no it's one of the things that for example IC talked about is let's say you had you know the the electric bus could be a emergency power source for example let's say we had a you know natural disaster you can take a couple buses and run your fire station on yeah you bring them there and run the power the other way um but we're not we're not there yet but yeah yeah it's very very quickly yep there's a lot of things that could be uh could happen like that in the future that is not really something that we see immediately on the horizon of software isn't ready on these particular buses and also it would take a large investment by eversource and they might not might not even be willing to do it to have the switching mechanism because they'd have to make sure that you know power can flow in the opposite direction which you know has big implications for the grid so there's a lot of stuff uh there's a there's a lot there um that really makes that complicated and you know you have to approve it every time every time you know it's used you know usually in the summer about five times a year um and there are questions of how much there's a lot of promises that are being made on on you know oh this will this will make everything fine this will make all the all the dollars and cents add up um we haven't seen good evidence of that so yeah uh but it is something that could be uh a factor in the future the vehicle to vehicle to building might even be more convincing um the future so using your your vehicles to to power your building or solar to power the Plus uh so I talked already about the one-time upfront I accidentally the one-time upfront cost is big for infrastructure but it's one time so if you're buying one bus it's big for that one bus you know as and we'll talk about a little bit more if you replace all 35 buses all 35 type c buses in Cheshire um you know then you're spreading that infrastructure out over a much larger uh base their economies of scale said differently uh so we'll talk about the regulatory landscape why we're here um so uh there are mandates and incentives uh being put out there I mean the big one is the kind of the Clean Air Act um but you know Carriage sticks uh there are goals and mandates uh the federal land State levels that are driving us toward lower emissions uh levels and on-road vehicles again we'll talk about the Connecticut Clean Air Act EPA clean trucks is a another one but they're also helping us out to get there providing grant funding Federal uh EPA feeding School Bus uh Connecticut clean School Bus uh which is kind of ties in with uh kind of A Clean Air Act um and then Volkswagen Knox mitigation program the grant that we received and then diesel emissions reduction act to go along with many others that aren't mentioned does this also include I'm just trying to think of your standard maybe yearly or I don't know maintenance fees like right now do you have maintenance costs for our bus so the prices that we give to Cheshire Public Schools it's on a vehicle basis so per day um so we provide this bus per day 180 days no we're 180 180 um 180 days um I believe that the cost per type c or type 1 bus in Cheshire is 349 dollars per day yeah um so that's what the and it includes the maintenance okay yeah so that's all that's everything that's all you need you're getting a bus for yeah we provide the bus y but we pay for fuel that's right so I remember that there's an advantage to that budgeting yes we purchased the field we don't pay tax on it thank you but there's also a risk of the fuel right I just didn't know if we delineated the maintenance yeah in anticipation of no no we we have to put everything into that one number right so it it you know as our costs go up of course you know the it goes into that number you know it's reflected in in the price yeah and the big I mean obviously is to purchase the bus in addition to maintaining it and that Fleet is relatively new and Panthers provided 18 new buses yeah hopefully there's about that for 2021 and 2022 models in chapter um any changes in the safety features of the buses now that they got an electric and each reason so uh oh seat belts obviously no not because you're the only weird one electric so the bus actually has a speaker to make noise because you can't hear it coming [Music] there's a story right there they did have I don't know where but an ice cream truck sound and they decided that that was a bad idea because what do kids do when they hear the ice cream truck yeah yeah but it actually yeah you have to we have speakers that make noise because the bus is front and back too quiet so they've got some like promotional things that are on there as telematics come standard on on these buses so you can track the bus and always know what fault codes are on it um there's also what's called Khajiit Wi-Fi uh comes standard as a kind of a promotional package on them so there's Wi-Fi for the students on board um but as for the safety features they're the same safety features that exist on other buses are available yeah so do you have 10 you have 10 of the type C's on the road on the ground we're working through ways to get them uh out on the road yeah uh so the Mandate that is kind of prompted this uh trying to get clean air Air Act sp4 Senate bill 4.
yeah would they need parent permission if they're 18 no thank you very few of them are but no they would not Caitlyn would you say that there may be also an advantage to not pressuring students to make sure they do something super productive with that time if they do take a period off maybe they're doing college applications or um or just unwinding their brain because sometimes when you get to that point in high school you just need you know that hour break before you go to soccer practice or whatever it might be I think some of that's going to happen organically yeah can you record yourself making a speech to them that they all have to watch before they get the time off you know what I wouldn't put anyone through that to watch a video of me all right so um this is an action item and we do need to consider this in time so that we have the incoming students aware of what the expectations are going to be so we can do this by a voice oh is there any public comment on this one all right don't see any okay so all those in favor of changing our what oh I'll move adoption of the graduation credit requirement adjustment as presented I'll suck in it okay moved by Tom seconded by Caitlin okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye all right and did you say I I did it I was running through my head really quick to make sure that we could do it just a Unison voice okay so that was five eyes okay all right all right Julie good evening thank you so I'm back again I will be back at every regular meeting to update you on the Parkview emergency portable project until it is 100 complete I do have an update that the lighting has been received it was ordered after you approved the lighting at the last board meeting and it has been received and it will be installed the weekend of October 29th and so that will leave the ramps on the front and the back of the portable that need to be replaced with the permanent ramps and we've decided to do that over the Thanksgiving holiday so it would be less impactful for students so you'll be hearing about this again next month at the regular meeting any questions okay I don't see any questions um may I have a motion then do we need to take action no you sounded kind of informational it's just information I move that we thank Julie for her presentation [Laughter] thank you all right okay so um I guess we're good on that then all right so Julie you have that's the second one great so the district put out bidding documents informal bidding documents for additional fencing at Chico high school I'm sorry the diagram is on the screen I thought you might want to see what we're talking about right I don't have my glasses on so I'll try to describe it for you we installed the fencing on the back side of Chico High School many years ago with a different Administration that had different concerns at the time the administration now would like to have the parking lot used formerly was the student parking lot at Chico high school and I think the seniors do park there now as well as staff they want to have a fence that divides the parking lot from the soccer field and the girls varsity softball field so we would be adding fencing to separate those two areas and removing the fence that currently runs between Inspire School of Arts and Sciences and the sport field to create a more open area and we also included in the bidding fencing for the chico High Varsity Softball field that would not be funded the same as the security fencing that would be funded directly by Chico High Sports boosters but we included it in our bidding so that they could get that pricing so I don't know if you guys can see that or if you have any questions about the fencing can you indicate where the fencing is that is going to be removed yes yeah I'll be new and then the softball cleansing will be new as well but as I mentioned not funded through fund 42 which is Redevelopment dollars we're proposing to utilized we put the project out for bid informally we received two bids one from Northern California fence that's a local company here in Chico and the other from Crusader fence in Sacramento Crusader was at 169 558 dollars and Northern California fence was at ninety three thousand dollars oh all right uh so we uh would recommend we enter agreement with Northern California fence this is a I'm sorry eight foot high chain link fence so um security wise for the main campus where's the security on the back side of Chico High from a fence standpoint it is complete it is completely fenced so we like um are considering um Warner Street there's a fence on Warner Street would that be the only fence between somebody on Warner Street and and the main campus the main buildings of the chico High campus yes that's very far away that's a big area to Encompass with a fence for security purposes and right now you have Inspire the Inspire fence that we're taking out does it connect from oh gosh what is it over there in mansion Park neighborhood basically the tennis courts the tennis courts into the parking lot no it goes to a gate at the student parking lot yes right yes so so that's a fence that currently you know covers basically the West side of the main Chico High campus right yes and we're talking about taking that out yes it's been requested that it be removed and it's going to be replaced by a fence that is all the way over on Warner Street it's on the interior of the parking lot not on West Sacramento Avenue so it goes along the soccer field on the interior of the parking lot but it stops right there at um yes foreign but if somebody was out by the football field where your hand is right now and if they wanted to walk onto the main Chico High campus which is about close to a quarter mile or solidly a quarter mile away they would be no fence they would have to go um so the vicinity of the softball field or the baseball field sorry the the famous with the famous red fence if they were near there they would they would be on campus essentially at that point okay are there any other questions or discussion points I Matt looked like he was thinking through something to ask another question I am I'm feeling like this is maybe from a security standpoint less secure would you disagree with that or disagree with that I think that the campus was looking for a better circulation and not to have kids students stopped from going from the main campus out onto the grassy field that they would have to go through a gate to get out for PE um so I think it was more of a operational request from them that that fence come down that it's in the way do you have anything to add because I think you were at the meeting where they requested that I think it's more of a as you mentioned a pedestrian flow I believe they worked with Inspire on this as well and Inspire also um was in support of that that change I don't believe the issue of does this provide an additional layer of security I don't believe that was an issue that came up about me there have been people who have come on campuses um resulting in things like lockdowns and and stuff like that has has anybody ever come onto the chico High campus that resulted in lockdown Jim's probably better equipped to answer this than I am we have had lockdowns obviously at Chico High I don't believe they came from that direction I think we had some coming off of Esplanade and just more of a cautionary yeah I don't recall any when I was principal um the main issue was traffic through the middle of our campus as Julie said earlier on the concerns were different back then walking directly through the campus it was a thorough Affair for students going from where they lived over to Chico State and back again and so there was fencing Pub put up along the south side of the campus and that helped stem that flow since then then the fencing that Julie's talking about taking down was put up behind inspire personally as as a former principal and if I was still principal there I don't see it as security wise any different because they're still fencing elsewhere to prevent people from coming on campus they could just as easily come through the fencing where it currently is is behind Inspire in fact the fencing behind its fire if I recall is much shorter than the fencing along Warner and along West Sacramento Avenues so it's would be actually easier to scale I don't know how how tall the fencing will be along the parking lot but um but is it was it eight feet the new fencing will be eight feet so that's included in the contract pretty good fencing and then between the parking lot refresh my memory and the Chico State or no the stadium parking lot I guess it is now it used to Once Upon a Time was it maybe a Chico State parking lot this is where we park if we want to go to places like the Almond Bowl um how tall is that fencing because that's effectively anybody wanting to come on campus could come that way um same thing on the other side you know along Memorial way or whatever it is over there on in in I believe it's eight feet but I honestly would have to make for you I know that the the perimeter of the parking lot along Warner and West Sac that fencing is quite old and it's probably six or seven feet but the stadium fencing that was done as part of the construction is probably eight feet I don't have any more questions okay all right so Eileen did you I just comment um just to remind us that we made a decision a while back about collecting developer fees this whoa I have glasses on my face about collecting developed reviews we are using developer fees to do this modification you I thought you indicated you know developer fees are fund 25 and this is fund 42 this is Redevelopment Redevelopment never sorry about that I I I did not catch that there was a difference in those two terms so what I was thinking about doesn't apply my I um I I was you know just at the Ammon Bowl and um I don't remember that the parking lot fence between what used to be the Chico State parking lot was as insignificant as as some of the other fence I think it was pretty dull next to um to where I had to exit um yeah I I support this move I think this this situation if I may Madam president yeah you're recognized really pokes at a value that for me is on the table right now as we look at um you know modernizing our campuses which we're always doing you know aesthetically it'd be nicer if we didn't have fences around at all because we could stand at the back door of our school buildings and we could see a beautiful Green Field with a lot of beautiful trees and be at one with our community but I could imagine this fence were taken out you know being a protecting people you know if you had a if you had a lockdown I mean you're dealing with a smaller area easier to monitor you know there's going to be times when there's gonna be nobody out there in that vast expanse of a field and I think it is a vast expanse you know I went to school there I think I have a good memory of it um it's a big area to keep track of and this fence we're taking out I feel probably makes the campus more secure and so I'm concerned I would actually would you know when it comes time to make a motion I think I might move that we maybe put this off so we can look at that aspect of it so am I correct Julie that both Chico high and Inspire were interested in that fence being removed that one section yes yes I have another clarifying question the um the the fence with the the little clouds around it what's the height of that fence six foot it's six okay thank you is that it right there is that is that a gate on the on the six footer foreign [Music] the student parking lot and those field be Fields no there's a series of big bollards that run along there and uh right so I just wanted to respond to something that had said um PE students from PE are out there all the time so that's pretty much open for anyone coming on in off the street so eliminating the fence behind Inspire and fencing in the parking lot actually makes that portion of the campus safer because people on the street don't have access to those fields foreign just looking at it from a principal's perspective and security I have a question Julia what was the I I could probably think back on some conversations but is there a a protocol for using the chain link fencing versus something else or is that just standard what's being used now um cost wise Etc yes that's a standard um cost wise certainly for a chain link if it's not at the primary entrance of the campus where we're using a more aesthetically pleasing fencing and gates at the entryway the rest of the campuses are chain link they do finish it with the if you go back back to that photograph fill at the top you can barely see it so that it discourages people from climbing over the top so as the team comes together it has these barbs on the top that are just part of the chain link but they install it that way on purpose to to try to discourage people from climbing over it and tearing their clothes or cutting themselves on it do we have a motion we need to go to public comment if we're done with the discussion is there any public comment all right don't see any so emotion then yeah I'll move approval of the uh accepting or okay the process approval I'll second that and comment that that the one comment that I heard that was most persuasive is the increase of security because of where it's being moved um further out so that the the students that are participating on those fields have more fencing protection than with the current configuration of that six foot fence at Inspire that to me weighs toward my decision well right now students who use the parking lot have no fencing right okay the clarification the student parking lots outside of the the perimeter fencing right correct and not to complicate matters worse but we did look at years ago and more recently fencing the whole parking lot in you know fencing the having Gates where you come and go but the West Sacramento Avenue simply doesn't have enough shoulder room for cars to stop and have a you know a gate open and drive in it would be a real traffic safety issue so the best thing that we thought we could do is put the fence on the perimeter of the parking lot as shown in the sketch I'm sorry I have another question I didn't have during the discussion portion but um what is the what's the timeline on this the urgency or or you know like why now and not some other time well as you can imagine we we get requests that come in all the time to facilities and to our maintenance and operations Department administrators from all of the schools are are super interested in securing their sites as much as possible uh things happened that may maybe they have a difficult time supervising a certain area and they ask for our assistance in addressing it and um that's how this came about as I'm sure that the administration at Chico High realized that they have a vulnerability there so they've requested that we put this fencing in to address that vulnerability and so they haven't said we absolutely must have it next week but we we take that as an indication that it is a priority that we need to take care of for them what's the vulnerability so if you the park ing the field the field the baseball fields the softball fields that whole area is open so this would be fencing that area off okay um I would offer an amendment that we approve this but not proceed with removing the shorter fence at this time so I guess I'm offering that as a friendly Amendment could you repeat that Matt I I didn't hear what you said I'm just reluctant to remove the six foot fence at this time personally you know I'd like to um be assured that the campus will be as safe without it and so I'm offering an amendment that we would move forward on on this that's already been moved but that we would keep the shorter fence for the time being until we're able to you know assess the safety of the I guess what I consider to be maybe the nucleus of the chico High campus which is the buildings where you know most the people are um so if you want to put that to a vote that would be fine that's not finally good look this has been gone it's a fence it's gone up and gone over by facilities have been gone over by the administration I trust you guys we have spent 30 minutes talking about moving offense let's just trust our Administration get it done okay I'd like to go for to a vote on that please okay so an amendment's been suggested it's not viewed as friendly grit okay so we would have to vote on the amendment don't you need a second to bring it to a vote oh yeah that's true sorry is there a second okay seeing no second we move back to the original motion and that is to include the eight foot fence at Chico high and remove the six foot fence that is currently separating off inspire I have a comment yes um so my my only hesitation in making this decision for right now is the fact that we are revisiting our facilities master plan in the context of of school safety and just being able to take into consideration that perimeter fence I have no problem with removing the six foot fence I understand the the kind of ergonomics of of Campus flow and the need for the desire to remove that however the chain link fence is a cost effective measure but you know where is the cost benefit you know line when we're considering type of fence and and aesthetic and not aesthetic like I'm not worried about aesthetic more of like what's most safe but for a reasonable amount and I know that that's going to be a discussion that comes up in our facilities master plan meetings that's the only reason why I'm like why does it have to happen now I and and I but I do like the idea obviously of closing off campus so that that our fields are not accessible while we have especially while we have students out there to just anybody who can walk off walk from from off campus onto to campus so that's the only hesitation I have is just the type of fence that's being installed when we have this much bigger conversation to have about types of fencing and you know trying to make our budget be a little bit more robust to be able to afford a potentially more secure fencing system and phase that in over however many decades it might take Julie What's the timing of the even the first review of the master plan I'm meeting with them tomorrow to lay out the schedule but our first meeting will occur very quickly but they weren't supposed to bring us the board suggestions until we have the the first meeting to kick off the development of the master plan will occur shortly the overall approval will occur in March so that is almost six months yeah the cost difference between a chain link fence and the the decorative metal fencing is quite significant I did measure all of the perimeter fencing for all of our campuses it's a little bit doubled up because we already have some of that decorative metal fencing already but it is it's not a foot high it's it's considerably shorter was over nine and a half million dollars to replay so it is it is very expensive undertaking to to do that around all of our schools sure the knowing the difference per square foot would be better for me when you say nine million dollars I have no idea how much if you're talking about every single square foot of fencing that we currently have to replace like and that's neither here nor there right now but my question is maybe something I should just research on my own and that is what is the research behind the the level of safety when it comes to keeping people out um when comparing types of fence again I don't care that it's decorative it's that's not important to me it's it's what's keeping people from coming onto campus is that we don't necessarily want to be there right so the decorative fence saying is just perceived as less climbable because it has the vertical pickets so that's why I was using it as an example and I think that the word perceived is important there which is why you know I just want to I just want to know what what's the research say you know and that is really going to be a topic for looking at the the facilities master plan I think um just to kind of lay that part of the discussion for us thank you for clarifying everything else I want to say that I don't imagine this District ever just taken out our checkbook and writing a big check for uh you know non-scalable decorative fencing around every single campus you know my vision for that would be something that would happen as we move forward you know incrementally I just want to clarify that it's for you um 10 and a half million you say is what it would cost to do the whole kit and caboodle in Chico Unified nine and a half nine and a half million you know I mean that doesn't sound so out of this world but still I don't that's not really my thought it's simply that we sort of take logical steps as we go forward Eileen yes thank you just a couple more questions of clarification you um I'm concerned that there is access without a fence from the parking lot onto the play Fields now if we approve this tonight except the bid and we we go ahead we then provide that fence as the barrier between the parking lot and unfettered access to our play fields and then you know the Playfield is campus did I miss something there or is that in fact what this would do if we approve it tonight and what's the um time frame for having this started and completed so that we do have a fence between the parking lot and our play fields you're you're correct in what you're asserting and it would be 60 days it would be complete ah thank you so not before Halloween but before New Year's okay all right we've had a pretty long discussion we have a motion that's been seconded I call for the question Madam president all right so um all those in favor of the item two um on the contracts signify by saying I I all those against nay okay so four to one all right and I'll look forward to the prickly new fence okay so now we bring up Cherise an unaudited actuals it was a nightmare to read yeah I mean a nightmare all right Charisse and I are here to present the 2122 unaudited actuals the unaudited actuals report represents actual revenues and expenditures for the last fiscal year it's not a budget it's the true financial performance um and these numbers are presented before the annual audit is complete um the Auditors were out a couple of weeks ago so we're on track to get that one complete by the deadline okay so you guys are used to seeing this slide it's changed a little bit so let's look at 21 22 because that's the Year we're talking about um 2122 was funded on greater of Prior or current year if you look at 2021 that was the same as 1920 that's because 2021 we didn't report Ada because of all of the changes happening because of covid so 1920 was that last year so we've had the same funding basically for three years now looking into the future we have the recent um measure that is going to allow us to use the average of the three prior years for our prior year number which really um you can see in in Prior slides that we've showed you it looked more like a funding Cliff where this really that using the average really Smooths it out even though we are still projecting declining enrollment all right on the income statement there's just a couple of things I wanted to point out first of all the bottom line is what we're looking at so unrestricted change in fund balance we're at 5.3 million and positive restricted change in fund balance 3.9 so a total of 9.2 positive change in fund balance this year um the other thing I wanted to point out is our restricted funds are significantly higher than they usually are and that's because of the influx of covid dollars that we've received so there's something on that I want to point out on the next slide too okay so this is our little pie chart of total revenue so when I was looking at this I took a look at what we reported to you in 1920.
and then they were that portion of their business was bought out by another company that didn't start happening again until September October now of course we have a large amount of Armstrong Flooring in Carpeting and tile and such throughout this project we've been able to recover and move to another manufacturer but again things like that create these types of delays and we didn't really think it was appropriate to kind of move the kids into school when we don't have flooring down um sheetrock is up the place is being painted ceiling tile is going in but without a finished floor it still is largely looks unfinished um Mr Belden joined us last night for our walk through the Board of Ed was at our September walkthrough you saw how much time we did gain and how much work we did gain over the last month but it's still just quite not enough where I would be comfortable and I know you know leadership here just want to be comfortable making that move too soon so Bob we want to have a go beyond that um so the uh the first shock that I got was exactly what you said where there's a lot of things that are not going to be done by the December Readiness day right they uh for the board they gave us a four page uh checklist of of items when you go down that list over half of them is flooring right and it's not just the Armstrong Flooring it's all the types of flooring whether it's the terrazzo tile or the uh or the carpet tiles the vinyl flooring in certain places the gym flooring I mean that's everything you you just do a flooring flooring flooring and I'll pass this around in case you guys want to look at it but it's um significant it is and the second biggest category which to me wasn't a big surprise their Landscaping Outdoors work right so the uh um of course moving in in January means you're not in the at a time of the year that Landscaping gets done very effectively and when the project is a little bit behind and they're trying to keep up you couldn't get it done here in October and November some of that item so so that means that the areas and the playgrounds the courtyards the front the the the stream in the front would not be ready and the stuff in the front probably wouldn't have been ready anyhow because it's all tied into the paving project which doesn't really get done until okay gets knocked down so and then once you got through those it and you guys will scan it it's relatively small things here and there it's a little bit of uh wall hangings and a little bit of ceiling things here and there but it's flooring flooring flooring flooring flooring so um Mr Chuck Cook visited us and said would you be willing to move in with a polished concrete floor now think Costco right and exactly you know and and our reaction was no way um it's just not we want everybody to feel really good when they move into the school um and uh so it was the the next question was well when can we be ready right if it's not going to be into we had original date for everybody the original plan was like a mid-December uh clearance by the town and the occupancy certificate move on January 3rd so um so the question then was okay how do we get um comfortable and I'll just show this to the board again the colors on this are um green is we can get done by February right not a lot of the sun green on it but not a lot all right uh red is I can't even get done by mid-February and most a lot of Landscaping on that some of the flooring items but the yellow which is 70 of the items are we're waiting to hear from the flooring companies right we don't know the lead time so last night I visited with the MBC and I asked our our building contractor OMG to please get us firm dates and firm commitments so we can make some decisions because we're in this awkward position right now of saying it's not going to be January 3rd because that's not the right environment to put our kids into but we don't know what date we can tell people and we need to get the Huckleberry kids moved into that school because if we don't get that done early enough we won't get the rest of the uh the kids in by September right right we have to start knocking down that Huckleberry building and building the parking lot because you need parking for the staff who are going to teach the kids when they all come in I'll just remind you it's a thousand plus kids in this one school that's a lot of teachers and a lot of staff so um so it's a it's a deep breath moment um it is in the spring off of uh you know where Bob left off we've been working with the construction manager Ong on a constant basis updating these lists doing material tracking um we did ask them last night uh to come here at the November meeting and present a forward-looking schedule I mean we receive it every month I think it would be helpful for you to hear from OMG and then we can start making decisions based upon more realistic or harder dates as we get you know firmer dates on some of these flooring materials one thing and I know Bob was a little surprised and he grilled me on it you know can we pay overtime can we get contractors to work around the clock and while some of that is feasible and we have done some of that we're talking about a lot of consecutive items that have to happen that you just can't truncate or overlap so I know you mentioned the terrazzo flooring and that's a lot of the school all the first floor in the hallways it's something that can't be done while others are in the building you know you can't hang a ceiling over a wet terrazzo floor and you can't lay a Terrazzo flow while the guy's hanging a ceiling so um these consecutive um construction items really are what making this schedule kind of stretch out then the other thing is obviously as one flooring or one material is not ready schedules you know contractors do plan their work windows and you know and some of that gets shifted around so we are working with that on a daily basis with both Ong tecton and arcadis and uh you know we'll be back here in November with a presentation of this is how OMG foresees the next two or three months happening and at what point can we get into the school and move the students into something where we all feel when we walk in and go wow this is what we expected yeah it's a standard the standard that uh Dr Brill and I agreed on was the part of the school that we'll be occupying now just remind it we're not moving the Pre-K and kindergarten in so there's a corn One Wing at the end that we won't be occupying but the part that we're occupying has to be complete right it has to be something we're proud to have people come into right that includes all the common rooms that includes all the hangings that includes all the classrooms includes all the flooring it has to be ready playgrounds and uh no we're going to live with this and live with that in that space so um I will just if I if you don't mind uh I found the tour that you had tour it wasn't a tour I just joined the NBC on their normal rate uh their normal walkthrough we all had a chance to go on a formal tour a month ago I was stunned hey guys for those of you who are on that tour every one of the back wings so there's six back Wings classroom Wings every classroom is wall boarded now every classroom has the the grids up for putting in the panels right there's a handful that we did not but they were mostly in and I found two or three classrooms that the ceiling panels were already installed so you can see what they look like they weren't fully installed but they were there so the back of the school other than the flooring you can see you can actually visualize that you know that that's a very clear path that's going to be done with with the exception of that flooring right the front of the school a little different here so much right the the cafeteria is all wall boarded now remember it was uh just uh just uh uh girders before it's all enclosed now you get a real sense of what that is they're working on the uh they're working on the serving area this week um they told us um the stage area and the multi-purpose room are all wall all fully wall boarded and uh and uh that's starting to look relatively complete yep the gym is not right the Gym's like a big storage area it's a staging area it's a staging area and then as you get over to the the Pre-K section the front classrooms exactly as they were there's no wall boarding at all and those common areas for the youngest children are are they're just having gotten to those yet for the the framing it up but the admin area was all wallboard the admin areas both on the second floor in the first floor um the uh there's still some important stairways that have not been installed the main in particular and the one in the library the library actually started seeing it take a little shape and we were all worried about that um so it's moving fast but when we went through the specifics of the flooring stuff they're 12-week lead times and when you restart in in uh there's the two key numbers I walked away was was 12-week lead times to get the flooring in assuming that those suppliers aren't overwhelmed with Armstrong being taken out of the equation we don't have dates from them yet and then the second was the terrazzo flooring is there a window of time I think the Cure period was like six weeks yes it is um that you need to have that they can't be in those areas so they're working hard to finish up the construction in those areas so they could get to work on that flowing so yeah and again on the flooring especially with the Armstrong a little bit of a ripple effect so Public Schools we do most of the construction especially in renovations additions and alterations during the summer months when Armstrong went Belly Up and this actually started in April this this process where they started not fulfilling orders everybody went to Target Shaw flooring and some of the other major manufacturers a lot of that stock and inventory was used up during this past summer construction months so as we got into September and the new flooring company took over the Armstrong line well there's a depletion of existing stock so now we're waiting that 12 weeks that's actually manufacturing time and that's exactly what we're waiting for at this juncture there was a couple of other good news items that I heard at the NBC meeting last night that the school will be fully enclosed that right now it's almost fully enclosed there's a couple of doorways that are still open to the elements they're either putting in temporary or permanent doors in those doorways and the heating gets turned on next week so that says uh you know the fundamentals are start are continuing on some of those important things the other thing we talked about was the whole playground playgrounds can't go in in the middle of the winter they can't but they were targeting to have them go in in April yes so this if moving this date will actually allow the kids to be closer to when they'll be playground equipment being installed and we asked them to put that into the scheduled discussion so that we could start seeing will the playground be in at the same time kids go in right and that's something thing we're directly responsible for that's not under Ong that's something that arcadis and District leadership has been working together on so yeah our Target is so there's some big meetings on selection of uh equipment and getting this next week next week so so that's uh that that the the Landscaping will line up a little better if it slides out as long as April and there is a chance it could slide out as long as April um but we need to hear from Ong before we make any decisions right right now they told us if you look at the color coding that they can't get a lot most of the stuff they're not committing February 15th is what we had asked them to assess in the gym they didn't give us anything on Jim Jim they gave us no input on so so this is based on initial conversation sounds like partial use of will be all they allowed if it but that was for this the comment was for December okay right that was comment was for December so we don't have a good answer on the gym that was the only one they didn't color code so uh and uh yeah we have a better indication on that but um right now because of staging we're just not allowing anybody in to do any work yeah this we need the space so uh so there's a couple of little nuggets of good news in there that uh but there is overall it's uh probably it's not over Christmas break it's probably in March or April it's spring we're talking it's spring-ish it's springish and uh and the school will be largely completed yeah um bikes by the original schedule with the lack of form I'm guessing if we go through a walk through in January would be like oh yeah this is done except for flooring right and uh and because that's the big stuff inside the building that are a problem right um you know on other good news budget wise we still have a healthy contingency um which is good in this market because I think we hit the market at the right time um you know we've seen a lot of escalation we you know fight with it every day because obviously people do ask that question but you know right now financially we're in a good place so moving forward I know technology and some of the larger items that were just bid out came in under the estimated budgets so those things are you know we do have a lot of positives here and uh you know I said to Bob and John and they expressed some great disappointment as we did to Ong as well but what we say to our clients is at the end of the day nobody's going to remember you were four months later or six months later than you wanted to be they will remember if it's wrong so you know on behalf of all the taxpayers let's do it do it once do it right get it right 10 years from now nobody will remember that uh we didn't open it in August of 22 we waited till spring of 23.
um uh a few parts of this five uh that I'm mentioning here relative to school buses 100 zero emissions school buses and environmental justice communities by 2030. Cheshire is not an environmental justice Community um so not relevant to this discussion but what is relevant is these two items 100 zero emissions or alternative uh fuel school buses in all school districts by 2035 so if it's not electric it's got to be propane um at least for the options that we have other options are biofuel for alternative fuels biofuels CNG um uh that's all I can think of actually at this moment but other uh alternative fuel options apply but we don't have it it's as we'll see in a second diesel gasoline propane or electric uh 100 zero emissions uh school buses so you know zero emissions read Electric uh zero missions my eyes is a misnomer um because there is always a source of the emissions if it's not a renewable energy uh but electric um school buses uh by 2040.
and in 1920 the local control funding formula was 75 percent of the total pie and now it's at 47 and that's not because our lcff has gone down that's just because of the coven dollars that are that came into state and federal revenues on the expenditure side these numbers didn't really change dramatically and that's because we used a lot of the coveted dollars on Staffing and Staffing is the biggest part of our expenditures as usual when you add in the special ed contribution which is mainly salaries as well salaries and benefits is 90 of our total expenses and that's that's consistent and um when I looked back at 1920 as well and then this last slide is our covid relief funding so on this one we received 56 million um and after 21 22 last year now we have 21.9 remaining um we are required to spend five to six million by 9 30 23 next year and then the remaining 15 to 16 million we need to spend by 9 30 24.
it just will be really a faded memory I just want everybody to kind of hold on to that and say let's get it right so I've done a lot of talking here so what do you guys have any questions for uh Mr checkup thank you for coming by the way Bill my pleasure Bob can I ask you a question um Paul I I really appreciate where you're coming from on that um to remind uh for people watching at home for the public for the board um it's not acceptable for our kids and our staff to be in a classroom with polished concrete floors with an expectation that the tile man may show up after school one day and my furniture has to be moved out and the tile goes down and the next day my furniture is a mess when I come in and that disruption we don't want that uh we want our kids as Bob talked about and our parents to have time to tour a finished facility so they could be excited and we want our staff to have that opportunity for field trips and to bring the kids over and get them ready we thought we'd have that in December clearly that's not going to be the case um but with the community putting 78 million dollars into this project it has to be done it has to be done right and we need to in a very informed way plan the move in and that's what we had planned planned our whole District calendar around that um I want to assure everyone we are not going to touch any of the vacation time on the winter break so for those people who are planning to go visit family over the winter break or go skiing or whatever their vacation plans might be the days off are the days off we will work on the district calendar and where we might need to accommodate a day and we'll bring that for board approval and discussion when the time is right one Assurance I'm looking for Paul and I know we talked about this before there's a group we cannot disappoint I can be disappointed all day long um but my job is to solve problems the fourth graders I I hear what I think is really good news from you in terms of even though there's a delay we're still moving in in this Academic Year the current fourth graders must be fifth graders next year at Candlewood Lake and I just can you talk a little bit to that and some of the timing up of that and how that looks to be the same you look two through four is what is contained right now in Huckleberry we have no place else to put them because we do have plans to redo the ball fields and take down the modulars at Western Air um you know we have to bid it out it's got to be done it's not something that can be you know bid let and then say Oh wait hold on we're going to wait a year on this so these plans are already in motion the fourth graders that are in Huckleberry just like the second and third graders will be going into the new school I mean because of that where we have to get new Portables just kidding out of all your reporting that's something that makes me smile so thank you John the money should make you smile yeah I mean yeah no I know everybody knows it's what I do for a living absolutely look I'm in a lot of schools in the Bronx um you know the kids should be excited to move into the school exactly we're really looking forward it'll be a positive um one of the things that that I will do coming out of this meeting tonight is Penn um uh a communication to go home to parents because uh while we've talked with the various Union leadership this week to give them a heads up that we'll be having this formal discussion tonight I also went over to Huckleberry um with uh Dr rudel Dr P was on PD today so uh Dr Rue and I shared with the faculty that the move will not be happening for January 3rd but sometime in the next few weeks as Paul's alluded to we should have a a date uh for move-in and we'll work on subsequent calendar plans um so we're ready to go I think I think there was a comment from a few of the staff members to say Dr Burrell with all due respect this is the worst kept secret we we knew there was no way you were getting in at that time so um blind optimism I suppose but really really want to see this so so much for the kids um and the staff the staff is excited about it but they uh some of the procrastinators shared that they're happy in the sense that they have a little more time to pack so that was something the other thing I do want to share and this this will benefit parents who drive their kids to school and parents were wondering about how the buses are going to work um as well as staff there will be a temporary parking lot uh as part of this yeah we're looking at site Logistics and you know as we move forward and you know depending on when we're moving in um you know we'll redo the site Logistics plan we'll go through that with you sure I'm not gonna make any promises on how many parking spaces or bus Loops or parrot drop off or parents um that's going to be very fluid depending on what's available on the site absolutely we will always strive to maintain to give everybody's normal living experience but if it's springish at the end of the day we're probably looking at eight weeks maybe 10 weeks of inconvenience versus you know years and years of enjoyment exactly and and so with a a later move in time there's less time in the winter where you have snow removal and what could be a lot more inconvenient and messy for parent drop-off bus pick up and drop off and also uh staff parking so there is a benefit in that regard um not trying to paint a Rosy picture or anything like that we're all disappointed but um with challenge comes opportunity all right let's make the best decisions possible you know reality not expectations so Paul are you going to organize Ong in here work with Dr Burrell again on get an agenda slot and so we can invite them in yes I've already prized Dave kravenzola of um that plan to come on November 16th for Dave to present from OMG you know LLC recovery schedule but the schedule moving forward to um give us some firmness and some Charities of what they're going to deliver when they're going to deliver it so we can make our proper plans for the future of moving kids I mean we have a lot of uh we have move Management Services that we need to kind of work on as well so that means boxing up teachers moving them over I've got Furniture coming in there's a lot of other moving Parts other than just construction being completed so um you know that all comes into play as well we're probably going to be utilizing the K in one areas because they're not moving in for furniture storage for the time being because I think that's slated to come in sometime in early December I've got to put it somewhere and then technology arrives and yeah there's a lot of moving pieces to this and that portion of the building will be complete enough to and secure enough to house that type of expensive equipment and furniture right well site security is the responsibility of the contractor um you know we do have insurance and and and stuff on that but as Bob alluded to earlier it's being closed in we're getting the balance of our enclosure pieces in the forthcoming week or two so that building will start to be buttoned up for from a security standpoint we do we have a lot of Technology moving in um and like the installation of all that will continue ongoing as well I assume right yeah Eric will actually be done sometime in December with all the technology pieces and smart boards and everything else being hung up uh thankfully you know we live in a great Community we haven't had any issues with site security you know there's a lot of material there's a lot of money materials and tools and everything on this site and uh you know the community at large has been great about respecting the site and um you know just kind of keeping their distance if you will one more question um with the the delay in moving the Huckleberry kids out we're still okay though with the Demolition of that school and the site work that has to be done and then moving the center school kids over the following yeah and again Dave kravitzola will address that that is still the current plan so if springish we're moving the kids out of Huckleberry abatement will happen demolition will happen the asphalt plants actually don't open until mid to late March anyway so that kind of puts us right back in the time frame for site work to commence even if we did demolition in February I can't move Frozen the Earth you know it's just not feasible so that would have to come out you know kind of stayed as is for a little while and initially we were taking that down not until June the end of June so um if that all had happened this year so it still looks like it's feasible to get all the site work will some of it dribble into September October with Paving and you know we have two sides of that parking lot I would say probably but you know let's see where it lands when Dave comes on November thanks I mean I want everybody to know contractors don't make any more money by stretching things out they all have summer jobs or school work that they want to get to for the following summer so uh they want to be out of there just as much as we want them out of there see what they really do okay any other questions all right thank you Paul all right appreciate it thank you thank you Paul um and so you're planning to do this communication like in the next 24-5 hours uh by the end of business tomorrow I'd like to pen a note and perhaps it could come from Dr P myself and you um so it's all of us you know be great if uh we put the link to this oh yeah we'll see let people see this so absolutely okay Bob would you be able to take maybe a brief recess before the next presentation uh well let's finish the The Candlewood Lake stuff um do you want to talk a little bit more about the the Huckleberry Furniture disposal plan Yes actually if Ken could come up to the microphone just to uh embellish a little bit of what Joy shared um I think she pretty much covered it all it's the uh the board's policy on the sale and disposal of uh obsolete folks equipment and supplies and she caught the order could you just walk through the order of how we're going to make things available uh a little slowly sure so first of all all the computers and technology equipment of any value uh will be inventoried by our technology director and technology department to be used for spares and parts moving forward uh our other schools and as long as the and also with the TSO we'll have first choice on furniture and Equipment after that um after we have taken what we want the policy dictates that we will notify Town agencies that they can take furniture and Equipment free of charge and after that Surplus not taken by the schools or town agencies can be sold or donated to the public or disposed of if there's no value on community groups and organizations would have preference over individuals and employees have an equal but not preferential employee opportunity to take any of the surplus furniture or equipment and that's just a summarization of some summarization of what's in the policy one of the approaches we want to take with the policy is the taxpayers have already paid for this whether they're a business in town or you know they live in town their kids may have grown we're really not interested in getting involved with holding a tag sale and asking people to pay twice for something that they you know a second time for something in their taxes they've already paid for so we want to be able to provide furniture for our different Community agencies of course Mr belanda and Mr Renda have first dibs on things that are going to come through and take a look see what they can use I don't know how many tiny chairs they need but but there's definitely some teacher desks and shelving and some other things so we'll have an organized fashion I know that was a a particular the furniture disposal was very interesting a particular interest for some folks and so we wanted to put the policy out there for people and walk through what that's going to be Ken actually wrote a memo that's in the board packet so again if anybody's interested they certainly could go look at the policy itself but but see Ken's memo and that's how we're going to approach it I think we ought to make a point point of communicating it to the first select woman and to make sure the finance committee is aware of it okay um just because there we talked about it I could do it I could do that at the next Board of Finance meeting great and maybe you should talk to Tara yeah all right so I don't want any surprises no and Ken well we talked to Tara maybe we could get Marsha involved in that conversation just to let them know exactly what we're doing sure great and it's policy number three two six zero if anybody's interested in looking it up and um so I assume that at some point when we're ready to actually do this that there will be some sort of like dates of like okay this is the last day that we're tagging stuff this is the last day that town agencies have so that it's organized and we know okay now there's nothing left we're gonna donate the rest or whatever Mr Mr Caldwell's been put on notice to help us think through some of how that we should make that work our facility directly yeah I can also see that process dragging out once we get a firm move out date then we can uh yeah put together a schedule like that can't give the furniture away until the kids aren't using it anymore that's that's def uh for sure okay thank you thanks again and uh Dr Bill you're going to give an update on the new school start times yes related to all this yes let me find my notes here just to make sure we have that um so there was another point of Interest more from staff than from from families just double checking on new school start times uh to to recall probably about four years ago we with the board put together a subcommittee called healthy school start times and we really looked at um student sleep um obviously as a as an adolescent health issue frankly and so reviewing the studies um conducting parent surveys Etc et cetera and really having a very long and thorough process uh having the athletic director involved everybody always talks about sports how's that going to Impact Sports at the high school um we we came up with going from a three-tier to a two-tier bus system that serves the uh the new school start times which we're supposed to begin this year but because of the delay in Candlewood Lake and at the time almost a year ago now not being sure where we stood with the pandemic and all the other uncertainty the board decided to hold off on 2223 implementation of start times and we would revisit that um with an understanding that we're really looking at 23 24 which is next year So the plan is still to move forward with the board's wishes for 23-24 implementation the start times for Candlewood Lake Elementary School only one Elementary School we don't have two anymore uh is 8 50 a.m it will end at 3 35 pm and it'll be on one bust here and then the high school and middle school big change for the high school only a five minute change for the Middle School the start time for both whiskey near and BHS will be eight o'clock with an end time of 245.
school contracts uh can be 10 years if providing at least one zero emission School Bus um and uh the commissioner's instructor set up a grant funds program to support the federal funds that are coming through the clean School Bus program which we'll see in a second has the EPA announced the first round of the recipients they said they said in October so I was just curious if they were going to warn anybody outside of the environmental justice communities I know that Ben is probably not but it is highly unlikely there's um about so they had originally 500 million they increased it to just about uh one billion um for funding there were four billion dollars applied for and I believe it's at 75 percent was electric um so either electric or or in priority uh communities um so non-prioritized communities are unlikely to get how does one get categorized in the environmental justice uh so they're uh so for can it's different between federal and state levels in Connecticut um you can go look to see all of them but there are about 10 different metrics that they use to decide if it essentially comes down to Poverty yeah rankings yeah and it's the same it's the same with Federal but they use different different metrics to arrive at that the the average turnover of a school bus fleet is 10 years pretty much yeah um so with regard to those deadlines of 2035 and 2040.
real in reality we're projecting to spend about 18 million in 20 this school year of it so we will only have um about 5 million or 3 million remaining to spend in the out years board um so this next slide is going to compare the last budget we brought to you was in June and that was our estimated actuals for 2122 so what we like to do when we come and present how we actually ended the year is compare estimated actuals with unauded actuals so if you notice there are a couple differences I'll go over in the next Slide the reasons for those but the change in fund balance down at the bottom the difference between estimated actuals and unauded actuals is only 462 000 when you consider a large budget that's pretty close um so a couple of the big differences between what we call EA and UA is local Revenue the difference on that is our fair market value adjustment that we had to make we get the calculation from the county that basically says if we had to close all of our books right now what would our cash value be and as everyone knows the volatility of the market right now usually we're very close to 100 on that adjustment it was 96.78 this year which doesn't sound like a lot but when you have a 55 million dollar balance it's a huge adjustment salaries and benefits health and well welfare all of those are due to either overestimations if we were a little too conservative when we did our estimated actuals and then also salaries and benefits differences for payout for prep days we had teachers that decided to not take their prep days and so we paid them out for that at the end of the year okay so HW is Health and Welfare yes okay yeah gotta love all the acronyms books and supplies that big difference is due to just delivery when do we actually get things and we try and we try to estimate as close as possible but as everyone knows we've been dealing with supply chain issues so some items weren't received before June 30th Capital outlay same thing with that shade structure projects that we were hoping were going to be done by June 30th just were delayed until August and then transfers and contributions that one was a lot lower due to the difference in special ed and the reason that our contribution was a lot lower was because of one-time funding that we received from both the state and feds for special ed programs so that took a little bit of the hit off of us for our contribution because they're giving us less because they're giving us more so our contribution actually went down for special ed between when we came to you with our budget and where we closed the books okay so next we like to explain to you our transfers in so that RDA pass through for rrma that's per Ed code we have to give them three percent for our RMA for our maintenance and operations Department to run that's three percent of our total expenditures in the general funds that's required for Ed code that's that 3.4 million developer fees as we've seen the last few years and it has not dipped developer fees and Chico are amazing we are having huge Collections and so that's three percent that we basically get as an admin support for the general fund to help all the supports that we give for collecting the developer fees and helping our community contributions for restricted programs normally we just have those top two there so it's special ed and RMA the three Title One title two and title three those were unforeseen I was part of our federal program monitoring that we had last fall so we've been explaining that to you guys along the way but unfortunately there were some unallowed costs in those Federal programs that we had to basically repay out of the general fund okay so this chart shows us our unrestricted ending fund balance year over year as you can see the 2122 ending fund balance we have very healthy reserves are unrestricted that kind of purple bar that says other commitments that was the amount that Jacqueline brought to you in December and the good thing about this is it's going to help us weather the storm all of the Articles and everything that we're hearing right now is that there are a lot of signs for recession and so this will help us a lot so that we can help take on the costs of purrs and stirs our special ed program keeps growing so all of those increased costs we will be able to weather that yes Matt is that three percent like the maximum we can save no um so the well okay so what I'm sorry what three percent are you talking about because we have a lot of different economic uncertainty oh I see no so we actually on top of the reserve for economic uncertainties all of those other categories that we have are parts of our ending fund balance but we actually have unassigned of 9 million on top of that so what we try to do is that top orange bar we try to make sure that we also have a buffer on top of the three percent I believe the reserve for economic uncertainties the three percent is per Ed code yeah so for clarification the three percent is required by the state of California for a school district our size to have a minimum of a three percent Reserve but we have more this board has taken action to do an additional two percent which is the yellow or Canary color okay okay and a reserve could be analogous to cash in the bank yeah savings account yeah I consider this the district savings account and that's the max I remember this conversation um but but there's a limit right you're not allowed to just save a whole bunch of money right you have to spend your money you have to spend your money but if you commit so there's a maximum for a district our size there's a maximum of ten percent but if the board takes action to commit that is Exempted from the 10 percent so Matt that's that purple bar that Jaclyn brought to you that's 14.5 million that are committed to different needs the district might have in the future out of our savings account basically okay okay and then a few years ago the board asked us to come and just kind of break down restricted ending fund balance and which accounts had vending fund balances so these are all of our grants that we receive and where they ended the year in 2122.
while we're on one bust here for both high school and middle school they will share they will not share buses they will be on separate bus runs so I know that's a concern for some Middle School uh families kids are young should we have a sixth grader on the bus with the 12th grader uh very um legitimate concern uh although Bethel next door there are middle school kids around with their high school kids so it's it's kind of community value there Ken's worked that through that's part of our new five-year contract with All-Star Transportation Ken is actually working directly with All-Star now they're doing analysis of the runs and the addresses and the number of kids to see if we might need a couple more buses or not as we develop into the budget season as well so that's the update on furniture and the update on new school start times I don't know if there's any questions okay all right thank you thank you all right that's it on the elementary school building project you're off the hook yeah we're doing a report we got Paul to do it um all right so we're going back to the the original agenda so the next topic is a very important one on the school Improvement Plan update um and that we're going to get a report uh from the assistant superintendent and the building principles on where are we right now and so I'll turn it over to you recess thank you Bob that's sad [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] I'm standing because I'm going to go over here so I can see the screen a little bit better and the board has kind of shifted over to the side because this is a very important presentation on where we are with from the learning loss on from covet and what actions district is going to be taking so with that I'll turn it over to Dr Mann thank you very much I'm hoping that you can hear me I'm just on the verge of losing my voice completely so I'm going to project and use my best teacher skills um similar to Misty Nicole Hickman I'm excited to formally address you as the assistant superintendent I've now been here close to three months two and a half months um and I'm really enjoying working with this amazing team and I'm excited to be presenting with the entire team tonight many members of the district lead are key members of the district leadership team are going to be joining me with this because it really does take a team effort and we are going to be talking about I know that the board has a lot of experience with presentations regarding growth over time prior to the pandemic that was one of the main focuses of the presentations and this is a little bit of a different presentation we are going to data that we're going to be reviewing tonight is student achievement data from this spring so what this really this past spring spring of 2022 and what this really provides us is a a piece of the foundation from which we are going to be building I want to remind everyone that as we move through this presentation you know this is the data piece which is the first half of the presentation isn't a very important part but it is not the entire picture and uh these these class these uh tests that these students take oftentimes for sat for example is a one day test SBA is a couple different days um this to the S back data but um it still is only one piece of the puzzle and as you saw earlier today school is not just about the the testing it's about the whole child so we're going to use this information for uh helping inform our practices and helping inform our work um and so this is going to help flesh out where you your understanding of where we are so this is just an overview of the presentation kind of a mini agenda for our presentation we're going to be beginning with setting the scene and kind of giving A Brief History of Time for Brookfield Public Schools um with our illustrious superintendent and then we'll move through those data points and then all of that as I said really kind of builds up to where the rest of the team is going to be sharing aspects of their school Improvement plans based on much largely based on this data but also based on the feedback and the work that they've done with their faculty and staff so that the professionals are really engaged with and involved with the work and then we'll talk about where we're going with the future so I'm gonna ask Dr Burrell to come up to kind of set the scene for us from Fall 2019 through now thank you Dr Mann so um it's really important to think about the story where we were what's happened to us over the last two to three years where we are right now and where we're gonna go and I want to set the stage for you using the the literature frame or the movie frame of the hero's journey and many people are familiar with Marvel Comics and Harry Potter um Star Wars and all their favorite literature in terms of the scene gets set we understand the context of where we're at we have rising action adversity that's faced and then we move forward into knowing exactly A spacebar where we are so what I would like to do first is set the scene it's really important to think back from where we came as far back as 2015-16 uh to 2019 as we started strategic planning and getting ready and then the pandemic that came right in March of 2020.
what's your initial thought on even moving toward an alternative fuel you're thinking you're thinking what what I'm thinking um which is that I mean the alternative if you want these buses to be you know we're just going to be playing a shell game at that point if we don't start by 2025 you know putting alternative but even if the scrap buses that just you know for less than 10 years old yes I just want I just want to say to make sure I'm thinking this clearly so the alternative fuels you would have to start by 2025 or in 20 almost in 2023 right now so you have to in these buses don't have to but these buses well I mean to do this in a straightforward transition where you would just be rotating your Fleet in a normal process yep you'd be starting in 2025.
those top two exp the elop program expanded learning opportunities program that we plan to spend this year in 2122 educator Effectiveness we have a four-year plan to spend that out by the end of those Grant funds and then cash flow this is pretty standard you'll see the same pattern pretty much we have a dip in November and then another dip in March and then December and April we receive our biggest property taxes so that's a large cash influx for us but pretty much standard as far as cash flow goes for us for the year and then in conclusion the good thing is we've had hold harmless over the last few years so as Marie mentioned 2122 was last year for hold harmless but because of the state's passing of the three-year average we'll have kind of a trickle down so we won't have quite as much of a hit to our lcff Revenue which is very good for us we also are going to continue spending those covid-19 relief dollars according to the plan that the board has approved a lot of that is being spent on learning recovery as well as social emotional supports and then as I explained and Marie explained the larger stick restricted ending fund balance is due to a lot of the grants that we received this last year so we saw a very large influx of new grant money over 2122 and we are all working very hard to figure out how we can spend those dollars to expand and extend our programs for 22.23 and then we will we're as Marie said we're in the middle of our audit right now for 2122 so they're reviewing all of our program and financials are getting pretty close to finalizing but we won't receive the actual final audit until around Christmas time and then we'll come back to you in January and present the final audit okay so if you don't have any other questions I'll need approval of the unauded actuals tonight but I'm here for any questions as well I move approval did you I have a question okay so on the uh on the unaudited actuals those Student Activities special Revenue fund I was really struck by the tremendous drop in the certificated teacher salaries that was listed it was a drop of 94 percent and in classified salaries it was a drop of 98.5 percent so I wasn't sure what was going on with that I'm sorry Kathy which slide are you looking at okay I'm looking at the unaudited actual Student Activity special Revenue fund that's fun nine Cherise oh I gotcha nine fun night yeah so that's our ASB funds yeah essentially so that's been that was a new change that came on two years ago two years ago through the state of California it didn't used to be part of Duke unified's books they were still audited and they had their own but now those funds are now Incorporated in Chico unified's financial statements so with 2122 coming on there was less activity at ASB they were starting to just gear up again after having been a half day in 2021 right okay so that's that's part of the reason why you see that change okay it was just pretty Stark and any other questions so um so all of those real severe drops were basically over that yeah and the Student Activity funds yes okay and what about the Child Development Fund that one's our preschool fund uh-huh um so was there a particular change you were looking at well there's um and it said the excess or deficiency of revenues over expenditures and it shows that the difference was 354 percent negative so that's on page one of the Child Development Fund so that's comparing actuals in 2122 last year and they too were held harmless the state preschool okay um regardless of enrollment in that program to the budget in 2223 in the current year where they are not held harmless so that's where the 354 percent decrease comes into let's just kind of Stark you know but that will change because we are adding a fifth classroom at Loma Vista okay preschool program okay does anybody else have questions before I keep on sludging through this I'm going to second the motion to approve okay there's been a motion in a second um I'm sorry I put order yes um just to remind everybody that the order of operations here is um to have our presentation ask questions call for public comment and then wait for the president to ask for a motion okay so um the issue of showing a deficit with the child development funds I'm keeping on with the questions then that's the same thing about we were held harmless and now we won't be correct okay and for clarification the Child Development um program the state-funded preschool program when I say Child Development it has its own Reserve or savings account so if there's a deficit then we draw off that savings account to make the program whole okay okay I told you it was a nightmare to go through all right um I'm just impressed you're looking at the whole thing oh yeah no every line so um in the cafeteria uh special Revenue fund that was also a little confusing because the state had said that we don't charge you know for food so how are we running deficits I think the deficits you're seeing might be comparisons of actuals from 2122 to budget for 22.23 so we didn't deficit spend in nutrition services which is why we didn't have to do a transfer out from the general fund into nutrition services so they actually ended with a positive ending fund balance okay yeah I know those reports can be very hard yeah I was just like oh my God okay yeah because I'm like going they look like we were deficit on food and I'm going my kid goes yeah breakfast and then he has second lunch and you're like geez where does he put it I don't know mm-hmm Okay so I think that's probably the source of most of my like what the heck probably okay all right anybody else with questions no you didn't stay up all night okay um so uh any comments from the audience okay seeing none um now we have a motion right okay in a second okay so any comments by the board discussion okay well let's then move does the governor's uh budget come out on the 15th of January is that the date where yes usually it'll come out the preliminary budget will come out in January and then we'll get the revision in May so in January we'll have at least an idea of any changes any large changes that are going to happen in 23 24.
we really focused on as you can see in this uh Orange Box investing in our school facilities investing in the new school which we've just spent a great deal of time talking we're almost at the finish line with Candlewood Lake there was a great deal of Financial and Regulatory control that we needed to achieve and we did we also had reports there was really a specific report about BHS being a focus high school and we had to work on our high needs students in closing and narrowing the achievement Gap many of you will remember the hundreds of thousands of dollars we had in the school Improvement Grant um and we had those issues with high needs students and not achieving and having a large gap between non-high needs and high needs students that we've addressed K-12 we're really proud of that work and we've narrowed that Gap a lot of investment in digital context technology infrastructure in terms of Technology we've done an incredible job the community has really invested in that area as well and of course our curriculum development and then really seeing the need straight from our teachers mouths I'll take you back to a little bit when I talked about the tour my first tour going around trying to talk to every individual teacher during their prep times and they talked about the need to really support our students emotionally and that was from teachers of seniors in high school and the next day I visited with our kindergarten teachers and they were saying the exact same thing we did all those things and as part of that when you looked at our total performance index Dr Mann mentioned the whole child in 2019 when you took into account not just test scores but exposure to the Arts graduation rates attendance rates all kinds of things that matter when we educate the whole child that the state measures we had it gotten to the top of durg B we were within the top four districts in durgby we still have plenty of work to do academically plenty of work to do in other areas but we're really proud of that work and then adversity hit in March of 2020 we all know about what happened and we had a lot that was really going on uh in our community the sudden School shutdown transforming us very very much School online no one no one had ever done School online Public School online K-12 like all of us in our region in our state and around the country had um we had to do a lot of work on reopening with an enormous focus on student health and wellness and in addition to that making sure that we didn't drop the ball on academics the other piece that's really important and Bob mentioned it in the introduction of this presentation we had learning loss the parents know that it is not the elephant in the room we talk about it we've put a lot of pieces in place using the grant monies that have come in from the federal government summer school more intervention technology intervention math intervention we're really working hard on that in addition to that as we were going through the last two years there was a lot of Milestones that were missed I think about proms for the kids and dances and sports and all those Milestones our musicals there was lots missed lots of no connection limited connection families having loss friendships lost loved ones lost we've gone through a lot there's a lot of trauma that people are still trying to overcome having said that I think while there was lots of fracture in the community I think we're coming together in an incredible way which brings us to the next phase of where we are right now which is overcoming the adversity and that's our theme for this year of reset and relaunch here's our opportunity to change and take advantage of how we've grown and it's important to acknowledge that and that's exactly what I'm doing here before Anna starts in with the principles we're building new teams the team of Candlewood Lake Elementary School led by Dr pepsaski and our other great administrators and bringing all of our wonderful teachers and staff together with our students a number of new administrators in the district we're really excited about how our team is forming there and of course tonight both uh Mrs D Nicola Hickman and some others have talked about move-ins and move outs and new community members and we're really excited to welcome those folks and we really need to create a bold New Vision for the Brookfield public schools and uh Mr Belden talked about the strategic planning committee and the work that's going on there so we're really excited about that and the real Focus needs to be on student achievement and making sure that not only are we narrowing the achievement Gap but all of our students are rising with their achievement and we're excited to get going on that Journey there will be one more orange box but that'll come at the end of the presentation with Dr Mann finish this things up but I thank you for your time Dr Mann will turn it back over you all right thank you so as Dr Burrell said this is where we are and we are looking toward that transformation and we believe that at this point um one of the things I've been impressed with in this District um are all of the various resources people have spoken about it tonight we've seen demonstrations of it and it's not just the fiscal or physical resources it's the personnel and the the infrastructure that has been built with our people and you could see that with our kids tonight you know they are they are ready to learn they are excited to to develop and they're really um at the point where they're going to be able to do amazing things and they have infinite potential that we are ready to help them grow so um this is the data portion of the uh presentation and as a reminder for everyone the smarter balanced assessment is the state test that is given Every Spring to third through eighth graders it was not given in the spring of 2020 obviously and in the spring of 2021 they did not really release data for us so this is the first time in 2022 that we've had the this data for um you know for a solid two years um it tests Ela and math it's uh and the scores are four level score from does not meet to met and exceeded and what we're looking for is to have as many students at the Met or exceeds uh levels as we can and also paying particularly a particular attention to those other uh two levels approaching and does not meet because that's where we want to kind of disaggregate what's going on and why those um why those students are struggling on these assessments so this is our SBA data for English language arts in each of the grades so you'll notice that in third grade and fourth grade I'm going to try to use this excuse me um we're at in the mid 50s high 58 to almost 60 percent range have met or exceeded uh fifth grade and all the way through eighth grade we get between that 50 and 60 percent so I want to do this as I said to you this isn't um a presentation about growth but there's a little bit of some comparison in this these are our scores from 2018-19 and what I want to draw your attention to is that those third grade these are two different cohorts third and fourth but they're essentially the same outcome in terms of achievement so the third grade in 2018-19 was at 59 and they were at 57 this past year so what that shows me is that the third and fourth graders that tested this past spring didn't have a significant difference in terms of their outcome then the third and fourth graders who tested in the 1819 school year well why is that what happened with that most likely it's that these students were not academically as impacted with the pandemic but if you look at our fifth grade cohort I'm sorry you can't quite see it I'll get out of the way for a minute in 2018-19 as fifth graders we're at 75 percent this is the same group of students in eighth grade and they had significant learning loss for ELA so that shows us all of the impacts that the pandemic brought and that is consistent across many communities across the country the other thing is to think about the age 5th to 8th grade there are so many developmental aspects happening not just academically but socially and emotionally and this District was poised to have those resources available but not knowing how to really and like Dr Burrell said none of us knew how to do school online we certainly didn't know how to help kids develop those social emotional skills those soft skills online so now we know that this connection between academic and social emotional is so strong we'll go into the this is the a comparison of where we are in the demographic reference group of Dirk B so this is Brookfield so we again this is Baseline understanding where we are um most most districts dropped in their scores uh but this is you know a good kind of comparison it we also it gives us a frame of reference for what we want to work toward this is the same chart but with SBA with math you'll notice that similarly we're in the 45 to 50 range except for our fifth graders they really struggled this past year at about 28 who met or exceeded but if we look at the comparisons again third into fourth grade similar in terms of 1819 cohort and 2122 cohort sorry Joy trying to move out of the way um and then again we look at these fifth graders they were at 51 in 2018-19 they were at 51 this past spring so there wasn't learning loss but they also didn't grow like we would hope and and work toward and what that demonstrates to me kind of the difference between you might ask yourself what's the difference why in ela and not so much in math math is a much more scaffolded structured approach to learning which might translate more easily to a disrupted learning cycle hybrid or completely online Ela reading literacy are socially based academic skills kids have to be with each other they have to be interacting and so I think that that kind of demonstrates a little bit of the reason for that learning loss however we want to be better than 51 percent so we know that we have our work cut out for us with the math scores as well similarly this is a dirt comparison and then the next Generation science standards test which was newly uh newly rolled out before the pandemic its first iteration was in the 1617 year but we didn't get any scores so we really only got those scores in the 1819 year so we're in that 50 to 60 range as a Next Generation science is tested in 5th 8th and 11th grade and so if we do a comparison from 1819 again you see that cohort of fifth to eighth grade and again Next Generation science standards are largely literacy and based in terms of the phenomenon and the self-discovery it's also social students work together in order to develop those skills which align directly to our vision of The Graduate portrait of the graduate with that collaboration communication critical and creative thinking so um it makes sense that our kids when they weren't able to be together and even last year we know that we they were in school last year but they had masks on I'll tell you from my experience of being a building leader kids were waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire year I was asked constantly do you think we're going to go out again as soon as they'd hear something on the news do you think we're going to go out again so they were distracted from learning even last year so while they were in school there was still an impact here's the durg results for the ngss so we're at 65 overall and then the last portion of achievement data that we are that is released by the state is the Connecticut sat day so as you know the state of Connecticut tests all 11th graders in March um this past year the for the first time ever the SAT was done online so our students did uh online sat which not only they they may have been actually more familiar with it our teachers were not familiar with preparing kids for an online assessment in the essay in for sat and frankly college board was giving it a go they had never done it before they did some AP testing during the pandemic but they wanted to see how this would work um so the scores range in terms of they're actually from 400 to 1600 in terms of composite score with evidence-based Reading Writing and then also the math score one quick uh caveat that I want to mention is that an impact from the pandemic which isn't in my educational opinion a terrible thing is that many colleges about 65 to 70 percent of the colleges well all the colleges went test optional in 2021.
let's put this way anything new you buy after 25 you'd have to give strong consideration to buying diesel after 25. if you're yeah I'm saying if you're going to buy a bus after 2025 you really want to think about why you want to buy a diesel bus right oh yeah my point is because then by 2030 you're looking at doing the I'm thinking you would be thinking about doing the infrastructure for the electric anyway yeah so you only have a five year window where you're buying these alternative fuels so and you you own the school buses not us that's right okay yeah so my thinking makes sense it really it's there's a certain yeah right so it would help Cheshire you know because from our perspective we own the school buses right it would help Cheshire to be you know be thinking about this before you know because otherwise again we talked about the infrastructure our costs get passed on to you that's just the way the way of the world so if we have buses that we can no longer use we'd scrap them and so that represents a much higher cost to up and and then hard cut put in alternative fuels or electric and get rid of those other buses that represents a higher cost that will then be passed on to to Chester but we as a community would have to provide the actual charging infrastructure to that point that's going to be by the fuel now all right that's right yeah logic would dictate that it's it's the big thing is it's your property so it was your property probably your infrastructure but these grants are complicated in that you know they're going to give us the the grant for the bus and the accompanying it will be a grant for the for the infrastructure so and the thing it's very possible that we you know pass that on yeah and say okay have you seen any grants you cover the rest of that so do you see any grants just for the infrastructure yes yeah so like because what I'm hearing here is that the problem that you're having is you're getting the bus is not the infrastructure doesn't go anywhere so yeah it would behoove us to start playing yeah and I I will say that um the last the last deer around was specifically for municipalities and school districts we as a contractor weren't didn't apply for it just for uh infrastructure um from municipants yeah for municipalities for for public entities essentially but you would access consultancy or we do this in a joint venture yeah if you if if you tell us that that's the way you want to do we'll make sure we're scouring for for these these grants you know if it might be that you who has to apply for them it might be us to us so here's the other piece to your equation of timing right that without a grant right now electric doesn't make sense because so you may need to go propane as a bridge because the cost is so much cheaper I mean you're what 110 000 right now for a propane bus yeah I've got a hundred thousand a hundred thousand okay a hundred thousand four thousand dollars more of them yeah so so 100 000 for a for a propane bus or a um an electric is 340.
it's mid-January yeah that'll be for next school year okay yes okay so uh this is on number three the uh 2021-22 unaudited actuals we have a motion and a second all those in favor indicate by saying aye we didn't have the unanimous on the last okay so so we'll do a Voice vote Yes Robinson I all right five nothing thank you thank you board yeah very calm delivery of something that had red marks all over all right so um the Gan Appropriations limit yeah yeah very exciting okay I'm bringing forward resolution 1590-22 adopting the Gan limit um the Gan limit was part of the giant packet that um you all received um the gam limit historically was intended to constrain the growth in state and local government spending by linking year-to-year changes and expenditures to changes in inflation it doesn't really do what it's intended for anymore it's pretty much a pro forma calculation and the limits grown significantly faster than Appropriations subject to the limit so this is kind of a formality it's part of our unaudited actuals package but we've presented the Gan limit to you separately on this item have any questions you just wonder when they're going to catch up to the fact that life has changed yeah I agree okay so this is resolution 1590-22 any comments from the audience all right seeing none I move approval okay tennis moves approval I'll second that and Tom seconds that any other discussion or questions all right may we have a vote then all those in favor signify by saying aye aye probably the least distinctive thing we have to do thank you hey thank you very much for your very hard work okay um so I'm going to sign that one we then go to the first reading of the revised and updated new board policies and Kelly you get to be on the hook for this yes we're bringing forward a new series of board policies we do this quarterly as they are brought forward to us to keep us in legal compliance so typically the board will just review these at the first reading and then if there are questions or suggestions please do submit those to my office and we will bring it back for approval at our next meeting if you have questions we're happy to answer those tonight so we can expect to see all these on the next agenda for final approval so I had some questions on the charter school oversight um it mentions that if a charter school were to close that we since we are the ones who you know have put them under our approval we have to see that the students are transferred and finalize financial reporting and close out and my question is can we charge them for that it's a good question I would suspect every case is different because if a charter school closes because of fiscal reasons that could play into what you're asking if it doesn't close because of that that could also play into what you're asking so I do want to seek some more clarification on our end but I think situationally um it if they don't have it to give us they don't have it if that's the reason that they close but uh I just feel very strongly that if if whatever they did blew up um even though we were overseeing it at a broad level or I guess I'd just say at the 10 foot level um the chance to recover our cost seems to be something that ought to be acknowledged and thinking luckily that hasn't happened but if we go to that point typically we get involved as we see things coming up we get involved with the school and and there to support and help as we can so I would hope we would have conversations with them about that particular scenario I've never been in that situation particularly where it comes to that point but I would hope there would be some discussion there you know I don't know if uh Jacqueline or Cherise want to add anything about the fiscal piece of that but you're right the board policy does not totally address what happens if there's if there's you know belly up or if there's not so I'm happy to find out a little bit more info okay that would be great I have a sort of a tangential question on that one are there any charter schools that we authorize that we are currently charging the one percent to yeah yes so the one percent is for Charter Schools who are not in Chico Unified property for example Wildflower yeah so are we charging all of them we charge all of our Charter Schools either one percent or three percent we do okay yes one percent if they are not in Chico University facilities three percent if they are Chico Unified facilities one of the questions it's amazing so I didn't know if we were in fact charging for all of them right now thank you very much I thought so but thank you okay and um I had another one too there is a recitation of the the issue with Personnel this is 3553 that um designated uh employees can use individual records pertaining to student eligibility for any free and reduced price meal program but we don't have those so that's a great question so board policy 3550 and 3551 do talk about the universal meals right we're going to serve every child breakfast and lunch 35.53 specifically talks about Freedom reduced meal applications and that is because that's a federal compliance piece so you have two different situations Universal meals is a state initiative okay I'm signed in by Governor Newsom and the free and reduced applications piece is a federal compliance and that data is also used to help us determine our what we call unduplicated count students it's very sensitive data we get that through applications through the compliance piece and or through an alternative income form so that data is used and I know our grant writer uses those percentages of students who are free or reduced to get us funding for our district as well so it really comes down to State versus Federal compliance well it just seemed really strange to me uh would a parent resist doing this since there's no food attached it certainly creates a disincentive for parents to complete it yes so we do ask that they that they do complete it because it does get us additional funding via our local control funding formula if families are eligible but it's not a mandate because we do have Universal meals okay anybody else I have more questions but anybody else have questions no okay you're you're covering some of mine thank you okay all right so on 400 um and this is about uh the notification to employees um how soon they get it and on page two in the first paragraph it says at 1.3 months notification in one month more and then the second one makes it really unclear because it says 45 days so it was just confusing to me which one are you looking at I'm looking at 4118 page two in the first paragraph it says the notice will be given three months and then uh one month after that and then a second paragraph it says 45 days four one one eight page two oh okay so if we have a um an employee for this is regarding the first paragraph if we have an employee that is not performing and we are considering dismissal we first before we can even go down that road have to issue a letter of unsatisfactory performance or on professional conduct prior to the next step which is the 90 days so so that has to be done 90 days because it allows for um what's supposed to take place is intervention support an opportunity for the employee to make changes in their in their performance and then what was the question on the second paragraph well the second one then said 45 days and I was trying to figure out the difference between timing is it that there's two different things yeah I think it's the progressive discipline um one says the top paragraph is unsatisfactory performance the second paragraph says unprofessional conduct an awfully long time for us to carry someone that we feel like it's very very difficult to get through the disciplinary process for certificated Personnel so it is stretched out and we're we're obligated to provide them an opportunity to change their the performance their behavior in order to meet the requirements that we're putting forward to them so these are just education code timelines that we have to adhere to so when you looked at the last paragraph on that page when it says the person who's going to be participate in the commission on professional competency can't be they have to have a valid credential but they can't be an employee of the district correct what the heck would motivate somebody to do that so it doesn't happen very often but we have had some of our staff participate in these hearings for other districts so they will will usually we usually get an attorney I mean a call from our attorney who is representing another district and they put an all call out for specific because you have to you have to have the same credential as the person that is being dismissed you have to have served in the classroom with I think in the last five years or something and you have to have an administrative credential so there's some boxes you have to take well um typically there's very few people that check all those boxes so they kind of put an all call out so while we would um send if we have that person we send them to their hearing we would hope in the future that they would return the favor for us if we ever have that situation do they get paid for the time they serve on the commission so we've done it a couple couple times we will pay for I mean they get paid their salary but they pay for travel and if they have to stay it's usually two to four days of a hearing and they would pay for all the expenses as far as that goes and we would pay the salary and again we would expect down the line for that favor to be returned if we needed the same just seemed a very difficult position for a person to be in and that it would be so actually um it's it's quite an experience especially for an administrator that hasn't gone through the process so I know of two instances since I've been in this position where we've had administrators um participate in that process for other districts and they readily volunteered okay okay so Eileen if you thought of yours or I didn't have anything okay okay anyone else have any questions again I do encourage the board to send us questions if you have them that gives us the opportunity to research and clarify most of this is egg code right so it is based in law yeah but this is the first reading right so we'll have cancer do the whole conversation again next time all right so I just encourage you to look them over because they were quite I mean there were great number of them we don't usually have that much um I think that's my main things right now anyone else have any questions or concerns all right so this is informational as noted it is our first reading so I just encourage everyone to go through the new board policies and to make sure that you understand because they are to keep keep us legally on the right track and not running uh unnecessary risk um all right so are there any items from the floor that somebody wants to bring up what oh I'm sorry that was the yeah it is on the very back okay so we had had things brought up in the last Corrections and it looked to me like they had been done but any any commentaries I I do I I was um taken I'm caught in the cabling whoever did the work to accomplish the the two things that we asked to have accomplished at the last meeting my I assume it was Erica and I was really pleased it's the first time that I've gone through the governor's handbook and I went through it several times that between uh Saturday and and actually this morning after um it it felt like the changes thank you Caitlyn made it amorse structured and a more um easily um utilized document it just the and and I I wouldn't say that about it before these changes were made the governance handbook because they're they're um you know there weren't the numbers there weren't easy ways to reference what we were talking about easy ways to connect back in with other parts of because so much of it is very similar that I found that the work that was done to bring this forward and present it tonight made so many positive changes that I couldn't come up with anything that I found that um that said uh we need to change that everything seemed to fit the the things that we are supposed to be governing and so I I just I wanted to applaud the work that was done between meetings I thought it was very readable yep so um anyone have any other comments this is a discussion action item some of the um things that had come up for me on my first two readings a while ago now um that um I had considered potentially changing or adding um might be more um appropriate for bylaws and so I'm going to hold off on on those suggestions however this is not something that needs to be taken action I don't think it's not totally critical but the last piece that I think that would make this document really usable for for us board members anybody sitting up at this at the in these seats is maybe just linking in bylaws that they're related to so when it's talking about organization refer refer to by law 9102 or whatever I'm just picking that number up but um just as a reference piece because our handbook is really for us to to just agree on how we are operating our bylaws are are kind of more firm um in in what we um we must abide by if that makes sense and so and they do relate to each other you know some things in our handbook are pulled from the bylaws so if there is a place to reference the bylaws it would be nice to have just that that link back to you or a reference to our bylaws if anybody needs to see what Ed code is actually behind this piece of our governance handbook as as it is outlined in our bylaws again I don't think it's critical it's just a one last point that I had thought of but I didn't have actually a chance to write it down and type it out and send it to everybody so all right so do you want to make a motion I move we put this off for a month until we have a new board well the concern I have with that is this is about legal validity that we are not putting ourselves at risk [Music] um so well I'm not going to second the motion but then I'd like to speak to the issue not not that issue but okay you want a second in the moment no put it off okay I do not want to second okay well then uh make a different motion I move approval um with this document and then we can agendize um a follow-up with tying things in as as board member um dalby has suggested to the legal references I thought we had covered most of them um member dalby was there anything that stood out to you as to where we haven't connected um to Ed code or um and foreign so much of what is in our policy handbook we have an opportunity on an annual basis to change because we change language in different you know in different parts of this through actions connected with our lcap through actions connected with with other things I'm not sure that I'm confused about why we would tie it to things that can change so readily so I would like to offer a friendly amendment to your motion to approve this document as is period you're seconding and that's my friendly Amendment if you accept yes okay all right so we're seconded on approving this document all right to your point we actually can amend this document at any time yes and so if there is an issue that comes up we we may have we will have at least one new board member on this stage come the second third week of November or December sorry December um every single meeting we have the opportunity to agenda as an item and we can add we can add this governance handbook to that and bring it up at any any time in the year so I'm happy to just move forward with this for now and you know maybe I'll just talk with um uh Erica and Kelly about what that looks like to you know Link in some of those connections to board policy board policy links to Ed code there's no references that I've really seen in our handbook that says see board policy nine one zero which is board governance um so anyway that's that's that's my that's it I've got nothing else to say so we have a motion and a second is there any further discussion I would just say that I don't think that's a good idea I know you're we're not you're not moving that right now that practice of linking I've had a couple of conversations with staff about this handbook leading up to this vote that we're going to take now um and I've been told that this handbook rarely comes up yeah because it's not it's a conversation basically once a year when we you know renew it review it in theory we're reading it all year long pouring over in theory we're practicing it all year long and so the references are in there then we'd see them and then we'll we'd be enriched by knowing that this referred to this or that section of bylaws is that right or policies yeah I don't know it just sounds like extra staff work for something that that only comes up once a year my two cents all right uh seeing nothing from the floor um okay uh call the vote so this is a item uh number two and it is the school board governance handbook for 22.23 all those in favor signify by saying aye aye abstain okay so four two is that just we say four to one as abstention okay four zero one four zero one okay four zero and one okay sound like a basketball Tia record all right so uh is there a board member who wants to agendize an item I have one um I've been losing sleep since our last meeting over my concept for a checklist for security for future School building and I move we place on the agenda for discussion and possible action um a the concept of having a school safety checklist for for future development where we have you know things that we that we want every new facility to have my concern about that and Julie's left is that she noted that we're going to have the meeting of the facilities committee uh quite soon and it's always a part of facilities and so I think that's the place where the discussion would start its facilities because that's your architect that's who you bring in that's who walks through every square inch of our buildings and tells us what is there and what isn't yeah I was listening when you spoke last time I respect your opinion Madam president um you know I this is just something that I think needs to be in place I think we ought to have you know a list of protocols is something that would that would go to every person involved in designing a new school like here are some things that we want in case we reach a point in our society in our school district where we want you know high security for campuses I know I guess my my question is I don't know that any of us here are qualified to Define high security procedure excuse me um we don't have a second yet no we don't so we shouldn't be debating the merits at this point foreign okay so without a second it it fails um but again I encourage people to submit ideas to the facilities committee I really do Madam president yes if I might ask Mr tennis at the last meeting Julie presented our list of the security did you get a chance to review that with her uh she told me there would be a list she had it in her hand did you get a chance to review that yes yes and you didn't feel that was going along the lines of what you felt we needed to do it's along the lines yeah along the lines I think yeah all right okay yeah so uh is adjournment and
most of them have remained so so our students and again I speak from personal experience because I have a senior our students are under different a different mindset with these high-stakes standardized tests than they used to be the PSAT in fact is a little bit more of a high stakes test than the SAT because the PSAT qualifies them for a National Merit where they can earn scholarships but the SAT is really just a test for us at this point they don't have to submit scores it is not a part of their their application and in fact because I didn't believe it as a mom or an administrator but when you talk with college reps they are fully they they fully support the fact that if you don't submit your scores it is completely not considered it's not like well that person did submit scores they must not have done so well they both they they do not even put it as part of the college application process but back to where how our students did so this is an explanation this chart is from college board it's not from the state of Connecticut it's from college board and it's the College Board Readiness benchmarks for 11th grade College Board sets cut scores essentially that says if you meet this score you there's a large correlation because again they are trying to get themselves back into the college admissions process there's a large correlation to a score of 460 in ela and 510 in math or above that if you if you're able to achieve that the likelihood of you earning a c or better in an intro course during your first year in college is very high so it does give some feedback some formative feedback to students and to to schools to kind of get a sense of where our kids are in terms of their college readiness but it's not the only way we can measure college readiness so those scores again um and the reason this is over here is because I had to find it I had to talk to the state of Connecticut so basically 460 to 620 is in the Met range and 630 to 800 is exceeded for um for college readiness and 5 10 to 640 for Math and it is uh met in 650 to 800 is exceeded so as far as the LA went our high school kids did fairly well 73 of them met or exceeded um the college readiness benchmarks the state average was 55.