so I can buy three propane buses more than a Diesel's 90. so so it's a small it's yeah so you can you know you could convert your Fleet I mean in theory if you just look at the math you could almost convert your you know based on those years you could convert your Fleet to propane and then throw them away and still be cheaper than buying electric without the grant so it's you know you're gonna and I don't think it's going to be in my opinion it's not going to be one solution it's not like okay we're going 100 electric I mean I think there's going to be a a combination and you know down the road there may be a hydrogen fuel cell or another alternative that even takes over for electric so I would so there's nothing on the horizon for hydrogen that yeah that's completely speculative um I would add that on the electric side be very opportunistic you know yes you might be putting propane but if the grants are available and you can get them go get grants now I will also add that I think there is somewhat of a game of chicken going on here with with this mandate we want to start moving in this direction do I think that actually 100 of zero emission or alternative fuel school buses will be in all school districts will be in all school districts by 2035 we're talking operational like operating every bus I don't know how many are in Connecticut there are 500 000 um across the United States um do I think that 100 will be electric by by 2040.
so you'll see that that was actually true with a lot of our a lot of the students in our Dirk um and again that I I think that just to me that highlights the importance of those formative Middle School years with their social emotional skills and their access to their academics these kids didn't get as impacted and the littler kids didn't get impacted but those middle years were severely there's a very strong tie our SAT Math we're at 50 percent of our students so again we need some we're thinking about those math students but I want to draw your attention to this whole Yellow Part there's a large amount of kids who are very close so we need to think about them as well as well as what's happening with those 13 of kids who are really struggling with their college readiness benchmarks and here we are orange and Woodbridge are Elementary only so they don't get factored into this um so this is the rest of the Dirk all right so that's all of the achievement data but kind of how does it fit into where we are as a school district so the good news is after three years of limited data certainly external data and really kind of even internal data because our teachers and our administrators and our Support Services have struggled to really get a set get an assessment of where our kids have been um you know that we we started off the night with an EQ presentation I can't tell you how important that is we have seen so much a huge increase in our students struggling not just with their mental health but their capacity to cope they really are struggling with those skills of when things are not good I don't know what to do and I think again that is definitely a testament to the pandemic it's also it's not just the pandemic it's the pandemic with social media and general isolation and so we have to make sure that we um use this to use this external data but continue to focus on those social emotional pieces as well we also have the opportunity to continue the work that was started and one of the reasons that the Next Generation accountability report was so great in 2018-19 is because of the achievement Gap that was the major focus of this district and the hard work that went into that from 15 through 2019 that as Dr Burrell said that next Generation accountability report which I'm excited to come back and talk about when it comes out in February um is a more holistic report card of the district these are test scores so this is just a portion and so we have to make sure we're still paying attention to the subgroups because if we're not paying attention to those subgroups then we're going to lose a whole bunch of our kids and remember all of our kids have infinite potential so we need to tap into that we we are sorry even mentioned about strategic planning and we focus on educating the whole child so making sure that we're incorporating into all of our work the academic social and emotional pieces um and then I just mentioned the next generic kind of accountability reporting but again all of this information is just information unless it's put into action and so what I would like to do now is to turn it over to the principles I want to mention all of this and what you're going to hear from now this is our top priority for our district we are going to focus on it this year and take another Benchmark when we have our Assessments in the spring but we're going to continue to work we expect to see those scores go up but we also expect to continue to dig into this work and keep reframing and working toward meeting the the dispositions that are set forth in the portrait of The Graduate so each of the um principles is now going to come up and give you a sense again a summation of how they are going to take how they have already taken this data and put an action plan together through their school Improvement plans so I'd like to introduce Mrs sparius from CES good evening everyone so I'm not going to speak to every data point sorry is that better okay I'm not going to speak to every data point but I certainly do want to um you know start off with where we are at Center School the kids over at Center School really begin their Journey as a Brookfield student in the whole pre-k through 12 Continuum starts with us at Center School we obviously teach the basic early literacy skills basic early math numeracy skills and there are a whole heck of a lot of more assessments than are listed on this um you know this slide that we administer but I did highlight some of the ones that give us a lot of good information but there's certainly a lot more that we're using so the core phonics assessment is basically a Mastery assessment so it's not a timed fluency assessment it's really Mastery based the information on this slide shows the beginning of your data for our incoming kindergartners as well as our incoming first graders and then it also gives you end of Year from Spring of of last year of 2022.
I'm fairly confident our electric grid would be shattered but by this so there's a slight game of chicken going on here where you know if there's a mandate in place is everybody going to to follow the Mandate um we want to start working in that direction but it's going to be very difficult for for this to happen across the board yeah just one more piece on the infrastructure and how that plays out uh my understanding is I mean that could go in a number of different ways and one thing that comes to mind for me and correct me if I'm wrong on this but my understanding is that there are players out there who are saying we'll pay for the infrastructure you give it to us the idea being you pay 14 cents per kilowatt hour will sell it to users for 16 cents per kilowatt hour so you have a charging station out of school got somebody Parks up there they're 16 cents they pick up the two cents to pay for the infrastructure over the course of 10 or 20 years or something like that yep so there are leasing models it's the same as exists with you know putting solar panels on your house there are tons of companies that will come they'll say hey we'll put them on these solar panels on for free and then they take all the benefits of of the electric that speaks all of that and that probably would not be I I find it hard to Envision how that would work well at the bus depot but if we did have charging stations in schools then something like that could happen which are open to the public yeah and my point is simply that this could play out a million different ways there's lots of people who realize that there's money here yeah and they can make money off of it yeah right yeah it's and so I had um on the you know I called him a financing partner Highland electric is a big partner um that we can bring it on there they've been very aggressive with financing these projects um because they they do have ways of of monetizing those and and you know they'll own the equipment buy it back at the end with the expectation that you're just going to buy buy more and more because howling the one that the county that's right yep yeah so literally what they did is they said we're just gonna pay for your Fleet in entire County and then they're going to make the money over the course of like 10 years or something yeah yeah so people went to jail over that field all right yeah um but yes um yeah they are very aggressive with their uh at least right now with the money that they'll put up up front to own that infrastructure um and they believe that they're going to be able to monetize it later so that is that is certainly an option um let's talk they're all you know as we've seen we can always find money you know my inflation might go through the roof but you know we can always rent money I'm talking about can the grid yeah support support this and the answer obviously right now is no um you know we have to build that up you know how much does do Renewables you know at locations you know do we have all have to have our own that's that's not in the presentation but we all have to have our own uh uh micro grids on site in order to power uh what for would be 42 buses I believe for for Cheshire um that's if you go to Martha's Vineyard um the transit authority there they're awesome but they have their own microgrid to support their electric buses they have solar panels um you know backup generators to to provide electricity if the power is out um so I'm not saying everybody's not going to do that but if if we were going to get to to this I think that those types of things would be would be necessary so we'll see what happens over the next 18 years all right a little behind on time I assume um so EPA Community Truck Line I'm just going to skip over this but uh they're regulating away diesel engines anyway so um they have two options that they might be going to option one um would follow the card standards uh the California standards which are much more rigorous um for Knox so they're debating if they're going to go to that you have to have 0.035 and step one 2027 to 2030 by uh or for oxides and nitrogen grams for uh horsepower hour um unattainable um for diesel engine manufacturers um at least if you listen to that I guess that's what they would say is next but um diesel is getting regulated out anyway um so we're looking at that by 2027 or or 2030 um most likely unless they go to option two which is still going to be difficult for uh diesel engine manufacturers to me uh EPA clean School Bus program we talked about a little bit um five billion available 2022 application period ended August 19th should be coming out in October for awards um different levels if you're prioritized or non-prioritized and prioritize gets selected first again Cheshire is not prioritized so we actually for dacco unfortunately did not have any prioritized districts um that that we we serve um any questions on this should any of your districts apply even though they're not priority hey you know I don't know do you yeah um so Cheshire 250 000 for electric vehicle um and thirteen thousand dollars would go towards infrastructure per bus if we move to an alternative fuel would it do you have any recommendation on CNG versus propane can't do CNG okay oh there okay it'll be propane yeah and I'll tell you why uh CNG is available in in um in transit buses the problem with CNG is the fueling station's over a million dollars so well and and so and that's exactly what the bus the school bus manufacturers said they said you know I can I can basically put a propane tank on my ground up the the propane dealers do it for free and and they looked at the market and said you know what we're not going to spend the money developing a CNG school bus because nobody's going to buy it unless you're maybe in Texas you know so so they they only Supply the propane on the school bus side [Music] so I talked about the Volkswagen Grant um we got 65 Grant coverage that's really big as close to the neutral with diesel uh Dira already talked about a little bit typically the Dira Awards have been far less than the 65 for example uh so dacco Chester just uh you know late in the game give you the overview of your Fleet 35 type 1 school buses 15 type 2 school buses um seven stvs I hope these numbers are right I just went in our operation systems to get them um don't check me okay it's 100 diesel in gas and here's the facility I believe then this is the area yeah we're talking about so I mean expanding that direction and then we talked about possibly expand that way again I don't I can't speak to I all I can say is that won't work for electric I know that for sure it barely works will this work I I don't know um uh that would be would get in charge who's our main uh electric partner with IC in here they could do a free consultation um talk to you about you know what we can do with this facility what other facilities are options um to just talk through that um I think I cover that there's not enough power there for uh electric DC fast charging not yet but you know to your point earlier it would work for propane that's all I have to do is drop a propane tank and you're done so one question on the DC fast charging we have a fleet of 35 big buses yep regular school buses um I just wonder how many of those do we actually uh need fast charging for because I imagine some of our school buses are doing a morning route and afternoon they're not doing sports and they're not doing sports at night so we just went you know with a level two charger 240.
so just to highlight some of the noticings if you will that we discussed as a school-wide data team to just bring that forth The end-of-year Kindergartners last year as you can see some of the things we noticed was with their letter ID and sounds 86 percent of the kids were at Benchmark or above so they mastered all the letters and all of the sounds and the letters and then one of the things that we also noticed was that with the CBC words which is basically single syllable words with um a um oh my gosh a vowel sound in the short vowel in the middle the CVC words um they were at 77 at Benchmark or above one of the things we noticed is our incoming first graders um taking that same CVC word assessment um we're at 37 at Benchmark and we were kind of looking at that going whoa what happened um and that was one of the things that we what we said wow um you know why should that have been so one of the um I guess uh hypotheses that we came up with was that the um the CBC words in terms of the um when that you know comes up in terms of teaching on the Continuum is more toward the end of the year in kindergarten where they're actually then decoding those single syllable um words with the um short vowel in the middle and um then when because it was more toward the springtime we noticed obviously in first grade the beginning of first grade that those skills didn't stay with them um and we had to ask ourselves why that was so you'll notice in the next slide when I talk more about you know moving forward with information it's more about how we can make sure that we're teaching with some connected text to make sure that they can transfer those isolated skills into context so that it stays more solid for them um one of the um really I guess celebrations if you will and now we're last year of first graders excuse me they were at 96 at Benchmark on those CBC words so again that's something that's continued in first grade it's a really a beginning skill frankly in the end of um you know kindergarten and it continues into first grade and builds on from there from about winter around December is really what you expect that to be mastered in first grade um one of the other highlights was that in terms of the testing from acadian's Reading which is more of a timed fluency automaticity test um with the reading of whole words red was it 84 at Benchmark and that's really a test where there's again a lot of the CVC words and they're reading them then within one minute how many words are they reading um the whole the whole word read versus you know Sound by sound if you will and that was at 84 at Benchmark one of the things you'll also notice is the composite score was at 70 percent Benchmark and that's where again a higher level skill of reading or reading fluency rather than reading passages and getting the words correct and accuracy on that um that's a skill that's again building more toward the end of first grade and that test doesn't even come in internally to the end of first grade and that pushed the composite score a little bit a little bit lower but certainly to have 96 percent at Benchmark 86 percent at Benchmark and 84 percent at Benchmark those are pretty solid scores especially compared to some of the other scores that we heard before our incoming kindergartners right now and you see letter names at 11 at Benchmark these are incoming kindergartners they're first learning their letters and sounds so 11 have already mastered that at the very just coming into kindergarten when they were tested around September October so that's certainly not alarming um you know scores at this point um so I'm going to move to the next slide because this is where we are right and where we were at the end of last year um so let's talk about being moving to the Future right so the school-wide data team looked at the data in terms of how did the kids coming into kindergarten and first grade how were they scoring how did we do with the kindergartners um that left kindergarten last year and the first graders that left first grade last year so that we could reflect on instructional practice and be able to think about what um what went well and what we still need you know what are the opportunities to improve and to continue and to change so the school-wide data team met and some of the highlights to our school Improvement plan was to incorporate instructional practice that would Encompass the components of the gradual release responsibility model this is something that we've worked on as a district excuse me pre covet and we want to refocus in terms of reset and relaunch to make sure that that instructional practice is solid and tight because we do know that that is best practice and has great effect sizes on student learning instructional opportunities to transfer learned skills into connected text we're going to be certainly investing more into codable texts and that was as a result of one of the noticings that we had was like hey these kindergartners came you know at the end of the year they were at um you know 70 percent with reading their single syllable um short vowel of CDC words and and then get lost that coming into first grade why was that and that was the hypotheses that we really need to do make sure that we're including in practice multiple opportunities to transfer those isolated skills into context and connected texts so that there's greater learning so that it's automatic and not just isolated skills engage in data informed collaboration through the survey and the data team process and one of the things that we did this year was built into our schedule a professional Learning Community time so there's some collaboration time for our kindergarten and first grade teacher teams to meet once a week for 45 minutes and that's built into the schedule um Implement data informed flexible student groupings during the elt at course grade levels so that we're efficiently and effectively using all of our human resources to really help support kids so um in a nutshell what does that really look like it's again using the data to make decisions you know the early basic early literacy literacy skills are based on a Continuum of it's really systematic and explicit instruction and it's based on as I said a Continuum of really when you teach those skills and we basically took looked at the data and then made some groups you know which who are the students that need some more help with syllable you know blending who are the you know kids that need more work with some concept of word right so just looking at the phonological awareness skills test and our phonics tests and then made some groupings and across our elt time which is our extra learning time we're using our reading interventionists our math interventionists our teachers and then basically and our kindergarten powers are involved with this as well we've been doing some training with them and basically making those groups during those elt times so that we're able to service every single kindergartner based on the skills that they need to look to learn and the skills that they need to practice so that's something that we're working on aggressively in kindergarten and we'll be starting up as well with first grade so those are just some highlights I don't know if anybody has any questions or move on all right questions at the end okay okay so I'm going to have Dr P come up to talk about Huckleberry but I just want to reiterate what Mrs Feria said about um you know that individualized piece and really that personalized piece regardless of where students are that we meet them where they where they are so we can help them on their Journey forward and that's for all kids Dr P is going to talk about his plan as well thank you uh the the nice thing about following Deb ferries is we worked very closely together with this so really technically I could stand up here and say ditto and I could sit down and leave you but I will talk a little bit about uh things that we do at Huckleberry that she didn't cover only because we decided we're going to highlight different areas so if if you look at the data it's pretty reflective of what we saw in the escrow especially with uh you know respect to our math we're in the 57 but again that's beginning of the year uh these are arcadians reading which word's correct kids you have a minute timer set read how many words you can uh and then your accuracy is what percentage of those words that you read did you read correctly acadians math we have the computation which is you know your addition subtraction Division and you have your Concepts and applications which is your word problems and applying those Concepts into real life situations so we see the data we know where we're at I'm gonna hit the wrong button like I did and I'm gonna need Dr rootle to come running out and save me all right so when we talk about our school Improvement plan we met as a staff and we thought you know what we're starting in the 70s 59 percent sure it would be great to get to 90 but when we set our goal we set them at 100 because we're not going to walk into a classroom with 20 kids and say all right we're gonna get 18 of you but we're not going to get those other two so our goal is always 100 we're going to get you to enter above Benchmark that's our goal always always always how do we get there Deb talked about the purposefully planned meeting time to review data that's called our PLC block and our staff gets one every six days and what they do during that time is they review student data not just as the grade level we have our math interventionist we have our three reading Specialists we have our math coach we have our literacy coach the admin team and the classroom teachers we look at the data we see which student is struggling and why once we have a clear picture we work together to move forward and we come up with a plan srbi is it tier one is a tier two as a tier three what is the internet intervention that were needed we come up with a goal we come up with a plan six weeks to put the plan in place we revisit the same child how do we do does the child need more intervention no intervention less intervention and again we have the same group of experts sitting around the table to put that plan in place we're doing curriculum development work with probably one of my favorite people Dr Muriel Cox she's brilliant and she's really ensuring that our curriculum is tightly aligned with the standards as the SBA is tightly aligned with standards uh you know I I think about when I was a kid in classrooms and and I remember Miss Coyle my second grade teacher loved her to death uh and she loved the koala bear and we spent three months on koala bears and it's kind of getting away from that and saying okay sure koala bears are great as long as we're aligned to the standards and what our students need to know and understand to be successful creating student learning plans is the third strategy and it's awesome because what a student learning plan does is it gives the student power and ownership of their learning when we're doing a particular concept uh if if a student is struggling or a student gets back his classroom assessment or her classroom assessment not really where I wanted to be the student learning plan is right in front of them okay you didn't do well here well here are some resources here are some programs you can go to here's some some worksheets or skills builders that you can do here's a you know sitting with small groups with a teacher to further develop your skill and really just watching my favorite site was I was in a fourth grade classroom and they were got back their math assessment and the kids immediately pulled out these learning plans and they were saying okay because I'm struggling kind of here and just listening to that conversation they're ready they're ready to go they're invested in there and in their learning and they want to succeed add to all that the presentation that you saw today where yes we're going to increase the rigor at huckleberry and thankfully we have this amazing mental health Team who's putting forth these EQ courses for our kids so that's our planet huckleberry all right so as uh Mr Renda comes up I just want to kind of highlight what uh Dr P just pointed out about uh Marie Alcock who is a consultant that the district has worked with and has established a pretty strong relationship with and if you take a look at my newsletter that got that was sent out last week and click on the link to go to the video you'll see some of the some of this work in Action a little bit of what Mr rendez going to talk about right now but also the work that Marie already came and worked with our elementary school folks to um you know start really reflecting on that curriculum and doing all the good work that Dave was just talking about so here's Mr rendo a lot of data mm-hmm thank you so here you can see I did a little bit differently I know in the um at uh Huckleberry Dave broke down the scores and and Deb for um accuracy and where it's correct ours I put up as a composite score so you'll see for fifth grade acadians this is the beginning of the year scores that we had 60 percent of the students that were at or above and then it just said then our next two scores uh the below and well below so you'll see when you look up there I mean again our biggest area a need of improvement is in our eyes we've met is really our acadians with our math with is with our math I should say you'll see that like if you look at our sixth grade acadians right now we only have 31 that are at or above uh with the composite score and the big thing we've noticed and we one of our PD at the beginning of the year um well not I should say I mean it was recently at our PD um was we were going through all of these scores our s back scores the the the teachers know about their new data that we have they have their uh each individual students data so go backing off of what um Dave and also Deb talked about it's individual to the students so I have a class in differently than when when in elementary where they have one class of students ours have the five different classes that they would have throughout the day and they have the individual results of all those things for those students now obviously in in our classes we have students at different levels except for in Upper levels we do have honors classes but students are at different levels so it's our teacher's job as we go through is to figure out within the classroom tier one what can we do because depending on the amount of students in that class in the weakness that they have that is a big differentiating thing so I have a larger amount in one class I may have two separate groups going because I have students that are still we are noticing and it's it's sad to say this because I'm a math person is we are still noticing students struggling in computation basic computation and I know as we talk about this is not an excuse but as I know I talked to other Area Middle Schools where middle schools in Connecticut we have a group that we meet and that is one of the areas they still see we still have sometimes our seventh and eighth grade still struggling in basic facts and I kind of equate it too for years when we were the last so many years some of the things that we did were zoomed right behind it wasn't in front of the in front of the class and we had students using calculators a lot students doing things and again I'm not blaming students for this trust me is they missed out on that really direct um interactions with the teachers and going through the computation type things and held accountable for them also um so again I just wanted to point that out it's it's obvious that that is one of the our bigger areas um and then also in uh seventh and eighth grade as you can see we're at forty percent and thirty percent uh seven percent and those are areas that I'm going to talk a little bit about um what we're doing as we move forward and then the down below I just broke down for the uh s back uh s but testing I know um Dr Mann already spoke about this but I just wanted you to see across the board what we had for ELA and uh also for math and some of those are obviously the scores that she had shared with you but the big thing is what are we going to do to improve those to improve on this so part of our school Improvement plan is I didn't highlight the first one but I know that Dave um and Deb already talked about it so then that we are working with Marie Alcock this year um we didn't last year but this year we are working with her and really trying to make sure and we've had conversations on both Ela and math but specifically with math like where we want it where are we we going wrong here do we have those standards and not just do we have all the standards in there because for people that realize there's so many standards but what are the standards that you get the highest leverage in and I know this is something we always talk about um and what are those big priority standards and making sure that not just that we're covering it but that we're using using like Dave was using the koala bear thing for uh months that we are spending the most time on those High leverage areas and things that we are struggling in uh to really get the biggest bang for the buck if you want to say um the next thing I I went down to highlight was utilizing our reading and math intervention inventionists uh and I put slash tutors which I'll talk about in a minute to create small groups again based on this data that we do have and we do similar to the other schools we're meeting for Serbia we are talking about the students data a little different in the middle school they meet as Partners instead many times so if I'm the sixth grade math teacher I'm meeting with the sixth grade the other sixth grade math teacher then we also do meet as a larger group but being able to create those groups so my math interventionists for those of you don't know we pull students from their specialist classes um and it's for a certain period of time that they are in there um and and we do that because we want to make sure that we are increasing these skills and again it could be based on a certain skill it could at the beginning of the year honestly we did a lot of we're still doing some computation and some basic things at the beginning of the year but as the year moves on we also take into account not just our benchmark assessments but also assessments that teachers are doing in their classrooms because what are those areas that we say we just had a test on I'm just going to say fractions what are those areas that the students struggle the most in with the weaknesses and then that is something that the interventionists will work on also and for periods of time like David talked about um tutors this is really we were lucky enough Dr Ruby thank you uh she's not here but I could thank her that she part of the grant that she uh was able to get from the state for us was the ability to have multiple math tutors and and also Ela tutors and that has been a huge thing another focus of theirs is computation but we are able to have three this year so during elt times we're not pulling them from class time it's from for the from their elt um that they are being able to work in small groups with those um with those interventions and again taking the data from the beginning that they have comparing it to at the end of the cycle and if students need to continue to be they did not make enough growth then there's sometimes when kids again will be in the next session um you know that doesn't happen as much obviously but we really want to be able to push and I and we do have some pushback sometimes and I could say this out there is sometimes parents will say Well they're doing okay in their math class and we always just say to them that's okay because what the the the um concept that they're learning right now is a they've learned to last say week or whatever maybe they did well on a quiz doesn't mean that they're able to retain that and if all of us that have uh you know I I was okay I was good in math um but there are people that always talk about their struggles in math and I know a big thing with all kids is being able to retain all that information in any subject but with math being able to retain it so those kids that aren't able to retain just because they can do it for the what they've been tested on in the last week or two is great trust me it's great but being able to retain is the most important thing so that's our job to be able to help them to retain them um my next thing is again using that Benchmark data that we have but also progress monitoring tools for the purpose of planning these interventions is is it's a it's a big task um but obviously those are on our areas of weakness and then utilizing the uh they call it the S back interim assessment blocks there are some new um things that they put out through the state that we are going to be starting to utilize which I think will be helpful again it's one of those things where we don't want I don't want us to think that we are tet we are we are um doing this to to prepare just for the test because I I honestly don't believe in that but at the same time these are examples that they use for the smarter balance test these are examples of Standards so we do utilize it for our instruction because again I give you an example of if they take one of these um interim blocks and they see an area we can you know most of the the kids didn't do well in that area so you know what as teachers and we've had these conversations I need to reflect as a teacher now if I didn't teach the concept yet that's different but if I taught the concept in a large chunk of kids are not really understanding that is it the type of question it is um is did I maybe I didn't teach it in a way that the kids understood so now I do have to go back to reteach that right as as we always do that as Educators we have to reflect on our on our own abilities and seeing where that may be so that's one of the areas that we do talk about student data and obviously it's always to ensure the growth over time um I I wish I could say that every kid makes that huge growth some do and and you know some don't but I do I want to make again point out to it we do have these the math interventions and also and this is also in reading the uh reading interventions that we have that have been a huge huge help for us and our our reading intervention is a little bit different than maybe some of the the younger we have ones that uh work in some more small group of students that we have there we call it tier two or maybe even a two 3 that they're working with kids that our students have their literacy blocks that they're in but they're also pulled from a different block that they are able to get more small group two three students in there to be able to really focus on certain um certain areas and again depending on what it is reading interventions so any question oh any good all right all right thanks so as Mr belanda comes up um I hope that you're hearing kind of this theme of all of the resources all the passionate Educators the kids are ready to learn I've been at each of the schools over the last month and a half a couple times in some of the different schools and I have to say how impressed I have been with the the energy and the excitement and it doesn't matter what what level really I mean kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade the teachers are excited they they seem poised and ready to go kids are excited and I think that you can also hear it from our administrators so we're going to hear it now from Mr belanda thank you Dr Mann we're all like a little congested the whole administrative team it's like we've been hanging out too much Anna's lost her voice Deb is I don't know right sorry I'll talk like no it's it's this is my after nine voice my radio voice um so it's it's very great I'm I'm I count myself quite lucky that um you know Dr Mann is here and has such a a great understanding being a former uh recovering maybe High School principal maybe we'll call it recovering High School principal who truly understands um the measure of the SAT um and what that means and is able to explain it so well and even get a little bit deeper into the state's perspective as to where you fall in the yellow or the green and the blue this is specifically this comes from the College Board specifically Dr Mann did share some other scores here um again she talked about what the Benchmark score is so you'll see uh in parentheses next to each of these the PSAT 460 480.
yeah I would that suffice for I mean it's a portion of our Fleet yeah so every discharge overnight the highest level for uh level two would be a 19.2 kilowatt um so not up to 20. so it would take 10 hours uh in best case to to charge the lower battery um it's a long time so there's not much there's not a lot of margin margin for error there and we like to keep a lot of Parker fair so so is it positive but is there a margin of error built into the actual kilowatt hours in the bus because I thought we had we were saying that the buses have more capacity than we would actually use in a day to drive that Miles so that that's true okay so in terms of in terms of Simply diversifying our bus fleet and the energy uh required for it that would be a possibility of an electric bus with a level two not 35 type 1 buses so maybe a few of them yeah yeah all I can tell you is that our in charge especially in this region you have to think about this region yeah when it gets cold it you know perfect is far from what happens when it's cold when a battery is cold um the flow of electrons is far slower so that 19.2 kilowatts just dropped in half so now you're 20 hours to with with a 19.2 to charge 200 kilowatt hours so but even then I mean so when you look at just pure math the cost is in the charger what the cost is not in the charger well it's not in the charger itself but it is in the but we could put a level yeah you could put a level two right now yeah oh I see what you're saying yeah without the service right right right and I'm really speaking to the idea before you were talking about diversifying our sleep yeah and it's used to be a small step yeah and it as we progress I think it's something that should be on our minds sure I my preference as it has been in New Britain and Middletown is let's overdo it first and then we can scale back from there um because we don't want to not have enough power and I've said this to multiple different customers you know we're working with Boston Public Schools um it's important to get these things right to start because you you not only lose your you don't not only lose the public but you lose your drivers you you lose uh your operation staff but if these things go wrong so you want to give them too much not not too little to to get the buy-in up front my kids are in first and third grade I may not know what happens in the classroom but I know what goes on in the school bus fair enough uh all right so we've already talked a little bit about the product type one also called type c sorry for the late on that uh that's IC Bus type 2 also called type a um that's that's Collins all right um so I see bus offers diesel gasoline propane and electric um uh diesel these are common size B gasoline PSI 8.8 liter coming soon will be the Cummins ISB 6.7 octane um they're going to squeeze the last bit they can out of a heavy duty gas engine um the PSI has already signaled that they're leaving this Market because of most of the things that we've already talked about um it's just getting harder for that to work um propane is a PSI 8.8 liter VA and the electric and I'm talking about the motor here obviously most of the cost in the batteries so that's not where really the money is but it's a Dana TM for sumo uh and then Collins um the gas are electric um I'll just focus on electric uh they used to be motive that's that used to be who so it's a it's a automotive chassis in this case a Ford gets sent to an electric upfitter they take out all of the uh what they call that when they take out all the guts the cabins anyway yeah yeah the manufacturers have a word for it but uh and you know putting all the electric stuff you know so an internal combustion engine comes out batteries electric motor going um and that's what we're dealing with there so lightning is a little bit more established than motive is and was um but I'm gonna wait and see mode on on this well and believe it or not one of the biggest problems they have is not well besides cost but it's the weight because you got when you add so much weight in the batteries to that chassis it can't handle it anymore so they're limited you know everyone's saying well why can't you spawn batteries in well because the the chassis just can't carry all that um so I'm just gonna limit our conversation a little bit to um diesel propane uh electric for the IC Bus uh the type one or type c um I'll just fly through this do you guys could read this later but you know advantages to diesel you know it is the highest power it's a lower cost up front um higher higher operating costs these days due to maintenance of the emission system but that's mostly offset by long federally mandated warranty periods on those uh emission systems uh so we have the lowest fuel consumption by miles per gallon but a higher price um so ultimately it's the highest cost uh of the three options that we're going to talk about diesel propane electric for fuel cost environmentally the highest knocks output of all options but surprisingly it's actually lower on all other emissions measures than propane or gas because of all of the emissions technology that's gone into these you know diesel particulate filters diesel exhaust fluid selective catalytic reductions there's a whole it's like the whole alphabet of stuff that they use to reduce knocks reduce particulate matter coming out the exhaust reduce hydrocarbons so you know I don't want to hear this but this is about 50 times cleaner than a diesel engine was maybe 15 15 years ago um it's it does run very clean um comparatively but still ice knocks out but that's a big emphasis because that's both the pollutant um Nitro oxygens of nitrite of nitrogen nitrogen dioxide which is a pollutant bad for your lungs and nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas it's also laughing gas so big emphasis to reduce that by the federal government uh reliability um more there's been more breakdowns there's more componentry has been added you know more things to break with those after treatment systems uh it's a high flash point in diesel so safety makes it probably the safest dual option a driver faster Comfort not very good because it's loud a lot of hybrid a lot of vibration it takes a long time to heat up uh and then range that's good because it can go a long way on a single fill and then there's diesel stations wherever you you want to go on field trips so just for application these are the best equipped for on Highway use so these engines want to go hot and fast um so they want to go down that way I'll try to speed it up uh but propane uh PSI 8.8 liter um I'll just let you guys read through this at your leisure um and then electric you know obviously we're talking about much higher costs um the vehicle maintenance costs are down uh lowest cost of fuel because it's such an efficient method of transferring energy um you know once the energy is actually there um little energy lost their heat environment zero emissions when driving I will say true impact depends on the source of the energy you know is it natural gas or renewable energy probably 53 percent of our grid in Connecticut is nuclear energy most of the remainder is made up by natural gas so if you thought you were you know carbon neutral by doing this not so much really but as a factor if environment is your concern reliability uh to be determined but there's high expectations um and I will uh we already talked about 210 kilowatt hours or 315 kilowatt hours 135 miles or 200 miles of range um it's also very costly to replace these batteries by the way uh and then here we go we're always late on these things but electric infrastructure um we have level one level two and DC fast charge so these are both AC level one AC this makes 120 volt AC um you know it's you're your level two is like your dryer Outlet 240 volts or 280.
so uh that's the Benchmark that they use it obviously increases as you go on throughout the year so the PSAT it's 460 and the SAT is 480. so looking at the class of 2022 the graduating class from last year when they did take the PSAT to the um sat you see that there was certainly a drop and then in the evidence-based reading and writing looking the fact that we had 83 percent that met at the PSAT and thinking about when they took this so this would have been fall of 20 yeah fall of 20 they would have taken it so they'd just come back to school and it's an impressive number at 83 it really kind of blew me away that we were at that level coming back um as things changed over time you saw it did drop slightly I don't like to see those strengthen numbers go up um from that perspective in terms of math we're always we have typically and and most pretty much every High School in the country has lower math scores when compared to the evidence-based reading and writings course you know but you can see and you'll see kind of a theme almost uh there's a little bit of a plateau here you know obviously The Benchmark has increased the concerning one here was that strengthening of 52 percent right that needed to strengthen their skills in the class of 2023 is the current seniors so this PSAT that we're talking about for them was taken fall 2021 and again a plateau a strength an area of strengthening which I don't like to see right uh from that perspective here and then in the SAT interesting we jumped uh 43 to 50 and kind of reduced everything that we needed to in those right areas so in terms of highlights and I don't often get to say that about math relative to the SAT we definitely saw some growth now it's 50 where I want to be no and Dr man talking to the state average of something like 30 it was it was relatively low the state average is pretty low in terms of that but these kids when they first came back for example the class of 2023 they had not taken any high stakes tests like this in some time we really backed off and we focused so much on certainly about learned teaching and learning but we also talked about the importance of mental health and getting reacclimated and focusing on the whole student not just one particular test store and any of you who have teenagers or have had teenagers understand the level of value they place on certain things so as the SAT does continue to be it's an option certainly for kids to demonstrate their knowledge and we will certainly have kids who will submit their SAT scores right they're gonna that's gonna help them because they do well and there are some that won't and so working with teenagers and helping them to understand the importance of taking a test and what this means they don't care that this matters to me or for our state average or how our school is scored right they have to have a personal invested interest in that but one thing I do want to talk about besides just the PSAT and sat and some of the the information that we're going to break down I'll talk about that in the next slide something that Dr Mann talked about that none of us whether it's uh Dr P or Mr Renda or myself talked about the ngss you saw that data presented earlier it wasn't really here um on this stuff uh Dr Renner to talk about those interim assessment blocks for SBA they also have those for the ngss right and so as that test continues to evolve and it is a very complicated test I think some of you have been uncaped and gone through and seen the structure and the the complicated nature of taking that sort of assessment if you haven't we can certainly be happy to walk you through it so you can see what it looks like but there's a whole different way of taking a test it is not just filling in the blank it is those kind of dreaded tests that you took in college maybe if you did that where if not a but C you know how much you hated those I hated those multiple choice questions where it could be a and b but not C or D this goes in so much more depth and requires particularly in science for students to manipulate variables identify things actually having them for example the one I think about all the time is that sample of ngss one if you've seen the science one where the kids are actually manipulating data they have to pick the variables they have to make decisions so it's more than just bubbling in the right answer it's so much more complex thinking so the more we get into these interim assessment blocks and and you may have seen the previous screen that our scores went up in the 11th grade from last year to the previous year to this past spring so that's a a positive thing on our end but there's always things to continue to work on I wish I had more room because I'd put more up here as you can tell it's very small but one of the things that has been a challenge at the high school as you get into content Specialists and making sure that all our curriculum is aligned to standards we do have a standards-based curriculum I don't want anybody to miss quote me on that we absolutely do and we have that information one of the things we want to do in terms of student achievement and scores which is what we're really measured by I would argue that every single one of these things regardless of what's highlighted or not factors into student achievement across the board if we can do all these things and do them all well it's going to be better and that's going to and you'll see some of that stuff when we talk about the um the performance index that'll come out or the accountability index that will come out probably in February but this is just continued correct the development for that forward-facing document we get a lot of questions about curriculum at the high school one of the things we want to make sure we're very transparent the srbi process at the high school is a challenge across the board it's a different model where you don't have teams or groups it's a little bit different and we're going to continue to work through that process we've actually separated our srbi process to include we now have a static srbi meeting in terms about it talks about academic achievement but we also have a student and family support team that also meets the reviews that students that are brought up for those concerns because oftentimes it's behavioral things that are brought up we want to have those additional questions so it talks about analysis of sub scores and that's the thing I wanted to bring up across the board including with AP tests we did start some of the we had some of those initial conversations with our AP teachers at the most recent professional development session where our AP teachers were taking a look at their course grades the grades they assign kids in class and comparing them also just at a very basic level to their actual AP test score and what we're finding is in some courses it is pretty well aligned not that it has to be an a equals a five on an AP test or a b equals a four but we did have some instances where they were not as aligned as we thought they might be and so we're having these conversations about utilizing the AP classroom resources and taking a look at those specific strands and the different content areas that we might be weaker from a curricular perspective and also looking at how we're providing feedback throughout the course of the year if I'm a student who gets an A in an AP course or a B I'm not saying I should expect a four or a five but I also shouldn't be able to get a one I should be getting a much higher score than that but we'll break down all these um in Parts in our data team at the administrative level and then also work with the teachers as well ilt is going to continue to evolve including expanding academic interventions and enrichment offerings and then one thing that we're really looking at is the loss of credit piece when students get D's or F's and what that that at-risk group it's amazing PowerSchool for those of us that use it on our end or the parents that use it as well there's a lot of back back level algorithms that can actually you can pull up I can on my PowerSchool dashboard I can pull up and click at risk students that's going to give an attendance rating and a grading rating I can at a moment's notice take a look and see which kids are at risk for possibly failing classes or or maybe heading towards truancy due to attendance if we can start to address some of those things specifically and intervene with some of our additional strategies I think Mr Renda talked about the reading Specialists and the work they do thanks to the board several years ago we not we added an additional reading specialist one of the great things that they're able to do is not just work in their small group classes that they're working with students that need the most intervention but they're now also pushing out into courses like science right now they're getting into science classrooms if anybody's ever been in a high school science classroom you've been at the biology you've been in that Earth Science some of the vocabulary and some of the supports that kids may need they don't necessarily have that support so our reading Specialists are also pushing into other content areas to provide additional support there and with the addition of a math interventions two years ago it's been a great help to work with our students that need that level of intervention so there's a ton of things we probably could have put a lot more on here if we wanted to um but that's just that's the highlights of some of the things we're continuing to do at the high school all right so as you can see there's a lot of work that we are already in we've already embarked on um and I'm hoping that you're beginning to hear the um kind of the the connection between curriculum instruction and assessment those are not three separate things those that is a Continuum that is interdependent um and so the curriculum work we do with uh Dr led by Dr Alcock and the capacity we're building with our teachers to continue that work is is going to inform the instruction the instruction that is going to be high authentic learning experiences and high engagement is going to impact those assessments and then that assessment information that we get back not just from the standardized data but also within our own formative classrooms will help inform that curriculum again so that we can all kind of connect to all of the debts um and the other thing I just want to take a minute to say is that testing is a skill building process so uh Mark mentioned that our kids hadn't been testing they hadn't been used to testing so while we don't we we are not going to teach to the test because if we do the right things in the classroom the scores will come but part of that is getting them comfortable and used to being assessed that's partly not and it's not just a physical skill it's also that resiliency piece what do I do when I sit down in a computer test and the computer freezes and I start panicking right those are that's all of it is is interconnected um but if we do that and we work on those transferable skills that will impact their achievement then that's what we kind of will uh when we'll really start seeing those results so as Dr Brill mentioned in the beginning you know we're now we're getting toward we're kind of looking at this transformed experience and transformed hero of our schools so what are we moving toward we're moving toward that extraordinary with a focus on the whole child I mentioned at the beginning that all of our kids have infinite potential we need to fully believe in that and fully invest in that and we appreciate the investment that you have already given us and we're excited to work with you to have you continue to with that investment so that our tangible outcomes such as student health and well-being the new school a stronger sense of culture and you know again connectedness to the school facilities and the school climate will result in that high achievement but more importantly will result in those intangible outcomes such as resiliency trust belief Unity not just for our kids but for our faculty our staff our community members our parents so that we're all we all can remember that this narrative happens together so again this is just a visual to close us out these this is our portrait of The Graduate right the vision of The Graduate of the four C's but this is really the connectedness the interconnectedness of everything for our students so with this that's how we'll get belief trust and unity so I know it's been a little lengthy but I do want to open the floor um for any of us to take questions okay so I want to go back well I can just start by saying wow this is uh [Music] going from the holistic top of the durg view to where you showed us where we stood gets your attention doesn't it um the uh how I guess my first question is as a board what can we do to keep attention on this and get the right support to you and to the principles in helping change the full direction of where we've been right your Turf well I think um to the first thing is to continue doing what you've done you know I mean the resources as I've said from the beginning since I've gotten here I have been so impressed with the in and when I say resources I don't just mean fiscal I mean the the intentionality and the focus on school and the whole experience for kids Athletics the Arts the extracurricular the co-curricular aspect so continuing that investment and continuing that focus and intentionality is what I think that we can ask that how you can support the work we're doing we'll we've already um Dr Murphy and I have already talked about kind of the focus throughout the year with um cape and that we will be talking about and we started off the year with a curricular Focus um and Debbie and Rosa were there as well um we can you know we'll continue to work at the cape level to kind of hash through some of this this progress um but I think really that just that continued intentionality and support and allowing me to come back and Report out as I said you know throughout the whole presentation this is one data point one snapshot there are other things that flesh out the experience of our and the success of our schools so I'm looking forward to sharing those as we go through it strikes me that one of the things that we can do is lessen the churn right you know get a lot of stuff great ideas coming in from everywhere right um and uh oh we got to go work on a new you know K through 3 Ela curriculum right and comes down from the state I to me this is like the house is burning and we got to spend our time focusing on getting getting the getting the house the Flames out and it uh and the kids where we need them to be and if we can get some of the shaft out of your way don't be at all afraid to say can we just put this sort of thing off a little bit right because I think that's important that we stay focused on this absolutely um and there are some things that we can as you mentioned we can't control if the state is going to say you need a new K3 reading program um but we can leverage our resources and I've already talked with Debbie and Danielle rudel on those but I agree with you if they're extraneous things that are getting in the way that are taking up bandwidth and time and you know intention we need to put those things to be like number one priority absolutely everybody so if I may add Bob to exactly that and I love the phrase lesson the churn the the I started to say our Focus needs to be on achievement and and uh Dr Murphy and I've had some private conversations um matter of fact you were with me at a conversation with the board of Finance Bob in the Summer where I really talked about um while we talk about the whole child and who doesn't believe in that we need to be focusing on Reading Writing math science social studies the academics we need to put a renewed focus on that we're coming out of the pandemic and clearly from the snapshot and again the date is six months old at this point um we we have work to do there we're excited to engage in that work we're not running from the learning loss and we want to make sure we're moving toward the top of our comparative and Regional neighbors um we owe that to our kids we owe that to our families and so we but we we to your point um while there may be State mandates that come down that feel as though they're in the way and is right we need to leverage and and make that work but if everything's a priority nothing's a priority academic Focus must be a priority going forward right thanks now the other second question I have and then I'll turn into the rest of the board this I you know and this is a connect the dots question in the beginning of your presentation you showed us that there was a big drop off in the middle school years right in achievement and then you saw it again in Dean's charts right in terms of what you saw on the more tactical scores you know as you kind of went through the years it started high and then dropped I suspect that's part of the developmental issues of that age group and their Readiness to focus on what are ever increasing complexities right because the the you know we've we've spent time with if you remember with Dr Ruby about social studies you know you're moving from basic reading to complex reading in that window right that is where that transition happens so I saw that in the data right so there's kind of one reaction of let's get everybody up right let's catch everybody up but there's that specific focus and I didn't see in the action items things that say oh man this fifth to eighth grade group who are now becoming high school kids we have to put some extra focus on uh to catch it up they were and it's not meant to be critical at all but they're kind of the standard approach okay we're going to keep working people up we're working people up you know use our assessments use that but there's something else going on in there and I'd love to spend some time with Dean with you and Mark probably in the high school because you're inheriting that group who just got slapped you know with the coven learning loss how are we keeping our eyes on the whole child in that window and and doing extra things to help that group in particular reset because I'm not sure business as usual the approach we're using at the elementary schools that that will help you get everybody up a little bit I love what Dr P said about this goal is 100 percent right on on meets the standards that's exactly right but the uh um but I think there's some Pockets that might build off what you're saying so I was trying to think of some things um specifically for the Middle School like have we looked at maybe like increasing our star administrations to happen more frequently to allow us to give us more data points to track you know areas of weakness um you know year after year at least I've seen with my son an area of geometry you know he's an honors but it's an area that's continually low and I would imagine that that's the same because that's the area where they suffered where they kind of lost out when code first hit was that's where they covered in the spring so um looking at those math areas that were are tend to be weak and the more data points you have for Star the better right you take it in the beginning as a Baseline and you take it in January and then the end of the year it's not really going to help us I mean it will help us for the next year but only that one data point in the middle of the year is really only helping us but if we take it more frequently in November or again in March then we can really maybe track more areas of growth and weakness so I'm happy to have um Dean and Mark come up but I did um one and again from my perspective coming in new with fresh eyes um knowing that the instructional coaching team was put in last year knowing that all of these interventionists and the tutors were put in in the recent years and thinking about the srbi process both at the middle school and at the high school which again as Mark mentioned is a different entity and has to be approached differently than in the um than in the longer younger grades to me that is part of addressing those specifics and not doing business as usual in addition I think that and so there's definitely I think we can continue to dig down and use those uh the iabs as well because those are specifically targeted to SBA but also to those standards so combining that those data points um as far as you know leveraging all of our data points Star as another one for 712 that we have both for um for Math and La so all of those things and it takes it takes the structure it takes this right we can say we need to do all these things but we need to make sure that we have the right people and the right structures with the right amount of time and when you will afford um team teachers or classroom teachers that time because kids are working with interventionists or they're working with instructional coaches or tutors that is what that's going to I think really shift this tide a little bit um and those those pieces of the puzzle have never really been brought together in such an intentional way so um I know I'm new but it doesn't sound to me quite like its business as as it was I think there is a very specific Focus I think that Dean's work last Monday with the teachers at the middle school when they're all in the in the calf and they were all looking at their SBA data as well as their parent feedback and their student and their peer feedback data it was it was a palpable focus on what is happening with our kids and I Dean should speak to it but I don't I didn't get the sense that that was what had we had done previously go ahead I give just a little background with this star and just sort of I meant to say this before and I forgot I gotta tell you one thing is as teachers I I actually met with two teachers today it was it was about something and they were just teachers take it very personal like they are so upset by the scores so I watch I mean obviously people that are teachers um but they it's a big deal like we that's why we're having those conversations I think with uh Dr Maine saying is we were there in I think in the even in the video I might have said it there's a lot of discourse going on we're trying to figure out what are those areas number one where are those areas that we've dropped and even in subgroups it does not just the overalls achievement for grade but and what are we currently doing and we're going to be looking at what could we do differently um I could tell you this much the star we do give it to students that um multiple times that are in interventions the problem with the star is is that it doesn't really give us really drill down data as much as like an acadians might um might give us that it's not uh something so for instance so you understand it it could give us a kid a a question on GI geometry and we haven't even taught geometry yet so that's the when you're when you're going through those skills sometimes depending on the score it doesn't tell specifically what they got wrong so it doesn't say to us they got the questions wrong on fractions we'll say so then we could drill down and say oh we know that they need fractions it's based on an average and I want to make sure am I say that it's an average for a student in that grade level say at the beginning of the year at that time of the year um and then the same thing with the middle of the year we do like I said before we do give it multiple times to students that are in our interventions but that is just kind of like a baseline that we continue to use as we go along because it doesn't give us real specific like standard per se that people might think it does it does say things about that but it doesn't give a specific to it so I don't know if that's helpful or not to know yeah no I mean it does get very specific I mean it's just the report that you pull on it but it gives standards reports and things like that no it does yeah yeah but it doesn't a very valuable tool break it down yep and we do utilize it no doubt about it but we don't it's not something that we give multiple I mean that it's made to do the beginning middle and end of the year and what we've been told them and again is that we do do it throughout for students that are struggling Target see so so that I don't miss get misinterpreted yeah because I don't want to be misinterpreted I think what you're doing is great right um I worry I worry that it's deeper than the specific uh topics that are being taught it's they've lost the thread at the middle school of dealing with complex and Readiness to learn and Readiness to absorb and Readiness to engage because that's what you need them to do at that level so I I would be when I was talking about maybe a little bit of out of the box you know it's looking a little bit step back from the wholeness of the child and I love the interventions you're doing I love what you're doing in assessment I love how we're going to go focus in on the ones that need the help but there's something cooking here right and I'd be interested in getting it may be anecdotal but is there something that we need to start helping our children who are in that moment right middle school during the covid years move to a new place right and mark from your point of view the kids who've just arrived at the heist school I would surmise and hypothesize that two years from now when you show those SAT scores for the graduating class of 2020 X whatever it is 25 you'd be going oh my God right um there we we need to figure out how to remediate if you will you know that that that moment it's not really you didn't see it in the data in the younger kids right you're moving them up the court for the basics of Reading Writing arithmetic and all of that it's as they move into the complex topics there's something cooking there and I'd love to spend some time on that at some appropriate moment right it's maybe you know you've got to get going with what you got here one of the other points I just want to make was the use that the different use in uh of the iabs this year and based on what the state is has changed a little bit with that I mean I think that's one of the bigger things that will help us to get more drilled to help us drill down more with certain standards um so that is something that that we are definitely working on it just was that I'll tell you just a little Side Story it was uh it happened to go over and visit a neighbor it's at one at one point in the middle of covet and the kids were at home doing their remote learning and I walked in and the uh the phone was right below the screen they're playing their video game and looking very attentive but they're focusing on the video game they there was there's a developmental point in there of that age group that uh they were losing the will and engagement to learn and I worry about that a lot right that has stuck with me that that moment that I observed and I don't know if any of the rest of you who have middle schools and young high schoolers but that's uh even College fine I think to speak to that a little bit just quickly um you know I kids are our students want to please and they are very good at doing school but we want them to be engaged with school right and um I agree with you completely uh in terms of what is those what it's almost like you could physiologically what changed you know changed in their brains um to not quite be ready to to really be you know engage with school so I think that um you know what we've talked about a lot is also you know there is a connection between the social emotional piece and the academic piece and so now with all of the the focus on uh increasing social workers and school psychologists and slps and support staff um I wonder if that's a way to uh and you know Mark was even talking about it running those reports of it's not just attendance and um grade reports but also discipline reports and maybe maybe some different fun things that kind of get some of them and focused on engagement right and yeah so um and and talking to our teachers so that they have you know our instructional coaches can go in and help them with instructional strategies but also engaging with our parents and help and making sure that we're out reaching out to our parents and and being transparent about this I mean this is a one of those steps um but saying we need your help we need you to engage and and ask us here and here's five things you could do right right yep yep maybe that's what maybe that's a kind of an out of the box thing so I just thought there's a there's something cooking and I can't put my finger on it but it's cooking can I actually have one more thing like and it's not out of the box but the traditional homework is being an option to like authentic homework that reinforces what was taught and then just to practice like old-fashioned practice um I think there's a I know how people feel about it I know some teachers feel about it because I heard it open house but I mean there's you know you can't not practice and practice leads to you know production so it's uh you know from a homework perspective I have an eighth grader at home um as well and um it's an interesting dialogue and conversation nightly about homework um and some you know he'd be mortified to know right now that I'm talking about him right now but I also he's definitely not watching um but you know some of those conversations I've had right as we transition and getting them ready for high school in the com I have to do homework I do it in school I don't understand and he's getting it he's just not doing it um he doesn't see the value in it right and so that's speak to kind of your point um but also I think in terms of executive functioning pieces that we continue to talk about um I'll bring up two points because I don't want to belabor all this time because we've been here for some time but I will share with you the board party members the pillars committee that brought forward the um social worker that we're bringing in from Civic from the outside um we're still pending on that we're still waiting they're low on clinical staff side note but that same group now has a new Focus right every year we're looking to kind of and one of the things we're talking about our Focus this year is talking about executive functioning and looking at um particularly for high school students and what we can do to help support them and make that transition and whether it be working with staff to better understand it across the board but I think that will pay dividends down the road as we continue to help our students do that the other parts about the ninth graders in particular we did just give the ninth grade essay PSAT uh last you know last Wednesday and the 12th so that'll give us one that gives us another data point at least a standardized data point to look at we have star we're also going to look at but also you know it's it's a reinvigorated focus I talked about running those reports right now I'll tell you on the of the 879 kids that I have in terms of in terms of looking at students that are we're concerned about grades and attendance there's two ninth graders on my list two out of a class of 200 and now it doesn't those those are the highest risk right those are the ones that are the highest risk there's more seniors on that list than there are ninth graders so that's a whole nother issue we're working on and I'm not ignoring them but I just just know that um we want to explicitly tell you that there are things certainly that we're paying attention to and as we get that data we'll be able to have a better measure of where we're going to do moving forward so stop asking questions um not to beat a dead horse but I just I'm gonna go sort of more Broad and less specific with my sort of overall reflection which is I I I didn't hear a whole lot of new terminology that I would have expected honestly given really honestly How Far We've fallen in the durg um sounds a whole lot like you know we're gonna we do a lot of really good things and we're gonna do them harder and we're gonna do them more and I think I connected actually really quickly with what you were saying in the beginning um which was especially with um you know Middle School aged kids who went through the pandemic and their particular learning loss and and how there's a connection there with some social emotional issues so then maybe that's there's maybe like less of a focus on not necessarily academics but if that's what we're sort of feeling like there's this really big problem that we need to address then let's go really heavy on that um I think my My overall reflection is just you know um you know I think there does need to be something more drastic I don't know what that what that is but um I hope it's not like a just sort of wait and see sort of thing so all right that's that's good feedback yeah um I just again coming in kind of from the from the outside and and there are a lot of um things that aren't easily measured that are felt and that you know that are kind of I can I can see um and my observation is that again there have been a lot of things done but they've been done in isolation there hasn't been a cohesive approach to many of the things and while it may not seem like a drastic approach helping teachers focus on alignment will be game changing they don't if they feel like they have to do this and then they have to do this and then they have to do that and then there's this thing from the state and then I also have to worry about the kids emotional and I they and also they're you know kind of have that vicarious trauma that they're dealing with that they're feeling I mean dean said it they're pretty shell-shocked right now um so and we started off you know super enthusiastic with the year and that's great and then we kind of hit him with some reality um I I anticipate and again I just want to clarify that this is this one piece um and I think that it may maybe it hasn't been as explicitly explained before that next Generation accountability report which we have no control it comes out in in um February it'll be interesting to see where that is um because that's where we really kind of shown in the dirt before not so much in these test scores so I just want to be clear about that the comparison from 2018-19 to now is not drastically different okay we were eight 16th the 20th in the Dirk and some 22nd in the dark prior to the pandemic okay with these test scores all right anyone else just a point I uh there's been a theme that we've been kind of circling around this whole time and I think it's time right you you just kind of mentioned all these things that are flying around um uh Dr uh David he mentioned two months of working on the koala bear I I think that well obviously you know these assessments are born but it's it's scheduling the time to within those assessments to kind of around those assessments really to to better those scores and I'm I'm kind of wondering because I didn't see much of that and I'm sure those happens in the meetings but you know I'm kind of interested in that that aspect of it so how we allotting more time to this area where we can say hey we're good in this area or is that kind of we're still covering this area even though we're good and we're just trying to I don't know speed up within the same amount of time this area that we're not doing is good I don't know if I'll get my point across yep no I understand what you're saying sorry well um right so because you can't get blood from a stone right I mean you have to you have to make sure that you have your finite amount of the school day um but I think it's a matter of being creative with the time Dr P reworked the schedule this past summer for Huckleberry um Hill so that he could build in that time for those teachers um you graciously gave seven days of PD this year I know that a lot of it was to transition to the new school but we're using that time with our teachers you know we have it is it is Coveted time that our teachers can sit and work and look at this this information um and and get trained there's also incorporation of those developmental counseling uh that we you know the developmental counseling lessons one of which was presented tonight but that affords teachers time to be able to work on other things while their those lessons are being Incorporated so and and kind of the the overarching focus is if you think of curriculum instruction and assessment again as a circle kind of like this last Circle you know there's the academic social and emotional but it's curriculum instruction and assessment they are not a linear Continuum and they're not any in isolation but we have traditionally not we Brookfield we education have thought of them as such up until recently now we're kind of seeing there is this huge connection between all of these things and if you do those things correctly you find time anyone else I would just I mean I think we've sort of touched on it but um just to sort of add one more layer um I I do really feel like the trauma that people went through is a big factor here and I don't know that um the test scores and all the data we have is really getting us an answer for that um so I wonder you know if it's possible I know we've we've kind of surveyed people to death but you know maybe it's worth talking to these students in that group that's struggling and talking to their parents and finding out what what do you see as the issues what is your child struggling with where do you see the gaps where can we help maybe not just as a school district but as a community what what other resources can we pull in if we need to to help get these kids through you know this rough period And I I Deb you're making a great point I want to share because we haven't really announced it but the Brookfield cares the asset behavior inventory uh survey will be coming out in the next couple of weeks so that is something that's a community support that we have and we haven't had that assessment of where the students are at in three years at least now so I think that's something right there that's already in place but wide open to the ideas you're talking about absolutely that's all thank you okay anyone else okay so a couple of final remarks okay um the teachers need to know we're 100 behind them right they're the solution they're not they shouldn't feel pressure from us right just to go do something you shouldn't feel pressure from us because we we're we it's all I think all of us are in the same boat about we want to do this for the kids it's all about the child right um and so anything that we can do to make sure we have their backs and then we're providing the resources and support that we can provide as a board we're all for it I would think as a board we should have a more regular Cadence of meeting with uh um with Dr Mann right in terms of where are we how what are you seeing you know what help do you need right and I think John I think we ought to make that uh every meeting or every other meeting type of uh visit doesn't have to be data Centric on this it's just like and we ought to have our uh any uh spotlights focused on learning app you know the excitement right things that things that are happening so I think this has to be our number one priority on number two close behind is getting into a new school so the second thing and I'll say this to the board I was looking carefully at those charts did you all notice that Amity was number one on those rankings and I'm so glad you're here so thank you for coming thank you for coming to Brookfield and my kids were up in those data too because uh you you've lived this and uh really looking forward to seeing how this journey continues so I'm excited to be on this journey with you okay thank you thank you thanks everyone thanks thanks to the principals all of you 15.
um what's the standard charge out there now for electric cars that you see yeah so the you know if it's if it's just an electric car I don't know the kilowatt hours that are in those batteries but it's far less than a bus so you probably have a level two charger okay yeah um it's it's just fine to have a level one in your home if you're not if you don't have super high demands on your of your vehicle um but for a bus you really need a DC fast charger um or some people call them level Crews [Music] uh so the Chargers we worked in charge of the continues and ABB company um they're the main partner of icbus they're kind of the exclusive partner right now because their software is the only one that's been seriously tested uh with IC Bus so we kind of need to use them or they have their own brand Chargers which you can see or they have ABV Chargers so our dealership units are the six are ABB uh Chargers 24 kilowatt um whereas we have three 120 kilowatts coming from for uh New Britain those are going to be doing crack so they're going to be longer routes so they're going to be 315 kilowatt hour batteries so if you want more charging faster charging and 60 kilowatts for uh four Chargers in Middletown as you can see as you get up don't be fooled that's that's dual connectors not actually dual Port I can't have two buses uh connected there um it's a CCS on one side which is what goes into our bus and then chat mouth um which is the like you're the European style um so not a not a dual part this one can be a dual board so our chargers can you know have the two arms so one charger charges two buses that's my question yep all right finally here guys budget considerations let's talk money all right so I'm going to break it down for you into uh vehicle cost infrastructure cost fuel cost and maintenance costs and we're only talking about variable costs for maintenance so not the garage so vehicle cost um you know these are estimated numbers but it gets you in the ballpark um ninety thousand dollars for diesel about ten thousand dollars more for propane and uh 375 000 for electric now if you get a 65 VW Grant then all of a sudden you know you're down at 131 getting pretty close to uh propane there um you do it all out I've got you know the scrap value in the formula what's the useful life um cost Capital obviously you can play with all of these parameters you know as interest rates go up this only goes up um so daily cost comes out to as you can see 57 63 197 and 64.
okay I think that's the last long uh long discussion we have we do have enough a couple of other uh relatively quick things we have to do next item is um uh grants approval I'll move that the board approved the attached list of Grants as recommended by Director of Business and operations can post and superintendent Dr John Burrell second moved and seconded just as a reminder to the board we agreed to we have to approve all grants and we agreed we would do this on mass you know instead of one at a time on our agenda so Ken once you give us a quick overview sure with the exception of the first grant on the list they are all entitlement grants which means that the the it's Federal money that the state allocates to us and we have to submit an application telling them how we're going to use the money within the parameters of each particular Grant uh the first screen is the after school Grant which it was competitive and we got again this year it's a one-year Grant and again we're partnering with the Brookfield Craft Center and the Brookfield YMCA to provide the after-school enrichment programs uh to uh I think mostly middle school students and also making tutoring and extra help available uh Title One is used to support struggling students in math and reading and we provide salaries supplies and professional development to give tutoring and we're using it for uh regular education summer school program I believe at whiskaneer and this is again supplemental to what the district already provides similarly Title II is for professional development to provide opportunities to teachers and coaches beyond what is provided for in The District budget title III and those two the title one and title two and title three are all two-year grants title three is to provide materials and supplies to support English language learners idea has two parts six eleven and six nineteen and I apologize and neglected to put a narrative in for 611 it is used to provide two special education teachers and 18 paraprofessionals plus some tradition transition coordinator services uh Ida 619 is specifically targeted for preschool so we provide a paraprofessional support in the preschool program Carl Perkins is actually that's a little bit of a typo because it's a one-year grant that is to provide support for the high school technical education program and then title IV is a grant that we use you're allowed to take that money and transfer it to another Grant and Dr Mann as we have done it at times in the past is transferring that money into Title II to support from professional development and those are all the new grants this year okay any questions these uh We've touched on these in the past so yeah there's nothing nothing right hearing those no questions all in favor opposed thank you thank you thanks Ken uh next up is uh budget assumptions and priorities this is where just to receive this from uh the superintendent so I'll be very brief especially considering the time of the night the budget assumptions and priorities is an annual update to focus the board Focus the administration on the development of the budget specifically the assumptions that will all work under it's kind of a expectations agreement the board has had the report for several days though it's part of the board packet it's certainly for those citizens who are interested they can go on read and then the following two pages of the report talk about specific priorities in the area of curriculum assessment instruction which will mirror what you heard tonight so I don't need to go through that work for leadership to do in climate and Community Building as well as supporting our teachers in highly engaging instructional strategies and developing those and then there's a number on the third page is a number of operational in facility priorities specifically all the bulleted points transportation we talked a little bit about that tonight enrollment Staffing certifications structures packing and moving all the things that go into Candlewood Lake and whiskaneer and looking at schedules and all the Personnel that will impact both schools and the transition in addition to that there's a lot of work with technology that you could see in there a big part of our budget development will be the continued operationalizing of the Esser grants and some of the instructional coaches and those rolling into the budget and we'll be working on we'll be revisiting this document and then there is one piece of talking about we'll talk about it during budget time is looking at a clerk to help us with public information things such as FERPA and foi requests the hours that these are taking are really uh when you talk about the the churn some things that are distracting the administration from focusing on student learning and so we want to make sure that we have our administrators that are highly compensated and expert in leading their schools to be focusing on leading their schools and not on something we can train someone to do specifically and kind of routinize um responsive documentation I'll certainly answer any questions so we'll have a chance to talk about this through the whole budget absolutely and if anybody has a chance to dig in on this you have a question send me a note we'll have a conversation that can help you understand or wrap on this okay hearing none we'll move on um uh the next one which um are both policies and these are oh I got one more after this so uh I want to see if we can merge those into a single one okay I will move that the board approved the deletion of existing policy number six one six one point three compatibility of service and adopt cape's version for a first reading is recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee and I will move that the board approved new policy number 6172.4 title one for a first reading is recommended by the policy and communication subcommittee second okay moved in second and Debbie do you have any comments you'd like to make to us I'll just answer that policy 161 3 is actually called comparability of services there was just a typo on the agenda but it really just um it really just ensures that the district is providing comparable Services across all the schools in the district um whether they receive funding for Title One students or not um we had this we have this policy currently have it but kabe's version of it includes some language regarding maintaining records about that comparability so you'll see there's our original version that has everything crossed out and then cabe's version which is very similar but just adds language at the end so we're recommending that we delete the old version and adopt cape's new version the second one 6172.4 is about title one parent involvement we don't currently have this policy um it is mandated so uh I believe Dr Burrell said Dr Mann will be implementing the procedures on this managing the title one parent involvement um Title One supplements how much money each state allocates to the schools to ensure there's there's not an achievement Gap um so it's pretty self-explanatory when you read it but um again it's one that is mandated but we don't currently have okay all right so just as a reminder for those listening in a first read is we start a clock moving to give the board a chance to review these it comes back for a second read which is when it actually gets approved so we're not voting to approve it tonight we're voting to accept it as a first read Debbie when do you need in football um I was hoping by November 11th November 11th that's your next meeting for close to your next meeting yeah okay okay so November 11th any input to uh Debbie um any discussion okay all in favor of accepting both of these as a first read unanimous um last business item on the agenda is a Cooperative agreement for athletics or to prove the creation of Cooperative Arrangements consistent with the state statutes for hockey and wrestling and further authorize the superintendent to negotiate applicable written agreements with participating Boards of Education in such Cooperative arrangements and move that the board approved the creation of Cooperative Arrangements consistent with State statutes for hockey and wrestling and further authorize the superintendent to negotiate applicable applicable written agreements with participating Boards of education and such Cooperative Arrangements I felt very repetitive I feel like that was said twice was that yeah right I'm sorry Joyce second when you work with attorney Murphy sometimes it's said twice John why don't you put this in simple English terms on what's what the issue is yeah very simple um uh Mr Baldwin uh approached uh principal Belinda and me regarding our wrestling program we have 14 wrestlers for the coming season and uh we're not going to be able to hit all the weight classes we still can have a program region 12 only has two wrestlers at this time and they actually inquired of us could we be part of your program in a co-op Arrangement and Mr Baldwin was very open to that and we had some discussions about it and actually in the way we're writing up the agreement they could have up to five before it would change the agreement um and shared costs Etc and they would actually help our program because they'd fill in the gaps where we don't have kids for the particular weight classes so it's really going to be a mutual beneficial win we have the written agreement region 12 is the particular District they now have the written agreement and so um we're working on that and so this authorizes you authorizes me to work at Council work with the the other athletic director or the principals and make this happen in addition to that hockey has been a long-standing co-op we want to make sure it's with two districts with Danbury and Bethel hence BBD and we want to make sure that we have a very up-to-date modern agreement with both of those school districts as well so that's what we're working on we have the agreements they're in the hands of the other districts we're ready to roll for the winter just wanted to dot our eyes and cross our T's with this particular approval here twice twice twice so do we have to vote twice I think he could only vote once we'll be accepted as any questions on what the goal here is and what we're approving no all right all in favor all right thanks for the support on that no problem like I said these last ones were going to be quick so um all right so we're back to uh public comment this is our second round of public comment and I want to thank you for being patient I hope it was interesting for you but our first speaker is Irene Korea foreign Korea 45 West whiskey near Road um in 2019 the Connecticut definition of bullying was changed in Connecticut public act number 19-166 and became effective July 2021.
and you know that that's why that's so close to that because we have a longer useful life on electric bus um but daily cost is kind of the most important thing because we can kind of put it next to the 349 dollars per day that you guys pay and okay how much does it go up from there any questions on infrastructure cost obviously that's only electric um so you know really what we're looking at here is okay what does it change if we go from one bus to 35 buses you know as we spread it out over more buses what does it change as we get the the VW grants um so you know you'd see that it just goes down you know if I get one bus you know I can I'm only spreading it out over one bus if I have 35 buses then you know yeah I'm paying for a lot more charging stations but I only have to do my service upgrade once um I only have to do my sight work once it might be a little bit more uh installation might be a little bit more but ultimately it's going to be a lot less um so increasing economies of scale is the point and then fuel cost um I used the retail prices for diesel and propane I don't know what you guys pay for diesel and what you would pay for it it's less than five a gallon right today yeah yeah it's probably it's probably less than this so with the propane V2 yeah yeah and it's likely that you know I have this you know this comes out to just a little bit less than diesel it's very likely that you'd be able to acquire propane at you know significantly lower costs than that [Music] um and you can see that you know Electric's cheapest propane next diesel highest and then maintenance cost so again we're talking about variable cost only so I'm only talking about uh you know the consumables that we're putting on so I'm going to pay for the technicians anyway and I'm going to pay for my garage anyway so one of my what are the consumables that I'm putting on tires brakes fluids on scheduled repairs Tires and Brakes are going to go down because we have regenerative braking on on these systems so rather than the brakes and and working and then causing greater tire wear by them skidding on the on the roads uh the regenerative braking is charging the batteries while slowing the vehicle so if it's on a hill it can break the you know break that vehicle while uh charging the battery and there are different levels of regenerative brick so that brings down Tires and Brakes and that is pretty amazing the way it works yeah did you go for a ride when you I did go up for a ride it's like a golf cart if you've ever driven on a golf cart as you ease up on on the accelerator it slows it down well the the bus that we took a ride on at three different levels of regeneration so at level three that slowed the bus down the most it also gave more energy back to the batteries so it was pretty incredible and the person that was driving the bus Frank I think his name was was you know very good and you know you get used to it it takes a while yeah you know what he was doing but um you know at some points as we were riding it did actually help the longevity of how far you could go with the bus and it wasn't uncomfortable as he would take off his foot off the gas so to speak even though so I guess because he knew what he was doing but it really does help and I know Frank said that gee I'm not sure we'll ever go through a set of brake pads that's because you don't touch the Testament right because he doesn't touch the break so one of the point just the board member and as a parent for you is that the bus was quieter yes and the bus driver was talking about how that has a direct positive impact the atmosphere within the bus because oftentimes what happens is noisy engine leads to yelling which leads to sort of deteriorating kids bus drivers yelling that the bus driver gets in trouble because oh you yelled my kids well you can't hero the answers anyway the point being with a quieter boss yeah there is I feel probably a real possibility for improved uh yeah an improved atmosphere for the kids it's absolutely the case you know and and we see that I'll also note with Propane and Gas as comparison of the added benefit of they heat up much faster than Diesel and that's the same for electric although it has the negative side of that there's a big drop in uh the charge but driver Comfort passenger comfort you know the feeling the bus you know with all three of those fuel types gas propane and uh and electric significantly improved yeah absolutely awesome um so here we're just talking about maintenance costs uh so we talked about Tires and Brakes fluids and filters obviously are now non-electric um much reduced goes a little bit back to the after treatment system also you need to put a lot more oil in a in a diesel engine than a propane engine um and unscheduled repairs per mile I'll admit that these are somewhat uh fudgy numbers to uh figure it out but what we can say was pretty pretty good confidence is that would have the lowest maintenance propane next and then diesel and battery replacement costs we have that I did not put that in there just because I had enough slides already um okay but yeah so battery replacement costs you know if you wanted to replace all of the batteries so there's an eight year warranty eight year hundred thousand hundred thousand mile warranty on the batteries so if I want to get my bus to 15 years then let's probably think that we're going to replace those batteries um halfway through you know at some point uh they always seem to get those those warranties just right so a hundred thousand dollars now will battery prices come down I don't know I don't know I'm not gonna Bet On It um but we also don't know if there's a secondary market for the battery yeah which is the secondary Market is coming into play I saw a Nissan Leaf uh retired battery power plant that's operational California yeah and also you can't predict the future but battery prices have dropped dramatically the last year or two inflation out of it over the past 10 years they have dropped dramatically yeah absolutely so yeah so we just it's technology and Technology like computers it gets better and less expensive generally speaking much like a television you know but uh he went out and bought a television in that size 10 years ago you paid 10 grand and now you can go to Costco and buy it well maybe not that size but close for a thousand dollars yeah you know so I mean yeah aside from the inflation that driving with technology and costs yeah and the battery is more about technology I think that is absolutely true yeah the software that backs it up is a huge piece of it um you know and it's telling too that I'm told that we can it's a 375 000 bus and I can replace the batteries for a hundred thousand dollars well there's 275 000 still in there what's it from you know it's the technology mostly um that has been put into it and all the capital but they've expanded to make this happen so yeah is that 375 000 for the bus is that like is that a real actual fabrication and construction cost of the Busters it's just so inflated because of all the federal Minds out there well I wish I knew I mean I'm just thinking like I mean obviously you know that you know these the vehicles you've seen them I mean is it is it really three times the cost if you looked at the bus you would not tell a difference right so it's not isn't really three times the cost to me I know I can I can I can certainly say no it's just not now how much does it cost I'm sure it's a lot yeah um but how much are they advertising engineering they've put so much engineering into this so you know it's that's just the way of the world you know obviously they're trying to recoup the costs of all of the engineering that's that's happened and at a certain point hopefully they'll reach a point where it'll come down and now we can but it you know that's also how inflation Works you're right right there's so much money going into it if you know people are gonna get 375 000 well guess what the price is not going to be any less than 375 000 yeah it's crazy I I am a big Advocate buses but safety is also a real concern and you know people around Connecticut including here in Chester many people saw plus that the city Boston blew up in one hand them as they blew up my understanding is it was a fire the picture it burned for a long time electrical fires last a while yeah it looked terrible at the end my understanding is that what happens with this is It's the fire starts it gets put out then it starts again and it gets worse every time it gets put out again yeah it's not as though a group of people on board nobody when nobody was actually like yeah that bus was inside of the garage at the time that it caught fire so they had plenty of time to disable the brake on it and push it outside of the of the garage so it's not like it would like just something unbearable yeah but in terms of safety I'm just wondering we don't want that to happen either way but but hang out so so some of the and I talked to actually uh one of the executives from one of the battery management battery manufacturers followed that particular fire and what he explained to me is there's there's huge differences in the ways batteries are constructed and the and and according to him and again you know I'm just relaying what was told to me the way the batteries were constructed in that particular bus they were essentially like large plastic bags that were inside this plastic shell um and um so that once that well once the one bag caught on fire it just spread to the other ones because there wasn't any divider between the you know the actual batteries themselves in the in the newer technology batteries that are you know that ic's using there's individual cylinders so the theory is that it would not be able to spread from one cell to the next because they've got them isolated and you wouldn't have the tremendous heat that was you know I mean I guess the way to describe it is if you had you know in you've really got an engine you've got individual cylinders that have basically explosions in them happening right well if you set off the fuel tank you can have a totally different type explosion so that's why it's isolated from the rest of the vehicle so in this situation when you've got these big bags that were filled with whatever chemical that is um they just kind of fed each other whereas in the newer batteries they've got these things in in cylinders so there's more of an isolation that won't lead to that that's saying it wouldn't happen but the computer has the ability to isolate individual cells and there are many thousands of cells that make up you know just like they call it a three string battery it's the largest battery but that's actually nine rectangles nine packs with you know hundreds of of individual cells in them you know and that's just how batteries that are in series work um but ultimately to your question we only we don't get to see inside the batteries you know so we can't and there have been a ton of buses on the road so it is a situation where we the only way we'll know is you know 10 years from now when when we know um you know we can only repeat what is told that is told to us but that it's a concern you know to not know um it's an unknown and nobody likes unknowns but it is something that you're following and you're already saying there's special Technologies out there absolutely knowledgeable people can reasonably say this is mitigating that risk this is safer than what that was yeah technology is improving yeah and I I would hope that a a large company like Volkswagen that's already been in uh a scandal um you know when they're putting batteries in in buses that are transporting school children would have a pretty good economic incentive to make that yeah battery as safe as possible and I have no reason to believe that they are not safe um but as we've already said the proves to the point I have let's do a few questions the cost for and I'm just thinking of a home electricity costs in that there's a service fee a delivery fee that's not part of the the whole electric cost um so you're talking about an electric bus yes would there be an extra fee yeah uh answer is no if if we'd have to figure out what the situation was and I I guess I don't want to speak for for our school bus team but so stop me when I when I'm wrong if there are extra costs to us then we put them I don't have the price 349 what are you talking about the cost of delivering the electricity yeah so let me let yeah so so that's going to be really between you and eversource right but as I said earlier there's there's things that are built into the the Chargers that we can hopefully help manage your electricity costs for example again I don't know how this works but I'm told that if you charge bus at night it can be cheaper than charging the bus during Peak so you know we may want to have a situation where we say to eversource okay you're going to charge us X dollars if we charge this bus between you know midnight and four in the morning and you're going to charge us you know why dollars or X Plus dollars if we charge it at three o'clock in the afternoon when your all your air conditioners are running and everything's peaked out but would that be ideal given the time that we need to use it well I mean again I'm just picking I'm picking random times but yes I mean I think you would be probably running the bus during the peak time and charging the bus but we've got to manage that right so that you're charging the boss in the in the off-peak time but that's one of the things that we can do with this charging system this was part of the presentation that was at the meeting I went to a tackle so you know not knowing the details of how our electric grid works but if we delay the charges we could plug in the bus at four but have the software start charging the bus at seven correct so we don't physically have to be there correct then it'll charge during this off-peak period to reduce the cost that we pay I do know just because I had a meeting on a different topic last week trying to get actually electricity pricing have a contract expires in December that you know electricity can be charged in five minute increments um we don't do it that way currently but that is the way electricity is priced so if we can find a vendor an eversource allows for it we might be able to take advantage of some of those things and it's kind of early stage to be able to talk about that beyond what I just said that I think it's possible but I don't know you know if we wouldn't have to do that directly through eversource right now we're talking to a third party that would manage that for us on an hourly basis right and they've deregulated that market so you can buy your electricity from other than ever which we have in a few years from a regulatory perspective I think it was two years ago [Music] basically never mind got the corrupt and deep to really look at the entire system and so there's a lot changing but it will take years to get this stuff to change yeah that not through not through anybody slow walking anything but just to do it safely and reliably right and then the other big opportunity which we touched on is you know if we can install you know solar whatever solo farms solar carports you know that we'd have to pay for that but theoretically it should reduce our cost from just buying it on the grid you know which is the way that we're doing it now pretty much there are ways to to make that you know cost neutral over a period of years of course too if you're willing to put up the money and then you know as Tim mentioned there's also companies that will do that for you yeah too uh you know they'll come in they'll give it to you for free and then they get all the benefit from it um most of the benefits well I mean and listen we're not you know we're wrapped up in a school bus world right but there's there's a lot of other things that are going to be happening at the same time and a lot of other other draws on that great equipment I mean you've got for example I mean you got bizutos right across the street from us you know they got how many trucks and you know electricity demands and refrigerators and you know cooling units for trailers and so I mean just just that alone is going to be a a draw on that grid so you know the profile in Cheshire might be different than the profile somewhere else because of what the demands are in the local grid so it there's there's a lot that you know you know well there's there's a lot of interconnectivity here yeah there is there is that's why we're trying to set up a scenario where we could be as flexible as possible um the other question I had if you know or not is is there a hybrid option out there we do not have one um yeah there's not a hybrid option no no yeah and discussion it's really weird and I don't know why but even in the cars they've gone away from hybrid I assume that's the way that Roger I know the disorders yeah it's it's it's one or the other now it's you don't have a from my perspective it makes I it doesn't make any sense to me to own a hybrid car because the maintenance long term when it gets out to like 10 years you have two different two different major systems and I'm just kind of thinking of hypotheticals in my head so what would be your suggested hypothetical in the phase in because you're you're you mentioned before that propane might be the first round yeah I mean listen we can do propane right now without any Grant scenario I mean we've done it in New Canaan they're 100 propane they like it um but I think that the answer to your question is going to be within the next you know next year two years what are the grant opportunities because that's going to drive your your decision right and and yeah we need your feedback too on you know what what is your appetite for large large expenditures in short medium long-term you know yeah actually just quoted my slides but you know we need to we need to know what you say uh before we can kind of provide Our advice based off of that so yeah what are your priorities um and what what do you want to see from us help us to start to create that plan for you and then right ultimately it's going to be about flexibility I agree with you what are the option we're trying to Hedgehog yes yes this propane this propane makes sense economically on a fight your window I think so yeah so and the reason I ask is because if I if I recall correctly from our slides 10 years is only allowed with at least one electric School Bus 10 years yeah and listen I I you know let me talk about a 10-year contract I I'm I'm a little skeptical about the 10-year contract only because I I don't think I'm smart enough to price it I I really don't know I mean I don't know I don't I'm not sure what prices are gonna be next year you know so I'm not so sure how we give you a fixed price contract for 10 years from now and how you decide it's a good deal or not one percent Renewables that may be great but I just don't know so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about the 10-year contract I don't I mean we're going to amortize the bus over 10 years anyway but you think the propane could be propane it's economical in a five-year window oh yeah we're doing five we do a five-year contract with with uh with uh New Canaan I mean right now very frankly I mean I know you've got you've got new buses in your Fleet but very honestly right now there's other places I can put them so if you said to me hey you know we've got a contract coming up in 10 years or in two years you know we want to be at least a hundred percent propane and then we'll fill in with electric we take the buses that you've got there and put them somewhere else and and give you the propane that you want um or we can phase it in a different way so we're very flexible as far as especially in the early stages now there's other places to move that equipment as you get closer to 2040 it's going to be a little tighter you know to to make those moves but right now I mean I think what makes the most sense is to have a transition plan how do we Bridge ourselves over the next thing and I will tell you that you guys are are at the Forefront of the curve right now because there's a lot of districts that aren't even this isn't even on their radar screen you know they they don't have any concept of so you're I mean and kudos to you I mean you're you're so far ahead of everybody else right now even having this discussion right it you know so Kevin yeah better not retire I got it I got pushed around a lot in terms of garbage discussion but in terms of the program my mind is first of all space literal acreage and then second of all um cost the cost in relation to is it were you saying that it's basically free the propane guys will drop a tank and they don't care about it so whether we do if we did one propane School Bus for 35 school buses it makes no difference because there's no jobs and even if you wanted even if you wanted to buy the tank the cost of it I mean every every hardware store essentially has this basically the same tank that you're going to have in your bus yard fuel gas grills tomorrow okay yeah all right [Music] so it could it could happen so if we just have a transition plan and our next buses are going to come up I think the we should get a plan in place for propane and we should pretty much stick to that you know of and then pretty much say as the opportunities come up for electric we pull the propane out to head somewhere else no but we have to have to have the facility figured out there's a lot of steps before that that are there but yeah propane is pretty doable in the short term in the last 20 years that we as I don't use propane at home in the last 20 years have we hit any uh moments in time when literally propane was not available and I think back years ago somebody you know the The Gas Pipe won we didn't have a problem here but like from Texas to Virginia the gas pipeline was blown up and we were you know we've not had a problem yeah okay so propane available these are very stable has a very stable price uh as compared to Diesel and and uh Octane and where's the program come from is it U.S coming through Houston Texas yeah so propane is actually a bypro a byproduct of the fraction process so okay propane is a lot most of it's made so I'm not a big I'm not a big fan of fracking in our environmental problems but given the choice between you know our own Pennsylvania fracking and Putin yeah I think I want to I think most propane is gas which is propane and butane actually um and it's a it's a byproduct of the process by which they collect natural gas which oftentimes or it's it's collected in that process of fracking when they expel the uh the natural gas from the Shale that looks the propane is in a gaseous state right it sounds like yeah no it's gas yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah under pressure in the cold temperatures though it becomes how it becomes a liquid I don't get how it's so pressurized or so cold or whatever when it's the gas it's not gonna I think it's traveling at least natural gas is traveling pipelines it's not you don't I don't think you take a freighter and go across oceans with gaseous I don't think gas so it's most likely uh North American caps propane yeah I mean ours gets delivered by truck so I yeah who knows how I got that up all right anything else thank you guys thank you thank you I need to digest it yeah thank you very much yeah yeah it's gonna be a process it's not it's not a bathroom renovation this is a big thing yeah well I don't know how many other vehicles you guys operate but you know you want to think about that too thousand oh yeah no that's definitely going to be on our radar as well you know the the Board of Ed owned Vehicles yeah right you know we're going to have to transition those as well and I mean I can tell you just from our own so we we did we looked at um the new Ford um Transit um van for our parts delivery and so we we were like that'd be cool you know we're doing all this electric stuff let's get a you know let's get an electric fan for for our parts delivery truck well we talked to the dealership and they're they're stated range on the van unloaded was a 126 miles and unloaded they had a demo at Tasca Ford in Berlin and we talked to the sales manager and he's like we're getting about 65 or 70 miles a day on this vein and we said I can't do a whole lot of it I can't really we couldn't we couldn't make it work you know so I mean so some of the technology just isn't I mean and that's one of the things too that we would hope that the Battery Technology improves so that you can you know maybe with a two battery system get yeah I mean so I guess my point was if you've got a you know cafeteria van that's working six hours a day it's not going to work it's not gonna work because you're gonna he's gonna have to you know stop halfway through your day and yeah a lot of this is just not practical yet but it will be it will be yeah so if you were to buy a propane van and you had propane at the bus terminal yeah you can go over and fill it up and you're good you know and so about transition if you know we determined that the transition plan we start transitioning to propane that it makes the decision we make you know with that bus provider right we do the same thing with our our vehicle that was my point yeah so Ben is there anything else that we can provide you for next steps to like help with that plan or or do you want to kind of digest this and then come back well you know we'll talk to the planning committee but I certainly think and you know we're going to do a little bit more Discovery right there's a lot a lot to learn here um I know that when we were at your shop last week that the group that you were you introduced us to they would do a whole analysis of electric for us you know including you know site review on your planning and all that I'm not sure that we're ready for that but I know that that's something we could take advantage of so now if you just send us the presentation yeah and obviously we're going to continue to talk yeah we mean monthly so I'll get up and I might need it these two got a chance to you know trap around I haven't gone either yeah we need the full emergency experience oh yeah we can add that as a next step if you've got any other events planned certainly let me know absolutely yeah no we can I mean if you want to even bring one down to show the full board we're going down okay I think that'd be great yeah all right he hates me absolutely oh that's yeah that's easy that's easy I just think each of those just because again my concerned about quieter boss that could be yeah we could put it next to a diesel if you want yeah I would like that just do but give us time when that works for you yeah all right thank you guys more agenda items together yeah well you guys have to stay yeah all right guys no it's good this was I saddled them with a prop we've got this new grand opportunity I just need some some items to prove okay does anybody know the score of the game yeah it was 1-1 but hang on a look right now for you all right I'm taking a scoring break wants to get it up on the computer it's still 1-1 bottom third all right thank you good night guys thank you very much okay okay all right so I you ready Mike back okay um item agenda item number four HVAC projects uh with possible action to follow for newly available grant funding Ben thank you so I will um walk you through this pretty quickly the state had announced a few months back that there are going to be HVAC grants available for schools I'm going to make the announcement many months ago unfortunately the state did not make a determination on any of the Grant application process until September 30th was the first review we received an information on how to apply for a grant and where to apply for the grant which was determined to be through the office of school construction and Grant review just like we're going through that for the tune of schools yes it's the same Department of administrative Services Group the Grant application deadline is December 1st so again September 15th to December 1st right so it's very short window the good news is though that I believe we have six projects that Capital funding has approved which is a requirement that our HVAC that are for our schools that will qualify for this grant does any of the previously funded projects like is there was is any of the funding go back to like beginning of covert like 2019 possibly okay so this I've got nine grants to present you okay six are projects that are in process that I think will certainly qualify three of completed projects that I'm asking for approval of the ad specs so that we apply for the grant and if they don't qualify they don't qualify but it doesn't cost us anything okay so so why not why not exactly okay now is there okay go ahead I was going to say good the process that we have to go through in order to apply for the grant I need just a few things one and this is you know based on what the state's requirements one the money has to be appropriated all nine projects the money was previously appropriated through the capital budget process by the Town Council two we need to have educational specifications for each of these projects approved by the board of education so I'm going to present these tonight and if you're so inclined you would make a motion that you recommend that it's approved by the board of education at tomorrow night's meeting so we'll go right to the meeting tomorrow night correct got it okay let's go the third thing is that we need the three resolutions that the Town Council would have to approve to appoint a building committee to go to schematic design and to authorize the superintendent to apply for the grant because the money is appropriated and this is only upside I believe that the Board of Ed and the Town Council certainly should and and would approve it so this is really going through the steps to enable us to apply for a grant okay so I put these in in order the first one um I'll take you through detail on the first one which should be the HVAC improvements for the Highland Elementary School oil replacement this is a six hundred thousand dollar project that's what was approved this Project's completed we completed it for 330 000.
the new definition removed the keyword student and repeated the new building definition is an act that is director indirect and severe persistent or pervasive which one causes physical or emotional harm to an individual two places in individual and reasonable fear of physical or emotional harm or three in fridges on the rights or opportunities of an individual individual at school the bru received a thorough 41-page audit of all district policies from Cabe on August 26 2021 the superintendent brought up the bullying definition change at the September 21st 2021 policy and Communications subcommittee meeting the meeting minutes stated that the definition has changed and the district is waiting for guidance from Cape and the board attorney regarding revision over a year later the bullying policy has not been brought up for review nor has anyone realized the inconsistencies in the student handbooks the BHS handbook reflects the new bullying definition but the link in the handbook is broken does not work the WMS handbook reflects the old definition Huckleberry has a handbook but it does not mention bullying and Huckleberry and Center both have links on their websites to the outdated Boe policies the policy and communication subcommittee meets on a regular basis they decide on the policies requiring updating revisions over the past three years almost all policies were devoted to be taken to the Boe for a first read this gives all Boe members an opportunity to voice their opinions and receive feedback from the public this provides oversight and gives the subcommittee input on what changes if any are needed the policy subcommittee brought up the first time at their 427-22 meeting to have a Boe approved new policy 411 5.3 without a first read on May 4th 2022 the Boe voted to waive bylaw 9 d311 and adopt a new policy 4115.3 evaluation and employment of coaches what most people don't realize is that right before that this was quickly approved there was a high school coaching issue ironically there was quite a list of Correspondence regarding a high school coach on the 5-4 BOE agenda my question is why is the Boe and Senior District administration has not updated the polling policy despite Connecticut law that made it effective over a year ago but they race to approve a sports coaching policy in eight days where are the board's priorities and how does the Boe and Senior School administrators put our children first um if I still have time I have a quick um update not update I wanted to point out that the additional funds for the locker room came from money that was appropriated for the whiskey near electrical system the town voted on that it's a bonded amount of money 117 thousand dollars um for my professional experience I'm an engineer I'm a project manager it's about a 50 year old building [Music] insulation electrical wires degrade over time and one day you're going to have a problem I've seen it you're going to have it's commercial electric it's outdated in obsolete Parts um one day you're going to lose an electrical phase I've seen it you're going to wonder why all the you know a third of the lights off how come my computer is acting weird you're going to be in for a lot of bigger problems I really hate it when we you know was it steal from Peter to pay Paul um I was not happy that that money was taken from there and a lot of people you know it's not you don't see the electrical change but it's something if it fails it fails and um that's all I have for tonight thank you thank you very much just as an aside on that and now just to clarify something that project was largely complete when and it had under spent its budget so it's and those bonded projects just can't leave money just sitting aside around for some future thing so it was pragmatic that that we did it it didn't take anything away from that project so it just isn't aside so I spent a lot of time on that one as some of the other board members know um okay thank you for your input um and Mrs Matthews I think left us so um so I think we're done with public comment um three main points okay um I'm thinking that we should lead off with the Huckleberry Spotlight about EQ and then uh I think it's obviously important to review the CL es update and school start times and construction delay and then the third thing I will try to summarize is the school and school Improvement Plan update yeah it's a lot in there though I would suggest you put it put in a really high level summary that says we spent a lot of time reviewing that and it's really worth listening to right and don't spend a lot of time trying to summarize it that would be my advice so there's yeah almost have to listen to it to really get anything out of it so is everybody okay with that okay uh upcoming events all schools are closed for students on Tuesday November 8th for professional development at Center School this Monday through Friday is the book fair this Friday evening is the PTO sponsored fall family fun night from 6 to 8 PM next Wednesday October 26th through Friday October 28th is an early dismissal for conferences on Monday October 31st is the Halloween dress down to dress up whole school pajama day and Friday November 11th are the Veterans Day is the Veterans Day assembly wear red white and blue and Thursday November 17th is picture retakes Huckleberry has the book fair starting this Friday through next Friday Wednesday October 26th through Friday the 28th is also early dismissal at 12 20 for conferences Monday October 24th through Friday October 28th is a spirit week and Monday October 31st is the PTO sponsored Huckleberry hustle Friday November 11th are the Veterans Day assemblies the book fair at whiskaneer is October 24th through 28th October 27th is PSAT testing for 8th graders October 28th is the 7th and 8th grade Halloween dance November 10th and 11th is early dismissal for parent-teacher conferences November 11th is take a veteran to school day November 14th is a Jeff feely parent presentation and November 15th it's his student assemblies and November 17th is a makeup picture day and at the high school Wednesday October 26th is picture retakes Wednesday November 9th and Thursday November 10th is early dismissal for conferences a lot of upcoming when we only have one meeting a month oh man it gets longer so okay thank you for that all right so that's the end of our agenda for this [Music] um no no but I'll come over and talk to you after okay um so uh with uh without objection we're adjourned [Music] please [Music]
um so we'd be going in for 3 30 for this correct okay the reimbursement amount our standard reimbursement rate is now 50 but of eligible cost I don't know how much of this would be eligible and this grant program for these HVAC it's the same type it follows our reimbursement through our CGR yes okay so it's not like 100 50 okay is that 50 is that associated with what the legislation of Liz did yes like it's coincidental that this is happening at this moment yeah right theoretically for this because it's a renovation type project it would have been 46 I believe anyway so it's an incremental pickup but it's not gigantic okay so the all nine of these specs follow the same format really the um so dad's same yep the only thing that's different each of these is on page two where it shows the site the building right so it's Highland Elementary School it's a one level structure the project summary is what's different in all the specs so this particular one was to improve the efficiency and quality of heating provided to our staff and students by replacing the boilers okay so that's one there's two ways to go with this there's a motion we could go through all nine and you make one motion to recommend all nine to be approved for the board or you can know them one at a time I mean I don't I don't see a downside too I mean it has a safe and specific as to how much money each district can apply for okay so then I don't see I mean we might as well shoot for the stars and see these are basically projects that are done or in the works uh six are in the works so this one's done and they've all been vetted you know the specs are very straightforward we're just stating what the project is are we all okay if we just go through all of them and then we make one motion if you're so inclined to do so okay the second one I'm sorry one set I think Andrew asked it and maybe so if we do hypothetically get the funding it does not go back into the operating budget no no it would go back to the town right because the these are capital Appropriations they're not from our operating budget okay this is from the separate you know capital budget but it also hopefully would free up us next year's capital budget to do additional right carryover in a sense we we can ask the Town Council if they would appropriate any money coming from these grants towards other places but like putting air conditioning in yeah I do a little school and that's not we've we've asked them the council has approved that before for example with school security Grant we got school security grant money we asked them to appropriate it back for the school security projects I didn't want to just do all this leg work and not reap the benefits for the other projects come here right and you know the greater good is it comes back to the town you know that theoretically it helps the town and the taxpayer but we would rather it help the schools the second one is the Dodd Middle School replacement of rooftop units it was a hundred thousand dollars appropriated this project is also complete we we use a whole hundred thousand dollars okay so that would be fifty thousand HVAC improvements the Doolittle Elementary School boiler replacement this was this was completed yeah we saw that it's a six hundred thousand dollar appropriation that was completed for 511 000.
uh the next one so this is the first that's InDesign it's HVAC improvements at Cheshire High School this is to replace the unit ventilators across Cheshire High School the appropriation is 410 000 this Project's assigned to the public building commission it's in the works I certainly think this falls under the criteria for which this grant is being provided just quick on this one um this is designed and construction is back to happen like next summer it's in design it's assigned to the public building commission we would like to get it done for next summer and the only thing I'll add is that um this is part of a long-term strategy to replace all the unit ventilators at Cheshire high school so 410 000 was appropriated but in future years it's not been appropriated we've asked for eight hundred thousand dollars more to go toward this project so back to you know same point that if some of this money from the grant gets reapplied we could continue to extend and it has to be appropriate the projects have to have been already appropriate by the municipality in order to apply well the if the Town Council can appropriate money between now and December one we could have more but but that's not likely to happen public building as a damn Arrow yes the next one is HVAC Cheshire High School energy recovery ventilator installation that's InDesign it's actually ready to go to bid this is one that we we certainly want to do next summer um this basically improves the there's about 10 000 square feet of high school space that doesn't have proper ventilation this was uncovered when we hired Collier's project leaders to do a review of the HVAC systems in all our schools during the pandemic so you know this is definitely qualifies the mechanic the next one is Cheshire High School mechanical tunnel improvements that's a hundred thousand dollar appropriation that project has not yet started there's a few components to this but the original portion of Cheshire high school has these underground utility tunnels that have heat pipes domestic water supply the sewage pipes that run through them we have endeavored to keep these spaces not only clean but dry in Prior years you know going back a decade if water would accumulate in the tunnels it would cause mold growth unfortunately which you know adversely affected indoor air quality so we believe this would qualify for the grant but that often lays up to the state to decide but there is an HVAC components to this so that's why we included it the next one is the Dodd Middle School um this is systematic phase-in of cooling improvements so there's 120 000 that's appropriated this was just appropriated in June so this project has not been started yet it would have to go through Design This is design money uh no it's designed and actual start of work and this would be to start replacing the outdated rooftop units at Dot now this money is appropriated we did request we don't have some major HVAC we we have quotes that we received for the to do a full HVAC Improvement and cool to school because right now you know we have Windows we know yep so that it's about a six million dollar project um and then kind of going back to your question if that money were appropriated by the Town Council we could include it in this grant I will say that I'm not sure that this grant won't be extended right right now we have to apply by December 1st I think the idea of improving HVAC in schools is probably going to be I would hope an ongoing commitment from the state um and along the same lines we requested an engineering study for Doolittle what would it cost to um basically completely cool Doolittle it's between 6.4 and 6.9 million dollars and does that include the roofing does not include a new roof it would be you know engineered and it could be the difference in prices the difference between doing full traditional HVAC what you know Ducks installed and the ceilings versus those because any split units like this that's our last elementary school if modernization passes do little be our last Elementary School it doesn't have any AC so the good news is we have the pricing now we would include it in our capital budget request in a future Years anyway when we were doing that I actually relatively soon but since that money is not appropriated we cannot include that in this grant okay all right next one is uh same idea systematic phase and of cooling improvements but this is at Cheshire High School 225 000 just appropriated this past June um it's not started so we'll include that in the grant so you have it at 120 though oh no hold on I have never mind can I ask who the CHS is 225 where is this for um like the commons is this very specific portion of the building or is that um well we would as we go through the design we would determine where we would prioritize okay and again this is another one where it's a long-term project 225 is appropriated we asked for another 800 000.
and then the last one um is was also appropriated in June it's three hundred thousand dollars now this one is to do unipendulated Replacements at two schools it's Dodd and do a little okay um it's not again it's not yet started so we we would have to go into design so those are the nine request to the planning committee now is to determine if you want to recommend that they go for approval and by the Board of Education I would like to make a motion move this the planning committee recommends the educational specifications for the nine products as presented by VIN for approval by the Cheshire Board of Education so I have a second second discussion um Can Can we modify this given that and Vinnie I'm gonna put you in pressure here but if we do have more opportunities is there a need for again going through this process to make another motion or can we just give you the kind of the authority to just submit as you see fit the board would have to approve the ad specs now there's no other projects I went through all the HVAC projects that we have money appropriated for this is it oh there's nothing else that's like that's almost like Windows [Applause] what window s we do have some window projects approved currently right but that doesn't fall under this HVAC all right well if we don't have hbas okay I guess why not I mean some of this is you know the actual heating right now everything that we have right now and yeah even if let's say even if the we could get the council to approve you know six million dollars for you know air conditioning at Doolittle yeah even if they could do that it still would have to go to referendum yeah right and then no according to the grant well they don't even have the time at this point they would not be able to do it the referendum has to be held by February by the end of February of 23 so but I mean they just couldn't do it it does open it up for depending on what happens with modernization that next year we can go to the voters and say hey we can do AC half of which will be paid for by the state of Connecticut at Doolittle now all of our elementary school supply grants available and that's what I'm hoping for I think what what it says to me if you're talking 6 million for DOT and 6 million for Doolittle what that does is it uh probably come probably becomes a priority for our extended school modernization plan right really regardless of whether it passes it referendum uh because we're still talking about school modernization and now this would be Renovations instead of new schools I mean that's where we landed in the first round phase one right but I think this is probably just something that is on Jeff's plate front and center uh and as well as Tony and Tim Slocum when they're talking about next phase next steps right phase two yeah yeah because I mean 12 million dollars six million if we got six million grant money sometime in the next 12 months but that's a big deal yeah phase two of AC doing AC and Dot and Doolittle that would be huge right but but that would really be a question is that what we is that what is that what we want to do right yeah yeah that's a good point right yeah okay um okay so there's the motion second uh all in favor all right all right all right all right okay very good thank you thank you can be hearing more about this tomorrow night are you gonna do this presentation tonight yes okay yes just preparing I won't wear a hoodie okay let's I'm sorry um so let's move on to item number five the RFP RFP for space needs due to Elementary enrollment growth okay then I will um I will make this kind of quick at least to give you a notebook view so we did Issue an RFP for proposals to take a look at the Four elementary schools and what would we need to do in order to be able to accommodate additional classrooms you know between now and three years from now when our schools our new schools are built assuming the referendum passes if we had to and the reason that we are doing this is because there is a concern that the way enrollment is growing even above the projections we're going to run out of room probably at Highland first if we had a guess based on the development that we know is already in progress um and others may follow you know do a little it's probably the next likeliest candidate so we issue the RFP we did have [Music] um for firms that were represented at the non-mandatory walkthrough that we held a few weeks back and then we did the proposal openings on October 17th this week and we did get four proposals from firms that were interested I provided a a spreadsheet just to give the planning committee members a quick summary fire architecture Silva petroselling Associates antonazzi Associates Russell and Dawson you know we were open-ended about how they would like to be paid for their services so prior architecture the way that they would um the way that they proposed they would charge an hourly rate plus expenses not to eat exceed five thousand dollars for each of the four elementary schools so if you did that math it would be a maximum of twenty thousand but if we decided to pick one school or two schools and not do the rest it's five thousand per School Silver Petrocelli they took a slightly different approach they were 11 000 per School however if we and that's 44 000 if they were to do all four schools then instead of forty four thousand the cost is reduced to forty one thousand eight hundred and tenazi Associates um they provided one proposal all four of schools eighteen thousand five hundred dollars and then Russell and Dawson they also provided one proposal seventy two thousand dollars and there was no breakdown of on a bicycle basis so and I provided some additional detail here over to the right though the important one is that all the Farms indicate that they could start in mid-november um they did have varying lengths of time as to when they could complete so fire architecture would complete in March of 23.
silver Petro Sally in January of 23 antonazi also on March of 23 and Russell and Dawson although they didn't give us a start date they said that they would complete the project in seven weeks none of those windows are unreasonable you know yeah although then this is not that time sensitive a project but we do you know want to plan and be ahead of it so that's the brief update I you know let me ask the email you copies of the proposals that are extensive um I certainly as I sit here today couldn't point to one of these and say this is the one you should go with I think that you know certainly three out of the four just based on pricing should be considered the proposal at 72 000 that is I'm not sure how they they came up with that proposal number but that let me ask a question the the Silver Purchase Ellie um do we need enrollment study in civil engineering like is there a reason why that's being included no I put those hourly rates just to give the the committee members a sense of what they would charge on an hourly basis it doesn't even really apply the way so the Petrocelli proposed it but the 11th so the 11th or the ten thousand four fifty so to speak as if we did all four schools does that 10-4 include engineering and enrollment oh yes if we need it if we need it yeah but that's so if we don't need it are they more in the 20 000 range no what they were trying to tell us there is that they're not going to do directly the you know what I apologize that doesn't even belong there okay that carried over from the previous RFP all right okay no no that's fine scratch that um because I was I was gonna say like I think we have a handle on yeah it's being updated okay yeah so that's right because I copied this from a prior RFP um summary I mean I've worked with Friar before I they're a reputable of good firm um yeah we've done two projects with fryer we've done work with Silva Petrocelli um they've done fine work antonazi um we've not done any work you know with them that I know of I don't know if the town side did but they're certainly reputable Russell and Dawson is the only firm I didn't know of um and you know the proposal looks fine it's just the proposal price is very high and in the antonazi associates there's no per that's kind of a lump sum fee correct depending on what we need all of these because of the way it was done it's a request for proposals we could talk to each of the firms we could ask them to um modify their proposal if we say you know what we absolutely want you to give us price per school or we are only going to do two schools we're permitted to do that it wasn't an invitation to bid this was proposal so you know we can talk to them ask them to you know negotiate their pricing based on you know whatever parameters we want we could change scope increase or reduce scope and ask for different pricing is the idea to have somebody under contract with the caveat dependent on the passing of the referendum now or is it or is that a fact-finding mission and then we have so if this doesn't pass in November we would then enter into contract with them so we don't even need to make a decision tonight or is it you don't need to make a decision tonight the decision tonight can simply be we're interested in getting more information from these firms or will you can arrange to have them interviewed by the planning committee you can ask me to do that uh we the the decision tonight should not be to select one okay because I was going to say like you know I'm happy with moving forward with prior but also you know antonazi is also cheaper so I mean I but very not well yeah the prices are fairly close right one of the thoughts that just goes through my mind is if the referendum doesn't pass and even if it does do we have any concerns with Darcy because we're only talking Four elementary schools here so that might just change that could be the difference between eighteen five and twenty thousand and those two and how they approach that yeah I mean and honestly I mean with the price fifteen hundred dollars is a lot of money to me uh but the the the service the qualifications they offer make a difference too right so I yeah I would say Russell and Dustin is out I think the silver Petrocelli it's quite a bit more but the other two are in the same ballpark and I I would go on recommendations of anyone with it well I guess so is it is it that if we'll ask you two questions first is do we need to hire this firm even if the referendum passes we're gonna need to come up with because we're three years away from you know having new schools built and you know the concern is that we don't have sufficient capacity and so let's plan and if the planning you know the simplest example is we would need to put portable classrooms at Highland right let's have a plan for that because there is going to be a fair amount of work to determine where to cite it then how many do we need and then what's the lead time to order those and what do we need you know so so do we want to say let's have two of these firms come in and do a presentation to us with our next planning committee meeting I would like to I mean you are familiar with at least one you know would that be fair yeah okay so why don't we why don't we do that why don't we have so we'll just have Friar and antonazi come in and discuss their proposal with us at the next planning committee why into Nazi though um I was just going with the two lowest priced firms but if you if you do we want to have silver silicon into I have all three of them I just you know just from looking at it and I know you clarified it then but just not providing information is kind of a red flag for me and and at no I guess it's not their fault based on how the rfps we left it open-ended yeah yeah so they chose to do it that way but would that just be a simple clarification and them too itemize the expenditures for us I mean I I would ask them if we're going to invite them in I would ask them please be prepared to talk a little bit more in detail about um would you be willing and how would you break down the cost on a per school basis right I think I mean if we're doing if we're going to bring in two I don't see a difference of bringing in three yeah and we just give them 20 minutes each and they have to be on yeah I mean this was a lot more free-ranging tonight I felt there are contractor and we're trying to figure out how to move forward this is selecting a contractor yeah that's reasonable so we'll bring in three 20-minute interviews to be scheduled yeah okay I've got you guys get it all right well I mean we'll we'll know where we're going to at our next oh yes yeah you know fingers crossed figure out a date and then not the day after that yeah okay um all right so item number six quick updates School Field improvements if I could just start off by saying I work that was done at Doolittle and Highland and things look remarkably good so if you want to talk about that yeah so there was quite a bit of work done as Andrew said by the town staff at Doolittle and Highland and also um kind of a joint effort at dual at Dodd we are sodding the softball field and going to do some work on the infield so that and we're shutting down that field actually have to decide what which is going in in the next um a couple of weeks that field will be closed off so that in the spring it'll be ready to play to be played you know the the responsibility of being of maintaining those fields and grooming the fields and scheduling the fields is always rested with the park and rec and public works department they will not you know supported by the town by the school staff you know so they've always looked at kind of like the way you looked at bartlum Park or the way you looked at McNamara they kind of it didn't go well for the last few years for whatever reason but there is an increased uh demand for additional Fields even Beyond Highland Doolittle and Dodd now there's a there's a group um that's been talking to John Golic the director of Park and Recs and there's an email chain that they would really like to see Chapman um kind of brought back to life and not getting involved in those details directly you know if that's if that's the need which I can't assess because again we don't do the schedule of any of the non-school activities um that also may be in the works but yeah they definitely did a great job there's really no need to hire a separate contractor right now the there is a contractor that's hired to do the work at dot it is that Championship yeah um so we're in much better shape today than we were at the last planning meeting I think more work and dialogue has to occur and um you know I'm not I'm not sure what else we need to do long term to improve the fields but if there are things that need to be included in the capital budget you know he's between Jeff and Sean and myself and John Golic will determine whose capital budget it should go into yeah if I could just I just want to add that you know um I think that because I work on a couple houses down that it was really nice to see that you know we had the parks and DPW really stepped up Boe stepped up and everyone kind of worked together to kind of solve this problem that's kind of a glaring issue at some of our school to create field space and so I think that the work that has been done and then work that's talked about to be done in the future we're going to solve the bartland park project and also make the school facilities look a lot nicer and have good fields for the kids so I guess and we just spent a ton of money doing it either so for Clarity on it is it the the athletic director basically runs the high school fields and then everything else dot Elementary School sort of sort of defaults to park and rec the high school is clearly run by the athletic director or maintained by our staff yeah Dodd the softball field is used by dot so they don't have sports what we don't do on the school side is schedule any of the adult or the youth leagues to use any of the fields outside of Cheshire high school so park and rec basically just knows we're not going to schedule anything use it use the Dot Fields ever before 5 PM because there could be Sports going on there I mean maybe in the summer it's different but that's just we're just not going to do that and then we can do stuff after the fact and there's really never been a any sort of big conflict that mattered so it just kind of happened yeah okay exactly that's exactly right okay okay and now there's gonna be more of like an effort to make you know responsibilities laid out yeah in order to make sure that all the fields are available for play by the people you know like as we're one down we have only so much land yeah let's make sure that it's playable and we have the field space because we have a field space it's just who's gonna maintain it and when it's just scheduling if I recall correctly we met last time you said that they were like in some of the ball fields there were you know like old fence posts that were kind of not in great places where kids could get hurt so what you were aware of with that those are gone that was all taken care of yeah you end up taking stuff out if you there's a before and after of Highlands fields and others it's amazing what they were able to do and I think the user satisfaction they are good that's great so and kind of the deal we've always had is that the you know the board staff would always mow the fields and the town staff would take care of the in infield and you know put out the bases and again maintain the schedule and coordinate to make sure that fields are you know not double booked or anything like that which is a big big part of what needs to happen so we don't get involved on that side of it on the board side okay so that's the update there you want me to do pending z-rex I mean we're in it let's go all right next next agenda item pending Xerox so I had a call earlier this week with energy resources who um spearheaded the effort that got the two solo part four um the Rex approved that Doolittle and Highland School we never went forward with it just because the cost of you know installing those total carports was was cost prohibitive however a couple of things well one thing specifically changed you know based on uh the discussion I had earlier this week and that is now there is a 30 percent tax credit available it doesn't we're not a tax organization so it would come in the form of direct pay so that changes some of the math as it relates to the cost so they energy resources and I I know that you know Morgan from energy resources he's he left apparently oh Morgan left yeah oh that's too bad the new guy is Bob multi okay um so he was on the call and he's leading the the effort on these types of projects at energy resources they're going to go um basically back to the green Bank get some pricing and come back to us with what a power purchase agreement would look like so and then I think it's really easy because then they give us the per kilowatt hour rate and we know what we pay eversource we have a choice Aesthetics all sorts of other stuff but yeah you get that for us you know we'll we'll make a determination the thing that would have to happen would have to happen is that you know this expires April 1st of 23.
but um the gentleman from energy resources represented that we can ask for an extension and they think we would get it oh from eversource yeah okay but they said there's no point in doing that now let's see ours expires April 1st April 1st of 23. the one that we okay got it so that's the update there we just selected Highland on the other schools being considered for we we narrowed it down to Doolittle in Highland because those are the places that you know made the most sense um and there was a whole survey done and there were some other options considered including roofs and you know taking down a lot of trees at church or high school sam yeah do you have that presentation just so you could take a look at it before yeah because yeah it really I think it I mean my recollection is it just goes back to school modernization and that's the priority right and the likelihood of Highland and Doolittle having major changes in their Footprints was pretty low but the other ones were just big question marks so yeah that's it all right uh anything else motion to adjourn favorite all right but thank you thank you no sorry
yeah maybe I can announce ask him through it's pretty good we're here if I call your name students we have Anna Monahan good uh Daniela yepez Chanel Acosta beautiful and Jose Gonzalez all right three for four beautiful good evening everyone and welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Clifton Board of Education for October the 20th 2022. I'll ask if you would please rise for a salute to our flag followed by a brief moment of silence foreign and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you roll call please Mr abidrabo here Mr Awad miss basford here miss Beltran here Mr Canova here Dr Danny Mr Paris here vice president Daley here president Smith here we have a quorum um Mr Awad uh notified me that he wouldn't be here he has a medical issue and Dr Danny told me that she would be coming late somebody said she's here but um she'll join us shortly um mission statement please Jim you ready or you want me to do it all right anyone else want to read the mission statement the mission of the Clifton School District in an open and reciprocal Community Partnership is to provide all students with a quality education to develop the skills necessary to become a literate lifelong Learners who are responsible and productive citizens contributing to a Democratic Society in an ever-changing world okay the open public meetings act the New Jersey open public meetings law was enacted to ensure the right to the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meetings of public bodies at which any business affecting their interest is discussed or acted upon in accordance with the provisions of this act the Clifton Board of Education has caused notice of this meeting to be publicized by having the date time and place thereof posted at the city clerk's office Clifton Public Library administration building senior citizen Nutrition Center on cable TV in the local press and on the district's website and mailed to presidents of parent teacher organizations this meeting will be tape recorded in accordance with policy zero one six eight okay um if I may before we start um just to uh extend our uh get well wishes to um Mr Keith bassford um Keith was in a horrific car accident and uh is has a road of recovery ahead of them and uh just let him know that he is in our thoughts and our prayers um oh gosh is our student representative I thought I started there you are come on up let's do you first okay starting with fall Sports the boys varsity football team last game won Northern Highlands 21-14 the next next game will be played against Union City at Union City tomorrow at seven girls soccer had a game today at Caldwell winning 1-0 girls varsity volleyball will be having their senior night tomorrow at 4 in the lower gym they'll be playing against Paramus Catholic come and support the girls cross country will be having their varsity Invitational on Saturday the 22nd at Garrett Mountain at nine in the morning girls tennis girls tennis next match will be tomorrow at 4 and the location is still being determined just a little reminder the CHS Halloween extravaganza will be taking place from 6 to 8 on Thursday October 27th this is a free and fun event that Clifton High School hosts for the children of our community there will be activities games and treats costumes are encouraged and bring your retreat bag treat bag to collect your goodies once again this is next Thursday October 27th so come out and bring your families to enjoy this event there will be a CHS open house for incoming 9th grade students on November 2nd so come and bring your students to see how amazing our high school is just a reminder that the Mustang robot Rodeo is Saturday October 29th at CHS 10 a.m to 3 P.M everyone is right to attend it is free and open to the public the fall play is coming up on the weekend of November 18th the casting crew are hosting an Applebee's Flapjack breakfast at our main fundraiser for the show I it will be held on Sunday October 23rd between 8 to 10 at the Applebee's in Clifton Commons tickets are 12 and can be purchased at the event your ticket includes a whole breakfast a pancakes scrambled eggs choice of sausage or bacon and a choice of coffee or orange juice the cast members are excited to be your service for the event please join us to help this help support the CHS fall play games Club is a great way for students with unique interests to join with friends and meet new friends outside the usual CHS social Gathering like sports and music club members get to enhance their stratic skills as well as social skills and have a lot of fun the MSA meets bi-weekly and caters to students by providing a safe space for them to explore their faith and identity while connecting with other students and making new friends the Phoenix magazine provides students with the chance to be published students and staff can submit an original work of art or a poem to the magazine for a chance to be featured the magazine is released annually every May don't hesitate to email Miss Abraham to submit a work of art they must the musty marching band will be hosting the 7th 75th annual North Jersey band festival at Clifton Stadium this Sunday October 23rd beginning at 4.
all right welcome everyone we'll call the meeting to order it is 7 p.m and we'll start off with our roll call please here we have a quorum if we all join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and justice for all thank you all right Welcome to our public in the Press one of the same and everybody joining us in the online thank you for tuning in this evening do you have any public comments all right perfect we'll go right into the consent agenda Mr Gert if you'd walk us through that please yeah um we've got one resignation Tom Detmer is our high school golf coach and he is resigning I know he was an employee of ours for many years I don't know how long he's been a coach with golf but he's retired from us as an employee in 24 26 years anyway he's stepping down so we want to thank him and wish him well is he is actually completely retired at this point uh coach baseball and yeah all sorts of other things too years ago okay um we've got hires of Jessica rux is our new payroll and Jennifer Rau who's going to be an LPN nurse at the high school and um we we just haven't been able to get any RNs and whatnot so we've got an LPN she's coming to us from Waterloo and uh she'll be working under Jan Turley and we're all good so we'll have a person at the high school with which is wonderful news we've got two leaves of absences there for um pregnancies that'll be starting in February and then we just have the vacancy for the high school Gulf Coast so right now the administration recommends that you approve the consent agenda as presented short and sweet is enough any discussions comments questions without entertaining motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I'll make the motion to approve the consent presented thank you Andrew do your second second it's in second roll call please yes yes hi all right motion courage unanimously thank you on to our Communications and reports and presentations our enrollment report is in the packet I saw and then we'll go right to our administrative reports start with Brian all right thanks so I was a little bit late we had senior night for golf cross country and volleyball so I was doing some quick announcing I ran up here so it's also parent-teacher conference tonight and the PTA donated all the meals from Joe's to all the staff tonight so I wanted to recognize them thank the PTA for that there's been a little discussion about swick and with teacher turnover we've lost a few dual credit classes but we've also added some dual credit classes so I wanted to make sure I made you aware of that through Slough we did lose physics and through SWIC we lost uh architectural Cad and mechanical CAD but then through SWIC we were able to add basic Horticulture Horticulture and production management I'm sorry Horticulture production and management consumer econ AG business management and npe weights so we did lose a few but then we were able to gain gain a couple more than what we had a busy time with sports our girls golf team for the first time a golf team Advanced the state as a team and they finished eight eight we had an individual boy qualify for second day of golf so you do qualify for state but then you also have to qualify and advance to the second day as well so that was very impressive our soccer teams playing the sectional final this Friday volleyball starts regionals next week cross country starts Regional Saturday they had a very great a great showing I'm sorry a great showing at the conference meet across country teams football start playoff next weekend and winter starts start next week so we just roll right into the next one and if you're looking for an evening out we have the the play the upcoming Play The Man Who Came To Dinner runs November 3rd through November 6th with a Thursday night Friday night Saturday night and Sunday afternoon performances there you go and with their pictures okay uh pictures that's new on the left we have our September students of the month the category was citizenship on the right we have our volleyball players with our pink out night and there's our girls golf team our male advancer to State and then our senior homecoming Court that's all for me thank you man I forgot about that Varsity was just about to start against Freeburg did he did believe they both lost JV did not talked about freshman you better get back to it okay that they have a very good student section there yeah yeah they did they traveled well that's correct the corners at a conference soccer meeting yes exactly well thank you for your report you are more than welcome to stay and you're also more welcome to go join them if you'd like to so it's completely up to you yeah I'll take I'll take off and I hope I didn't jinx it very good thank you appreciate that all right our assistant superintendent report I wanted to go through with you first so um the Illinois state report card is going to be released to the public on October 27th um so as we go through the slide you will see that our school ratings are top secret because we're not allowed to broadcast that to the public just yet um we are allowed to share it with board members so you do have a confidential piece of paper with you as I kind of go through some of these things um but like I said on the 27th of October is when the report cards will be released um so Columbia High School we're really excited SAT scores um they did dip a little bit this year which obviously was concerning when you first take a look at that but as I started digging in the state average took a massive dip this year and so while our scores dipped when you start looking at the percentage of how much we lost versus how much the state average dip was we actually are still much further ahead of the state curve than what was expected so met with Brian this morning and we talked a lot about how we're going to break down some of that and some of the ways we're going to guide the high school different departments to kind of help not only catch that growth up but continue to move our students even further on the future SATs the other thing that was exciting on those I said there's that breakdown of ela and math but just seeing the our participation on a lot of the things we get points for participation for different parts of them and our high school teachers and Brian do a really great job of making sure that the students are getting done what they need to so we can earn and capture all those participation points that we possibly can that goes into it some other areas that Brian and I identified as kind of some room for growth is our chronic absenteeism rate it's right around three percent which we are and you'll see in a slide later on for another school we are much lower than the state average for our chronic absenteeism rate but three percent in our opinion is still too high so that's an area that we're going to start focusing on and then the climate survey so that was that five Essentials as well as the students take their own perception survey and you know that one of our district Improvement goals this year was on climb Mitten culture and so that all feeds into what we're doing I do think based on the feedback I'm hearing and I don't know if any of you have heard or talked to any High School kiddos yet so far this year but they are really excited in these homeroom activities that our PBIS team has been doing and it's so it's really great so that's the high school Columbia Middle School we have some things to celebrate so you can kind of see there the blues are our district scores the red are the state averages so we are still in Colombia above the state average on both our Ela and our math proficiency for both of them again obviously right we want to hold ourselves and our students to a higher standard and so you can see that one of our rooms for growth is that Ela proficiency because we're pretty close to that state average but again have not only talked to Dawn but um that was something that Angie had identified at the end of last year as well is doing kind of a curriculum review on Ela and that is one of the buildings that doesn't have a clear curriculum set forth for them we depend a lot on our teachers as professionals so they do an amazing job with not having had a curriculum to kind of build from chronic absenteeism rate is something that we're also celebrating so this is where I was talking about before you can see the middle school is also right around that three percent so again not what we're happy with but the red is the state average so you can see that we are looking phenomenal when you start talking to some other school districts um math growth as I was digging through the data is something that we are really focusing on but I think a lot of that also comes though with our new math curriculum this year so we're excited to see um if that growth Gap has closed because that is just a comparison of our students where they were last year and how much they've grown by the end of this year so that really is a true data to or a true assessment to our own data and our own students um the other thing is is that while I can't tell you what our label is I can tell you that in previous years we had received a grant because we had an underperforming subgroup and that group has made great strides and they are no longer an underperforming subgroup at that middle school and so we are ecstatic to have that news as well um Parkview again we're very excited about their iar scores um and their growth rate um again so like I said that growth rate that bottom chart is comparing our kids to where they were last year to where they are this year and again we're growing but you can see math we're at the state average of what's expected for growth so again we're hoping that with this new math curriculum but also one more year removed away from covid will help boosting uh boost all of that there's a lot of research that shows that students lost a lot more math skills during covid than they did reading skills because when you start thinking about it you might have not have been doing a lot of academic work right but you were reading the cereal box you were reading the signs in the cars you were still reading even if you weren't doing academic stuff math unless your parents were having you help with the bills or something you aren't really practicing your math skills during that time we do want to focus on chronic absenteeism Parkview is one of those part of the reason why the data is under embargo for a while is because it gives schools a chance to go in and review what the data has looked like and when we first saw Park views absenteeism rate that came back it was double what all of our other schools were so immediately jumped into digging into that and then we got an email from the state that said oh a lot of people said that their attendance wasn't calculated correctly so they gave us a day and a half to go in and correct anything or go through and look at every student so we did that at Parkview so originally they were reporting that we had a six percent chronic absenteeism rate they just refreshed this afternoon um and Parkview was also down to a three percent chronic absenteeism rate so there were some errors in theirs um which so like I said it is nice that the state gives us a chance to look at that data before the ratings come out um and so like I said that math growth is an area and then finally at Eagleview um so chronic absenteeism theirs is the lowest in the district um so we are really excited because a lot of times that's hard at that level it's the first time kids are in school so they pick up sicknesses a lot faster and so we were really excited to see how low their absenteeism rate and then the growth rate of our students at Eagleview especially for kiddos that last year was their first experience being in school because of covid so not only just I didn't go to kindergarten but a lot of them didn't even go to daycare or anything like that but because of that when we look at our kindergarten Readiness assessment the kids test we have noticed that our students our scores dropped in half um on students coming in to us at the kindergarten Readiness so that assessment is given at the 40th day of school so it's not really judging what we've done at school but just where they come in at and we know that could come in at all different rates but last year's and this year's classes it's our teachers are dealing with a lot of different things that they haven't had to deal with before and again it goes back to I wasn't at daycare so I didn't have to share with anybody other than my siblings or I didn't have to sit in my chair and do what somebody else told me to do because my mom or dad told me to do something and either I did it or I got to go get and play on my iPad or whatever it might be so we're just really working on those Readiness skills for them and then again that math growth rate is we'd like to see it higher in comparison to the state level um but I feel like a broken record but again hopefully that math curriculum is is going to raise that up so um like I said the information will be made to the public um that just so you kind of have an idea too an exemplary school is considered in the top 10 of schools in the state um a commendable is a school that has no underperforming subgroups and then targeted isn't has underperforming subgroups and then that comprehensive is the lowest five percent of schools so that you can kind of get a gauge of where we are at um and then just a couple things I wanted to shout out for this year as I've uh or for this month as I've been making my way around the building um so the first picture um is Karen Proctor so I know we've talked before about bus transfer over at Eagleview at the end of the day and it's crazy and I have to you know give a huge thanks to all of those teachers that help with bus transfer there's no way it would be possible without many of them coming out there but Karen Proctor meets one of our students who um was having some different issues and needed a little bit of extra help to kind of stay focused and to get from his bus to the next bus and all of that um and so she meets him at his bus every day and walks him to his transfer bus but the really cool thing is to sit and listen to their conversation he got off one day and he said well I guess you don't have to come to work tomorrow because I won't be here and um so it was just sweet to think that you know she was his and her only reason for coming to school in his opinion was for him um I was over there the other day and I heard her say well tomorrow or Friday's a half day but I better see you okay I guess I'll come so it made me kind of think that maybe he hadn't been here on our half day in September um so it's just she's done a fantastic job building a relationship with him um the middle picture is our new librarian at Eagleview and Parkview Jordan vudeaman um she had some huge shoes to fill when she took Marla Rose's spot she jumped in and you would never have known that we missed a beat at all she's got those kids doing activities they are she's really building that passion and that for reading she's just doing an excellent job the picture on the right is a picture of Kelly langraf in her sixth grade math class except I've been doing a lot of visits focusing a lot more on math classes just to see how the new curriculum's going um but one of the things that I love is our elementary teachers are really good about small group instruction and making stations and kids go around right we think of that a lot as an elementary level idea and as you move up that becomes less and less of a focus with our teachers um but I went I was in Kelly's room watching and she was doing her her thing and making math fun and exciting and then all of a sudden I heard her say oh how about you come work with me today and how about you and it wasn't anything I mean obviously as an educator I knew who she was identifying and why um but those kids had no idea because then there were other kids saying oh can I come back and work at your table too or she'd open it up and say is there anybody else that wants to come back um so she just does a really great job of making it an inviting environment not threatening at all um and then it's very obvious that the students are comfortable with Taking Chances um making mistakes but that's how we learn and so she does a fantastic job with doing that um and then the last one it's really hard to see um down at the bottom but our new special ed teacher at the high school more concert did an activity with his homeroom and he uh was teaching them the importance of sending an email but how to make an email clear and get your point across and what it needed to contain and how it should be kind of be formatted trying to get his special ed students to Advocate to their teachers I need help with this or can I get some more explanation with that but did it with his entire homeroom class and so one of the activities he had them do though was email a teacher that had made a difference for them and so Not only was he teaching a life skill to our kids but I got several comments from teachers that received an email from a student or class just how it was a nice thing and you know we know we hear a lot about education is just hard right now and so right we a lot of times get emails of upset students upset parents upset administrators um and so to get an email that is positive and you know inviting um the teachers really liked it too so I just wanted to give Mark a shout out for for something that he'd done with his class this month too so that's all I have thank you any questions thank you all right and our superintendent's reports all right um before I start uh we've got from the Illinois Association of school boards we have an established board leader and so we got a letter and they wanted me to present this to her and so Miss Tammy Hines wow well thank you congratulations you've done the training that that they would like from you congratulations I enjoy the training there you go all right um I've been out a little bit more in the buildings than I had last month I think last month I told you that it's been with Staffing and whatnot a little harder I've been out more mainly doing administrative observations for their evaluations I've got to go out and I've got to watch them and so I follow them through meetings or I follow them through portions of their days and it's attached to what their goals are and as Smith said climate and culture is one of our goals and that hopefully when you're starting to get the sense of is the data-driven nature of how we target things and look at things Alyssa's diving through the attendance reports and all those other aspects to our scores has been wonderful to see I'm going to talk to you about PBIS positive behaviors interventions and supports um it's a reboot we're looking at the data and it's been fascinating I I'm looking just at district-wide data um and so I graphed it out or I didn't graph it out I printed out a report from Skyward and our largest issue is is cell phones which is probably not a surprise to anyone our second largest issue is not really an issue but they're things that we report in there and it's with 84 reports of cell phones and earbud usage right and this is district-wide we had 75 positive referrals that was the next item that we've been logging so if a student does something that that is completely and utterly right we notice it we can give them a positive referral it's kind of like that email that that the the teacher did you know saying nice things about each other um the high school is the only one right now that's logging positive referrals so those 75 all came from the high school and I must say that looking at the data and the issues um it's a great place our teachers do a wonderful job and there's a lot to be celebrating and positive behaviors is there classroom behavior is the next one Tardis is after that but really um right now what we're doing is we're looking at that data and each building is coming up with goals each month to address those issues and re-teach those issues and talk about where they're going to be but as an Administration we're looking at it as uh developing our Baseline data and systematizing our administrators are talking about oh you guys are tracking positive referrals how are you doing that and and with that communication we'll see it growing in the other buildings and our data will become richer and more um valuable as we start to systematize the processes in all of our buildings you know what's a tardy how do you calculate a tardy um but listening to the two presentations today of the high school and uh Miss Smith's thing it's I think qualitatively we can see that positive things are happening in the buildings the conversations and I'm not saying that they didn't happen before but it's just a wonderful thing to be able to take time and and and honor it and acknowledge it and I it's great so um that's what I have for my superintendent's report perfect thank you all right we're going to our we have no items for Action this evening so go right into discussion items and we'll go back to you for the facility study yeah next week Tuesday and Wednesday that's um October 25th and 26th The Architects are going to be at the high school and they're going to be meeting with teachers uh they're going to be meeting with um office people they're going to be meeting with nurses and other all the different classifications and we're going to be moving forward on defining what is needed what are our programmatic needs and getting some information on that the goal for that programmatic report is still for the beginning of the calendar year January 1st for a presentation to you all um questions concerns comments on that okay I'll keep you posted perfect all right and next item is security yeah this was requested item for discussion by board members um I recommend that we form a safety security subcommittee two board members I'd like to see on it uh I'd like to get the administration the faculty and staff Community representation I've talked with Chief Don John and he understands willing to participate in this uh the purpose of the subcommittee would really be to review our safety and security measures um do a deep dive into our data what's needed uh talk to people maybe send out some surveys and and and make some recommendations from there questions concerns comments on that or anybody that would like to volunteer I thought we had a security committee already I think we have a behavior committee I don't think we have a security committee committee well I'm on like this what is it called like I want to say I go to the safety meetings and then report back yeah I think you're the only one on that one though and that's really more for the um the yearly when we bring all the responders in and whatnot so am I hearing that Miss Heinz should be on this committee I would love to be on the committee okay I'll be on it perfect excellent Lisa Schumacher that's easier than getting motions out of you people that's amazing now that I know which two board members are I will email you and find up some dates um we'll probably be sending information out to the community to see if parents want to be involved in this and uh be moving forward great thank you both for volunteering next item is our is iasb resolutions and those were given to you in your packet basically these are at the annual conference um our delegate we have Mrs Hines is our delegate and she will cast a ballot based on the board's position of course as everybody knows board members don't have any Authority on their own so we're only a board as a consensus so we need to give her some direction on how the board would like to or the position the board would like to take on these matters so I think there's what eight of them uh nine if you includes the current position statements deletion and amendments okay okay so how's everyone you want to go through these one by one and them on real quick well did any or anybody or did anybody have anything that have opposed what the um ISB recommended great point I I wasn't in agreement on a couple of them but I'm not I don't I don't even feel that strong either um which ones the number one was taking the the ability to sue for school districts that that accumulate more money than they need basically the uh so I think the the Miller ratio of what you refer to is right now if a school district has um I think it's two years of fund balances cash on hand currently we for instance we have a six month cash on hand our fund balances are such that we can do payroll for six months we don't have a year um they're saying that if there is if you get to a point where you're got two years two and a half two and a half years then um there are some it can be brought to you by the community to do rebates for the taxes correct so my position on this is this is not this is public money it's not does it belong to the boards of the schools around Bales belongs to the taxpayers and I have no problem with adequate funds to run the school and Pay Teachers a decent salary and maintain our facilities but then when it goes up I mean the tax bills in Columbia just went down significantly because of the fiscal responsibility of of this district and I don't know I think it's a good thing but uh that's me yeah the recommendation from the the the the resolution committee from iasb is to support this and you're saying you'd like to see that opposed I would personally but that's let's just make the eye will go along with everybody for everybody so basically if there's more money than two and a half years that it's okay to send it back to the taxpayers correct and this would make the this is basically there's there's an existing vehicle for this and what they're trying to do is remove that vehicle so if a school board accumulates more than two and a half times what they need it makes it more difficult to get that money back in the taxpayer's hands is that is that per um per fund or is that overall I believe that's overall the Miller ratio was I think developed originally for townships that have a less of a payroll you know um if we weren't if we were staffed not as you know but that's why our tax rates are what they are is Right a school district is expensive yeah and so the Miller ratio I think was originally used for for townships I agree though with Greg give it back to the community if we get too much since it's not opposing this or supporting it is there anybody that wants to speak to the support side do you think our taxes went down because of this no no this I don't think this would really affect our district because the taxes way down this year for us because we extended more money like we normally do every year you extend for more money meaning we're asking for more money there was a property and a tiff that came off and so we still extended for more money we just didn't extend for more to capture that Tiff and so that property that came off is able to add money and so our rate goes down because there's more property that's being paid so we extend for dollars needed not um percentages right we don't control the tax we don't control the tax rate once we say this is how much money we need then it's calculated cincinnatif fell off and it was calculated that way that our base window yeah and our our our rate went down yeah there's another entity that's helping to pay the taxes but we still asked for more money as we do every year because you got to cover increased costs we will never get to a two no I mean this is one of those things where you guys can go either way most school districts are never going to be in that case am I seeing his consensus for opposing or is there anybody that wants to support yeah I guess as a matter of matter yeah sure then the other one we should probably talk about is the alternative funding for school bus basically electric bus subsidies and I think the association is a do not adopt yes they're worried about the rural communities and all that kind of stuff so is there anybody that wants to support that one or do we just go with the right those are recommendations okay that's the only one I really saw that was controversial so so you're ready to go with this is there anything else go with the recommendations which would be oppose the Firearms dealer location change Capital grants support school safety fund support oppose involvement with candidates for public office and and then support the last three mandate Review Committee Financial contribution to School Board elections and uh all of the current position statement deletions and amendments everybody good with that got it all right we have a consensus awesome thank you thank you for the suggestions Scott that saved a lot of time all right individual board member comments anybody have anything awesome right I actually I ain't gonna pipe up real quick perfect um one thing I wanted to say is uh this week I was at a JV football game and there was a serious injury on the field and there was not an ambulance present at the school and and so my understanding is it's mandatory for any Varsity proceedings that an ambulance be there but of course the age of any of our students or the opposing students shouldn't make a difference in terms of what was going on so this was originally it was a spinal cord injury they thought and it was you know and so we they had to wait for an ambulance to come and show up and it was it was quite a thing so there was a lot of chatter a lot of chatter about the fact that there should be an ambulance at lower classmen events as well for for for both sides of the thing so it was something I sure has been brought up but I also wanted to Echo that I agree with that and I think that that should be something that should be done so I will I made a note I will look into that okay thank you perfect anyone else right we're supposed I don't have anything and I don't believe we have an executive session this evening right I'll make a motion for a gentleman a second Perfect all in favor aye are you opposed all right that concludes our meeting thank you very much for joining us Brian did not jinx
thank you better get honest ly oh thank you sometimes all right thank you this is the parent canceling headphones is foreign [Music] let's check the messages United States one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all um [Music] for the determination of Springfield Elementary School paraprofessionals Michelle hadland effective October 21st 2022.
we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order first thing on the agendas we're going to invite Mrs Rodman up here from Sugar Grove Elementary okay um we are honored to be here tonight to open our school board meeting with the pledge and I am so happy to bring Alana Broomfield to help us with the pledge today Alana has been an incredible example to other students in our building she not only participates in Girl Scouts and dance and I just learned that she also took on gymnastics even though she broke her toe doing it recently but she's just taken on some gymnastics as well but she's an incredible advocate in our building and she ensures that everything that she does is a great friend and a great leader and the last week or a couple weeks ago she wrote an incredible essay to really enjoying that opportunity so we'd like to invite Alana up to the front here to guide us I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh hold on thank you all right that was great Alana thank you next on the agenda is to adopt the agenda Mr President I move that we adopt the agenda as president most has been made and seconded to adopt the agenda all in favor say aye aye is anyone opposed motion passes thank you next on the agenda is recognitions and presentations nothing tonight nothing tonight reports nothing tonight next on the agenda would be public comments regarding agenda items we have one person signed up tonight Bill Collins come on up Bill give us your three minutes and tell us where you're from and your address and let it rip 3865 new better Lane Bargersville so here we are again with our community in turmoil due to the ineptitude and lack of leadership of this board our teachers after giving their all teaching our students are here protesting for fair pay and benefits after voting down the laughable proposed contract 91-16 meanwhile in a few minutes Scott and Jack will vote deciphon half the funds from the education fund the same fund used to pay our teachers all the while Scott and Jack are hoping the public will have forgotten about the second reading and imminent passage the 150 pages of policy changes the topic I signed up to speak about almost leads one to wonder if the whole teacher contract Fiasco is just a bad faith political ploy to distract the community from other issues at hand like the CDC adding coveted vaccines to the recommended vaccine list for school-aged children do we really think anyone on this board will stand against forced vaccines they didn't stand against Mass mandates or quarantines even though even though the governor specifically gave them the authority to do so maybe some of you will remember the Stretch Armstrong toy from the 90s this is what all of you on the board are doing to us the parents our students our teachers and our community as a whole every single one of you should be ashamed when will it stop when you start listening to all of us even the teachers that are here with their signs and start mending fences haven't you made a big enough mess here I hope the voters are paying attention you all should be ashamed [Applause] next on the Gen items is consent agenda items option Mr President I move that we accept the consent agenda as presented my second most has been made in the seconded to approve the United has presented all in favor say aye you want to pose motion passes thank you 8.1 action item thank you Mr Herbert okay this evening I'm recommending that the board approved the 2023 budgets for all funds and the seating Mr Taylor will provide you with some additional information thank you Dr arganoff 2023 budget was presented to the board during the regular meeting scheduled on September 22 2022 at this time we have no changes being made to that budget tonight is just the official approval following the hearing that was held in September this meeting has been appropriately advertised accordingly and there are a uh about five or six very routine in nature resolutions the board will sign after the meeting and this will be turned into the vlgf and published tomorrow and it completes the 2023 budget process any board member comments I do have a statement that the Center Grove School Board of Trustees has asked me to read we support and have the utmost respect for the teachers staff and administrators of Center Grove Community School Corporation we acknowledge the unique circumstances and challenges the employees of the school corporation have faced over the last several years we also recognize that there are additional challenges ahead as we navigate into the future last year we were able to provide our teaching staff with the historic eight percent average pay increase along with the seven percent pay increase for other employees of the school corporation last month we approved a pay increase for 5.65 percent for our support staff we also presented an offer to our teachers which includes a 5.65 percent average pay increase we appreciate the hard work and dedication of our teachers and all employees of Center Grove schools thank you comments sorry if we didn't catch this dinner on the resolutions on this there is a typo on the on the header on Center Grove Community School Corporation we've been there for a few years it probably has but we'll get back directing for you because this is a motion thank you forgot Mr Alexander I think we'll need a motion if no other comments Mr President I move that we approved the 2023 budget for All funds does presented along with the following resolutions resolution to adopt the 2023 capital projects fund plan resolution to adopt the 2023 plus results plan resolution for Appropriations and tax rates resolutions for blanket appropriation modification and resolution to transfer amounts from the Ed fund to the Ops button I'll second most have been made and seconded all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you 8.2 thank you Mr Herbert this evening I'm recommending that the board adopt a resolution authorizing transfer from education fund to operation fund and Mr Taylor will provide you with some additional information thank you again this is a routine uh resolution that we do every year about this time we have given the support staff as as mentioned a 5.65 raise and added a few custodial positions um these uh raises are largely funded by additional dollars to come through to us through the federal fund or through the funding formula money and the education fund and because we have support staff in the operations fund again such as our custodians and our bus drivers we need to transfer some of that formula money to the operations fund to pay these salary increases this revolution resolution accomplishes this transfer for the months of October November and December the amount in total is four hundred fifty thousand dollars and that is in line with the transfer amount the board approved last year it's a consistent consistent funding level that was already in the budget this is new money and has to be appropriated to be spent and transferred as much and that's what these resolutions will accomplish that we approve the resolution to transfer an additional amount of 450 000 from the Ed fund to the ox fund then may the second date all in favor say ay e aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you excellent agenda is 8.3 thank you this evening to the right spot here this evening I'm recommending that the board approved resolutions approving the issuance of bonds and additional Appropriations for the bonds Mr Taylor will provide you with some additional information well actually I'm sorry we'll go to the hearing first yeah so we'll definitely turn this over to you I apologize there we go so I now open this public hearing I would like to call Mr Taylor to make this presentation about the projects the financing of the projects and the actions we are taking this evening congratulations thank you Mr Hubbard again one of those routine tasks as part something we've done since 2009 to help our education and operations fund is that we've purchased technology and maintenance equipment out of Geo bonds we've done this for every year since 2009 including now asking for it for two in 2022 for 2023.
here thank you asked everyone stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God good evening and thank you everyone for coming down to our meeting in this fine fall chilly evening um we have a lot of great presentations today we also have a very long agenda so we'll start getting through it uh we're going to start off with our student Representatives which is Monica and Michael all right um well thank you guys for having us again so just to start off um all fall teams all fall sports teams are recognizing their senior athletes at their last regular season home contests so as of now most of most of the Fall teams have had their senior nights and some are still to come but most of them most of them have happened the boys and girls cross country team won both both won the Housatonic division title this year for for boys it's been the first time since 2002.