[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] good evening I'd like to call the school committee meeting for Monday November 21st 2022 to order we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance foreign like to ask if anybody has any cell phones electronic devices if you would shut them off and put them on silent it would be appreciated also like to let you know that this meeting is being taped and is shown uh live stream this evening on youtube.com backslash DHS TV media and also rebroadcast on both uh Channel 9 and channel 18 throughout the week at various times and we thank them for all their support roll call please John Nunes yeah Mary Waite Kathleen Amaral yeah Shannon Jenkins here Chris Oliver here all right thank you welcome back Miss Gunther nice to see you okay first daughter of business we've allotted uh 10 minutes for public comment uh on anything that's on tonight's agenda uh I will ask you to uh please uh keep your comments the three minutes and I will stop at 10 minutes so if one goes over the other somebody's gonna get shot changed just so that you're aware okay thank you just need your name and who you are please and what you represent thank you good evening my name is Jasmine Olene and I work at the Mellow school I even wrote that part so I wouldn't forget to say it this is my 20th year being an educator and I started my career in Fall River and I worked in the city for nine years and I learned a lot 11 years ago I was fortunate enough to be hired into the competitive District of Dartmouth and I was so excited and it was here that I became a better teacher the teacher that I am today immediately I fell in love with the staff my team administrators and especially my students and their families I am confident to say that my students know that I care about them and I put them first making sure to address not only their academic needs but their social emotional needs as well I strive every day to be my absolute best for them and I will continue to do so but I am tired I'm tired of trying so hard and feeling like it's never good enough I'm tired when every year I make less than the year before because the pay increases don't even come close to covering the increases of health insurance I'm tired as I look around and I see valuable staff that are leaving the same staff that I learned so much from because our workloads continue to increase to amounts that feel impossible While others struggle to pay for their basic needs 65 percent nurses have designated and designed protocols and worked Around the Clock getting us through covid and they continue to keep us safe secretaries keep the schools afloat by supporting teachers and principals in ways that build the foundation of our schools teaching assistants they run small groups they cover classrooms and anything else Under the Sun that they are asked to do and they do it well but where is the appreciation where is the validation of the work that the people do people who all work directly with kids the people in those buildings day in and day out the ones taking care of dartmouth's children they are the ones that have built relationships your reputation and keep your property values up but we are tired and many of your District employees are struggling to pay their bills they are leaving I would like to also ask how come other districts are able to figure it out but we can't I have worked with the most tremendous individuals and I have learned from colleagues and I have watched many of them leave and go to other districts we know that you value the excellent work that the professionals at Bush Street do because they're compensated for it but when it comes to keeping the professionals who support your children directly face to face every day you need to reevaluate what you are doing to keep them here we are demanding a fair contract for all of our units the nurses the secretaries the teaching assistants and teachers make Dartmouth competitive again thank you [Applause] good evening I'm Heidi Spicer and this is my colleague Kelly Steele and we're both Preschool teachers over at Cushman school during the last school committee meeting we had waited in line to discuss our responsibilities in the preschool position however public comment had been cut off before we were able to come up and discuss our concerns um and we strongly do feel that you should hear the importance of making the teacher contract more inclusive to the preschool staff throughout the con the contract negotiation process my colleague and I have found that multiple times we've been saying things like what about preschool where does preschool fit how our common contract does not provide information pertaining to the vast differences between a preschool teacher and any other elementary teacher the preschool staff currently wears multiple hats we are a general education teacher we are a special education teacher despite the fact that 50 of the preschool staff are not licensed special education teachers we are also evaluators in the initial evaluation process our students are on many different educational levels we have eight peer Partners who are typically developing and up to seven special education students our needs our special needs students range and abilities from developmental developmentally delayed to more significant needs which mirror more the pals and past programs this means we are responsible to plan lessons and activities following the Massachusetts curriculum standards right IEPs progress reports and evaluation reports and provides supplementary AIDS and adapt General lessons for the special education students when looking at prep time in comparison to our elementary school colleagues preschool has the less time to prepare with additional responsibilities additionally we are responsible for the toileting assistance and diapering of our special education students which potentially could be up to seven students on top of the toileting and diapering we are also responsible for cleaning and changing the peer Partners if they have an accident this added duty is not seen anywhere for other teachers for other bargaining units that do handle toileting and diapering needs they receive a stipend as should any other unit who she has that added responsibility we hope for a contract that will include preschool and the uniqueness of the position thank you for your time [Applause] anybody else foreign we are the district RBT team and we are here to tell you a little bit about what we do and why we think we deserve a stipend increase um thank you for our time we provide students who have moderate to severe functioning levels of ASD diagnosis with intensive one-to-one ABA therapy API is a therapy based on the scientific principles of learning and behavior as District rbts we use systematic procedures aimed to increase necessary educational and developmental milestones this includes Improvement of language and communication adaptive skills attention and social interactions we also work to decrease any Behavior challenges that a child may have such as aggression self-injury endangerment or property destruction we are all thoroughly trained in behavior management techniques to properly help prevent manage and de-escalate any given situation our job our everyday job duties include case management of currently seven to nine students served three to five times a week daily inflammation of skill acquisition programs and behavior re reduction support plans management and acquisition of all programs and materials set up of daily data collection maintenance of cumulative and percentile data plus input and graphing of all data for each child on our daily weekly basis communication with teachers and service providers is also done every day to work as an a to work as an RBT in this District we are required to have at least an associate's degree although most of us do have Bachelors we have to complete 40 hours of training in ABC procedures and present principles modules pass an initial competency assessment which we must demonstrate Mastery of 20 different domains adhere to the bacba ethics code and RBT task list we have to renew our certification annually continuing to prove domain Mastery and pay reciprocation fee every year sorry this is through the behavior analysis certification board which is internationally recognized governing body for practitioners working in Behavior Analysis what we want to highlight is that there has been a huge increase in our caseload over the past few years um ending June 2020 we had 10 students which accumulated to 49.5 hours as of November 2022 we are now at 31 students 125.5 hours we are covering all these students and it continues to increase plus all the data the casework the program management it's all accumulating so we just think that we deserve a little bit more with the increase and recognition of what we do thank you thank you that's it alrighty thank you very much uh moving excuse me moving on to the next daughter of business the approval of the regular session minutes of November 7th so moved second moved by Mr Oliver second by Miss Waite on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously executive session minutes of the same night I'll move with the usual stipulation that they be held until the matter is for which they are intended are complete second second by move by Miss White second by Dr Jenkins very good you've memorized that well oh thank you that took some time on the motion any discussion cheering on all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right on to some more good stuff and we're gonna do the middle school first right I guess sure okay so I believe we're going to start with the Middle School plan tonight and um Mr Darren Doan principal will introduce his team who will then present the school Improvement plan foreign thank you for having us this evening I'm going to soon turn this over this evening to my success in Mr Rossi and I'm taking the easy way out but um it's again it's been a wonderful Journey for me but uh these goals initially are going to be theirs as they move forward and it's important that you know they have the opportunity to kind of uh share their thoughts and works and you know they work extremely odd and we also have Mr Madden with us who's going to um step into Mr Rossi's role February 1st sir I thought it was important that the whole team was here but we have Mr Hayes our assistant principal Mrs dikis our associate principal and now I'll turn over to Mr Rossi so thank you thank you thank you Mr Doane it's been quite a run for you um good evening everyone before um we report out on our school Improvement plan I wanted to uh introduce Mr Sam mad and Mr Madden's with us tonight and although we are uh and he's going to be taking over February 1 and although we're saddened with the departure of Mr Doane we're very happy to have Mr Madden in his skill set join our team Sam's been at the middle school for 16 years and he is also a graduate of Dartmouth High he is also a Wordle and Words With Friends extraordinaire Mr Madden I apologize I lost my voice so I'll be brief but um as Mr Rossi mentions I grew up in Dartmouth attended Dartmouth schools and since I've been at the middle school for the past 16 years I've come to realize how important this town is to me how important the people in the school district are to me so I just feel extremely fortunate and grateful to have this opportunity to be a part of this administrative team thank thank you well done Sam and that's a great segue into a sense of belonging so what does a sense of belonging look like and what does it mean at the Dartmouth middle school with the help of learn launch we Define a sense of belonging as the feeling that one's authentic self is seen valued affirmed and connected to and by the school we believe it comes down to relationship building and finding a student's passion and giving them the opportunity to explore that passion further whether that be through academics the Arts music Athletics technology languages or drama Productions giving our kids a sense of purpose is the key to success so let's talk a little bit about the work that's already been done with a sense of belonging our guidance department has received specialized training with DCF and the crisis center our entire staff received SC training on lgbtq Plus guidance staff monitored School attendance and provided Outreach and support for families in need guidance also runs targeted social skills groups for kids within our school community we also identified and helped families in need during the holiday season which is a long-standing tradition at the Dartmouth Middle School all grade levels provided targeted lessons in social studies on humanitarianism and good citizenship through those efforts we raise four thousand dollars for the International Red Cross our after school program was able to run last year and we offered a wide range of activities from Orchestra robotics creative writing little green news drama club jewelry making weight lifting and sports we believe there's truly something for everyone we've been able to offer online academic assistance during that time frame as well our PBIS team planned many school-wide events including our spooky relay pink day Dartmouth strong day the rare fare our eighth grade class trip and our eighth grade class party and finally Mr Garcia our adjustment counselor started a unified basketball team that was a huge success we were able to have a home and away series with Fairhaven and a faculty game as well and I'd estimate that probably 85 percent of our student body came out for that home game with Fairhaven it was truly one of the one of the great days of last year at this point I'm going to turn it over to Mrs dikis and she's going to talk about great appropriate instruction hello everybody 2122 seems like a lifetime ago this even though it was just a few months ago um one of the things that we did last year is we realized that we needed a lot more options for modified assessments we found that the kids were learning at a much broader range of abilities so instead of having a modified and irregular assessments we have more they're more on a spectrum now so we that's one of the things that really came to be particularly after covid last year and a year-long of hybrid we also added pacing calendars into our curriculum planning time which really has helped us with the long-range planning and ensuring that the standards are hit you know throughout the year again it seems like a really long time ago but three quarters of the year last year we had a period of time that was called academic enrichment up until March of last year the kids were all still eating in their homerooms because of the coveted restrictions so we had a half hour that they were eating and a half hour of enrichment time during that time they truly was a to the best of our ability a time where they could work on reviewing or enrichment activities in really deep dive a little deeper into the various content areas the teachers worked really really hard in creating what we call Choice boards that we're still using now for review for enrichment activities you know thinking the science teachers created in our instructional technology so many in the eighth grade that went six seven and eight and that really helped them review all three grade levels for the science MCAS and they were able to do that during that time we found and continue to find as most of us realize when this choice it's much more engaging for the kids keeps them motivated particularly those reluctant Learners so those are kind of our highlights from from last year I'm going to turn it over to Mr Hayes just to go over the uh understanding um so as my secrets was saying it seemed so long ago um we had to spend some time in that school year meeting vertically to identify some of the possible learning gaps from our non-traditional school schedule that we had for the you know some of those previous months um we also use the pre-test and some other formative assessments to identify the areas of need and some of the strengths of our students right because you know we still had students excelling even though there were some areas of weakness there that allowed us to provide some just-in-time targeted interventions as well as to continue to challenge our students you know some of our Advanced Learners and to further their development I'm also through our various PLC teams because we have a number of them that meet at the middle school level we were able to closely Monitor and analyze the data from STAR testing from their MCAS scores benchmarks and some of the other assessments that we give to ensure that the interventions that we were using those targeted interventions were actually useful and to adapt those and our teachers did a wonderful job working really hard to adapt to those interventions to make sure that we were to the best of our ability addressing all of our students needs as well as their strengths so we really focus on looking at making sure those interventions were effective and making sure that we were doing all that we could could to address them into including our schedule changing a little bit as mysticas was talking about how do we fill some of those gaps and our I think our teachers and staff did a wonderful job doing that I'm going to come back with what we're planned is for this year with a sense of belonging um presently we've begun our first two sessions of our after school program in our unified basketball team is going to be expanding to unified bocce which should be pretty interesting I'm excited to see that our PBIS team continues to organize school-wide events we recently ran our spooky relay our pink day and this Wednesday kids will take part in our Dartmouth strong day with this year's theme being you guessed it a sense of belonging guidance continues to monitor School attendance Family Outreach holiday assistance in the running of social groups we were able to run career day for the first time since the pandemic and it included 32 guest speakers from the community this was targeted at our seventh grade population our kindness Cafe run by our pass and Pals programs was able to reopen our check-in check out and our step-up program continue to shape positive behaviors and build positive relationships with our tier two and tier 3 population our National Junior Honor Society will continue with its Beach cleanup initiatives its book drive with gifts to give and for the first time since covid they will partner with Dartmouth highs Honor Society for a Valentine's Day dance at the Council on Aging um finally over the summer we partnered with learn launch and they helped us frame our school-wide professional practice goal with staff which is to foster a sense of belonging at DMS staff is presently in the first year of that two-year smart goal at this point I'm going to turn it back over to Mrs dikis for more great appropriate instruction in addition to the professional practice goal that Mr Rossi mentioned our student learning goal is focusing more on stamina Independence comprehension areas that were identified by all of the different content areas we're really trying to Target writing across the curriculum as well as math fluency and science reasoning scientific reasoning excuse me I can't say enough about our special ed staff that worked so hard really thinking outside of the box trying to make sure that we met the needs of the kids that we have um they were very creative and very willing to try new things in as a result we have new courses that we are we are trying we have teachers that are teaching Cross grade level that we've never had before we have a lot more small group and individualized instruction as a result and they've done a great job and we really have a lot more confidence that we're going to be able to you know close those gaps at a faster Pace than we were before so I can't say enough about how much how hard they've worked to make that happen um some other good news that's came out of our STAR testing at the beginning of this year is that four the most part the majority of the students in September the reading level was pretty much on target with where they should be we do have the outliers and kids that need specialized instruction and they are getting that but it does reinforce for us that they absolutely should be getting grade level or even a higher level reading materials to continue on that path so we that was really something that we felt really good about during our curriculum planning time on a weekly basis week every single time we look at our scope and sequence we update it with any resources that we may have we really look at what our summative informative assessments are and they are live doc you know it's a live document we're constantly adding that in those in so that we use that document on a regular basis just recently we did add um actually that we literally within the last week started adding a reflective piece that we will add at the end of each unit if not more often and then the other thing that I'm really excited about is we have started working more closely with the high school than we have in years we've already made plans for the end of this year for the Dartmouth High lead teachers to work with our eighth grade teachers and really make sure that that vertical planning is happening and then hopefully it will be our first annual but on a week from tomorrow we have our we are hosting a business Innovation and Technology day for the eighth grade they're bringing everybody down and they're going to be able to have the kids cycle through and really see what's going on at the high school and hopefully keep them engaged in what's the learning and excited about coming to Dartmouth High and you know kind of all work together as one District so we're really excited about that Mr Hayes um with that our our plcs have met with an increased focus on calibrating student work across grade levels with a real emphasis on increasing stamina for all of our students as we found that to be one of the deficits across the board you know for our students in sixth to eighth grade we've also continued to analyze data to monitor student progress and identify the appropriate targeted interventions and to develop some of some individualized intervention plans and some of the work that Mystique was speaking to has really been used to identify individualized intervention plans for you know whether that really be you know individual students or small groups of students you spoke to some of the the really good work that our special education department has done it's been phenomenal and really identifying specific gaps and helping students through those um and we also continue to provide frequent formative assessments and that provide timely feedback a number of our teachers are using wonderful softwares that allow them immediate feedback allow them to address students strengths and deficits immediately uh you know to to again help with intervention plans whether that be you know to strengthen students or to address some of the gaps that we've identified through those testings um so with that I think Mr Dome you wanted to the committee has any questions thoughts remarks Mr Oliver sure uh just a couple of brief remarks first of all thank you for the presentation everyone uh it was very informative what I'm seeing here is I'm seeing you know quite a bit of out of the box thinking and a lot some definitely some more collaboration across grade levels um especially with the high school I'm happy to see but overall you know I'll keep my keep it brief keep up the good work I'm happy to see all the uh the deep thinking and the the collegial nature of everything that's taken place so uh you know thank you thank you all Dr Jenkins I'll also say thank you um I guess my one question would be I assume by stamina you mean sort of time on learning task is that what you mean by that what we were finding is consistently kept hearing repeatedly that they um student would write a sentence is this right well you know it just there was no grit into in the learning and a lot of that they had lost that and so when we say stamina being being able to stick with a task or writing assignment for a longer period of time that kind of thing yeah that's just it's interesting you know we've been dealing with some of those same issues pushes up through the pipeline to us and you know higher ed and we've been doing some collective reading a book called igen and about sort of the impact on device usage on on issues of stamina and time on task and attention to to task yeah and so I've just never heard it called that and so it's very interesting to me um I think this is great and I love to see all the work that you're doing so thank you yeah at as my colleagues have said really the sense of belonging it's you know it's it's clearly your um you know practices around thinking outside the box and you talked about the um uh you know the special education and sort of working to kind of meet the needs of the students and kind of bridge those gaps I love what the the work that you're doing in terms of transition to the high school that's only going to you know reap benefits I'm sure uh and I'm just thank you I've always been a cheerleader and and of your thoughtful approach and welcome Mr Madden glad to see you part of the administration at the middle school so thank you for this um no again like echoing my colleagues it was great presentation you know thank you so much I think um you know I was I'm always really impressed by like the targeted interventions and really trying to you know bring those students up um I guess my one question and this is something I've heard feedback from parents you know maybe you know in the Middle School is for those students who Excel how do you like because I feel like I've you know I've heard from parents concerns that you know in some cases like they this could maybe get or you know how are you like trying to like meet their needs and address their needs it's just an issue that has come up as I've taught to parents across the you know over the years one of the things that we're doing is a lot of the book choices because we do have some kids that are reading at a pretty high level and so they they certainly would be steered toward books that are at a much higher level than some of the other one we're doing an independent reading or a book club they would be in a book club with groups it's one of the things we do with reading now is but kind of like we do as adults right they you know and they're in book clubs together and they are able to talk and so they are at a higher level we've got it what you do is in the Khan Academy a lot for the math programs we've got some kids if you know we do our formative assessment they're getting 100 on it we're not going to reteach them something they already know so they're getting differentiated and they're getting a different assignment that may be on Khan Academy or algebra one or a different lesson altogether so we're very mindful of that one of the things that we're really enjoying is we've been using a lot more of the edge elastic and that gives you pretty much on the formative right away we'll tell you and we'll say well these four kids so let's get them something else and so we don't even bother giving them the next assignment they'll do something totally different so that kind of thing right I think like the trend seeing that you're meeting again like that much more with the high school I think that's going to be like a great like transitional event like you know there's that vertical teaming and I also just like the plethora of like what you're offering to the kids after school um I think you know a lot of these kids struggle to find their place and their people so the more that you're offering it's great to meet them where they are so thank you very good I'm impressed with you know a lot of you know I heard the the comment out of the blacks thinking a number of times and that really means that you know we're trying something different versus a standard way uh just simple easy question how many students participate in your after school give or take and I'm not yeah approximately uh about 300 350 students participate in addition to that we do have students who take advantage of our online learning that runs from 2 3 to 4.
each one with the exception of the Care is Grand the cares Grant specifically focused on PPE and really addressing PPE at the start of the pandemic the next two grants really focused on SEL social emotional support intervention support interventions social emotional support and programmatic support what districts may have felt like would help to address learning respectful districts and we started to implement 20 21 21 22 and then 22 20 the cares Grant has ex expired in June of 2022. the sr2 grant scheduled to expire in June June 2023 and the SO3 Grant is scheduled to expire in 2024. the board Might Recall last year as a result of our budget Gap we were afraid and that we would have no choice but to accelerate the financial cliff that you heard so much about and it's left last last week close to 16 million dollar gap between us and the City the three applications that we submitted to the state of Connecticut again cares has since expired predominantly a grant filled with PPE strategies and activities Esther 2 was an SO3 was more on stack of programmatic programmatic supports and the same with message word the board Might Recall and I just can tell some of these things for you I'm going to look down make sure I capture them I recall some of the strategies and I just want to walk you through them and so one of the strategies that we had submitted as part of the grant was a comprehensive overhaul of our HVAC systems this required this was a planned commitment of 2.7 million we spent a hundred thousand dollars thus far it's going to go through a couple of coping like strategies if you will addition these strategies total 7.6 million again this is as of June 30th we have spent 1.5 million additional secondary classroom space part of the plan in budget season and so I had a couple of different board members had asked the question where are we with our covert relief Monies of course there are a lot of questions probably by the council probably our mayor our board members in our city like we're already with that 38 million dollars and what does that mean for us as a district overall so just circling back again last year we ended with a 16 million dollar Gap talk to quite a bit and because we have not had to continue forward with these positions any strategies as planned we have saved quite a bit of money on the covert relief funds and so instead of us being in a position where the monies will expire this Jew 2022 I'm sorry 2023.
foreign welcomes public participation and asking the community the comments be limited to three maths the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or deflammatory comments about Board of Education personnel and students who are against any person connected with Danbury public school system charging [Music] good evening my name is I have three children and all attended to be a family for our international service I'm an instructional coach schools my purpose of her speaking tonight is to ask why the fifth grade graders at AAS are not attending Nature's Classroom for a week at the end of the school year this year and I've seen the leadership from the Indian great board of education is not as many of the professor of principal Jackson [Music] um my wife has sent emails to both principal Jackson will not answer questions there are questions about why the insurance has been changed from a long week to a day and my wife for superintendo diet so let's not apply um so I'd like you to please consider the following uh the day that a student sets but can be a very dais school they're doing a promise and every student knows this promise and talks to their parents about it for the years that they're there my wife just said has been one of those supporters she's been part of the PTO for the better part of 10 years as well as PTO president and treasurer for some of those years she worked with and supported our last principal principal rosh on so many different Industries I work see we're missing out on the on that trip is what they talked about and uh the next year persisted and they lost out on our trip again and that's what they talked about and however last year we truly focused on what was best for our students and we found ways to make it work so the teachers were scared parents were scared the costs were inflated we had everything working against us but we worked through each obstacle and that's what leaders do we travel to DC for three days with our 145 8th graders and for those three days in May Cove had disappeared and because of it our kids got to see the Declaration of impact on the Olympic Memorial and that was freshmen uh let me look back at middle school that's what we're talking about at AAS parents are offering support if you've got fundraising and uh before the surprise news of Nature's Classroom they had begun fundraising and the experience um sorry before the surprising news of our anxious classroom experience was sent out we even held a spaghetti dinner at AIS where we have as many as 400 people in antennas um and so I asked why don't we start giving back to our children and things that they lost during program I have some suggestions for you but I I don't want to go over my time so in in lieu of giving those suggestions I just want to say I I expect more from leadership than mitigated speech and avoidance or non-response and I expect them to do as best for students while taking into consideration of teachers and the parents I would hope that as important you work to promote field trips and enriching experience for our students through policy contract negotiations and impossible you know reward for people that look to do these experiences mostly our teachers that put these things together during that time um I'll close by asking this why are we taking away a program where in the words of the website the students develop a sense of community a confidence in themselves and an appreciation for others that is carried with effect of that school Community it really is an experience that way I hope that some of you here will set forward as leaders and hulkeep the promises we made thank you Chloe good evening Danbury Board of Education members my name is Chloe Jewett I am a fifth grade student at ARS I would like to ask you to think about letting us go to Nature's Classroom before a week at the end of this school year but I heard we weren't going to Nature's Classroom for a week I felt really bad but I didn't just feel bad for me I also felt bad for my classmates there are only 56 of us in the fifth grade and we've been together since kindergarten when I told my brother about how sad I do when covid ended last year we knew we'd be the first class in three years to go to Nature's Classroom when they told us we were only going for one day some of us were upset and some of us were mad but all of us thought it wasn't fair I tried to do something about it I made this petition with my grandmother's help but they made me put it away and some of my friends were told that they'd get in trouble if they signed it there are 12 signatures on it I want to be a leader or my classmate that's why I came here [Music] my dad told me that leadership isn't easy and if I came here to talk maybe someone could listen well let's go to Nature's Hospital thank you thank you Chloe you are a great leader thank you Jeff moving out to your consent calendar or would you make that motion and make a motion that the Board of Education approve these items on the consent calendar exhibits 22-131-22-134 as recommended any discussion all those in favor any opposed an extension and Carries unanimously some calendars that include the donation or should we read it includes do we have any student Representatives it looks like no okay action item a them um [Music] that's 2023 in accordance with exhibit 22-135 any discussion seeing none all those in favor any opposed any extension motion carries unanimously action B how would you do that October October 2022 for an education except the October 2022 financial report in accordance with exhibit 22-136
thank you Teresa present Rachel yeah Michelle here okay you're Gladys you're Lauren here Bridget here Julie Ralph president Albert here Louisa here recognitions thank you Great Plain for returning once again [Applause] foreign talk just a little bit about what career it is and how great playing y'all who were the school um what is a blue ribbon school it's a national who are the school award is bestowed in the whole schools would demonstrate Excellence it is the highest award that you can actually earn in the nation so dander I would have been very blessed to have a total of three schools history of the Wednesday 2000 2012 2020 would have been South Street and of course this year Craig play so what makes our public school you have to have students of course now the school Community is very important parent communication being sure that they're informed these two definitely have everyone invested in everyone is important all teachers PPS staff they're um your homework is usually srbi his scientific Reserve Banks interventionists we have special education teachers in parents and tutors your PPS everyone the nurse the custodian bus drivers you name it and also our Jericho Partners who are right here in Denver right and then last for a number of years and have been very active in helping us to get where we are today as far as working different School what do you need to have and why are we including School it has to be a place that is a welcome and warm environment no matter where you go children should feel safe and that they are able to learn and someone who believes in them their need needs needs need to be met daily but that's food clothing whatever it is our parent organization is able to do that's even if children are in need of not only clothing and furniture there are different things that are parent and our community members have been very good about doing and these things must be done in order for children again to have the mind and ready to work a change in mindsets had to take place with the staff over time in order for this to happen making sure
uh actually we did this at the same time North and South so this board has a lifespan of about 10 years and we're getting close to 16. what we're seeing especially at North but South will also experience these problems is that things are breaking down and the parts are not they're obsolete we can't even find them anymore so we're having a tough time so we want to upgrade this we want to replace it with new boards for north and south and you'll see that on South line item as well they also do not have a CAT5 cable line so really with an improved line and improved board we're going to be able to do much more moving things for our pools visuals and for our teams who are excellent teams at both sides of style shift them South this is the music Suite flooring area and chairs rolled carpet about 4 500 square feet and the tile is about 6 700 square feet so we're going to replace with carpet squares on the carpet area and on the tile two by two quarts there's no asbestos in Syria so that you know brings the price down dramatically experienced that enough in the mfp yes uh additionally there'll be some plastic chairs that will replace what's existing there student parking lot at South this is a big lot 81 000 square feet so it's complete removal of the current asphalt some have to even go further down the stone base so there's a lot to this one But ultimately there'll be a new layer of two inch asphalt and then striping after it's completed building automation at South similar to North these are two different Air Handlers over there that control a fair amount of the building so uh these will be replaced as well and upgraded and taking you back just a little history of our BAS system years ago when we bought our units we were with Johnson Controls and you go back 20 years now and they were really the proprietary person and they had control and it's changed so much over the years these systems now and we use precision and that's what we've pretty much replaced Johnson with in all of our buildings we're almost there as you see every year I bring this back we have another hundred thousand but all this money is well spent because we're saving so much on the control side of the climate in the classroom in areas but also are Gas and Electric which really just just comes down we have that much control of it so it's important to do these things and and being able to see it on a computer when you get a phone call from a classroom on the second floor you can pinpoint what's going on with it right away and then you can see things that are breaking down way before you notice it in the field okay okay oh I think it was last let's see if there any questions on the Capital Improvements before he digs into Life Safety I just wanted one thing sorry the Grant I I know jury had brought to the board for approval you approved the ISB fifty thousand dollar Grant we did apply for that we will use that towards the north Bas uh controls if we get that so that would cut that down fifty thousand sorry Hank no no I forgot we're going to talk about that okay all right so questions for the capital part before Jim dives into Life Safety improvements is the is the student parking lot replacement uh based on a a actual number I mean it's almost the estimate there seems a little more precise and it's actually a little less than I thought it might be so I contacted three companies that I work with and said you know if I was gonna do this tomorrow how much would it cost how much no I added you know a little bit here and there and that's how I got to that okay yes some were at 200 000.
oh thank you that rips oh all right we do not have any public comment this evening so we'll move on to our 301 audit report I'm Kathy Naughton from eater castellan company I was here last year I've been out um at the district for the audit for the last couple of years involved for a few years so I'm happy to be back and one of my favorite parts of the job is to kind of wrap everything up and and present good news so thank you for having me uh first thing I want to do I'm going to actually cover two different audits one would be Essentials School District audit and then the northern cane audit as well just another small report after out there that'll start with Central um first I want to thank Dana and her team for cooperation and assistance with the audit her staff is always extremely prepared and easy to work with so that makes my job a lot easier so I appreciate that thank you I'm going to I'm going to I'm not going to go through the audit and talk you know details and numbers and things like that I really just like to give a little bit of an overview of the process and point out a certain you know certain pages just just very little analysis if any just just some comments on it um as part of the audit we evaluate the district's internal controls over financial reporting we test those controls and then generally if there are findings we report those often we have um minor recommendations for efficiencies and improvements in internal controls those are not necessarily reportable and just want to report that if and when we ever have those conversations with the business office management Etc they're always received and implemented as as we've recommended so again something to to congratulate the business office on um as far as the internal controls they generally generally appeared appropriately designed and implemented so no control issues there I'm happy to report there were no findings no reportable findings and a management letter to the share so that is always a plus um in terms of the audit report the most important part of that audit report is the opinion and as you read through the opinion you'll see that there is an adverse opinion related to generally accepted accounting principles and it goes on the letter goes on to actually explain that the district reports on the regulatory basis of accounting which is prescribed by the state of Illinois so it's not Gap financial statements that you would see in a business but it is on unmodified or clean opinion based on those regulatory basis uh accounting principles and really what that opinion means is that the financials are free from material misstatements so nothing significant would be incorrect in those financial statements we also again mention the internal control over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations no findings to report we don't provide an opinion on that but we do test it evaluate it and make recommendations as needed in terms of the federal programs we tested two programs this year um including the Child Nutrition program and the Esther Grant that's the covid-19 funding that started a couple years ago those were the major programs um in terms of significant dollar amounts and we had no findings or compliance recommendations on those so that's always a positive all right now I'm just going to scroll down just mention a few of the various statements that you see in your in your audit report so starting on page I hid my page hold on one second page six um start the basic financial statements and this first um statement is the statement of assets liabilities and fund balance um it's remember we're talking about the cash basis and cash and Investments are presented that's a primary asset of the district there are no overdrafts to report or any overdress between funds all of the district deposits and Investments are fully insured or collateralized which is something that we uh look at at as part of the audit um there's usually very few liabilities reported on a cash basis statement the exception generally being payroll timing differences withholdings that have yet to be remitted and things like that um and then the chunk at the bottom is the fund balance of the district so it's you know sort of the residual the remainder after those liabilities and it's broken down in terms of reserved amounts and unreserved amounts for your District those reserved amounts really represent fund balance that's uh that's technically uh held for Student Activity funds um and the IMR of Social Security fund that would be Social Security payments that need to be made um and that's contributions uh and then again there's occasionally um some sort of driver's ed excess so revenues over expenditures for drivers that you're required to report Reserve fund balance for those types of purposes so in a few of the funds you'll see those reserved amounts as far as the honors reserved amounts those are split between designated and undesignated funds designated funds for your District relate to the 2021 tax levy that is earmarked to be used in fiscal year 23 so there's kind of set aside if you think about it as just setting that aside for a future purpose um so those are just reported in that way um and then generally the remainder of the fund balance is undesignated to be used in in the way that you have determined as the board is determined uh the next statement is starting on page eight it's a statement of Revenue revenues received expenditures disbursed and changes in fund balance so similar to an income statement in a business um this is a summary statement so you're going to see high level uh categories of revenues for local sources State sources and so on and then expenditures by functions such as instruction support services and so on um the important part again is sort of the near the bottom line the excess of the revenues over the expenditures in this particular year that number is positive and all funds except the tort fund um and again there's still a positive fund balance in that fund so that's not not a concern or anything like that it's just really a lot of times about timing of revenues and expenses statement on page nine is a detailed statement of revenues received so that's really just underlying numbers that kind of roll up into the statement before so I'm not going to go into too much detail but if you want to know more about the types of local Source revenue or federal revenues and so on you'll see details there foreign the budget to actual schedules that begin on page 11 are the detail line items for expenditures so you're going to see for again specific line items on the budget you'll see actual numbers compared to budget if if total expenses were less than budget for All funds except the tort fund again not just not just a difference in timing of revenues perhaps or timing of expenditures and so on and again you can look from line item to line item on this and see variances most of this is beneficial for operational purposes and again not not a concern from an audit standpoint really what's required to be reported in your statements is if a particular fund is over budget and that again as I mentioned I think the tort fund was the only one so that's indicated here a lot of pages there one for each font um the notes to the financial statements are begin on page 23 and really this is just a narrative it provides additional detail and explanation about the information contained in uh the audit report so you can scan through and again there's some tables that provide information um really not going to spend a ton of time on that I did want to point out uh an additional footnote this year there was a change in principle adopted the government Accounting Standards Board has a new Gatsby we call that gasby standard in place and so the last note on page 36 is a change in accounting principle related to gasby number 87.
probably not okay so I'll probably drive down the night before and save us some friends and Andy yeah okay so um I think the best thing to do would just be to attend and then they can bill us after the fact okay okay all right we'll we'll amend the thing tentatively to approve you to be able to very good thank you all right do I have to re-vote because we're in mind of it all right can I will somebody make a motion on the amendment um okay I'll try that motion to amend uh to allow Dr malkow to also attend the isba conference all right we have a motion by Mrs Kelly second by Mr Marshall any discussion all in favor aye motion passes thank you we'll move right along to our director of Human Resources Personnel Mrs mucha thank you we are recommending that the following Personnel items be approved motion to approve motion by Mrs Kelly second second by Dr Medlin any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you also in your package you'll find some information about high school summer school the dates for high school summer school and the subjects that will be taught for your information any discussion no no but I do have a question to ask Terry about the the head varsity girls wrestling coach did you have a hard time getting a wrestling coach for the girls actually no we had someone pretty quickly that okay had varsity soccer coach head varsity a volleyball for the boys for the volleyball yes yes that came pretty um quickly also wow okay so now we just need to get the team members we already have some people interested we've started yeah the girls uh wrestling does wrestling they're done fabulous yes yeah I know I've heard some of the girls are very good yeah all right thank you just just curious about that thank you thank you with that we'll move on to our director of primary education Dr Bracy oh you have nothing okay all right director of secondary education Mrs Castaneda thank you for my first item I am seeking your approval for the professional leave requests move to prove that professional leave requests second that motion motion by Dr Medlin and a second by Mr Marshall any discussion or questions all in favor aye motion passes thank you for my second item I am seeking your approval for the field trip requests motion to approve the field trip request second we have a motion by Mrs Kelly in a second by Mr Marshall any discussion our questions all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you and for my last item I just wanted to discuss some changes with our Iowa summer course offerings if you recall this past summer I brought to the board a change for Lake Central's graduation requirements due to the added rigor of the graduation Pathways we decided to decrease the number of credits that students had to earn to a true core 40 instead of the 46 where we had had it set in the past we have allowed students to take Iowa summer courses and really had no limitations on it however with this reduction in the number of credits that were requiring for graduation we no longer feel that that carte blanche approach is really necessary um so what we're going to do is we're going to allow students to take Iowa if they've attempted a course here at Lake Central but want to improve their grade on it so their first attempt is with us and that they want to retake it in order to improve their grade then we would allow them to take ioa we also would allow them to use Iowa if they were a senior who is trying to graduate at the semester and so there would be a limited group of courses that they could choose from in that scenario which would be government economics personal financial responsibility health and composition we would cap that at four credits Max because they already have 56 opportunities during the course of their time here at Lake Central and even if they were graduating at semester there would still be more than enough room to fit everything they need into their schedule the last change we would make is that if a student was pursuing something that we don't offer here at Lake Central for example ioa offers American Sign Language and that's not something that's available here we would allow them to pursue that and in that case if they were going for the academic honors diploma you would need six credits worth of that in order to qualify for it and we'd let them go above the four up to a six Credit Max but those would be the only um situations where we would allow the use of Iowa because of the reduction in the number of credits that they need to graduate we just feel like it's not as necessary as it was before any questions on that you know so it was very hard for me to hear all the particulars in what you stated do you have something written that you could email out to me of course thank you okay thank you thank you our director of student services Mrs gramala thank you I just wanted to update the board on a training we hosted at the end of October we had 98 staff members which included teachers counselors School psychologists principals I think we had an occupational therapist there as well they all participated in a two-day training with Dr Trisha Berg from safe and civil schools the training was on a intervention method called the tough kid toolkit so it's a strategy focused training it was a really nice complement to trainings we've done with Dr desotel's and earlier trainings we did on Champs which is a classroom overall classroom management strategy one thing that we heard from a lot of our teachers is that they had very limited training on classroom management in their teacher training programs most said they had about one class in all of their college coursework so they really believed that they all had students who would benefit from these strategies they were able to most of them sat sort of in their groups with their buildings so they were able to do a lot of brainstorming throughout the two days and we got some really good feedback from it so we've had enough interest that once we start looking at remaining grant funds we might try to host it again to get more more staff members through I I did hear from some teachers about it and they were very excited about it because because of the needs of the students in their classroom classroom and this teacher was talking about restraining and it's like no no no you don't no no there's other ways to do this so it was very timely good job thank you so now we'll move on to our director of Business Services Mr James thank you Mr Seuss when I sent the board packet out on Thursday we had yet to receive any information from the state about the annual teacher appreciation grant that changed since then and on Friday school districts across the state were notified how much each district as a whole was going to receive in December from the grant um last year the school district was awarded approximately 344 thousand dollars this year it's just under 340.
because so we have staff that supports that thank you Neva with the transportation we over the past few years we know there wasn't enough Drive is still a lot for trembly so we were concerned administratively about how that would negatively impact but thankfully we still have a number of students who participate so the numbers didn't change all that drastically good good to hear thank you okay thank you thank you thank you very much just lastly um I was asked many years ago Mr Ross and I've been what since 2007 we have worked together in administrative capacity I stood in front of school committee members then I don't know if you were there Mr Nunes the previous principal that was high it chose not to take the position chairman of the school committee said we know Mr Dome will do what's right for the community and the students I didn't apply for the job and here I am 14 years later but my point being is I was asked if we were asked a few years ago what was our biggest strength as the Middle School and I had to give it some thought and then my biggest strength is that we're not complacent and that we are a very reflective practitioners when I say we it's not just us but it's our staff in general and I have no doubt that in the midst of Rossi's leadership and team that will they will continue to not be complacent to be reflective and to can at least strive to support students as well as staff and communities so that middle school is in very very good hands and I'm extremely proud of all four of them and having had the opportunity to work with a number of them for many many years so thank you you've left it in good hands yeah thank you thank you thank you [Applause] hi everyone we're uh two people because uh the rest of our team is uh I think fighting some high schoolers in volleyball right now as the National Honor Society uh there's a legendary high school team that is a teacher team that's competing so we have a bunch of our people on that team too so I have uh Richard chavier our associate principal here as well with me and everyone else is in the gym it's an excused absence yeah exactly I think they're having a lot of fun over there we have over 24 teams competing during this fundraiser so it's the most teams that we've had so far yeah good um I I want to Second a lot of what the Middle School staff said too I think we have a really great working relationship it started this summer at msaa where we kind of really bonded as as a two United schools and um we've worked a lot well um Rob perrotti is putting together a showcase day at the middle school just for the students and then we're putting working together as a showcase at the high school and we're going to talk about that in a little bit but I definitely want to Second what Sarah was saying on that is that it is a really nice partnership between the two schools um so we had a great year last year we really did um we were able to start to come back to normal and um we especially once we hit around March it really opened up and we were able to talk about that so Rachel's gonna uh they did a great job of introducing sense of belonging so we don't have to go through a whole Spiel on all of those they they did better than I could say it so um Rachel's gonna talk about sense of belonging well Dartmouth High I think is very strong with the sense of belonging we have so many things that go on with our band and with after-school programs but one of our greatest successes is our advisory which was created approximately four years ago and it really helped carry us through the pandemic and support our students and let them know that they were a caring sensitive adult in the building that wanted to connect with them um so the use of advisory to support students social emotional needs life skills instruction and digital citizenship the mission of the advisory program when we first created The Advisory program was to provide students with academic advisement and goal setting personal Wellness Community Building and at the end of last year we started discussing with our instructional technology specialist Jen Thomas excuse me digital citizenship which is very important where students can learn how to persevere how to put aside the technology when they need to to be successful so this year we've added that particular strand to the advisory and we also have re-established our advisory design team which we had before the pandemic and of course that became unhinged and now we have a very solid group of teachers from every content area and we meet to plan The Advisory so it's a village it takes the village to create thoughtful advisories for our students and our next goal which is a little moving forward is to get some student input so we can hear what they need in advisory and to capture their voice last year we were very happy to return to Traditional High School events it was discouraging not to have graduation and prom and after prom and we were able to do that and the Silver Lining was that we were able to implement the senior Sunset which I think we're going to do every year now the senior stroll where the seniors go back and they visit their elementary schools so those are two things that came out of the pandemic that we're very proud of also we have been recognized as a unified Banner school this is our second time to receive National Banner recognition and this work started last year and the year before um it's a Special Olympics unified Champion school has an inclusive School climate exudes a sense of collaboration engagement and respect for all members of the student body and the staff so we have some phenomenal coaches and teachers that have just done a great job in creating an inclusive unified program so once again it takes a village and we're very proud of our accomplishments I think we're seeing the definition if it takes a village over here thank you Renee um so when we talk about great appropriate instruction we're talking about that return to blend in personalized learning the district with the Highlander Institute prior to the pandemics invested a lot we had three cohorts go through training we really last year focused back into that Blended in personalized learning some of the pandemic taught us the tools that we had in front of us modeled that structure where you can do you can do breakout groups in one side on a computer with an ed puzzle activity and you can do a small small group in front of you and then you can do a third independent group so you have like that enriched sustain and push forward model so that really has been that really was a project that we took on last year and focused on and that was really impressive to see continue and teachers wanting to get really back to that we focused on applying the tools we learned over the pandemic with traditional and in in-person mythology methodology and the instruction with um Ed tools and again Jen Thomas has been a really strength on that and then the other big one is that we've continued our partnership with mass Insight through our sustainability agreement that was last year we're still working with them as an A La Carte model this year but in last year they really helped with our project lead the way in our AP programming so they have been a really strong support for us I was able to go to two days to training this summer we sent teachers to week-long trainings this summer they were a really big partner that we were really excited to work with and continue to work with today my turn for monitoring of understanding we last year had our annual end of the year curriculum Summit where Lee teachers work with members of their Department in documenting curriculum looking at the pacing looking at assessments moving away from traditional assessments looking more at project-based learning or assessments and getting more creative with authentic learning experiences also teachers shared best instructional practices and spent some time reflecting on what they needed to do for just in time supports for our students the use of common planning time which has been built into our new schedule which we've had for several years now has been very successful we have departments that work together to review benchmark assessments look at the the data discuss instructional strategies that work and may not work State assessment data and just looking at the pacing during this time teachers identify oh I already said that so we can move on every fall and think this is thanks to the district we administer the PSATs to all sophomores and juniors and the use of the PSAT data helps us to identify potential AP students students very often believe oh I can't do AP that's only for the smart students and that's not true if a student has a passion they can take that 1 AP course two AP courses to challenge themselves and prepare themselves for college the PSATs also prepare sophomores for the SATs and they need that practice and we also for the juniors this gives them National Merit Scholarship eligibility so we use that PSAT data that counselors meet with students they look at where their strengths and weaknesses lie and they offer them different opportunities and suggestions to help strengthen themselves as they move forward so where are we going um we really wanted to focus on we take that sense of belonging really important at Dartmouth High School we really focus on an increased involvement I think our students are probably secret me here saying um the school day ends it doesn't end at 203 for every Dartmouth High School student I've actually called a boss one time to say give me one day a month please for a student we have worked with the idea of that you need to be more than just a 203 student so in the fall we had 400 students over 400 students go out for athletics over 110 students for band we have 46 3 46 clubs and activities um Andy just gave me the numbers about two hours ago for athletics right now we have about 260 kids registered for winter Athletics and that's a decrease in number of sports so that's still at that particip participation rate per sports that we're really looking forward to and just one thing I want to jump in and note um during the pandemic when we were all home and virtual there were students that would email me and said Michelle I have an idea for a new club how about this and we kept a lot of our clubs and activities going when we went through the pandemic and to this day students are constantly bringing new ideas so it just makes me very proud and happy to be part of that because they need that extra support they need that connection and if students I mean research shows if students are involved in after-school activities they are more successful academically Mr Coogan says often give me 10 students I'll find you at advisor just give me 10 friends and I'll get you an advisor um we supported connection through outside presenters and we're still continuing to do that I want to plug minding your mind on December 7th that is a parent uh presentation at 6 30 um prior to that we have a um a a showcase night of our school that's going to go from 5 to 6 15 team so hopefully parents can then travel right into the auditorium see a wonderful presentation on mental health and Trauma and supports and you have survivors talking about their stories that um we really want the community to come out for this it's really important we did it back when I was at my other school we did it here for the opening um session for our staff and how many of our staff came up and said we need this for everyone so parents we're encouraging you please come out to that and we're going to continue that with speakers based off of student concerns and and that comes from again our student leaders in our building and our club leaders that really say hey we would like to hear something about this and with our schedule it really helps having that pace period where we can bring in presenters and support that we've targeted instruction and connecting relationships to the one Dartmouth motto We Are One Dartmouth High School We Are One Community we are one together we really spent our first three days on building relationships we did three days of advisory we haven't done that before and the whole purpose is is that every student needs someone connected to this building um and we've also increased a student recognition through displays announcements multimedia and in-class achievements we really want to push our students that do well and we want to con and push not just the students that always get the recognition but students across the board that are getting recognition and it's been a focus and we keep talking about that especially at our lead teachers uh grade appropriate instruction as a district district leadership team we have done some work with optic which is a platform that provides our administrative team with the opportunity to calibrate culturally responsive look fors and to identify aspects of great teaching practices aligned to each of the seven Focus elements of the teacher evaluation rubric so just putting on that particular lens as we observe different classrooms and teachers and evaluate our teachers kind of helps us as an administrative team to be in line in sync so we can support our teachers and to bring out the very best in them they're amazing they devote so much time and we just want to be there for them so they can be their best selves for our kids using student supports to help students create a clear learning pathway this work began a few years back and students continue to create Pathways with their counselors plan out what they want to do for the next four years so that way if they want AP courses not doing them all junior senior year the kind of peppering them throughout looking at what their strengths are what their passions are and helping them to plan accordingly so they're not in the last minute hustling and trying to get courses in so we're very proud of our counselors and support and our student support team that meets on a regular basis to support our students and provide interventions for them we have homework hangout our Pace period has been a phenomenal addition to our schedule and it allows students the choice of where they can go where they can receive the enrichment the extra help and supports that they need continuation of Blended and personalized learning with a focus on student achievement before the pandemic we partnered as Mr Shea had mentioned with Highlander Institute we trained two cohorts of teachers and from that point on we've really had a focus on Blended personalized and project-based learning when I go into classrooms I see teachers using Choice boards station rotation and I think that's important for so students can not only have the choice but they also are provided with authentic learning experiences which we have more work to do with that but this is you know we're moving forward we continue to capitalize on the two cohorts of teachers that we had trained in the past and we would like to move forward maybe with a third to kind of just provide support to all of our students and all of our teachers in moving forward with Blended personalized and project-based learning we continually revise our program of studies and our class options we've included Pathways of study which include Project Lead the Way advanced placement courses culminating um different experiences for students to ignite their passion this year we're adding pre-ap AP pre-calculus and also AP music theory to our cost offerings along with that we have a newly established business and Innovation and technology department we're very excited about the pathways that Mr perrotti has created for our students in that particular department and we we see great things ahead yeah um we're gonna present you guys that on December yeah so I gave you a little it's yeah it's not no no it's it's not something we want approval we want to be open about the changes that we are making and they're not massive changes but as we do change some morning we're going to show you guys that in December um when we talk about monitor understanding um feedback is one of the most efficient ways for for student learning and to gather student learning we are taking a massive focus on feedback our last faculty meeting focused on feedback we're going to continue to talk about what feedback means and how to effectively do that as a teacher I think it was one of the best tools I ever learned was to how I was giving feedback and that's when you get that paying for the Bucking the time and the effort and all of that so we're going to continue to do that um we're going to use the mtss and RTI models to support and identify students at risk we use that during um we actually have a spot and B planning that we're using it we're using some of our support staff really those tier two interventions so instead of jumping right up to tier three interventions we're really looking to see where we can support our students as as a quick intervention and a support getting back on track track and hopefully keep them in that like 85 percent of that triangle support model just a note about the feedback what's what's important not only for teachers to allow students the time to read their feedback and to learn from it but student reflection another emphasis that we we have this year is giving the time student to reflect on their learning to to show what they've learned to express what they're struggling with giving the students the time to do that as well as our teachers after their lessons to kind of debrief and talk about okay what went well what didn't go well and how could I do that better yeah reflection reflection reflection is I think one of the best things you can do as a as a teacher and a student as a learner um and then lastly it's that strategic use of that CPT time we're lucky that we have a significant amount of CPT time for our staff um and and it's an excellent to work on those data cycles and really to drive that student outcome learning we have a really strong Lead Teacher team and they're really focusing on using that time to make educational decisions and and supportive in that environment so um I want to thank you for your time we're really we're really happy about what we've got going on at Dartmouth High we've got a lot of options we're really focusing on building a building where students want to be every single day making that learning appropriate and just continue to make sure that we're doing what's right and that's been our Focus so far this year and building on that partnership with the middle school I think is really important we do the orientation in the summer and every year it gets better and better and we're just very excited because if we can create a solid transition with the Middle School our students will come and prepared and they'll they'll know it they need to do so do you have any questions okay this is what we'll start with you I just want to say the first thank you you know you're doing such a great job I think just uh coming in from this year I again no Mass just to return to normalcy just it just feels exciting to be here the kids seem real I mean just look at the gym I mean you're walking by like it's just uh so it feels great I think you guys are doing such a you know again you know third job of really trying to you know bring these students in and you know I I think there's like a new forensic spot I mean again all the different clubs that are out there and you know person I'm so excited to hear about AP music theory yeah since my son was asking about that so you know so lots of really exciting things and uh again lots of different avenues for different kids to find their place and their voice and their people so thank you thank you yeah thank you very much um you know again that sent that sense of belonging I I just really appreciate it I love uh Mr Shea when you talked about like the school day doesn't end about that 203 that's just that's you know poignant it really um struck me uh and so I thank you for that and I thank you for your receptiveness to my my input um in all of this and you know I I love I love to see um you know the all the students get um you know motivated to support like the unified you know be in our school award um but I wonder and I hope and I would um would probably bet the fact that you know your focus on increasing um participation in after school programs and that sort of thing that that that there's a focus you know I'm not sure there is on all students and I think about the pass and pal students and you know the you know the theme of Special Olympics Unified sports it's like we're more alike than different and you know all students have interests and strengths and um and this isn't a criticism at all it's just to kind of think a little bigger I think of a colleague of mine uh Dr Rossetti he um he's a sibling of a young man with disabilities and he talked about his brother Todd um and I may have shared this story over the years but you know his brother Todd was very popular in school he was a student with cerebral palsy and um you know everybody knew Todd but that didn't equate to getting asked out on a Friday night to you know to join the crew and and you know this can be said for all students and you know it resonates with me personally um and I'm always mindful of you know not not just leaving it being part of the high five Club you know we don't want our kids to be high-fived in the hallway and then not leave their four years of high school without a friend um and I know I trust that you have this in the back your mind because of your receptiveness and because of your background and because of what you know conversations that you know that I've been in with you and just not to forget all those students yeah we were talking with our unified team and when I got an opportunity to talk to them early in the season I said the most impactful presentation I've ever seen was in a small group a parent came into us and said how many of you all get a text message from your friend every kid raised their hand and the parent then said my son has never got a text message you know Reach Out be connected find a way to be connected and you know that always sticks with me you know who is not being heard who's the UN who's the students that yes I think the high five club might be the best way to describe that is yes you're a part of our school community community but again our Dartmouth High doesn't end at 203 it is almost eight o'clock at night and we have a full gym right now you know like every student should want to be a part of that every student should be connected to dharmouth High I don't matter about abilities or disabilities or who wherever you fall on that Spectrum you're you're you have a place here thank you thanks so I'll maybe give Dr give her a heart attack by saying you know if I had my druthers we wouldn't end at 203 but that's a conversation maybe for when Dr Gifford's like don't talk about school start times and time because that's a we won't bring that up right now I think it's great that we continue on but I love to see it not start at 7 30 in the morning at any rate um I just want to say I I like the idea of helping students find a clear path through their learning um you know we deal with this too that oftentimes they see their classes as a series of sort of check boxes that I have to check this and I have to check that and I have to check this and they don't they never get a sense of how that all comes together to put them on a path I also you know I think this was difficult during the pandemic and both of my kids really graduated during the pandemic but I'd really like to see us focus on um continuing to develop that sense of path beyond what happens when you leave Dartmouth High I think it was difficult to manage that during the pandemic because a lot of the stuff is done face to face in that you know Common planning time or the pace period that sort of stuff I'm in higher read I found the process of applying to colleges with my school somewhat baffling so I can't imagine what it's like for kids who don't have parents who are in the industry so to speak or who are not involved in that process and so I really like to see us to to to really focus on that building that clear learning path not just stopping it when you're done but where does that go and how do you do there and to give them the tools and the supports that they need to to take that next step whatever it may be and very often students they don't see like you said that the courses that they take in high school are preparing them for their experience After High School and we're trying to get them to think about what is your interest is it do you want to work when you graduate do you want to go to college what what are your interests would you like to enter the world of service so we're kind of having those conversations with them now and during advisories and presentations so they can connect those dots because very often they don't realize that until they're a junior a senior and they're like I wish I had done it differently so we're really trying to focus on that that's great and on that too um I I talk to students often too that we have an incredible offering in unified arts and in our bit program and to explore really who you are you know right now if I was to go take a photography class in the Bedford VOC I'm paying out of pocket right now Morgan Boswell throws me has an amazing teacher downstairs that has a full art full photo studio where you can develop film or do digital film you know it's we offer so much to find out who you are and what your interests are and we're really focusing on encouraging students to make those choices and really helping guide them to say what am I interested in maybe I'm not super interested in something and I might find out about that later on in life so again we're really working on that student and that whole student of where they are and where they are currently and where we want to see them go and what we can hopefully a future cost so we can take off their plates and they don't have to pay out outside later on today certainly paid off for us we went on vacation this year and my son who had taken the digital photography class took some amazing pictures everyone was like was that a professional photographer and I was like no he's trained at Dartmouth High yeah it really did wonders for him so thank you thank you thank you so I just see after this presentation a lot of growth potential I I think that it's always been here obviously covet knocked us down several steps um but I I stopped I'm starting to see it come back I'm thrilled to see that as a district we're really focusing on sense of belonging I said that I think at the last meeting when the the primary schools presented but it's just so important especially especially at the high school level when it sometimes things come to head or come to fruition you start to recognize a little bit more so I'm thrilled to see that and I'm thrilled to see that we're growing new Pathways I'm looking forward to that presentation because that's always been business technology that's always kind of knows um so no just a job well done uh presenting and just giving us uh giving the committee a a real um high level overview of of what this year is going to look like um and you know just I I love to hear you know everything that that's going on after school now and I know it was happening before um but just the fact that we're we're normal sick keep stressed and we're so lucky to have amazing people Ian with the band Andy with Athletics you know Graham has overseen you see OC in clubs activities which Rachel did before and I did that too we've got a lot of people that are in really good roles doing really great things so we're very lucky to have such a strong strong team around us that is really pushing our students to to be connected in in our essence of belonging you know what thank you for bringing that up Mr Shea because I couldn't agree with you more that we we certainly do have a large group of talented Professionals in this district and that does not go unnoticed yeah so thank you yeah we're lucky Dartmouth is a special place I I'm biased but I I love Dartmouth it's a special place there's a lot to offer the staff is incredible we have amazing students amazing students amazing staff you know there's so much great here yep thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much Mr Shea Mr [Applause] it just occurred to me as you were talking about the unified Arts you know program because it is so amazing if there's any way I would love to see that showcase a little bit more like on this floor I just I feel like when you come in you don't we don't see enough of the art so the photography or those like samples except for like at the art show um where we see music you know some of the other comments it would just be great to see that more like centralized like you know in some in some oh absolutely and I appreciate that feedback thank you um I was going to say too one more thing please spread the word that our showcase night for 7th and 8th grade parents is that December 7th five o'clock we know it's starting a little earlier that's why we're trying to get the word out as soon as possible but we really want to tail it into the mind in your mind so we wanted to bookend everything together one night for families but really if you can spread the word get the word out it's going to be a great night we're going to have the school Dartmouth High is a special place you guys sometimes we see it in this time of the day when it's not as as exuberant because it's the end of the day but you felt it coming in today I our goal is the whole building will be bustling like that and have a lot of energy in it for everyone to see all the incredible offerings at Dharma Thai and we can compete with any other school I really believe it great thank you so much thank you thank you thank you good job okay okay uh that being said uh the chair will entertain a motion to approve the Dartmouth Middle School in Dartmouth High School uh 2022-2023 School Improvement plans so moved second moved by Miss wait second by Ms Amaral on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you all right well we're behind the eight ball but that's all right it's been good stuff we'll take it anytime anytime okay uh old business superintendent search uh oh Mr Kylie you sent out those requests yeah Mike would you like me to share so I I prepared a request for quotes for a search consultant for the superintendent position issued that to three organizations that commonly do that here in the Commonwealth with a due date of November 30th which I thought would be Fair time and gave them two weeks to be able to prepare their proposal and then uh obviously for the next school committee meeting you'd be in a position to make a decision so as soon as as soon as we get the submissions back I'll uh sort of organize those for you and you know hopefully they stick to the format which is in my request for quotes is pretty clear as to what we're asking them to do and once they do that I'll provide that info to you and you can decide whether you would like them presents on the 12th um for questions or a presentation or whatever works for the for the committee at that time so thank you questions okay one or the other okay one of the other things that we are going to have to uh put the bed very quickly and by the next meeting have a decision is whether or not we want to try and get an interim superintendent in here I know we had some discussion on that the last time I gave you my two cents on it type of deal but we are going to have to uh take a look at that I know I gave you this looking for a leader from Mas that masc handed out at the at the conference and I went through it over the past week and there's some good stuff in there type of deal so you know take a look at that and and let's let's make a decision because we're going to have to move on this and the other thing we're going to have to think about is uh and on the superintendent on the actual search itself is the number on on the committee and how we want to break it up type type of deal you know you know administrative School committees you know faculty you know anybody outside that type of deal Dr Jenkins can we dig up what the search committee looked like last time I think that might be helpful to sort of informing us I mean I think it went pretty well last time and so there's no need to reinvent the wheel we can start yeah I'm not trying to reinvent no I know you're not but it's just if maybe I don't know if Kate or someone could dig that up and just sort of share it with us that might help us sort of think about um slime what that looked like and we could start from there as a discussion starter yeah we can do that that's no problem thank you thank you that's easy enough to do Mr newsc has a um document too that we can share with you about the decisions that you're going to need to make in that search process which I'm not sure the one that you have probably has some of that information in it but yeah um they also Jim Hardy just sent us a document um today okay that uh is sort of a decision-making timeline thoughts okay perfect thank you Chris uh in regards to the interim superintendent Mr chair I was just wondering if Mr Kiley had an opportunity to to think about this or um you know that what would be the next steps or I'm sure he's probably wondering or in whoever the interim might be is what is the expectation of the school committee for an interim whether it's Mr Kylie or someone else but I do agree that um you know I I think for the next meeting we should become prepared to have those conversations um that's kind of it's kind of where I'm at right now you want to answer you want to I'm happy to help in whatever way the committee you know sees best for the district so whatever in whatever role that is I'm happy to have you know happy to be a part of that so I've been a part of it before I thought it went pretty well last time so it's been a good uh it's been a good group and obviously we have a good team in place so yeah okay anything else with the superintendent search okay thank you everybody much appreciated uh excuse me new business Mr Kylie FY 24 budget timeline aren't we still in 23.
[Music] it appears now that appears but we are positioned now to end in a cliff instead of being in front of us 2023 in June the cliff will now be pushed back a year delayed to June 2024. I'm going to walk you through some General numbers I'm asking the board if we can come back and review in more detail in committee as soon as available committee meeting is possible to walk you through the details but with essentially with the 38 million dollars that we were awarded we've essentially spent 10 million dollars as of June 30th and then it begins to get a little complicated and then we are still encumbered 17 million dollars from now until June 2023. right so I'm kind of we are committed to another 17 million dollars of up to next June 2023. leaving us with 11 million dollars and this is why I feel like we need to get in committee and talk these things through the 11 million dollars that you have your pins and pencils out as we look at all of the grants that we have exhausted title one two three and four Alliance the general funds there are seven million dollars in positions across the district we are not able to fit in any brand those grants and they remain eligible for Esser the American relief program submission there was already two million dollars in Esther we could not move those to any other Revenue stream it was the two million dollars and you might recall we had hired about 14 15 teachers but the high school initially as part of essa2 we never cut those teachers positions we did cut through attrition and falls into the general fund budget are they Elementary High traditional Elementary teachers some of you have children in our elementary schools all of a sudden Shelter Rock Elementary School had a couple additional sections great Clayton who historically has historically always had two sections in every grade level had two additional sections yeah I think I've already mentioned Shelter Rock Shelter Rock sorry Stanley rough received two additional sections last year we removed those sections from Stanley Rock from Shell to rock from Great Plain down to eight seven which I did not mention another million dollars for the next two years so it's a million infinity so that's why we're in much better position and then the cabinet and I quite frankly being really conservative going into the summer given our conversations with you to wrap up last school year typically with this money available to us we would be very aggressive with trying to provide support degree in intervention support but we did not we just kind of held firm with our plans we left the covet as planned and we did not go outside of that plan despite the needs in the school community so that 11 million dollars that I just left you with and I'll just go back again 38 million we spent 10 as of June 30th 2022.
yes the two of them were 148 156 so okay like I'll use the 148. I was just asking where is the student parking lot because I didn't think our students really parked that much in art our parking lot is packed yeah but a lot of them are not students yes they are so that's why um my kids never got a student parking lot oh we we did about as many as we can every year yes we have a student lot that's alongside the football field and we've worked with the um the villages turned over street parking to us to manage as well around the school so that adds to well that's good uh our parking available 15 years since they were here anyway so things have changed a little bit sure but they're we do run out of spaces there's more people that would like to park than we have spaces well I would rather see the faculty get the first spots anyway staff yeah we have to get the staff here yeah that's important I think that's true yeah yeah all right safety Jim yes okay so caveat to this year um so about a month or so ago I was brought to speed at some situations that were happening at North and one of the was the uh a pipe leak a galvanized pipe in the underground track that was visual that you can see uh and in the elbow there was a split um just a little background this is old galvanized pipe we replaced the galvanized pipe in both of our buildings on our hot and cold water sides this is just a small section that's left and when I say small that's compared to the size of the school which is you know 500 000 square feet Jim when you say old pipe how old is this pipe 38 so yeah 1939 yeah yeah not 38 years not 38 years 1938 yes so the dinosaurs were very 85 years ago my plan all along uh was to our life safety survey is up every 10 years we did it in 2015 it's due up in 2025 we usually do the survey in 24 and start to work in 25.
this statement requires entities to report significant least Assets in their financial statements it's not really going to hit the financial statements of a regulatory basis but it would be disclosed in the footnotes so things like buses and copiers uh sometimes districts have you know significant leases for things like Chromebooks those would be considered assets because sort of assets because they're under control of the district and then the payments that are due in the future would be considered sort of a liability um in this year the it's basically it's implemented however the dollar amount that we've calculated for the value of those leases and liabilities at this point are insignificant to the financial statement so you're not required to report anything this year that's potentially going to change as a bus lease turns over so I think the major lease situation it was this is the final year of it so in terms of grand you know the grand scheme of things on your financials it was in material so you won't see anything this year it doesn't mean that it won't be reported in the future all right um the remainder of the report is just some supplementary schedules with again some more information that's important to to a certain users the end section is the federal audit um talks about the schedule of federal expenditures additional notes related to that and then if there were any findings related to your federal programs those would be reported there as well so that was that one other thing I wanted to mention that's not in this audit report but it is on your annual financial report to the state um The District's Financial profile score is ipsy's measure of financial strength and health and the district has a 3.9 out of four um which is the highest category it can be in as recognition it's the same as it was last year so I just want to point that out because not every district has uh that high of a score so something again to to be be happy about all right that is it for Central so questions comments they go too fast okay all right the next one's even shorter okay tell me when you're ready ready okay okay so for Northern Kane County Regional career and tech ed system um same same comments basically same staff dealing we're dealing with auto went well no issues um this was the second year for us doing this audit I know it's the second year for the district um being the administrator on that um no findings no no no again nothing that is you know reportable to the board so we're pleased to to report that uh this audit is all or this financial statement is also presented on the regulatory basis so again you'll see an adverse opinion on gaap financial statement principles however unmodified or a clean opinion under the regulatory basis um material in the statements included in the financial statement and we also tested internal controls for this entity um and I'll appear again to be appropriately designed and implemented there were no findings related to controls over compliance with the federal programs or any of the programs actually so good news there I will not necessarily go through all these financial statements because again it's pretty much the same as you will see for Central however there's only one fund for this entity so you'll see the educational fund and not the remaining eight or nine eight other funds seven or eight other funds cash balance and fund balance are positive for this entity uh the res the the fund balance in this entity is also a 100 reserved because it is reserved for state and federal Grant programs so um not not a lot of flexibility there in terms of using that money other than those designated programs cash and Investments were fully insured and collateralized and or collateralized again you'll see summarized Revenue sources and expenses and then expanded information on the following statements for your revenues and then your expenditures budget to actual total expenditures were less than budgeted so that was good and again notes to the financial statements it's a little bit different a lot smaller because again it's a joint agreement and not not an entire District and uh that that entity also was required to adopt Gatsby 87 nothing to report there in terms of those assets and liabilities quasi-assets of liabilities okay questions I forget anything to leave anything out okay fascinating right I love my jobs all right thank you thanks again for having me every year thanks a lot to Dana and that side of things for making sure that these always go very very well so thank you we're gonna move on to action items uh we need a motion a second to discuss and approve the consent agenda so moved second um you should have your revenue and expenditure reports in front of you um revenues are at 35.28 compared to 33.58 a year ago expenditures are trending at 27.62 compared to 26.04 a year ago we received impact fees this month for 50 000 46 dollars for nine home starts with no transition fees those payable reports for November are normal there's one Bond payment for 6.3 million dollars in there to U.S Bank this month um and then I just kind of put a little recapture of our audit that Kathy had just presented um the revenues exceeding expenditures in the torque fund that was intentional trying to reduce the fund balance because it was getting up there um and then in Northern Kane expenditures did exceed the revenues of Northern cane and it was more the timing of last year's expenditures coming and hitting in this year so those were exactly what she had said they were for and then tonight or I think next on the agenda is our Levy presentation so you'll just will act on that resolution any questions for Dana all right Falk yes and yes Nolan yes hener yes Rabe yes the thief yes Gorman yes Dana said we need a motion a second to discuss and approve the tentative tax Lobby so moved second me okay so tonight we're presenting the tentative Levy this first slide shows you the levy timeline you can see that tonight we're here for the tentative Levy I've calculated it down all the way down to when the December Levy is due and when we do it all the way down to where we deliver it to the counties um this year you'll see that we have to do a truth and Taxation which is my first time doing that so that's kind of exciting um but it's all for you um so with the truth and Taxation there's a very small window that you have to post your notice your public Hearing in the newspaper and on the website it has to be you know less than seven days before the board meeting no more than 14 days so you'll kind of see that little sweet spot that I'm going to put it in the newspaper on December 7th so if the newspaper messes up I have December 8th I have December 9th and I have the 12th to get it in so that way we meet all these deadlines so that that's basically all that's the extra step in in this whole thing so because so many people look at newspapers yeah yeah um so yes so December 7th if you're that's when it'll be posted if you want to read it um so every year I like to start out with the trends it shows you the history um kind of going back even before 2016 um 2017 you'll see that our EV eav continues to increase and then as our eav goes up our tax rate tax rates keep coming down and that's as true as long as the percentage of the eav increases higher than the bond payments so thankfully we've been our eav continues to grow which we know new houses um new homes new and the value of our homes are going up so for this year's Levy the projected eav numbers 922 million 500 000.
so in essence materially very close to the same amount as last year um the grant is eligible to be given out to certified staff with based on who have received a effective or highly effective rating the state law mandates there must be a 25 difference in the amount given to those two levels in 2017 the legislator excuse me the legislative General Assembly changed the law that said only classroom teachers are eligible to receive the grant even though we have many other certificated employees who get a rating as well so the people who have been carved out of the grant include guidance counselors Deans School psych social workers our Ed Tech trainers administrators assistive Tech coordinators Etc our administrative team and historically the board has always valued the what these other staff members bring to our students and in the past we have seeked the board's approval to use education fund money to pay a stipend to those aforementioned people who've been carved out of the Grant and to be in the same dollar amount as the people who are in the Grant and so I am seeking your approval tonight to pay a stipend to those those groups that I mentioned I don't have the dollar amounts per person yet we are focusing on doing our pay teacher pay raises for the next pay next week I will start working on the computations for the tags the teacher appreciation Grant and we intend to pay that out on a separate pay on December 9th which would be before our prior next before our next school board meeting that's why I seek your approval tonight to do that and then what I would do is once I have those calculations made I will bring that back again on the December 12th board meeting to have you bless it again so I seek your approval for that motion to approve that additional company we have a motion by Mrs Kelly second second by Dr Malco any discussion or questions all in favor aye motion passes thank you and my last item is to seek your approval for the donations that were included in the board packet move to approve the donations motion by Dr Medlin and I will second that any discussion questions all in favor aye motion passes thank you and uh I'm being told there are no public comments so with that we'll move on to our board comments and consideration of future agenda items Mr Marshall uh thank you uh this has been a short and sweet meeting this evening I have no particular comments to offer thank you Mrs Kelly I just like to wish our staff and our families a Happy Thanksgiving thank you Dr Medlin no comment thank you Dr Malco oh I do have something really positive to share and it's perfect because one of the principles is here Education Foundation is as I told you trying to reach out and be more Community oriented so we have a person from the community who is wanting to be a member of the board this is a letter she wrote I'm a parent of a first grader at Watson and a fifth grader at Grimmer you're not Grimmer wrong guy you're a clerk anyway I'm going to go ahead and finish it we moved to the area and Lake Central School Corporation in 2019 my older son attended two years of preschool and a well-funded private school in Chicago the lab school at University of Chicago I was extremely nervous about withdrawing him from that school and enrolling at Lake Central frankly I did not expect the quality and commitment of the Lake Central teachers to match the teachers at its private school where they were paid a lot more money where they are paid significantly more more money not only have the teachers at LC matched they have widely exceeded my expectations my children have had committed and talented teachers at Watson and Grimmer every staff member and administrator I interacted with at Watson was welcoming kind responsive and committed to students so um pretty exciting and you just need to hear those positive words because that's what keeps us going in this world that we live in she loved the work that the foundation is doing and she is also an employee at the University of Chicago they moved to St John to be near her husband's work and he and his two brothers are all like Central graduates so celebration yeah yeah right and are you done I don't want to overtalk you um but you know our LCT uh lctv and Publications they they went to St Louis and you know they brought home nine Awards too at their their convention so the lctv and Publications on the 14th went to St Louis and they brought home nine Awards so that was good to hear so um and I would like to also thank Mr Stanish on in in the high school for their Veterans Day program fortunately that was the only program I was able to get to this year but I'm sure they all were were great um but I can only attest to the one that I attended and it was fabulous so with that we'll move to uh Dr varaco for Board calendar of future activities thank you you're welcome so winter sports will begin check your calendars for activities I think there are still some holiday concerts to come for both band and choir at our secondary schools and our next board meeting will be here on December the 12th same time same place thank you Kelly
I know this is the time November right where it starts to get confusing right so we're we're thinking ahead to 24 we're still looking back at 22. we have audits that haven't been completed yet we have um quite a quite a bit of work still to do on that end of things um in fact the town audit from fiscal year 21 just recently got completed so that was way behind schedule by the way but at any rate um uh you know where and we're living in fiscal year 23 right now so there's there's a lot of moving Parts this is sort of the first public part of the fiscal year 24 process uh is to take a look at the timeline and uh our goal would be that we do all our internal work which we're already working on um and be prepared to bring a some thoughts forward to a budget subcommittee meeting likely towards the end of January and then and then bring forward in February to the school committee a budget proposal for consideration Mr noonson and I had a brief discussion prior to the meeting about what uncertainty there's going to be out there at that time when we're ready in you know mid-February to make a budget proposal and we are not going to have anything to go on in terms of the state finances at that point the good news is I don't I don't see the state finances getting worse from an educational perspective for us so I also don't see them getting dramatically better so but at least they should be somewhat predictable um that the town side of government might be a little more volatile on the state on the state legislature side so we'll have to keep an eye on that and see what that looks like um but you know obviously there's uh there's a number of uncertainties that are going to be a part of this process along the way so we need to be planning ahead and flexible and thinking about the um you know the grants that are going to be going away certainly being cognizant of that um and obviously we're still in negotiations so um you know we have that out there that um you know hopefully we'll have resolved by February but by the time we you know we publicly present we also have things like school bus transportation bid that is going to be um that is that is going to be coming up and uh we'll have that in time for the for the budget proposal but it's going to be significant um another major factor is the is inflation and and how that is playing a role in our costs in terms of um a number of things but particularly the operational services division at the state issued a a rate of increase for a special ed outplace programs at 14 percent and we don't know how that's going to impact us whether the state's going to intercede and attempt to um you know decrease that number in some way to make it more manageable for us or provide additional assistance to us it'll be interesting to see how that how that plays out so this budget process would then you know once we have an opportunity to start talking about it with you folks in February you know it'll be an interesting one from there moving through the town process and they have a new um you know they will have new Finance leadership over there too which might make it interesting so it's a lot to a lot to think about in this one a lot going on Shannon so can you remind me um where we stand with us our funding does it does it bring us all the way through fiscal year 24 or do we hit the cliff during fiscal year 24.
that leaves us with 28 is 17 million dollars in convert between staff and strategies and programs between now and June 30th 2023. that leaves us with 11 billion the 11 million is necessary because right now we currently have a gap with the city but it's improved the Gap has shrunk we don't have a resource a revenue to pay for the seven million gap we have two main already in Esser there's another 5 million that will not fit in any other Revenue bucket that we have so from that 11 million for 2023 7 has to come away and so that leaves us with four million dollars be careful it's not free money but it's four million dollars that we need for programming in the programming and I believe we spoke to some of these things in the curriculum committee I also talked about this last year as an expense to this year's budget that did not happen and this is our mandated reading program for this day at the curriculum department is interviewing it in finalizing that list now I think I believe the expectation is we have to choose one this year and begin to implement next year those numbers are coming in between two to four million dollars carries that sound right yeah that's 24 million dollars and I believe the state has identified five programs districts across the state of Connecticut have to choose from so I know the board like this is this news is not necess like everyone's not smiling because there's still a gap but the 16 million has been shrunk to seven and it's been shrunk to seven because our planned activities we did not have to implement and the team and I are happy to walk the walk through again I'd love to be able to do this in committee finance committee because I think would be a good place for us to speak to and ask what questions we need to and then also happy to follow up with the presentation I wanted to make sure we begin to talk about this clone into budget season for next year had an opportunity to talk to Kate and now before the board meeting today share with more chair as well prior again this is good news for us still work to be done we still need Investments but I I know I just like I'm cautiously optimistic because I I feel like this is a more doable Gap to fill so I understand that it might leave us with some questions I'm happy to answer them the team and I we all walk this journey together [Music] so that seems like good news so it shrunk just seven million as the Gap that we have to make up have we I missed the last finance committee meeting we're almost about one of them actually uh but if we've like got a list of things that what that would mean um like programs staff stuff that we we got on the list can we ask for that a little a couple times a list of what the cuts would look like yes or is that strictly in in the finance committee I mean but is there going to be a list of hey you don't get the 7 million we get four million we get three million what's what the cuts are going to look like is that worked have we started on that yet we we started a whole bunch of things um so the answer was yes I mean we ended last school year with some programs that could be compromised if so we we did that in the last meeting in June because I know we did because I talked about them um and I I we have not prepared a menu of if the city gives us this this is what we're cutting if the city gives us that this is where we're cutting we we have not done that um and for one week we haven't prepared and finished our own budget yet right so um we will do that and we'll we'll be doing those meetings publicly with the board and kind of walk through all of those realities we also have a committee that John has been leading and getting feedback from a community that will be making recommendations um that's the advisory committee and about that's not the only right you know source of information at the old cabinet not all aboard talk through but you know that at least this helps gives us foundationally anyway kind of what we're dealing with and that are strategically to talk about next steps yes totally totally thank you being on the advisory committee how is that affect that work or or does it at all so we were talking about some of the feedback thus far from the advisory committee I I think the advice of your curated committee moves forward with their recommendations and continues as if we're going to be challenged with cuts because the reality is there's still a gap there's still a gap that exists and whether the sense of the urgency might be a little different but I think I think that advisory committee moves forward with their recommendations and then we can talk about phases of implementation what we will pull from those recommendations Etc but I I think they still continue talking two things does the word attrition fit into the savings for teacher yes so thank you for that question we had the board might recall I believe this was an S2 SO2 strategy and this was for that idea of social distancing we hired 10 Elementary teachers through attrition we were able to fold so shell Teresa Luisa and I all elementary teachers as an example and we've been hired as extra teachers in the system Ralph Gladys and Kate all resign or retire and instead of keeping the extra positions we take their place I.E attrition and then we just lose those positions we just fold them in attrition and so that was a savings of a million dollars a year for us 2 million in total because it was a three year stretch to that question yeah [Music] 25 yes so literally pushed pushed it back one more year [Music] last meeting that we had really 12 million dollars this number to reduced significantly we still have that yes as well yes yes no it's reduced and so and it's reduced because it's reduced because of the savings of the pandemic and so we we have that money for one more year and with that money for one more year it will accept an inch this year and follow the American relief funds instead of ending this year it ends the following year as originally scheduled we were going to accelerate because we needed to fill that but to to your question and you remember that slide yeah right that that slide will likely come back on a table and we'll begin to discuss what does that mean phases so maybe we don't do the whole thing at once I don't think we'll have to um and you know again we'll get some feedback from the advisory committee and have discussions about support hopefully we don't have to lose any positions but okay yes thank you thank you for the good news sir being appropriate it's a good start for us that's for sure certainly a heck of a lot better than it was this time last month and I I want to thank the finance department uh the cabinet we 've been talking about cautiously optimistic but we've been working on this for a few months now working on number one moving staff to what we deem the appropriate space to pay them from so that was this was a heavy life story for the finance department and payroll department but it really took the whole team to put this together where carers advocating to say no my English comment out of title because Kelly saying my people should be coming out of title and Ida because and it it took a number of people to come to the table so I'm pulling care away from her department but we're seeing what Kelly seeing with my scene with Kim so I just want to thank all of them for getting us to this point really helped us to land to this evening with some confidence we can say we're in a much better place but frankly we're a little reluctant to do that until we cross our T's without our eyes several times so we feel really good about what we are despite feels like everyone's cautiously optimistic tonight but I understand would you like us to try and pick a date right that would be great yes and I was looking at the meetings it was like our next finance committee is not scheduled so January would be great if we could have one of us if we can if not certainly before we have our board meeting in January um I'm just going to throw out just November 14th [Music] thank you Kevin I'm sorry we have the teacher pipeline in here anyway so I'm not sure how long the room will be but pretty sure they're setting up a little bit early can we talked about the pipeline conversation now because it would be in a meeting in person but we were going to maybe encourage the boy to come in person how about you talk like a pipeline well if so annually the Rob Cody and his and his group will do um students will do a presentation of their work through their internship and the work that they've done in the library teacher pipeline uh it's a very special night and it's an opportunity for the students to articulate um and reflect on what they've learned in their courses and so um they were in recently and we're looking for a date with which to have um that event and talked about having it here so it's a little bit more traffic uh and more of our folks can see them and we did select the 14th and that was 5 30 to oh I'm sorry 4 15.
this was one of my higher priorities to be done at that time because I knew what passed right through and you know it's something that we needed to do but if it's not broke don't fix it it's still working but now it's breaking so I called our engineer our plumbing engineer he came out walked with me and we looked at that section and other sections and we both agreed that being more aggressive and getting this done especially this first one which is phase one which is that area in the underground track that's by the driver's ed classrooms should be done as soon as possible so we would like to do that for next summer and then the rest of it which is phase two and three would be done the following summer uh and that's much more complex because it's piping that goes to the white gym locker rooms it goes to the pool um so there's a lot of blowing out wall ceilings to get to it a much bigger project that's why you see a big number there um depending on how copper is in a year hopefully right we'll know more so that number May fluctuate down hopefully I'll be a little higher uh so air conditioners with that I talked with three Mark and Hank and we came up with a plan you know why can't we try putting this on Life Safety now as an add-on we've done that for other projects in the last two or three years we've been approved and we can use that funding towards this which would be ultimately the funding we'd be using in 2025.
and then um the new construction you can see um it's kind of been anywhere between 10 million to 15 million this year the projections came in at 25 million 600 000. and we're projecting our tax rate to go down 18 cents from 664 to 646. thank you this is just a visual representation of the eav tax rate from the prior slide so you can kind of see it some people like graphs some people like the numbers but this is just an easy visual to show you the relation as eav goes up your tax rate goes down this report is what gets posted onto the Kane County tax extension website every September they post this out so it's open and available for everybody this is the tool that all of Kane County schools use to budget for their Levy or prepare for their Levy every year I touch base with the tax extension officer and ask him if there's any newer updates and every year he tells me nope whatever is in September that's what I got this year though because it was so high of a jump in both eav and new construction I wanted to triple check that our numbers were accurate and it wasn't going to be any surprises or miscalculations um and he just said that he did revise it so here you'll actually see then the top left it says November date so he revised it for us on November 16th and it actually went even higher so in the middle of the page the rate setting eav the 923 million and then on the other side the total new construction the 24 million those are where the projections come and then on the next slide it'll show you kind of where we Trend and why how I came up with those recommendations but this is available for everybody to see it's up there every September so it's a great tool that Kane County does for us not all counties do that and they basically I think in their when I was talking to him he just said there's a lot of new homes in your neck of the woods so and we know that because of our enrollment growth so um So based on that previous slide these are where if the September columns which is really November this year but the September columns are the numbers that come straight from that report and then you can kind of see in the past that every year our new construction numbers always go up from the projected in September to the final and then the eav always comes down so this is kind of where I kind of got my estimated amount that I'm proposing for the levy I'm a little curious to see how close these come in because I did do the revised in November that if they had left it at the September and it was a two million dollar increase like how much more is it really going to increase or decrease so that might be a little bit skewed but okay so um just quick overview there's always four four main variables in a formula and later in the PowerPoint you'll see in my whole calculation slide that shows all this stuff um you always have your previous year extent your previous year extension base those are actual numbers that we know and the CPI that those are the ones that we know and then the projected ones from the previous slides so last year's 2021 extension base was 47 million 108 528.
we hit the cliff during fiscal 25 25 okay so um it is available into fiscal 25. okay at this point and they haven't there's there's been discussion about extending that because there has been some concern about spending the money at the federal level and at the states the different states levels but um but they have not done that and I don't think they're going to I think September 30th of 2024 is going to be the end of the use of that so it's a precarious position from a budget perspective we've been talking a lot about it on our side so it was Emerald I'm just thinking about um you know that s or cliff and then also considering you know you said you don't foresee or I would agree with you in terms of like the educational side of it in terms of legislative sort of support like lack a better word but then I think of SOA and which is incredibly important you know education equity and all that in the formula but remembering that we were held harmless right and and we're seen as a town that doesn't um contribute tax wise as much as we're perceived to not contribute as much as we could therefore don't get the support that we could if we did and so do you sort of worry or any any talks or or what are you hearing around that implication are we going to be held harmless we will be held harmless okay and I'm I'm pretty certain that that will not be you know that we won't be in Jeopardy of of that happening but we also won't be benefiting so um you know through that SOA process but it'll be interesting to see you know the the question one passed in the Massachusetts ballot so it'll be interesting to see how those funds are allocated too so I have a feeling it won't be to us but yeah you never know maybe maybe it will we certainly will have an opportunity to lobby for that with our legislators excuse me Mr Oliver thank you Mr chair uh just a quick question uh actually more of a request hoping that um my colleague Dr Jenkins and I can uh fit in here somewhere a budget subcommittee meeting I'd like to I'd personally like to hear a little bit more about the answer positions what are we doing you know as far as uh new positions um attrition all that some I'm thinking somewhere in between the individual meetings with principals and directors The Proposal review and then um between the the 13th and the 26th of January somewhere in that one that was kind of what I'm thinking this way you've had the opportunity to meet with everyone that's fine right right now the budget timeline shows a budget subcommittee meeting on February 6th but it's not to say we couldn't do it a little earlier than that I kind of like I would kind of like to have a little a little more involvement in in this I think is where I'm coming from I don't wonder if whether we're thinking about maybe because that February 6th meeting it looks like we're meeting with the principals and I don't wonder whether the meeting you're talking about is us with the administration it is so two meetings instead of one yeah we could do one towards um even our second half of January I think would be a good time for that we would have already uh you know we would be well on our way to developing what is you know the draft budget at that point so great that'll be fine okay any you don't need a motion on this Jim this is this is just an FYI correct correct yeah any other any other questions and again I would think that this also was a fluid document yes it always changes I don't think I've ever done one that didn't change I don't think so either um but in all my years we'll be flexible like New England weather wait five minutes it'll change okay group is the superintendent update okay gave you some information that was on my list but just to go over a few more the Middle School actually all of the schools have been doing some fundraisers where they continue to support needy families throughout the holidays so I ran in Middle School in Quinn last week they were doing a couple of fundraises with hat day and all of that so that goes on throughout the district all the time parent conferences for Middle School is right around the corner I know they were sending out information on that and Mr Doane he did mention today but he also called me today and had me mention asked that I mentioned that the uh the after school clubs really had a lot of participation they were very happy about that um Quinn had their big name revealed today for the lion so that was Leo oh miss Thomas sent me some good pictures so we'll get those up and the district was able to get from Desi they passed out more covid tests so we had them picked up last week we put them in all of the schools for all of the staff to take home a couple and they're going to be sent home to parents I believe tomorrow the schools were passing those out to the kids again it's just voluntary they were free so we took took advantage of that um as Mr Shea mentioned once again that we are having the minding your mind two two dates for that and one will be at the middle school and one at the high school but I just want to make a note that the one at the high school in the evening is for any parent it's not just High School parents any parent in the district that wants to attend that as you know Matilda is coming up the play so that's December one and two and three so you should have information on that um Thanksgiving game of course is going to be it for a Haven at 10 o'clock on Thursday and I did want to mention also Mr perrotti was once again doing crazy things but um on December 10th he's hooking up with DCTV and they're doing a live Telethon from Target from the target where they have the fill the bus with the police department so um we have I have here two senior students Hannah Lima and Ryan Aruda will be hosting that so I'm sure you'll be able to stop by and bring your toy for um for that event so he said it's the first time they're doing it and we'll see where it goes so what does it do for that again uh that's December 10th and it's from 10 to 2.
4 15 to 6 30 prior to the board meeting so that more more interactions that are whatever that was 4 15 to 6 30. can we do it afterwards so they'll just be here in advance um of the 14th yeah [Music] we do that actually um I've got a hold and I've got the one here it's 5 30 to 7 30. so they they scheduled for Wednesday in this room hoping board would would come here since they typically have the meetings at Wisconsin and so they were hoping if they had the meeting here we may get some more and more traffic in here for those of you who are not aware of the pipeline program has been in place for probably at least a decade now yeah maybe maybe seven eight years now okay and we've hired three teachers from the pipeline program now uh meaning students who graduated from Danbury High School bilingual why language family students who go through the pipeline program college and then come back and teach in Danbury so it's a long commitment we have at least two I'm sorry yes it is it is and so and then our students in these poster sessions they make presentations on the work they've done in the High School part of the class and you you would think you're talking to college students it's really an amazing night their families come and it's really kind of like a mini graduation for them in this program and then of course we hope that they continue in their studies and pursue a career in education obviously all of them do not but the ones that do some who have hung around we've to hire them I was fortunate enough to be here for our first hire at park at the Museum she's been great yeah I think that's at 4 30.
and then we'd get a head start and be aggressive getting this done so I certainly wouldn't want to shut down pools or areas of buildings if this got even worse and it would be hard to architecturally put together in you'll do it in your school year we got to do it in the summer yeah you can shut down a big area here so that's our plan we've put the application in goes through Roe first and then it goes down to the state for approval but talking with experts at White and my experience with life safety I think we have an excellent chance to get this approved I'm glad that I for I was concerned at first that it was going to be coming out of our Capital so yeah so is Mark yeah so um yes well and this at a at a time when inflation is running so high and and our our ability to keep up with that is so limited so um so we've got some stresses coming forward um yeah I know it's a hit you know I well it's hard to look at a big number like that and say wow you know he did all this work in mfp you know and now we're doing you know all this other work it never ends uh it really doesn't in my career you know you you do a lot of work and keeping your buildings up and I'll say I I know a lot of districts our buildings are in phenomenal shape and that's because of support from the board and from our Administration that put money towards projects that need to be done before they break down well anyone who owns a house knows it as soon as you get one thing fixed so we had hoped to make it you know until 25 to replace it but this is also like a pipe burst in the indoor track is not a great outcome you know much more expensive yeah plus then you have the cleanup and the repair and everything else so um we're just going to move the timetable up for work that we expected to do anyway it's just yeah well it's just the the risk is getting much greater that we can incur much more cost in terms of Damages as a result of a major major failure you can't always put a Band-Aid on it yeah so um so anyhow I'd say we got I got our monies out of the pipes yeah 38 to now yeah not bad like 85 years yeah we need to go find those people do they even make the galvanized pipe anymore no it all goes in as copper now well I'm sure too that you know we've probably got several connections too because tuned to similar metal Metals as well that that that's a that's always accelerate the process yeah so um yeah yeah and it's not this isn't a surprise this is something we are aware of but we were hoping hoping to get another a couple more maybe get to 86 or 87.