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um Ken could you just go up a page um hopefully they match yeah so there they are on the the left there the current year and that's what we projected forward and it's what it's saying is we're budgeting the same uh service level which means the same number of buses we're not cutting um you know they're going to be crowded again but we're not adding at this point same number but but it's going to cost almost a half a million dollars more for the same service right and most well it's the contract increase of three and a half percent which you know in hindsight that looks pretty good some of the transportation bids that are coming in are just uh they're awful awfully High uh but and also the other reason this line is high is that offset I told you you'll see on page 34 uh where the Abbott Tech buses are now on this line where before they were in Dan's budget Mr Russo uh please excuse me for a moment just want to confirm that Zoom user is um who that is I believe it's Michelle but I don't want to assume Michelle could you give us a photo yes it is me all right all right great I had said hello earlier okay all right so we're all set thank you thank you okay um so I also uh again what we'd like to do uh Thursday night is continue with um diving into lines uh particularly the salary lines the new positions uh maybe the answer a little bit here from the high school and then we'll also do some of the other areas of the budget if there's you know something in particular you could mention it or we could maybe talk about the ones that we think are changing or or so from uh this year and uh because we'll have another session even after uh Thursday I think maybe we have two more after that so that that sounds like a plan to you well done sir well done okay all right and if if I may be um a little bit bald if if you do have some questions already on the line items and you want to send them in to Eddie and I uh we'll have the answers ready that could it might make things go faster Thursday night uh but you don't have to we're we're going to come in trying to answer anything that gets asked that evening but if there are some maybe we could get started on sure thank you thank you John it seems like what I've noticed so far is a lot of items have moved to other places um like we do we discuss counselors yeah you know now you know how can you have three counselors I mean and it turns out there was you have moved them to other line items and um yeah are you talking about the new positions that we requested Mr Russo well there was one line I existing no it's the existing ones we had a line right at the beginning um I I think I'll I I don't have a um a general answer for that would apply to all or even most of those without looking at them individually um and we had to discussed this earlier today and I just it's a general propensity with Isaac Suspect with with other line items that I I did not understand when I went through this yeah I I would add um we're trying to give uh gradually uh to give the principals um more decision making with their allotment and what that means is you may have a principle that one year uh decides that you know the they need to replace more library books than they normally would for whatever reason any devotes a larger share to that but the next year the library is in good shape um maybe he wants to do something in the kindergarten classrooms for the kindergarten teachers it's a little different so um the fact that the principal's budget is different from one year to the next um you know I I'd be surprised if they were the same well my surprise is one of the principals put a budget in for supplies that was up 300 percent and I just but I assume that you've looked at this and and we could discuss this today you know it Thursday or another time it's just I just found some again items moved possibly to other places the right three counselors it but yep I understand okay thank you okay any other questions folks okay Teresa John I just want to say that I really appreciate the work uh that you're trying to do on behalf of the district for you know fuel cost savings um I think that's a something that's near and dear to everybody's heart right now um and watching those ever Source numbers add up so quickly so the thoughtfulness you're putting into that I really appreciate thank you chick is great to work I I like calling him yeah I asked him uh I asked him yesterday is because he locked in our electricity like he did I mean who would have thought that was coming I said to him chase you do night nice savings again I said uh do you have any football scores You can predict for me uh I also think very highly check Volpe yeah years ago we used to meet at expect discount at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning discuss our shopping strategies I mean the man is all in yeah yeah you said it better than I could thank you all foreign any other questions I just wanted to make a comment real quick just I want to say thank you Al and Kate and everybody guys are doing a great job on the finance committee um and John you're thank you for answering the questions as best as you can and um on Thursday I'd love to get in um more more detail but just had a quick question do we get confirmation I know the invite was sent out to council members and the mayor Kevin did we get confirmation is any any other council members attending I we can find out from Kara um I don't know I don't know if we have any confirmation yet okay yeah she sent the which I found uh she sent the invitation out today so it's only a two-day notice did you after the meeting on Wednesday when we said we were going to invite them did you reach out to anybody directly or we just sent the formal invitation I did not reach out to anyone directly just Kara we talked about in debrief afterwards okay oh yeah if you could find out some confirmation if anybody's coming that would be great yeah I think what she'll do is um I know she spoke with Lindsay so I don't know if it was just sent out directly um or we can do an invite which would probably be even easier folks are going to accept to be able to come but I'll I'll speak with her we'll try to nail down who's coming who's not coming okay great thank you and uh not to be redundled but well I guess I'm going to be redundant that's a 5.4 mil in salaries and five million in salary and benefit increasing definitely flexed uh the number of all including our the new hires that that we would like to hire yeah uh no that is no um that's just the uh existing staff I think we called it budgeted positions um because that that line we took all the people that were working right from here and just said okay right December 6th um but then we we put in all the vacant positions we have we ex trying to fill them and expect to film that the the line year the other line is uh the new positions we're requesting I I just felt if we isolated that um it would be very easy to say how much we ask them for who are they and then we can bring in uh the explanations um on Thursday right the the salaries and benefits line missed so that on that paper you just displayed is just contractual obligations to move up the line for next year you know we have we have 2 000 employees in this district and that's the cost of doing business um so you know we we have negotiated contracts that we have to honor um and that that that's why you're seeing that five million dollar number that is before we add new staff to the system right and I do see your your total number is below the the rate of inflation sir again well well done yeah questions any other questions Teresa um back about those uh the story in the paper about those tutors are eligible for benefits will that increase our line for next year yeah that that's being that's still being explored Theresa I'll ask John to jump in here in a second um our tutors um my understanding is years ago they had appealed to this the decision it was decided um I believe this was a city decision that the tutors were not eligible for a pension um that was appealed um and then they won the appeal um and so the impact of that appeal is I we don't know all the details yet uh we have folks from our office going over to the city to better understand what this means in terms of impact we don't know if this is you know a one year um deal and we just have to address you know address and make sure tutors in our pension it's now moving forward if this is retroactive but we have to go back three years six years we don't know the specifics yet um but but there has already been an agreed upon um kind of pension res resolution if you will that the city has my belief secured as late as as late as last year maybe it's been two years now um and so something is in place now for all of our staff um in terms of contributions and assuming the tutors will now be eligible they can also jump in on that plan but but in terms of impact I don't think that's been determined yet uh John do you have any different or additional information yeah uh well in addition uh if you remember I I put up a page I should I'll dig it out again it showed the city budget the different departments police fire and so on well down the list was a line that just said uh employee benefits it was it was a big one might have been the biggest one on the list um that is where the city budgets all of uh all of the contributions and All the Monies that are needed to keep the Pension funds solvent including uh for our current non-certified people that we have here that have been in the pension plan for many many years so were we to be asked to begin to finance uh the pension contributions for one particular subgroup of a group that would be a departure from a long-standing practice uh here in the in the city um so we'll have to see how that goes but be very different I'm not sure what the arguments would be made why we should pick that up so yeah the other thing is uh you know when you when you have a lawsuit like that that it starts um the insurance company's accountants they'll want you to reserve something uh set it aside in case you lose um and even the second year if they felt things weren't definitely going their way uh the right thing to have done would have been to reserve some more money uh in case you lost so I'm hoping that they've put something aside for this day that remains to be seen but we'll keep watching thank you anyone else Mr Spang Eddie Mr Wilson any closing remarks if all questions so I I will just um just want to add one more thing to Teresa's question um we we were kind of caught by surprise by the news in the paper ourselves and started to scramble and trying to understand what this means for us um Teresa I think indirectly certainly it could impact us as a district but directly to John's point it should not um it should not be our responsibility because the pension is provided by the city however indirectly it could um and so obviously I hope it doesn't because you know we have our own needs in the right now um you know in terms of serving kids kids and children and families of Danbury but we will know some more specifics um I think in the coming the coming weeks for sure particularly since we have a meeting I believe scheduled next week thank you folks in cooperation counseling no problem you're welcome so Mr Russo looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday um to dig in a little deeper on during our workshop and um I'm confident we'll be able to answer the many questions that might need to be answered that night so we can continue to move forward with the proposal proposed budget we look forward to being there Mr Wilson thank you sir thank you look at John's smile all right any other questions final remarks I'll entertaining motion Teresa that we adjourn the meeting the motion to adjourn second done all in favor aye aye aye ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your time your your attendance and and all your questions that we brought forward tonight and I look forward to seeing everyone again on Thursday well I look forward to seeing every
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and so the current budget Year we're in 22-23 we did the same thing we built a budget to meet expected claims so I'm going to take you through where we are right now and I don't want anyone to panic but I'm going to explain why we're not at budget right now all right but before I leave this slide this last year 2122 was good and we we did meet um a budgeted meet our expected claims then can you explain so but we've got we got a 1.5 billion dollar contribution from the town yes and I include if you look at the 961 I added that 1.5 million as part of the monthly contribution so that 961 000 includes the 1.5 million dollar Edition this 961 000 that I show is the average monthly yeah that includes the 1.5 million dollars from the town so I when we budgeted it we budgeted to include that 1.5 million even though it was paid in as one lump sum I broke it out to okay what our monthly contribution was okay and then um one of the questions so we depleted the stop losses or a lot of years it's like three years over a million dollars our our staff I mean that's that's because the claims exceeded by significant claims over 175 000.
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so and just to give you some round numbers our stop-loss insurance is a million dollars a year roughly it's going to be a little bit higher than that next year because we've had claims that are in some years exceeded our stop loss payments we've got more than we've paid in and it doesn't work well that way we have to pay based on expected claims so the last couple of years we've paid a million a year for stop loss and got you know payments in the neighborhood of eight hundred thousand dollars so that's headed into this column here okay okay thanks so my question is are our staff sicker or is are our charges yeah so that's a good question and I'm gonna kind of give you some perspective on that in the next few slides so this is showing for the four years ninth 2019 through 2022.
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this is showing claims not for the full year just till July to December and it's claims over twenty five thousand dollars which has been the driver of why our claims experience has gotten worse over the last few years significantly so if you look in 2019 we had 25 claims that were over twenty five thousand dollars from July through December that's six months of the claim here and I used July to December because it gives me an opportunity to explain where we are this year and you could see that it increased to 45 claims dropped a little to 43 claims in 21 and this July to December we're at 51 claims over 25 000. so it's increased by about a hundred percent over those those four years if you look at the dollars of those claims we went from 1.4 million in 2019 to 3.51 million this delighted December so it's up 143 so well what's happening and the answer is people are getting sicker or have significant illness so now I take that information and I break it down and I'm sure you remember this from last year but this is July to December of 2019 where we had 25 claims over 25 000 they totaled 1.4 million the average claim was 57 000 and then the breakdown for 2019 we had seven cancer claims totaling 584 thousand we had five claims that were related to Bone and Joint totaling 232 000 but clearly cancer was was the largest at 584 000.
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if I look at the same oh and I do want to point out that we had no stop loss reimbursement expected in 2019. now I'm going to take that same data for this year today July to December and the picture is um pretty Stark and dramatic so we had 51 claims instead of 25.
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nine claims were for cancer there were seven in 2019 the dollar amount though is a million 28 000 so the average claim is a lot higher at about a hundred fourteen thousand and most of this is related to treatment immunotherapy or chemotherapy you know plus any other diagnostic costs related to someone who's being treated for cancer the one that's that really um jumps off the page which is different is this one here heart arterial blood um and and stroke unfortunately that increased to 896 000 we had 11 claims for that in this year if I flip back we had only four claims totaling 236 000 four years ago so I can't tell you why that's happened but it's happened and even Tom who's here with us to talk a little bit about some of his anecdotal experience with his other clients um it's some I don't know if there's anything more to that more to it than that you know I don't think our you know the age distribution the population is different than any other District that hasn't changed dramatically for us either but it does seem to be that we do have employees that have more severe illness now certainly the cost related to treating illness you know over not only the last four years but you know the last decade or so you know there are improved treatments there are improved drugs they're also more expensive that's part of what the factor is here but you know it has been clearly from a claims perspective it has been a difficult four years for us keep moving yes never mind you're going to cover my dislike so just to review just remember that we the budget that we have for medical benefits we contribute every month into this medical benefits Reserve fund and then we pay claims out of that medical benefits Reserve so we like to have a Reserve balance so that we never run out of funding to pay our claims you know what we put in is controllable claims are uncontrollable you know we do our best you know working with with Tom and Cigna to estimate what claims will be but it's not foolproof so you know the rule of thumb is the healthy Reserve covers two to three months worth of claims and you could see you know back in 2018 we had um five months worth of claims with a four million dollar Reserve but that's dropped and our recent balance is 884 000 as of December 31st and I did provide the updated December medical benefits report you know the good news is that it was actually lower in November we were down about 700 000 but you know we had a we didn't have a a significant reduction in claims was about 1.1 million dollars in December but we did have stop loss that kicked in so we have about 234 000 of stop loss plus we received additional prescription rebates so that actually helped us increase the Reserve balance when we hit January through April we should see how claims go down because we start the new HSA plan year so hopefully we start building that Reserve balance back up we in theory should end with about 1.3 million in our Reserve because we budgeted claims or contributions to equal expected claims so right now we're running behind but as we go through the next few months you know we hope and we always keep our fingers crossed when it comes to claims that those claims will drop so that the money that we put in every month which is a million dollars will start to buoy The Reserve balance back up um this is just a kind of a graph showing what I just explained you know ideally we would have a Reserve balance of 2 million I will add that the budget that we're requesting is not intended to build up our reserves it's just to try and keep claims and contributions equal so we don't deteriorate our Reserve balance and if there's any well there's another piece of good news 800 000 is far from the low we got down to 205 000 when one month so kind of feel good about that well four times higher all right so how do we get to this 13 .325 million that we budget and we do budget and that here in in Cheshire so if you look at what we need for claims next year it's 13.2 million that's our expected claims so we're expecting claims you know based on the information we received from Tom at USI we expect claims to go up about 10 percent next year so that's why we need 13.2 million we're going to pay about 1.4 million for stop loss premiums to protect us from any large claims over 175 thousand employees do receive an HSA contribution from the board that 711 000 we pay Cigna administrative fees we're budgeting 300 000 for that we do have employees that are grandfathered that if they waive medical insurance with us they receive a payment of a thousand to twelve hundred dollars per year based on their bargaining unit agreement and then I mentioned that Cigna gives us about eighty thousand dollars per year for wellness money but we do pay for the employee assistance program which they don't fund and that's what that eighty three hundred dollars represents so if you take the total of all these expenditures that we're budgeting it's 15.79 million that's before we subtract for the 1.9 million that our employees paid through their co-share contribution and we are expecting or budgeting stop-loss reimbursement of 500 000 against that 1.4 million in premiums so that's how we got to the 13 million dollars given our our total cost is higher than that it is offset by those two items well how do we get this number we got it from the rolling 12-month average which we which Tom provides for us um and I'm going to introduce Tom here in a second he's going to go through just some information that I think will be helpful to look at the last two years so this sheet I know it's hard to read but this is the sheet that we received from Tom you know every year this is the renewal this is the projected renewal based on 12 months rolling claims and then adjusted as needed for the realities of what's happening in the medical world these days but this is as of October we will continue to get updates as we move through the budget cycle you know as a board the budget cycle ends in February but we'll continue to get updates up until the Town Council approves its budget in April so this number can go up or down I don't want to predict but we're budgeting based on what we believe will be our expected claims based on October and with that I do want to introduce Tom Tom if you you know stand here the mic gets picked up for the public and Tom is going to walk through a worksheet that I provided to all the board members it's on it's a legal piece of paper and and with that Tom thanks for being here and thank you yeah so I got one of them thank you everyone um so I'm gonna run through some of these slides tonight and again if you have any questions at all just stop me and ask me um I think Vin did a great job of summarizing a lot of the stuff I mean we meet many times throughout the year and talk about stuff and he's absolutely right the past few years it's not just in Cheshire we have seen whether it's covid whether it's different things that have been happening definitely seen especially in the municipal world the claims have kind of gone up and been pointed out a definitely a couple areas like heart stroke areas like that I mean the cancer the cancer areas have always been high but some of the area of those other areas are those things that were preventable and that people weren't seeking treatment for and stuff again that's not that's not something we can pinpoint right now but those would definitely jumped up the other one that he before I get into my slides that you know I wanted to when he pointed out was uh the mental health unfortunately we are seeing a large increase in that in all groups not just in the miscible side but on all of my groups commercial you're seeing a lot of the mental health substance abuse really where it might have not been top five before it's moving up there and everybody knows why and so it's causing a concern and it is increasing over time because people are seeking treatment for it um so again this might be a little hard to to see but what we try to do every year is just compare fiscal years so this is showing fiscal year 2021 versus 21 22 and we're just showing employees stayed relatively the same 712 to 7 or 11 and I apologize when we run these it is the town and Board of Ed so it's a little combined but obviously the Board of Ed makes up 80 percent of the total population at least members you'll see that so when you go to the Cross summary the gross claims and again when you're looking at this this doesn't take into account loss premium admin fees anything like that so when you're like well why is this combining with the town this is just claims for this time period so again we look at this um you know we're looking at total net claims it looks like they're going down Pharmacy looks like it's going up slightly and when you look at it it's a net going down but again to this point when we look at it year over year in the past when we have had the healthier reserves and everything when we're doing the projections and looking at it this is the decision that can be made and said hey based on where the reserves are and everything instead of budgeting you know 10 we're going to budget a little lower so again this number this number can look a little deceiving from the fact that year over year hey our claims are going down why do we have to budget increase again it can just be it can be a little deceiving uh when we look at this the average Risk Index again this is this is actually pretty good we met with the town and Board of Ed at the beginning November when we reviewed this again we've seen claims have been jumping up but actually what we have seen is that the risk that has come off your plan versus the risk that is coming on your plan is a positive so again we're not going to see that right away we're not going to see these in in the next maybe a couple months but again based on maybe retirement people terminating leaving new hires what we're seeing is when you look at age sex the risk all the different risk factors we're seeing the risk that is coming on to the plan is again actually a better risk so any questions so far so again we just go through there we just look at the medical per employee per month is about per uh is basically flat the pharmacy again up about 5.8 percent which would make sense um everybody knows I mean there's the Vin's point is was perfect again as far as Trend and everything goes when you talk about treating conditions and everything really when you talk about medical trend is it's the cost of everything's going up so the cost to treat somebody for a certain condition the prescription that can control or cure a certain condition costs money and that's really what's going into the trend and everything um on this page we're just looking at kind of different things like your inpatient days per thousand eight outpatient days so the ones in red are where things really jumped up so again when you look year over year the one that really does jump up as a skilled nursing where you know it's a 68 increase that again can be associated with the uh on the slide where we showed The Strokes the heart conditions things like that obviously if somebody has a condition like that a lot of times after that there's a skilled nursing or a rehab that's associated with it so that is something that's jumping up emergency room again that's something we have seen people are you know worried about they feel something instead of going to urgent care whatever they go into emergency room they want to make sure they're getting their treatment so we get it um but again there there's education and stuff that can be involved there because a lot of times these days everybody knows there's a I think there's an urgent care right here now right you know there's the urgent cares and stuff so if it's truly not an emergency that is an education process that hey maybe it's maybe it's urgent care do you wanna you wanna jump in here with me on this or just yeah a little bit about how you calculate your you know the expected claims year over year I know that we talk about rolling yeah how you guys do it yep so it's it's not just suicides everybody so the way when you're looking at how to develop your self-funded so obviously 90 of what you pay into your Medical Reserve that pays out everything ninety percent of it is claims so when we look at it every year and we start the budget process what anybody does is you have to take the most recent 12 months of claims and that's it so you take the most recent 12 months of claims you take into account large claims you have to add in Trend then show you the slide talking about National Trend I believe Cigna all the National Carriers they're still using in the eight and a half to nine percent medical Trend when you talk about that so again you know for the request of in the 12 12 and a half percent range is above what medical trend is yes but again to to Vin's Point what happens is we have to start looking at this in November the farther out you're from July even though we're saying nine to ten percent annual Trend the more you have to add into that number because the farther out you are so the closer you get the closer you get to July 1st the more you can reduce that number so again as we can look at updated claims basically if you run exactly the same the next couple months that's a point that can drop off every month just Trend so even if claims don't run better if you just run the same as you've been running your Trend number lowers because you're getting closer to July 1st so if your Trend number lowers then the projections can lower now again that can go the other way obviously Claims can go up and we can see things again we have seen in the past two to three years we have seen a jump in some of the larger claims we have seen higher utilization and you know we've been pinpointalized things um again they're the Wellness Plan has been put in place to get people to get their early screenings I mean the the mammogram is a perfect example you know and we've and we have looked at this when we sit down and we look at what the specific cancers are we do look at where these cancers that could have been caught by an early screening you know um Again The Strokes and heart conditions were those things where if people had been doing certain screenings and everything could it those those are the kinds of things that we do want to catch and to stop but again the past two three years you've definitely seen it not just here everywhere that people maybe have stopped doing some of the things that they were doing um going to see their doctors on a regular basis and you know you're starting to see some of it unfortunately probably catch up um you know can we 100 say that's what it is no but I would say you know if you look group to group that it's pretty consistent um you know the only thing I would say that was a little different with Cheshire that I saw on the trend is that again Ben did a great job pointed out that you've had some larger claims over the years and obviously during covid if you had a serious condition you still weren't going to stop going to the doctor and everything so whereas I saw a lot of groups go like this Cheshire kind of stayed like this because they had some of the large claimants and stuff that were still seeking their treatment and everything and then obviously after some of the restrictions with covet and everything then you start you know the people that didn't get their knee Replacements hip replacements you know surgeries that they needed on top of the large claims you started seeing this so as groups where again I'm seeing it where I'm seeing a spike for things that weren't done with Cheshire yet again some of the large claimants plus some of the spikes and services that people put off because of covid yes sir um for the uh the claims that increase for uh for cardiac stroke yeah did you find that there was a uh a change in age profile were they younger or were they it was it more of that you were saying that um uh conditions were perhaps put off for whatever reason might not be able to access Healthcare the pandemic lockdown this is sort of a backlog of that or a uh no we saw we saw your your age Factor that's until last I guess like I said until we reviewed it recently we did see your a tractor was pretty was pretty steady and everything so I'm not sure when I again that's what I'm saying we're not seeing anything just now when I say your risk profile started to improve I mean literally it's probably the last six to eight months where we see maybe like you said your age sex factor maybe if it was average of 45 that we've seen it go down now so that no I wouldn't I wouldn't say that was necessarily I would I would look at that that unfortunately that might have been some of those conditions where listen a couple of them when we look at them we're definitely just unfortunate probably circumstances but do I truly when I look at the stats and stuff think there's some people in there that weren't treating certain conditions that maybe could have been caught early yeah I think it's a combination is that sorry is it answer your question I believe so okay can I can you um I don't want to perpetuate this but could you just um explain some of these acronyms like pepm um um p.m P.M so p e p m is per employee per month okay so per employee per month would be yeah if you have 600 people that work at the board of ed on the insurance per employee per month they might have children and fan and uh spouses on the plan they it could be 1200 so it's not belly buttons that's just employees so that's if they're single two-person or family per employee per month if per member per month so that would be belly buttons that would be the dependence and the spouses okay um just personal um a couple years back my husband gets near poison ivy he eat balloons and so I'm a good student and I say go to the walk-in clinic because it's going to be cheaper than the emergency room and um we got the bill and he was charged in emergency room right and I called him and I said why did you do this he went to a walk-in and they said well it's now affiliated with Mid-State so you're going to get charged an emergency room right so if they're doing that what difference does it make how much you educate it so it's a that's a good point you make and unfortunately there are some of the health systems that will do it but then a lot of times there are non-affiliated urgent cares too so I guess I live in I live in I live in Woodbridge so I'll just use an example in Orange there's Stoney Creek Urgent Care and um they're not necessarily associated with they might have a loose affiliation with Yale in them but they might be a little different but again you're totally right next to town hall there's Hartford is that an urgent care right there now Hartford Healthcare and so they are you're right they're affiliated with the hospital are they going to charge an emergency room rate if your husband goes in because he needs an EpiPen because he's blown up because of poison ivy yeah but there are some urgent care centers that don't aren't necessarily associated with the hospitals they might have a loose affiliation but again it's all about education and especially people with HSA again an emergency situation your husband has to go he's going to go you know what I mean is it going to and somebody feels like they're having a heart attack they're going to go um I mean listen my son broke both his wrists last year my wife called me and they were going to put him in I said no we're taking them to we're taking them to Earth and Urgent Care at Orthopedic Urgent Care because I knew he was it wasn't that bad and we did we took him there and it was it was different so it's everybody's situation is different you don't have time to check obviously when it's an emergency situation but there are different prices for different urgent cares and people can look it up online but again you're not going to look it up in an emergency situation but unfortunately to your point some of these hospitals are building these urgent care centers and you don't know until you get the bill exactly so that came up in the periodic meeting with Cigna that very issue that um you know we kind of have to count on our employees who are in the HSA to tell us when that's happening it happened to me during covid my wife went to get tested this was before the home kit and she just got swapped got a I happened to notice that the bill was for basically a doctor visit plus a swabbing and you know certainly I followed up through our benefits person and yeah they would there was no doctor that was really involved somebody walked in the room and basically you know talked to my wife for a minute there was no diagnosis because it was just a test so you wouldn't know what was going on there was no prescription so I think the the world of Health Care is changing and we're trying to be diligent and we did talk to Cigna about you know what are the types of things that we can do you know to to know about these issues and not have to rely on our employees to let us know and I think and I think that's why you obviously you have Cigna or one of the medical carries they are trying to keep up with it and you know address those situations as they happen because they do have I mean they do have I mean Vin's making a perfect point it happened during covet it happened a ton again before home tests I ran into the same situation a bunch of times where I'd have to go get one of my kids tested and uh you know all of a sudden I got a bill for a doctor's office plus a test you know what I mean and I had to question it and say what are you doing what are you billing us for you know what I mean and then yeah I just don't know how we're ever going to fix it if we can't get them to cut it out and it this is gonna we're gonna get deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole I bet this is a bunch of talk it's not a problem it's a it's a reality and I do think that we do have a good provider with Cigna you know we do meet with Cigna every still every two weeks we have a service call with the Cigna Representatives both part of that and town staff to talk about any kind of issues that come up so we we have an open forum and a mechanism to deal with any type of service issues including issues that individual employees have that you know has nothing to do with cost but it's it's what the billing issues do come up and we do bring that up to your point that's your example of somebody it has come up on the call now how it is somebody went to Urgent Care somebody from the town might bring it up some somebody went to Urgent Care and said they got charged you know some people aren't on the HSA and they still have the emergency room Urgent Care copay so it comes up on the call hey they got charged uh emergency room copay versus the Urgent Care and they went to Urgent Care so we to Vin's point we are addressing it and looking at it but again and I always tell people this because I I get phone calls all the time the insurance carrier is going to bill is going to pay based on what the provider bills so again it goes back to a lot of times we had calls on hey this is supposed to be preventive care you know how come I'm getting charged for it because preventive care is covered 100 but all depends on how to provide if the provider bills is preventive it's going through it 100 you know what I mean if they bill you go for your doc your preventive care and you're like hey my shoulder feels a little creaky too and all of a sudden you know you see all those line items 100 100 and then you see that oh 150 I owe 100 because you ask the doctor about your shoulder you know what I mean so again that's the insurance company's going to take you know obviously they are they are monitoring everything for again lack of a better term make sure there's no fraud or anything like that but at the same point in time they have these contracts with the doctors and they're going to pay based on what they what is submitted to them you know just actually on that point I wanted to to mention two things that come to mind one is that you know we did a throw a review last year of all our claims internally you know by employee independent to make sure that all the claims that were paid you know through Cigna were for our employees or their covered dependents and that didn't reveal any issues and we're working through CT Prime you know we which we are a member of they provide our stop-loss insurance but they provide other it benefits you know to us and the other uh eight towns that participate we are doing a claims audit with Cigna and some of the CT Prime members are with Anthem so that will actually be a you know a statistical review and a detailed review of you know a small group but a statistically valid sample of claims just to make sure that Cigna is paying claims in accordance with our contracts and that that's a good point I would say you know for a little history to that is that you know uh a town and board the size of Cheshire within the past 10 years you didn't audit twice of Anthem and now you're doing an audit of Cigna I don't most groups your size and the 7 I don't see them often doing audits which is a good thing but what I'm saying is you again in the past 10 years you've done three this will be your third where you're checking the carrier and you're looking and you know and again we did the first two for you and again to Vince point we didn't we went in we sat there for you sit there for a couple weeks you get all the things you look at everything you look through the claims you match up everything and you know again we found found nothing just like in CT Prime now is doing it on the Cigna side and we're also on our side USI we are taking the claims and we are repricing them versus Cigna versus amp to take a look too to see what discounts and everything look like so besides the audit of what you've actually paid to make sure you paid we're also taking a look at too Anthem versus Cigna versus repricing that and it takes a little while we started it about forth right after Thanksgiving somebody that so again we we are we are looking at everything making sure the dollars are going to the proper places and and making sure that everything's being allocated and again I think it's you know when you look at the the information that Ben's put together I can provide you more information it's literally we've seen the past three or four years we've just seen in particular and when I've seen claim spike is the large claims particularly on the board of edside seen over the past three or four years of Spike and then what you what you had on top of that for a couple of the years was increased utilization too so sometimes when you have a spike of large claims but utilization stays flat it doesn't necessarily mean a big increase but then when you get the you know what maybe we're looking at now is the increased post covid people you know utilizing plus the large claims you kind of get a jump you kind of get a spike your first details uh it's very insightful and I appreciate the analysis because you know for a few years now Vince has been getting some detail too we're trying to figure out you know um are we just unlucky is there it's it's you know unfortunately cancer is cancer you can't predict it right um I'm happy that the employees are getting the treatment they need to get that's you know first and foremost you know big priority but you mentioned earlier uh claims mothers I I worked for a healthcare insurer for a number of years and one of the areas uh used to head up was the analytics side and what what we would do is uh helping a small large I mean employers try to predict potential future member needs at the most rudimentary level you know if you have patient history or a subscriber history and all of a sudden you know you see claims come through in a month where they have an A1C test they never had before or any treatment that could be an indicator that there might be more diabetes related treatment and they would do an Outreach to get folks to do wellness and screenings and health literature is USI doing any of that is doing any of that because there's two parts of that sure one is one one is you're absolutely right Cigna is doing that USI doesn't get that so I don't I don't see if somebody's not getting there UNC so Cigna is supposed to outreach and we have these meetings all the time and they will provide statistics the statistics hey we reached out to 100 people only 10 picked up the phone call where USI does come in from what you're talking about and we didn't put it in these slides and I can provide it to then he's had it and you can is that we do have a model for the large claimants so to your point and when we met November we said that we take we are my we can we get all your data fed into our system and then to your point we can go through we call it Model people call it but it feeds all the claims in and it can to your point it might have somebody that's got only a thousand dollars in claims but because of the diagnosis code that's associated with that again no names nothing like that just but with that diagnosis code it might say in the next year they expect three hundred thousand dollars in claims for that person now again we can't Outreach that person to your point but so again cigna's doing Outreach they're looking at specific things what we're providing is again hey based on the data we see and that's where in one event slides where he took five hundred thousand dollars out for for reimbursements you know for stop loss next year we'll respect that's one of the things we look at because we look at that we take those top diagnosis we say what do we expect for those next year and that's what we look at and that's where we get it and the 500 000 is probably actually a little conservative because that's we we say okay well this claim next year is going to generate 300 this one's going to generate 250. unfortunately this one's not going to be on like so yeah so it's kind of too long answer sorry there's kind of two sides that we look at so I I asked because uh I think uh most folks don't realize the analytics that have man scenes to tell managers on this too and um understood because we have some large claims particular you know oncology I suspect that the specialty drugs prescriptions are also way up there too yeah yeah and they we look at that too and then that's part of when we sit down with Cigna that they've done some analysis and you know listen it's something we're going to look at again because again I will say the thing about Cheshire Board of Ed and town that you've always been is we are always looking at everything so again for instance you were one of the first towns and Boards years ago that carved out your Pharmacy so you took it away from the carrier and you went direct and had your own Pharmacy contract well we went to Cigna and said hey what can you do they matched the opt-in contract you know we did that but again does that mean we have to keep it with Cigna moving forward no so again it's something you look at and say hey Cigna time for you to get more aggressive on your prescription contract again or we're going to go and find another vendor so that that's always looking at the stop loss again perfect example carved it out we went to direct to a few vendors and then joined a collaborative so you know it's always looking at ways to save money yeah I have one last question on stop loss and maybe I'm just oversimplifying it but if I look at the numbers earlier so our stop-loss premiums are budgeting about 1.4 million this coming year for a potential payout of 500 000.
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as Tom said it's conservative we're paying 1.4 to maybe get 500 yeah here's what I could say again CT Prime Works a little different but what I what I'll say about stop loss in general is they don't look at it like when you're a fully insured plan premium where you pay them 5 million in premium and they pay out four million in claims and we do the calculation and hey that should be a zero percent increase they look at it as what they call pooled product so even though you could be a 5 000 person employer they pull you all together and that's what they look at every year so instead of having to give you an 70 like some of those years like Ben said where on the stop loss premium you paid a million and they paid out 2 million in claims and they'd have to give you 100 increase they pool the product so stop loss I always say there's a dirty little word they call leverage Trend that's what the underwriters like to say so even if you run really good so again you pay 1.4 and they only pay out 500 000.
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well guess what the underwriter is going to make the argument they're gonna say yeah you only paid 500 000 this year but leverage Trend and our actuaries tell us next year is going to be 1.6 you know what I mean so it's stop loss is uh that's why I think you know getting into the collaborative it's been pretty steady versus this you know and carving out and doing things but yeah stop losses is always going to be a bit of a roller coaster whether you're carved in or carved out we did last year we did get 800 000 a little over that on the board side and stop loss um payments but I don't want to budget it that way because I'm actually lowering the budget request by taking into consideration the 500 000. yeah stop loss is again it's dicey yeah and it's it is something I agree where listen when you when you again Chester's always been very good about on the town and board side analyzing everything when the pro when the move was made to CT Prime at first at the Time Michael Malone said hey Tom can you put something together and I showed like eight years of here's what you paid in premium here's what you paid and here's what you got in reimbursements and was like Hey this makes total sense you know we should do this so again you never you guys have always been very good about looking at the details and the analytics and everything before you make decisions yes sir that um the stop loss calculation is predicting that we are going to be in a work position next year I don't 100 know because again Vin deals with CT Prime more than me I'm I'm just going to say like what I'm getting from the carriers for my other municipalities and stuff again what they look at yes they look at it and they say hey based on our pool this is the percentage we need in our pool then we add in Trend just like they would in medical and and yeah exactly and they might say so for my other group so again CT Prime is a little different because you're in there with a bunch of bunch of people that different decisions can be made and everything and again vims on the board so I mean if you want to talk to a little more on that but again on the what I'm talking about is just on my side with my experience with carriers and everything I mean the latest update from CT Prime because we did look at the numbers through I'm not sure we had all of October but CT Prime stop loss pull is running better this year than it was at the same time last year so we hope that that continues and if it does continue and we don't you know have a large group of claims then the renewal won't be 15 but you know from a budget point of view that's been our experience you know more years than not we've we've run worse in terms of stop loss what we paid versus what we've received and and that's the advantage of being in a collaborative you know some of the other towns picked up the freight for us so to speak so good all right I'm just going to kind of wrap up this this section so the I think we've made most of these points um I did want to point out this last bullet that this budget increase even though it's it's significant at 1.5 million it is lower than last year's budget increase last year's budget increase was 2.235 Million because we needed to get the Run rate of contributions to equal claims we did that last year so now this year incrementally we are adding 10 percent expected increase in claims to the budget and then we're adding a little bit more to cover stop loss expected premiums but it is better than last year's budget request and we need to continue to stay on this track where we're at least budgeting to meet expected claims into the future pension is next and it's the last section tonight so are we okay to proceed to pension okay so pension um this year's budget request for our pension is a twenty thousand dollar increase It's relatively small but it is estimated we do not have the um numbers from the actuaries yet for the pension plan the finance director for the town Jim jascot does expected by the end of the month but we didn't have it in hand you know at the time we prepared this budget or as of uh this evening but we do fund 1.3 million dollars into the pension or retirement plans for our employees we closed the town of pension plan to new employees in 2012 so all new employees hired after 2012 are in a defined contribution retirement plan which is helpful because it's a lot easier to budget and again when it comes to pension we only provide pension benefits to the non-certified staff teachers administrators our certified staff they pay for their own pension benefits you know directly to the state through their own salary deduction so when we talk pension just remember it is not including certified staff and there's no new news here the pension plan contributions have increased over the last you know 10 years plus now because of two factors one there was certainly a downturn in the markets in 2008 2009 which triggered a you know a drop in assets back then but what it also did is it caused the actuaries to look at what pension plans and as in particular were expecting in terms of returns and said you know you can't expect eight and a quarter percent returns into the future you have to expect seven percent excuse me seven and a half percent and then they lowered it to seven percent and by doing that on the pension plan it raised the amount of money we needed to fund in order to make sure that the pension plan could meet its obligation to pay its retirees upon their retirement up until the point of you know their demise or their spouses and demise if they're on joint Survivor so that's why you could see that our pension contributions have you know grew quite a bit since the last 10 years um although last year it did go down by 29 000.
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so you know we're hoping that this year we don't see a significant increase but I will give you one no one caveat here that when I did speak to Jim jascot the actuaries spoke to him about potentially trying to bring the return rate down to 6.75 percent which again would cause us to have to increase the contribution and just um just to put a little perspective around it there's 72 employees that are still actively participating in our pension plan so they're working and and they're contributing some and we're contributing the remainder but there's 212 employees in the defined contribution plan so we've got a lot more employees that are that are no longer in the pension plan so at some point that liability does go down but not soon enough for this budget certainly and I put this into the presentation because it has come up as a question in the last couple of years but this is the pension fund portfolio as of September 30th the pension fund for the town Board of Ed is managed by the Cheshire Retirement Board these and their minutes are available online but this was the report that they received from their consultant I believe it's called great Consulting um that shows the portfolio value of 77.9 million dollars and this chart just shows what their allocated percentages are it's only about 19 in fixed income so it's fairly um aggressively invested I would say um it's not overwhelmingly and fixed income and equivalence which is a good thing that's how you get the long-term returns but again rough numbers it's about a 78 million dollar pension portfolio that is being managed by the Retirement Board and the returns last year I just happened to notice in the minutes there were turns were down around 15 or so which isn't bad considering where the market was the market was down more than that but let's hope that things get better soon and this year from a return point of view is better but you could see this is what's happened to the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 2010 it's gone up which is what we like to see but it doesn't go straight up so Market fluctuations are a reality as a percentage of budget the um you know with this year's budget request employee benefits represent about 19.2 percent of the budget so unlike uh certified salaries which have gone down as a percentage of budget I don't think there's any shock here but the medical and employee benefits as a percentage of budget have increased since 2004 five and so the summary on salary and benefits is here certified non-certified total benefits the requested increase is about 6.55 percent so 4.26 million out of the roughly 5.2 million total budget request is right here in these line items any questions on pension uh potential return adjustment now you're saying yeah that could happen between now in may if they do that it wouldn't necessarily be for the next budget year and when they made the change down to seven percent the council elected to phase that in over a period of time you don't have to do it instantly so even if that return assumption is adjusted and I I don't know that it will be but the Town Council will deliberate on it if that is actually the recommendation that's made so I'm I'm more worried about the number changing dramatically but then we do not know and they're waiting on what the exact percentage of the obligation that is actually funded okay and we may not know by the time the board has to pass its budget but we will know by the time the council adopts a budget and just like last year I think last year we budgeted uh zero initially but then it actually dropped 29 000 by the time we got to the council so we incorporated that adjustment when we applied the overall net reduction in the budget after the council lowered our budget foreign we're done so we've got one checked off that's tonight's public budget review the next public budget review is next Tuesday there's a board event meeting Thursday um and then the following Thursday January 26th there's the public informational meeting and the board if they I like to can adopt a budget and if not there is a special Board of Education meeting that's uh on the on the calendar for February 2nd and then again the board must pass its budget by February 15th so they can as a board the board you can deliberate so then thank you turn it back to you Mr Griffo thank you Mr maciano um that concludes the presentation for this evening um were there any additional questions or thoughts uh before we adjourn no emotion please second all in favor we are adjourned thank you thank you everyone
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I call the orders are regular meeting of the building board appeals for January 19 2023 roll call darling here Robert Hart here Kevin Cox David arnster here you Flack here staff Mike Lemieux here Michael Redmond here John Reiser here myself Deborah Williams and we have a quorum thank you first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda does anyone have an auditions or modifications where can we have a motion to approve the agenda I move recruit the agenda second motion and support those in favor aye next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes from the September 22nd 22 PBA meeting is there any uh comments on the minutes from that meeting if not I can have a motion to approve those move to approve give me a second pushing in the support who's in favor all right passes repeals actions and show cause hearing the item on the agenda for this month is BBA appeal for 727 East Kingsley Ann Arbor Michigan so we have the applicant here can you kind of state I guess we were first uh we do applicant and insect report for us yeah okay well staff can can uh report on the variance request yeah so uh the property at 727 East Kingsley it's an R2 is described by the 2015 Michigan building code Signed Sealed plans were submitted and building permit building 22-0558 were issued April 11th of 2022.
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three two you are alive and you just do an audio check [Music] we are good sir yeah cool awesome so welcome everybody we're going to call the meeting to order tonight I'm glad to see all of our students of the month here with us and hopefully we can get to uh I'm going to use those our educators of the month in a few short minutes we're going to open a meeting with a few uh administrative items the first one I'll do is just read the New Jersey public meetings a lot or at least our statement on the old Republic's meetings which it says that the open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public that advance notice of to attend meetings of public properties at which time any business affecting their interest is discussed in that fund in accordance with the provisions of this act the Board of Education policy 016 support of Education Board of Education and any other person who's paid who has requested individual notices being required at this time please stand for the 20 minutes and to the Republic which it stands a nation under God indivisible with liberty Mr board secretary [Music] yes sir here it's awesome here this casino yeah this is upcoming here come in house here miss Hyde here Mr Januzzi here is the board president United Fire on the president to see thanks very much um I would like to move my president's comments that after the superintendent's report this evening just so that we can get right to my favorite part of the presentation which is our Awards well good evening everybody and welcome to our January board meeting Happy New Year to everyone and I hope uh your New Year is off to a great start you are meeting your resolutions and all the things that you wish for are starting to come true um like um our president said my favorite part of the meeting is the student staff recognition but before we do that I would like to introduce a new member to our board is a little different than the other members who are out of high school and graduated in college and working on their own taxpayers he happens to be our student right to the board so I would like to introduce Emmanuel Munoz our student rest of the board [Applause] High School he was very proud to say he's one raised in Bound Brook attended school with us since he was in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten since freaking kindergarten he currently is great before his class I think that deserves [Applause] before in addition to being an outstanding student a man who was very active in the school and Community he's a member of our National Honor Society a member of our academic League team he participates in our champion schools program which is a peer-to-peer program about team driving scene he's a member of our high school soccer team participates in track and field a class of 2025 fundraising participant and a member of our chess club in addition sometimes I somehow finds time to volunteer at the Presbyterian food bench for a couple of days a week and despite his busy schedule Emanuel finds time to do what he enjoys which programming spending time with his family and friends and challenging himself now manual was selected to to his role as a student rep of the board through a school-wide election process he says that certainly in this role will allow him to provide a voice for positive change he feels that providing positive change will make for a positive climate in the school and is looking forward to working with the board and to make sure you make positive change let's have a round of applause [Applause] at this time I would like to cover up Emmanuel do you want to say a few words all right so um next up to introduce start with our students of the month we'll start with Dr s from the mom ENT foreign Rufus Alexander loves the alphabets and Counting he can identify all letters and numbers one through 20.
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good evening I like to call this meeting to order Dr Foley roll call president Schultz members of the board please let the record show that all members are present like to take a moment of silence and then the Pledge of Allegiance thank you yeah okay okay I'd like to move that we approve the agenda second questions comments concerned all those in favor aye all those opposed motion passes five zero Dr Foley superintendent's report president Schultz members of the board we're going to start tonight with our superintendent Report with with one of our favorites our celebration of our students and our importance of Pride tonight we're going to start with Chaparral Elementary and I'm going to invite the administration Mrs Hansen and Mr pepper to come up so that we can celebrate their points of pride [Applause] I'll help hold I can help hold yes thank you all right good evening good evening Madam president Schultz members of the board Dr Foley members of cabinet it is my pleasure to be here this evening I'm Christine Hansen proud principal of what we like to call the Shark Tank and we're so excited to be here to celebrate our points of Pride this evening okay and I'm Terry pepper uh thank you guys for all being here we're very excited um and honored to be able to bring these guys up and recognize them for all they do for our campus this is usually where I drop my papers and Dr Foley helps me out all right so let me first start off with our certified staff member Mrs Robin Nelson come on up Robin thank you all right Mrs Robin Nelson is a dedicated and caring professional educator who year after year provides a nurturing learning environment for all students she has taught second grade since I've known her her holistic approach to students has allowed her to ensure high levels of growth for all students supporting both academics and social emotional needs she seeks out additional professional development opportunities and implements highly effective practices to meet her ever-changing student needs Mrs Nelson contributes to the overall well-being of our school by Leading our staff shared learning action team during quarter one she facilitated mindfulness Mondays all on her own where she'd hop on the announcements and help us all start off our day on the right foot in addition she facilitated a whole staff professional development in which she shared her personal journey toward maintaining a healthy home and life work balance and inspired many staff to pursue self-care to pursue self-care she works well with students staff and families across campus and she certainly leads by example [Applause] yes oh yes who did you bring with you this evening I just brought my husband Greg Nelson [Music] [Applause] all right I have the honor of recognizing our um uh classified uh points of Pride and we have Miss Rachel Whitmer [Applause] so what's whitmer's been in our uh as staff part of our tank for a few years now her enthusiasm and positive positive attitude make her an amazing asset um in our cafeteria as a lunch age she's able to think on her feet and problem solve through any situation she uses her experiences as a mother to four husd students and a swim coach to effectively and officially communicate with our large groups of students she demonstrates care through her kind words and warm smile and Miss Whitmer has now transitioned into the classroom as our title one para where she's working with our specialist to provide targeted interventions for students struggling with reading we're very lucky to have her in our campus supporting our students staff and Community thank you Rachel foreign and who did you bring this evening I brought my middle daughter truly [Music] [Applause] all right excuse me okay I'm very excited for this point next points of Pride this is our student who happened to be in Mrs Nelson's second grade class um she's now a third grader in the Shark Tank please come up Miss Adriana Bingham foreign all right come on over sweetheart all right Miss Adriana gosh what what can what can't I say about this lovely young lady um she is a positive influence among her peers she is not only a leader in the classroom but around our entire campus Adriana is always willing to lend a helping hand among her classmates she loves to assist students in the library and she does so on her in her spare time she helps them in the computer she gives book recommendations to her peers she also donates her time to our student Lighthouse team which is it's been phenomenal to watch her lead and grow she most recently found her voice which is habit 8 at our Veterans Day breakfast she mentioned to me in passing she said I just feel like I want to say something I feel like I want to say thank you to everybody and so I showed her how to work the microphone and sure enough she stood up on that stage with confidence and she made sure she she thanked everyone for coming that morning so I was so proud of her she was so nervous but something inside of her wanted to share She Found the courage she talked herself up and she she knocked it out of the park so very proud of you ma'am she's such a positive role model on our campus and I'm so happy for you to be recognized for all your hard work congrats all right and Miss Adriana who did you bring this evening my mom dad sister grandma and grandpa [Applause] [Music] Perfect all right and last but definitely not least um we have our parent uh points of Pride recipient and it's Miss Abby Oates thank you so much oats has been a volunteer in a variety of ways for many years she supports classroom teachers with small groups organizing making resources for them she participated in PTO she's volunteered this year to photograph our super shark steering assemblies and is visible at almost all you know school and Community functions she makes a a good effort to get to know and interact with our Chaparral Administration the front office classroom teachers and her dedication and supporting our student staff and Community is is evident and is very inspirational and much appreciated so thank you Miss Oates who did you bring my daughter Lennon okay come on over here come join us for a photo now we want to celebrate Coronado points of Pride so I'm going to invite Mr Armstrong or Mr Griggs to come on up alcohol [Applause] thank you all right president Schultz members of the governing board superintendent Foley in her cabinet thank you for having us we're excited my name is Jeff Armstrong the power principal at Coronado Elementary we're also known as the coyote nation and so we are excited to celebrate a bunch of really good people and this is always the most difficult because we have to only choose one per category and I wish I can grab many more to come on up so we're going to go ahead and get started and we're going to recognize our classified staff member of the for points of Pride and that is Miss Cindy Torres [Applause] so miss Torres serves as our amazing health aide and I will tell you that every principal says their health aide is pretty solid but there's no one in this District that is as good as what she does as Miss Torres as we all know the last couple of years have been a little rough and she has led us through so much ensuring that kids are healthy kids are safe parents are taken care of and that she goes ahead and takes care of the staff as well we are so very lucky to have her not only is she a rock star on our campus but when it comes to needing assistance across the district Miss Fulton relies on Cindy to go ahead and go to other schools and train their health aides when they get on board with the district so we're very thankful we're very proud and honored to have Miss Taurus thank you [Applause] oh yeah I brought my husband and my two girls Abby and Danny [Applause] love it all right we're gonna go ahead and recognize our certified staff Miss April Hammonds [Applause] [Music] yeah Miss Hammond serves as a first grade teacher she's been with us for two years and I will tell you that when we talk about growth as Educators wanting to learn more try something new no matter what it is myself Griggs our literacy coach can walk into our classroom and say hey can you try this and she is willing to run with it and she's going to try and she's going to tell us if it worked or if it didn't work and what she brings to her classroom in terms of culture in terms of climate is absolutely amazing she cares so deep for every single kid for who they are not just academically but socially and emotionally and she will go ahead and be the first one to work with any parent to ensure that their kids are as successful as they could possibly can be we're very honored very proud to have MS Hammonds on our staff so thank you if you want to talk about who you brought if you haven't heard my sweet niece in the front my sister and my awesome boyfriend Daniel continuing on with the awesome people at Coronado I'm going to welcome up Kim Monroe who is our president of our PTL so for volunteer [Applause] so miss Monroe there are many things that I appreciate you uh one of the the main things is that you keep the the vision of the pewto as what helps students and what can we do to support those who support the students what do we do to support the teachers what do we do to support the parents and families to make sure that we all work towards that vision of Student Success so very much appreciate that so she's had kids at Coronado for five years in her time as PTO president um one of the highlights I've been able to coordinate a direct donation drive that raised 35 000 which is no small fee and with that again towards that vision of making sure that every single family is able to attend community events and be able to attend it for free and so making sure that no matter who you are you're able to be a part of the coyote Nation so I very much appreciate that spends many hours on campus as you can imagine if you've ever done a volunteer role you know especially PTO president so many hours even today I think there's three separate times that you walked through our doors just today so thank you so much for all that you do for our kids and then who did you bring with you I brought my husband Matt and my son Ian and my daughter Reese [Applause] all right and I am so excited to introduce our students here so Bella come on up Bella Medrano [Applause] now Bella knows she already got her gift we didn't make her carry the big thing of candy out here so so she already got that um Bella what I appreciate so much about you is how you demonstrate you know when we talk about pause on the announcements so who we are as Coronado coyotes positive perseverance acting respectfully working a potential and staying safe you demonstrate that every single day I love watching on the playground how you invest in others you are quite the leader not only in the official title as student council communication specialist you do that fantastic she makes videos each week to make sure that every single kid knows what's going on on campus so that every single kid can feel a part of who we are as Coronado Nation I love that nice job communicating involving other people but you live it in your day-to-day as well you are someone to involve people on the playground that you wouldn't normally have hung out with you're like this person needs to meet this person and we're going to make connections here nice job that is a skill that I am so excited to see in you and I know that's something that you will invest in as you go on to Junior High and high school so proud of you Bella and who did you bring with you I brought my mom dad brother sister and my grandma nice job guys nice job [Applause] all right we'll take a picture thank you points of Pride for being here with us tonight we want you to know that you are more than welcome to stay but we also know you have school tomorrow so if you'd like to leave we are going to transition right now as we bring in the entire football team from Higley High School so feel free to leave if you'd like or stay if you should desire okay thank you foreign come on okay all right Mr latzenheiser please help us honor celebrate acknowledge our state football champions all right [Applause] president Schultz members of the board so excited tonight to celebrate a first in the history of Higley High but a well-deserved five-a state championship football team another round of applause [Applause] foreign just a couple highlights for those of you who went to their games you know how exciting they were this year eight and two on the regular season 4-0 in the postseason for an overall record of 12 and 2 but that doesn't tell the whole story I think the stat that jumps out to me the most about this team is they outscored their opponents 614 to 304.
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[Music] foreign [Music] like to welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the Brookfield board of education for January 18th 2023. let's start by everyone Rising for the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign all of our board members are here this evening um so first up is our student Spotlight for Center Elementary School so Dr Brill as usual I'll leave it to you to introduce thank you Mr Belden I'd like to have Mrs ferius the principal of Center School come up and she'll be introducing instructional coach Julie Vaughn to talk about grade one and their writing oh that was fast I wasn't quite ready to come up this quickly well thank you first of all I just want to say good evening and how excited I am actually super excited about having the opportunity to open a window a little bit into the extraordinary teaching and learning that occurs at Center School each and every day um this particular Spotlight is on our first grade opinion writers and how they use what they learned about opinion writing in order to use their voice to advocate for Change and change in their world which is Center School um and at that point I just want to give you a background on how this kind of came to be so one day right before break I had this first grade student Luca hamelick from Mrs natalino's class and he came to me and he said Mrs various why is it that first graders don't have recess on shortened days on the early dismissal days and kindergarten students do I said Gee Luca that's a really great question and I said aren't you finishing up your opinion writing unit right now and he said yeah and I said well I think this would be a great opportunity for you to write an opinion piece using all of what you've learned about opinion writing and um you know help me to understand your perspective and try to convince me um you know as to why we should maybe revisit the schedule and he looks and he's like yeah yeah and then I said wait a minute I have a better idea so what if maybe your whole class would be interested in doing that and then we can maybe get um you know our scheduling board I was making up that there was a scheduling board there really wasn't um to kind of come together and consider you know your perspectives and the points that you raise with what you've learned about opinion writing to be able to use your voice to you know help us to maybe think that it's time to revisit the schedule and he's like yeah yeah and he's getting a little bit more excited about it and I'm like wait a minute I have the best idea what if we got all of first grade involved and all of the first graders would get involved in thinking about this and using their voice and we can get a scheduling board together and we'll you know vote and you know get together for like an assembly and have a board meeting and see if we're you know if you've convinced us and he got really super super excited so um he left and then I got super super excited because I'm thinking oh my gosh this is such a great opportunity to have relevant real world context for our first graders and it's sparked by students like this is just fantastic so I immediately reached out to Julie Vaughn our K4 Ela instructional coach extraordinaire um I said Julie this is this is what happened this morning this is great and we collaborated and we both were like you know supercharged about it and she just took um took on the project and collaborated with our first grade teachers and students and um is here tonight to present so without further ado Julie Vaughn hey Julie I'll stay up here and help you because you know you got it all right there we go otherwise I'll just watch it all right thanks Julie no problem okay so as um Debbie said the background of the project really stemmed from this one student in in the context of their current writing unit that they were working on so then I kind of picked up the ball with the teachers we met and kind of laid out the groundwork for how we could really make this collaborative for students you know they do their own writing but it was really to bring in those those four C's can they be collaborative and communicate with each other um on this project and have a shared voice to then create a class opinion piece that they would present at this mock scheduling committee meeting so uh it aligns with the curriculum development process we're working on creating context so giving students in every grade level in each unit the goal is eventually to get there that provides students with a real world authentic learning experience to apply all of the knowledge that they're learning in the content areas in a larger Global Way um so we've been trying to engage in that work for the last several years and we're getting to the point where grade levels are really starting to be able to develop those contexts and give kids these um experiences it aligned with a ton of Standards writing standards the large one of writing opinion pieces um the idea that they can respond to questions suggestions from peers to make their work better the shared research and writing projects speaking and listening they also address a ton of the language standards with conventions and language acquisition skills so as well as some of the social studies standards with that being an advocate for for change uh the work we've been doing in the strategic planning of the four C's creativity communication collaboration and change making so really thinking about how these align Pre-K 12 not once they get to high school really thinking about how um that they connect to that portion of graduate how do we build these along the way and really prepare kids for the world that they're living in now so getting the four C's to be part of the elementary curriculum and planning and then highlighting projects like this will help teachers really give them capacity to create more engaging and authentic experiences with those real world connections is really kind of what the new strategic plan is really kind of focusing on so it's really exciting to see how we at the elementary level can build that that knowledge of this for kids and not just it's not just the high school perspective of that so I want to see the Kids In Action so this shows the process from planning to the scheduling committee where they presented their pieces it's only about six minutes I was trying to kind of capture all the parts so you could see the process so hopefully it all kind of works and the quality is good [Music] foreign [Music] because it's not fair that kindergarten gets recessed on late dismissal like life [Music] and we don't recess because we can all have fun and have a race and we can look at the Sun and everything oh Eric how does recess make you feel if you feel like a butterfly what do you want us to be happy okay we should have recess because we could get um um exercise I think we should have recess so we can get fresh air and we can deliver energy out I think we should have pizza so we can play [Music] I think we should not have recess because I think we have to learn more on half days [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] and then because it's like 1.1 on them all right so what do you think what's the agreement for the introduction to your opinion piece so Linda and Ben do you agree with what Lily's suggesting for an introduction yeah yeah so what did I say you could do yeah you can write it great talking about some suggestions for what to write for an introduction [Music] [Applause] [Music] you want to have recess on short days I do because we will be lucky foreign [Music] foreign [Music] out [Music] um foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I think the biggest thank you goes to the teachers for all their hard work with their students you know they did a wonderful job really getting their kids engaged and excited getting me the clips and the student work samples and all that so that I could put it together and really highlight all the great work that they did so yeah and I just wanted to also um second that and thank the teachers and thank Julie for really working collaborating together it was really an awesome culminating project um and a really fun culminating event and they did in fact um convince the scheduling committee to add a shortened recess on the shortened day thank you any questions any questions from the board that was really exciting have any questions I know they ran from the podium quite quickly yeah they did run away quickly what I'd like to do is arrange to have that presentation shown to the strategic planning committee absolutely when we meet next week Monday yeah we can do that I think that uh for that committee to see in action some of the things we've been talking about will be superb agreed so um well you can narrate it then too so thanks again Julie thank you Deb thank you thank you thank you guys okay next up is the youth commission um and uh the youth commission's joining us tonight to give us an update on the BHS career fair so uh I don't know who's going to be your spokesman but all right great mark [Music] good evening we're on all right there we go um I'm very appreciative of um Mrs mcniff and Mr Jaffe who approached me and asked me to introduce um the the people here tonight that are here to talk about the career fair that we hosted um on November 15th uh essentially the planning began last year uh when we tried uh we started planning for to have a career fair working with the youth commission um and through their due diligence and continued hard work they renewed that effort this year we were able to provide it for all students I really don't want to stand up here too much longer not because I'm afraid of the microphone but because they did all the work and it was great to be a part of it and see all the wonderful collaboration and communication that we had and so there are the members here so obviously Mr Jaffe is here Mrs mcniff you see Ernesto davia who was one of our Spanish teachers as well and then there's well two current students one former who can't seem to get enough of us but uh katyana kiv and Vanessa Greenstein are here as our current students and members of the commission and then Ben he just missed us so much and the board he wanted to make sure he was here as well so we thank him for always being involved as well so they have a little presentation and I just thank you for the opportunity to come up and introduce and we look forward to continuing collaboration with youth commission bringing great things to the school experience hello everyone we are the Brookfield youth commission as Mr Blanda said and we're really honored to be here tonight we are going to be talking about the career fair which we hosted a little while back but first I wanted to give everyone an overview of what our commission is so the Brookfield youth commission was started in order to give youth a voice in uh the government and in order to empower the youths specifically um in Brookfield to be able to stand up for themselves and make a change in their Community the Brookfield youth commission has hosted a few events as of recent for instance last year we had the uh uh of the the candidate forum for the people who were running for uh government positions and we obviously did the career fair as well as met with students on various other issues so without further Ado I'd like to tell you a little bit about what we did with the career fair so the goal of the career fair was to show students a array of different occupations and provide guidance in pursuing their interests we wanted to create this event because even in high school many students don't know what they want to do with their career and it's important to figure this out as early as possible like there's many opportunities such as internships and taking classes in specific interests that college is highly value but it's impossible to narrow down your interest if you've had no interaction with the professional word before therefore we found it absolutely crucial to host this career fair so the first step of the career fair was to have community outreach we needed to gather uh speakers and presenters to be able to teach our youth about the different careers opportunities available to them we created a Google form in order to gather a list of people who would be interested in presenting this is something that we did before I actually joined the commission this was earlier in the previous school year however we used the speakers who had signed up and showed interest then and re-contacted them once more in order to be able to get a list of speakers so uh we found um a bunch of people interested through this Google form and we created this graphic advertisement that we printed and posted around the school to let people know about what the career fair was going to be like and when it was going to happen students were sent a Google form and were informed by their iot teachers that they could select up to five presenters that appealed them the most and then they would be assigned to those rooms of the presenters we wanted to make the career fair more personal experience so we made sure that instead of just having uh places to walk around the school and look at like fold-up boards we actually had 30 minute presentations which students could experience three of they had they signed up for five so they had some options and we could easier place them but the way that we structured it uh it was much more of a personal experience for students and um based on the popularity from the response and the capacity of all the different classrooms the students as I said were placed into three presentations um of of their choice and of availability and students who did not complete the forms were placed into any remaining available sessions um now I'd like to hand over to Ben to talk about the different uh careers we had available and how the process of placing the students went hello I'm Ben Burgess basically to start off with the descriptions and everything so this is something that when the students filled out the selection form they got to view the descriptions of each speaker so they knew what they were getting into the other thing that I want to emphasize if Liam was here he would say it is that this is like a unique experience specifically because you're speaking you're picking specific careers as opposed to in the past anything they've had it's always been a panel of like everybody crammed into the gym and there was no individual one-on-one interaction like that um as far as the student selection form went so like we said um there were three options that they ended up receiving they had five that they could choose in the beginning obviously they didn't get all of them because there's only so much space but everybody got at least their first choice so we wanted to emphasize that there were a few students that were upset that they didn't receive any of them but that's because they didn't fill out the form so um part of just like going back to feedback that we got that's the big thing is whoever whether it falls on the student or the teacher is not telling them it's just a matter of filling out the form in the first place so we got those selection results since we had the five different options and then we basically just had to in the back end spend hours and hours sorting through it all copying and pasting and getting those three top choices to select them and then by doing so we could separate them out and see the totals for each classroom so we knew who was supposed to be where and then send that list to the ilt teachers to keep track of accountability so then we had the student feedback which Vanessa will talk more about but basically the overall consensus was that people like the career fair and I'd say if we were going to improve in the future it'd be that we're going to look into a different way of collecting the selection so it's not just through Google form maybe they could see a live view of who signed off already and that might give more of an incentive to say well if this one's filling up I better get on that and sign up so that's one Improvement that we thought we would make foreign just um going off what Ben started so our student feedback was very positive and as you can see here um mostly everyone enjoyed the career fair and wanted to see it happen um next year and the parts that were no were some of the seniors who would be leaving and who wouldn't be here next year to see this event happen but um overall the students got an opportunity to um not only interact with public figures within our community but to also see their leadership roles and kind of um see what opportunities they they would like to have in the future as well and like our youth commission members were saying it was very um placed for the students and specifically based off their interests and I think that's why it went over so well and all the students seemed to enjoy it was because they had a direct impact on what presentations they were going to see and we always ask for a constructive criticism and I guess the only thing was that we needed to make sure that in the future that students all know that they need to follow the form or else we cannot put them in their first choice but um overall the student feedback was great and even the teacher feedback was very positive all the teachers and staff saw how great of an opportunity this was for the students to get a chance to discover some new education fields and career paths they may have not known about um here's just a picture of like our pie chart that we did so we sent out a form um at the end just asking for feedback and some of the questions were like would you like to see this event happen again which you see here and then just some other um questions like is there any constructive criticism that you may have or um things that you want to see in the future for this event that's it here's some pictures and we're gonna play a little video of um a of the career fair yeah we started uh discussing this like the second the school year started and for about two months now we've been meeting every Wednesday on Zoom for about an hour to discuss details and plan we um use like Community networks like signing out through principal announcements to parents and um also some other ways of contact we have through Tylenol I believe we are a local managed service provider so we do it for medical dental Industries and with our presentation they're going to hear a lot about you know all the different things that you can do in our in our industry so yeah excited to be here kind of tell a little bit delightful about it it's a great field to be in and I love to convey that to them I'm going to Mr de Bombay's room to uh listen to the former Attorney General Robert Marconi foreign [Music] so excited to teach all the students about their career so it's really great to see that I genuinely think everything's gonna go great the presenter is also so excited to be here I know the presentations are going to be amazing [Music] thank you okay thank you so much um for your time as um behalf of the youth commission we um thank you very much for your time and um do you guys have any questions for us well so I did have one question which is how many different speakers Did you have I think we had um 30 35 yes 30 35.
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been in the meeting because I've been serving as the committee chair for community relations but um I'm I'm in a bit of a situation personally that is not going to allow me to be as present for the work that needs to be done so I'm really hopeful that as we open um uh the selection of our 2023 committee chair that someone else will be willing to step forward to assume that role so with that said let's open the nominations please sure I'll nominate Michelle okay well thank you Lauren is there a second oh second all right seconded by Al right any other nominations all right nominations are closed all those in favor hi hi all right congratulations Michelle I'll turn the reins over to you thanks Kate um thank you everybody appreciate your support and of course still hope to be working closely with Kate and Ann and everyone Mike so I'm thrilled in the other board members so with I think I'm going to head over to Mike is that okay go over the agenda now absolutely yeah so thank you Michelle and I just want to say thank you to Kate it was great working with you last year I I wish you all the best and uh what you have going on and uh I you know Michelle I look forward to working with you um on this committee and uh we'll have a a good year ahead so uh let's let's dive in um so that was number one with selection of the committee chair and we just have two other quick items on the agenda and I I actually think this would be a pretty quick one um as you all know Anne Mead's work in the family engagement office is tremendous I heard her talking a little bit about the food truck today but we have a couple Community budget workshops coming up um the the the season is all about the budget I'm sorry Rob can anybody take notes today all right Kate thank you I'm sorry to make a big point to make thank you go continue um as we all know this is the budget season so uh I know there's a big kickoff meeting coming in February with um Erica Haynes from the uh Connecticut uh School Finance project and she's going to tell us all about how to understand the budget how to think about it how to advocate for it and a whole host of other things but I'll let Ann get right into that and then we can roll right into the collective impact efforts underway so I'll hand over to Ann great thank you Mike good evening everyone it's good to see you congratulations Michelle and I on your uh new chairperson position and um thank you Mike and I Echo Mike's comments to Kate for the work and the support that you've done for this committee over the last couple of years so much much appreciated and of course appreciate everyone that's on par as part of the committee so let's start with the activities that are happening in um our office so we did already send out a parent Square message to all of our families in the district telling them about tomorrow night and encouraging families to come to the um board Workshop they know they can't talk a few of them I'm sure will ask that night if they can ask questions but um it's really we've had parents that have come to our forums have sent in emails have been um in attendance at the coffees with Kevin and so we really feel it's important to have really super open open access for these families to be able to come back in and see the work you know they've requested certain things be done certain things be added into the budget so this is the opportune time for them to be able to come back and see where we've put things into the budget that they've asked for so that's on the uh docket for tomorrow night we then go to a little bit different off the budget but this Saturday we start with a class of about 24 starting the parent supporting educational Excellency and that'll be a we start with Saturday morning then we go to Thursday nights and that'll be done both virtually and in person it's a great opportunities for our families to learn more about how the school system works policies and procedures how they're developed how the state governs our schools how policies are made and how they can become really change makers and and advocates for the district and Grace and her team right now are just finishing up uh parent C or excuse me pep and I think in that pep we probably have close to 45 to 50 people that will graduate um on Friday the 3rd I believe it is a February so we're really excited this is the first year we've been able to offer it in English Spanish and Portuguese both classes filled up and um so we'll have a whole group that will graduate starting in November in February we will have a Spanish pep class and that will be taught by one of our Spanish-speaking family Liaisons that is trained through UConn to be able to teach this curriculum so we're also excited about that um then that brings us to what Mike was talking about with the storytelling um and the advocacy work with a workshop titled it will be in person at the Black Box beginning at seven o'clock titled storytelling and advocacy go hand in hand and so this is a workshop that Erica Haynes from this Connecticut school and finance project with her team will actually help parents understand how important their own stories about their children how they progressed either progressed and graduated from Danbury schools or or in Danbury schools right now and what programs are really special and then how do they continue to advocate for that how do they um talk to things around the ECS formula how do they talk to legislators but not just saying we want more money for the district how do they tell their story about why certain things in education was really important to their family that's what our legislators really want to hear the importance to our families and to our community and of course we'll have families also talk about return on investment that you know if if students have great education which they do in Danbury then they'll stay in Danbury and that's a return on investment so she'll talk a little bit about that um we are tracking very closely all of the bills um as well as Mr walson's tracking them I know Mike you're tracking them too Erica gives us almost a daily briefing on what bills are coming up and different times that we can jump in and do virtual uh testimony so that that's a good um thing coming up um January 23rd we have new promise and that is filled up with about 35 new families to the district to go through that um 14 or 15 pages of module work so families can get equipped with what they need in the district PowerSchool here are policies around attendance and the things that matters to families and then March 25th is our next Family University so and that Family University will be pre-k through 12th grade unlike our one that we had in December that was just the preschool through second grade however those folks that were the the December folks they are coming back on February 4th to pick up materials and we're going to talk to them about how the work that they did at The First Family University and the things that they learned of how to work with their children how is that changing their behavioral practices at home and working with their children and I think for me the biggest takeaway that day was families walked out and said you know what I never realized counting Tupperware Lids or doing math with shampoo in the bathroom tub and doing counting was something that I could do with my preschooler with my kindergarten for them to learn their math math facts so the parents were pretty impressed with the ease or the easiness of the materials that we gave them and um they'll be receiving more materials when they come back for that so that's pretty much what we're doing we do have coffee with Kevin on the the 25th of February I think that I think that's the date um it's the last Saturday of the month um and we will also be meeting in a very similar format as coffee with Kevin with our teachers and other folks in the district so that we really can have a good 360 review of how everyone's feeling and have that conversation between folks and Kevin I'm sorry Kevin just put in March 25th so thank you Kevin um no February last I mean Kevin do you want to speak about the last coffee with Kevin a little bit and the the um content Oh you mean our last meeting yeah yeah families yeah well all all of the meetings are good um frankly but this last one was a lot about advocating for our school budget we had a number of parents who were asking for specifics on how they can get involved and how they can further support the school budget and it was really good to see um kind of the um foreign to be part of a movement to help support the budget and so we had parents who were looking to organize to help support and find ways to Rally support our parents to support the budget so it was really good to see and we actually had before we got off the phone a couple of the families actually connected with each other and shared each other's information a couple of parents who actually volunteered to kind of serve as certainly spokespeople or take on a leadership role so it was really good to see of course Anne made them aware of some subsequent meetings that will be taking place to further inform our families about school budgeting process we had Erica Haynes coming in after that meeting I forget the date right now but it was a really good meeting um you know in addition to the typical questions that I get just about school functioning and you know things that need to be tweaked to help better serve our families but the meetings are just getting better and better and it's really good to see our families and just coming out more and more informed and really asking questions not just for them but really in on the behalf of all Danbury students it's been really good and thank you thank you and what I found more and more so families aren't just asking about their specific child they're talking about systemic things in the district trick both on the positive and the negative side and so that's a different level than we've had in the past and so I think that in itself is a strength of our families to really be able to look at something not just that impacts their family but impacts more folks so that next one as Kevin said on February 25th will actually be held in person at the face Center and so we can make it a true coffee with Kevin with actual mugs and coffee and some breakfast Refreshments although I've always had coffee in those meetings and just that's right I know you've got that kick up well the the gray cake up absolutely absolutely so any questions about what we're doing or other thoughts of things that we should do I look to all of you as eyes and ears more in the community too yeah Kate I just want to clarify a couple dates Dr me because I apologize I missed them um graduation pep graduation I believe is on the um third I've ever confirmed yeah I will confirm that okay February 3rd from six to seven sorry class I didn't hear the date on when that one was going to be commencing the new one I believe is right the week afterwards okay yeah yeah Grace and I are still going back and forth with the date because we have so many different things going on we're really aiming to you know not have it conflicting things going on so we're we're still working on that that started I caught the storytelling at 7 pm or telling an advocacy but what was that date so that's February 13th that's a Monday night thank you if anybody if any of the board members can make these events especially our committee that would be great um well please mark it down on your calendars let me know if you can be there and uh you know because I was at that December 4th um university and it was great it was a challenging weekend there was a lot going on before the holiday and it really I mean I was only going to stay you know two hours I ended up staying a lot longer and it was great to talk to the people and you know our parents and our fellow you know committee members is just really a nice environment and the The Cutting zoo was amazing it was amazing so thank you so much for that hard work and you guys did a fantastic job thank you thank you okay did I just make um a suggestion a friendly suggestion um one of the things that we did at that last Family University was just to put out um a space for folks to communicate with board members there and to give them sort of like the option of taking a posted away and bringing it back if they weren't so comfortable hanging out and what you know having us watch them um if we could continue that practice to sort of you know try to open up those lines of communication I I hope that we that we could uh continue to use that as a tool thanks and and I'll make sure that the resource room has space for that because I think hey you got some wonderful feedback I mean in English Spanish and in Portuguese and the take that I had on it and feedback from families was they're really listening you know they hear about this you know the Board of Ed is being like this really scary group but we're all human you're all human and and you care and so the table award is not a scary group and is that what you're saying say again the board is not a scary group no no they're not and um depends on who you're talking to sorry but no you're not you're not a scary group and I think our families felt that they took away that that you were approachable and I think you had some absolutely wonderful conversations I know at one point Ralph was there um Kate you were certainly at the table Michelle and there were a couple of other Julie I think you were there too right and people just came up and and had a conversation with you that that's perfect that's that's really perfect for our families they really like that yeah great uh anybody else have any comments board members anybody who's not a board member any thoughts no that's it okay well I want to thank everybody then I guess I'm going to be closing out the meeting I'm gonna ask for a motion to adjourn so move Madam chair Mike did you have something yeah no I I just wanted to make sure and you you hit everything you wanted on the collective impact I know that was that was I didn't can can we talk about that though I think it's really important I'd rather have you Michelle have you all hear this from from myself and from Kevin's perspective too versus people start asking you about what is this Collective impact in Danbury is is that okay please okay great so Collective impact is a um State and a national level movement of and I'll talk slower on this because it's got a lot of pieces it's a pretty dense work but it is a movement of people in a community towards common goals so we have been over the last several years watching Norwalk acts which is in its 13th 14th year now of bringing all Community Partners together first to assess where there were gaps and services from Cradle to Career so if it's a big it's a big chunk of a child's life and from there they develop what's called cornerstones and they pick out certain cornerstones or goals that the community wants to work on and so Norwalk has I think right now probably eight or ten cornerstones similar projects in Connecticut are the Bridgeport prospers Stanford Cradle to career and Waterbury has the water buried Bridges program and so we have toyed around and tried several different attempts at Collective impact under many different other groups in Danbury at least through my tenure for the last 30 years doing this type of work in Danbury and because of politics or because of just things the way things shook out and not having money up front they fell apart well Nelly may put out a proposal back about a year ago now and we're looking for communities that they had previously worked with and that they had trust in to put in a Community Driven initiative not a school driven initiative but a Community Driven initiative and so we did apply to Nellie may as a school district with a thought of a community impact driven by the community um our proposal was responded to positively in the dollar amount of two hundred thousand dollars and then the board their board knowing May Foundation looked at it and upped it to 250 000 for the first 18 months um we have taken that money and we'll let me back up before we go where the money um when a collective impact idea is in its formulation stages it's really important to look at Key partners that do very similar work in communities all throughout the United States and the United Way is a community group as many of you know here run by Isabel Amita and in most of the collective impacts throughout the United States and there's a whole Federal movement of strive organizations that are Community impact um United Way is there backbone organization and so we have had Nellie May and there's all there's been all kinds of mous and moas memorandum of understanding and agreements um that United Way is the backbone Organization for this and so through the work of developing The Proposal we began to work with an Alex London out of Simsbury and he is a um contractor consultant that does this type of work he's very well known in the Bridgeport prosper's work of course the Stanford work and in the uh work that has been done in Norwalk and so we had several conversations as we developed the grant put things together and I know even before we put this grant in um Kevin and I and a group had sat with him to just talk about what could Collective impact look like in Deborah so now fast forward the money comes the United Way has um is the backbone organization and we have several smaller meetings at the beginning before December of what this was going to look like and getting the wheels turning to get it started um from there we had our first meeting in December with about 10 different people key people that were part of the original proposal that said my organization is ready to roll up our sleeves and start this work it is not easy work it's time consuming it is a really thought provoking work there's a whole data piece that goes with it there's a whole framework that you actually follow it's not something you say let's have coffee over and let's put this in and a year we'll be good to go so the process that we're going through is really more important than trying to rush through this process so we had our 10 folks in December we then realized that we were missing a couple other agencies in Danbury and so we have reached out to them so our next meeting is tomorrow at um beginning at 11 15.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
33 your committee chair [Music] so I guess I don't know since you don't were any of you that none of you were the chair last right okay so um maybe we'll I'll step in since I don't know how many of you are interested in being the chair but why don't I run this part um and see if there are any nominees for the position of chair they might nominate Kate um I'd like to I great I second the nomination you beat me to it Teresa there we go with any other nominees all right then the eyes have it all in favor aye aye aye hey happily turn in that gavel over here there it is congratulations thank you so much guys appreciate that support [Music] I guess I'll turn it back over to Kelly um we've got three different policies to look at um and I guess we'll just start with the first one that's there policy 5118.1 homeless students perfect um so uh this is a policy uh from arcade audit um that we were recommended as a mandated policy that we need to add and essentially this talks about the rights of our homeless Youth and families um and essentially I know the board has had an opportunity to take a look at this um but it speaks to um records that you can't allow any barriers to allowing a student who is displaced due to homelessness um for registering in school um so it's essentially talking about the district's obligation to place in an appropriate grade um to make every effort to help and assist the family in getting school records be it report cards immunization or medical records and and so forth um so I do believe that the policy regarding our homeless youth youth is you know pretty straightforward it is also mandated by State Statute so I don't know if we want to go through kind of section by section I'm happy to do that or if we want to turn it over for any questions I'll defer to you Miss kanetta um thank you Kelly um what's the preference of the committee do folks want to go through this section by section well how do you know they have to have an address how do you contact them what does it say sure um so essentially when a when a student uh loses permanent residency um the obligation of the educational institution or the district uh defaults to the last school that the student was officially placed in um so I'll give you a hypothetical scenario if a student um was evicted from uh an apartment let's say in Danbury and ended up living with um a relative in a neighboring town we would still have the obligation to provide consistency of education for that student in our school with our transportation um and then if the student were to establish permanent residency I mean that is always the goal to work with um with work with these students and families to assist them to um you know do what is in the best interest of that of that child once that permanent residency is established then we would assist with the transfer of Records whether it's coming into Danbury or or going out of Danbury um and so essentially this policy speaks to um those displaced or homeless youth when they're registering with us here in District um that we cannot allow um sometimes students that fall into this category have attended multiple schools and so obtaining their prior educational records and medical documentation and so forth um it can be a little bit cumbersome and so we we just want to make sure that we're supporting these families thank you sure Julie I say that you have a hand yes I have a question will this be in conjunction with social services to chosen School so this policy speaks to the school this policy speaks to the school okay oh I'm sorry I just heard my voice echoing the policy speaks to the efforts of the school um but um oftentimes Julie we are we are working with other agencies um be it Social Services um sometimes it might be an agency like the department of students and families um sometimes it might be an educational Advocate um so anyone else that is working to support the student and family um we are we are going to work and coordinate services but the specifics of how a student gets placed and registered in Danbury is outlined in the policy in practice or procedure those are just other agencies we work with because we always want to support the whole child throughout this process Kelly it looks like okay thank you I mean there's there's a blank for I don't know whether um you want to recommend a title or a name or a reference to another document like we'll disclose annually or something like that um but there is a blank there so um so I am the liaison for the district so that would have I think um what I would recommend for that thank you Kim for pointing that out um would just be um uh you know the assistant the assistant superintendent or designee um and that way it would be either myself or or someone if if there were to be um you know in in my uh absence that that could um Institute that and this speaks to um I work very closely with uh Cara wanza and Gina um who are a data reporting for uh folks as we are required to report any student um that is considered um home a homeless youth in our district we report uh those and it is a very confidential it's reported to the state um so that they can keep track of numbers um there are also and this is a little bit outside the policy but there are grants that the district is eligible to apply for to help with some of those wrap-around supports and services for these students and Families so if it's okay say assistant superintendent or designee in that blank do we have a significant I'm sorry so Terry I just want to ask a real quick question and then I'll be happy to recognize you as well okay no problem so Kelly I just want to confirm we're sort of already have these practices in place and the adoption of this particular policy is to some degree of formality correct that is absolutely correct okay thank you Terry did you have another question is there a significant um population that this applies to uh yeah no so we report uh annually and I'd have to pull the exact number uh Terry but it is not a significant number of students and families but it does fluctuate and Vary from time to time sure sure any other questions from board members go ahead Michelle a quick question so I had met um a family that had moved here and did not have the documentation and had commented that they were waiting like two months because they were living but it was almost like a sublease you know they didn't want to they didn't they were kind of taken in and uh somebody else obviously the owner was not you know maybe aware of it I don't really know but it was an issue because they couldn't show residency to get into the school so how is how is that different from what you're saying what is that time frame is this applicable to what you're talking about I mean they're not homeless but in a sense they don't have an address or can't necessarily ask the landlord to show that they're on the lease right or they don't want to kind of stir up trouble so how do how do you work around something like that yeah excellent question um and I'll try to try to give you an answer as each um situation is unique um so at Central registration one of the things that we've spent time working with staff and training is to um is to know what questions to ask of students and families um so two are particularly the the parents or Guardians that are registering or or the designee who is registering the child what we want to do is absolutely make sure that we're enrolling students that are Danbury residents but if a situation sounds in which to your point Michelle that there's there's difficulty because there's a unique circumstance um it could trigger through conversations with the family do they qualify as homeless youth um and and if so there's a series of questions that we would go through to identify that um it is some sometimes it is a it is always a very sensitive conversation um and so sometimes it does take a little bit of work with students and families and we try to do it as quickly as possible um to elicit the information and then link them up with the appropriate resources so it it should not in theory take any one of our families an extremely long time to register but we want to make sure we're abiding by your um uh you know making sure Danbury residents are enrolling in Danbury schools and then acknowledging that there are certainly special circumstances and considerations for families that are going through a difficult time as far as being able to establish a permanent residents okay and so that helps if we no thank you it does so if we then establish that yes they will be um you know enrolling that's when we set them up for the clinic and for all that right that precedes that process like how long does that process typically take is it a couple of weeks you know I know yeah it shouldn't take that long it really the whole essence of this policy is to try to work as quickly through that process um to get a student in school as quickly as possible um and oftentimes when we're working with um uh you know local school districts um you know the districts partner together so that we can keep a student in school while we make a decision of you know is their home District this District or our district um and so there are also Liaisons for the district there's a liaison for the state that we can reach out to if there's questions um and and really help us to navigate uh navigate some unique circumstances thank you so much that's helpful and certainly what I would just ask is if there's any situation in which you're aware of something that's taking you know a longer period of time alert one of us you know Kim myself we can certainly follow up on it um because we we don't want uh we don't want it to be a bear we want to make sure the right kids are registering as far as residents but we also don't want there to be barriers when there's a unique set of circumstances oh thank you appreciate it so before we go any further I just want to ask if there's someone here who can take some notes um the notes for this committee um typically reflect the specific actions that we're taking so in this case I think we're going to be making a recommendation for a first read is that right Kim yes okay um so is there someone who can take some some notes about um as these motions are coming forward I'll be happy I appreciate that Michelle um if you want to you know send the notes to me afterwards I can let you know you know just if there's any information that needs to be added or adjusted okay you got it I appreciate it thank you and if I could just oh I'm I'm sorry if I could do that there's um on page four of this policy uh Michelle there's just a blank that we're going to say assistant superintendent or designee that would just be one important thing um and I also have taken those notes and we'll make sure it gets reflected in there um and then we're making the recommendation for first read okay superintendent what was it superintendent or assistant superintendent or designee thank you okay got it so Kim may I ask would we normally make a motion to do first reading on each of these or just at the trio of them I think you can do either one okay just for the sake of keeping this simple let's do it one at a time and that way if we run into any obstacles we can deal with those as they come out so I would like to entertain a motion to make a recommendation to the full board that we do a first reading on uh this policy which is 5118.1 homeless students can I have a motion please ISO move thank you Terry may have a second thank you Julie uh all those in favor please motion passes all right let's move on to policy 511 5144.4 physical exercise and discipline of students thank you Kim for giving that up for us can I just ask one question I I didn't get these in the attachment did I miss it so Terry you got the agenda right right you see the agenda yeah if you look at those each of those policies that are listed in there those are clickable links and if you click they had trouble I had trouble well okay so it I'll try to I'll see what I did wrong okay no problem I try to take you to them yeah yeah so as you hover over it you can see um it it pulls up this link underneath so you then have to click on that link again to go to the page where it is if you do continue to have trouble though uh we can talk to Kara about having to include the entire policy as part of it sorry about that no problem all right Kelly I understand this one is yours as well sure um so this is um another uh another policy uh that we that was recommended by the cave audit um so it is a policy um that is not in place currently that we're recommending edition of um and essentially this is uh speaking to physical exercise and discipline of students um the background is it is a requirement that K-5 students have uh 20 met no less than 20 minutes of physical activity or exercise a day that can be a combination of both recess as well as physical education class um and so here this policy is really speaking to um the loss of recess as a consequence and forbidding um we know that physical exercise and activity um is is helpful to students um and so this uh does not allow staff teachers principals so forth to remove uh the recess or purchase participation in PE because of disciplinary reasons it also goes on so that is the for number one uh the first section of that number two also indicates that we cannot assign physical activity as a punishment so you cannot require students to run laps or something like that um and then the last part of the policy is speaking to our Wellness instruction um so that we cannot uh you know we promote Wellness as a district there are other policies that speak to our Health Services food services and wellness and this is just supporting that this policy as far as allowing kids access to physical activity and exercise um should should not be prohibited because we want to ensure the wellness of our students and that is physical wellness as well um I should note that in here um you know there can be brief restrictions um from physical activity so I'll give you um an example um the uh you know a brief timeout if you notice that a student is um you know maybe in conflict with another student out on the playground and you want to separate them and ask them both to have a cool off period of time um this policy does not prohibit that we want to act in and proactively and prevent those types of things um from happening um but a complete removal from from the physical exercise or activity um is not permissible are there any questions I tried my best to summarize that policy I know everyone's read through it in detail but if there's any follow-up questions or a part we want to speak um more detail to please let us know thank commissions from committee members okay I just have a quick question um on this policy Kelly um it does fit here under section one that loss of uh recess or other Physically Active Learning opportunities as a form of discipline may be permitted on the case-by-case basis if approved in writing by the building Administration prior to the imposition of the discipline so I would assume that there might be a case here or there possibly where [Music] um in the absence of having other Solutions uh for the behavioral problem that's going on uh a building administrator might permit this to happen is that is that what I'm reading here that is correct yes okay and it does require oh God it does require approval in writing by the administrator which I assume that has to be the principle except yes principal assistant principal but an administrator of the building okay all right any questions any questions from non-committee members okay no question so I think I'm looking for a motion then to move this into a recommendation to the full board for first reading at the next meeting can I get a motion please thank you Terry and a second please thank you um I Heard Michelle and I heard okay so Michelle you'll take the second on that one thank you all those in favor please thank you all motion passes all right Kelly I think the third one on here is also yours and that is policy 514 4.2 use of exclusionary or time now yes um so right prior to the pandemic we had revised uh this policy um and so you'll see the old policy was attached there so I am going to propose because this one is a pretty uh detailed policy um just to to have kind of a opportunity for the um for the committee to ask if it's okay with you miss Canada uh to ask some questions regarding the content of here there are some minor recommended changes in the K policy this is this is one that we we currently have an existing policy for um uh but there and it is it is uh also dictated by state statutory language um and so um there are some recommendations that we're tweaking and changing some of the wording and language um in in my professional opinion there's nothing um significant or or substantial about the recommended changes it is in alignment with um with the um uh you know with with the uh the the rules that we're currently following in place as far as as far as uh State Statute um but essentially if I could just spend a moment just talking about um seclusions and restraints um they are done um not not on a frequent basis um but the premise of being able to seclude or restrain students is done if and only if the student is at risk of injuring themselves or someone else um and so sometimes with a student that is behaviorally dysregulated to keep them or everyone else safe um there does need to be an intervention um by a school staff member um so a seclusion is um is essentially done when um all other students staff and so forth are removed from the vicinity so that that disregulated student has an opportunity to calm down in in the space without being moved um sometimes it's also done if there is an office space or something close by where we can bring a student in but it's it's confining the student to a room an office and so forth while they're in an escalated state from a behavioral standpoint to help them to utilize strategies and process and de-escalate and again it can only be done if a student is at risk of harming themselves or someone else the restraint piece would be done if if we've tried all de-escalation strategies potentially a seclusion may have been tried but if a student continues to be at risk of harming themselves or someone else that we we could engage in a restraint process and and essentially that means a physical hold of a student I want to clarify that staff are trained in physical Management training and what that means is that staff are given all the psychological strategies to use with students um you know 99 of the time the um the strategies of how how to de-escalate students or even greater than that work with the student and and help to to you know re-engage them in the task and calm down occasionally we do have students and and this predominantly speaks to students with some more significant special needs um that that may um without that physical hold be at risk of harming themselves or someone else and so this does allow um the the district to keep them and others safe there are particular holds that can be done to ensure the safety of the student as well as the staff members that are administering staff member or members that are administering the restraint but if you are holding the student in any capacity we do have an obligation to document and classify it as a restraint um the seclusion as well there's a required documentation so every time we engage in this with a student there is a paperwork that is required to be completed um the parent must be notified within 24 hours but our district protocol is as soon as possible um and uh then the paperwork needs to be sent to the parent within 48 hours or two school days um so it is very clearly documented of what what happened before during and after there are safety checks as far as insuring um that the student is seen by a school nurse if we've had to intervene in any type of physical capacity that we've implemented all the strategies um that that we can try prior to physically engaging with a student if a student has a behavior intervention plan that we've implemented those strategies as well um and that we've um you know that we've followed up with the appropriate parties the the school team that's working with the student to see is there something we can tweak or change to better support the student the family potentially outside support services and ultimately do we need to convene a follow-up meeting such as a PPT meeting to revise or review um and the law also requires that if there are four or more of these within a 20 school day period we are legally obligated to go back to PPT or go to PPT initially um to um to talk about what is the student's program and plan and do we have any obligation to do any additional assessments interventions or so forth so I just wanted to give that background as I know it's not something that that we frequently talked about I don't know if there's any questions on the information that I've shared so far any questions from committee members Terry any questions from committee members Terry go ahead please does this happen often does this happen often uh no um you know I think hold on just a second Kelly hey Julie it looks like the sound is echoing can you just mute until you're ready to speak thank you okay um so no uh Teresa there's a very small um subset of students um that this represents across the district um sometimes we do see um and and every year again it's part of our annual state reporting to the state of how many students has has this um has this happened with and um how many instances with each student um I will say and don't quote me on the exact number but in the in the low 20s as far as the numbers of students across the district my recollection was from previous reporting that's approximately been the number of students but some students have had more than one instance incidents of this um so so sometimes the numbers are higher than than the 20 or they are higher than the 20 is as sometimes it takes a little bit of time to try different interventions and strategies um to to get the student back on track frequently we've seen this with students that La um and and I don't want to say always but lack of verbal communication ability to express their wants or needs have more extreme behavioral disorders or disabilities that that is typically the population that we've seen the need for this and and all under the pretense of of safety other questions thank you Julie did you have a question is that why you had unmuted I just want to make sure and unmuted yes I just have a quick question um Kelly I know that you mentioned that you have um the individuals that applied this type of seclusion they have a training but do you have certified training on every school yeah so there are staff members in every school that are trained um there are crises teams that are designated to every school um and members of those teams are trained um the requirement of our of our physical Management training um and it's not a district training it's a it's done Across the Nation um we have our behavioral experts which are obesity is our board certified behavior analyst um that are certified trainers um and they train staff so the initial training that's conducted is a six hour training um and it is good for 18 months so after um you know honor about somewhere between 16 and 18 months you're due for refresher training which is usually between two and three hours of length to recertify and the training um really the heaviest emphasis of the training is all about what is referred to as psychological management so essentially utilizing um de-escalation strategies with students to try to not be physical and re-engage them um it then the latter part of the training and and um a smaller portion of the training is devoted to if those strategies do not work and a safety issue is still present um then then we need to intervene um and so it teaches staff how to protect both themselves and the child when doing holds and there are specific holds um based on the scenario situation size of the child that are appropriate um and so it trains and and staff actually practice on one another um engaging in those um those holds so that they are prepared should they have to encounter that with the student I hope that helped to answer thank you questions okay I have a quick question Kelly I just want to take a look under the time limitations note here um I see that uh in that first paragraph um the students really only to mean in the designated timeout setting or space just for the time necessary for the the student to become regulated again and be able to return to the classroom and it says here the time should not normally exceed 30 minutes um and then a suggested time legislation does not specify the limits so does that mean the state does not put a cap on it so uh yes so um every incident of seclusion or restraint is required to be timed um I will say the vast majority of them are you know a minute to several minutes in length they are not long-term um you know long-term interventions the language of this um is is really meant to um indicate that a student cannot have a behavioral episode and be removed for example for the rest of the school day in place in a separate location um really the essence of um you know a timeout a seclusion or restraint is to do it only to help the student re-regulate and then the goal is to reintegrate them um that said our state form and paperwork um if I can speak a little bit more detail to time our state form and paperwork requires an administrator to sign off if an incident or episode goes beyond 20 minutes um and so if um you know and our again our internal practices as Administration is always notified of it um but if it is to go beyond there um and then there's my honoring the nurses called in and so forth the times in which it exceeds for that length of time usually would be awaiting on some type of emergency Personnel or services to arrive to intervene so again I don't want to say it's never happened but typically these are short-term interventions um you know with the goal of helping the student to return to you know return to re-regulated State um and then to assume you know to presume along with the rest of their school day thank you appreciate that clarification I do see on here that under uh number four um it talks about and this isn't really the use of exclusionary timeout settings uh it it does say the director of special education and then it has some or blank uh should we just strike that or how do you want to handle it um I I think we can list or designate I always think it's a good idea to have an alternate and it would be myself or one of the special ed administrators on my team right now I'm the one currently doing that thank you yep all right so with that go ahead Michelle just one question bye and I'm just wondering because I know we're talking about security and safety when they um are set aside to kind of calm down is that videotaped is is that allowed or not I'm just wondering as far as you know is that something that we do or wouldn't do or you know as far as um yeah you know what I mean I know it's a vial I don't know I'm just kind of wondering if that's something that would or would not be done or positive or not um so it is not something that uh that we're doing nor recommending to videotape a child in an escalated State um that said uh there are teams of individuals that are responding so um while this might start with one staff member and one student um when a crisis team when a crisis situation evolves um there is a a response of more than one adult individual in the school um part of that is for both uh the staff and students safety and benefits we want to make sure that we have you know observers around to make sure that kids and staff are safe um but we certain we don't want to add an undue burden by by taping someone in that situation um we do I will say we do have cameras in the school environment as you guys are aware and you know hallways and things like that um so could it um you know could it be based on the location um on on video it may be but it would not be something that we would we would advise or recommend that we start recording um when a child is having a behavioral episode okay we did actually have an arant employee who did actually videotape as an observer who faced some discipline and I mentioned that only because there's lots of things that spiral out of a restraint um so that maybe kind of ancillary employment related action that we have to take in response it may be that the wrong person is intervening who hasn't been trained or someone is videotaping what's happening that shouldn't be so there's lots of things that often you know Kelly and I will partner together on those because um there they can often be an event and they're jarring and they're they're a little nerve-wracking to watch um and so often have spiraling consequences as a result yeah great I just was curious you know with today's technology and body cams and you know what really happened whatever you know the child that's all so thank you now it's a it's a good question any other questions from board members uh and this is open to any board members now uh anyone who's not on the committee have any questions [Music] I'm sorry I'm late I didn't have a chance all 40 policies how can I download them and read them because uh it's gonna be for the first reading am I correct correct these are going to recommendations for the board for first reading um so did you receive a copy of the invitation to this meeting Gladys I assume you did since you're on here yes so I would go over uh and I can download them from the invitation so attached to the invitation was the agenda for it and within the agenda there is a list of these the three policies that we're looking at tonight yeah and you can click on each one of those I'll get it okay thank you Kim appreciate the demo Mike Vanna White all right um if there are no other questions I'm looking for a motion to make a recommendation to the full board for our first reading on this policy I'd like to make that oops sorry go ahead Bridget that's uh okay you're uh you've made the motion can I get a second please Terry did you like to make the second there thank you so much all those in favor please hi hi motion carries thank you very much uh Kelly thank you so much for the the detail there and I see on the agenda we still have a another option which is a preview of Title Nine and Kim I think that this is going to be yours it is so um we put it on here as kind of a placeholder for you not sure how long we would take tonight with these three um but the Title IX policy um needs to be beefed up so we have a very basic one that's currently on our website um and that's in our policy book and so we're working as an administrative team to do a couple of things um we've done some training with our administrators that is required by law to understand the scope of of Title IX and how to respond to potential claims which require lots of procedural activity which really need to be in our regulations that go along with this Title IX policy so um it's going to be a a bit of a project for us to kind of beef that up and make sure that everything is in there including things like what does the form look like where you would report a concern what are the investigation investigatory steps much like your bullying policy goes through step by step how to respond so that's kind of a preview of what's coming for you and Kelly and I have been working together with the Chiefs to make sure that we've pulled in all of your building principles to see what forms they're using how can we make them more coherent and consistent and how can we build the regulations that support the Title IX policy um one of the things that Kelly and I struggled with a little bit today was we were in looking at the policy as it exists in your um former policy book which is a big three-ring binder that used to sit in the Board of Ed room but now sits at Cara Pompano's desk um for security and safety reasons because it looks to us like we're not sure that all of our PI all of your original policies migrated over um and so this is another one of those that we just need to go back and it was beyond the time we had to prepare for tonight to make sure that all of those pieces migrate rated into your current book of policies so if we could pause both on the Title IX and kind of where we go from here um Kelly and I have been working on a strategy on how to get through and make sure that all of your policies migrated and were kind of challenged in two ways one because it's a lot of policies and two because all of the policies were renumbered so there isn't a good crosswalk of what the former policy 7-225 is now a policy 4015 so we need to pause for a second and make sure that everything migrated and that all of the numbers crosswalk appropriately so um you know we've talked a little bit about strategy maybe doing the 2000 Series in one meeting the 3000 Series in another meeting just to make sure we've got everything in place um Kelly I don't know if you want to shed any more light on that yeah no I think I think we're at the point now where all of our mandated policy C's or for the most part have been introduced we may have one or two outstanding that we're working on um so I think if we could then maybe go through it sequentially or chronologically by series I think it would make a lot of sense um as they're they're by topic um you know all employment policies all student policies all um and so forth so I think it makes the most sense to do that um some of the the like the early series The the 1000 2000 series um there are not a ton of policies and you probably could do one or two of those Series in a meeting as you're re-looking at the um the policies that are currently in place and determining whether there needs to be any tweaks or changes it's going to be more tweaks or changes as opposed to reintroduce you know doing a whole new policy in an area um but some of your other like your employment and your student policies um there's a lot um in each section so you'll probably need to break that up either into a longer meeting um or multi-part meeting but I I think we might have a policy that we need to put in place for a specific reason and kind of go out of sequence for that but otherwise Kim and I were trying to um you know that we've kind of um you know inherited the work of others before us just make sure we're going through it streamlined and that we have a full updated policy manual and I think it makes sense to do it chronologically thank you for keeping such a close watch on that and for establishing a path forward for us obviously it's a lot of work and I appreciate that labor um you know I think uh it is going to be up to the the group here to come up with the consensus as far as how we we are going to you know move forward on those larger chunks uh whether we want to just do a long meeting or break it into two but we can have that conversation as we approach those those circumstances um yeah I think that's about it um does anyone have questions Terry I see your hand up uh the Title Nine what sections are you uh referring to so the Title IX policy itself is is not all that long it talks about um you basically the concept is you can't impede a child or a student's access to education on the basis of sex um where we're seeing it flow out are things like um a student um grabs a boy student grabs a girl student or smacks around the behind out at recess is that a violation of Title IX meaning does that warrant an investigation into the conduct of the student such that because it is based on sex or gender it may inhibit that female student's access to her educational experience so then that would trigger um investigation how do we go through that and it looks again a lot like your bullying policy but there are pretty specific steps you need to speak to both parents there are notice requirements there are follow-up requirements um it may require a safety plan for the students so there's a series of of steps that are procedurally required and that's what you'll see most likely in the regulations that support the Bland statement that says you shall not do this you shall not undertake this kind of action that implicates sex or gender um what section of the policy book does that fall under well for the policy number that's a good question um it's different in both books so I was having Troublesome finding it in the new version so I'm sorry I don't have the both numbers for you right here I can send them to you after um there are different in both books and I'm not sure I can't I'm having trouble finding them in the new versions Cara was very gracious she she gave me a hard copy books and because I'm a legal secretary background I'm I'm familiar with updating regulations so that's what I've been doing so I just want to make sure I know did she give you the because she just gave us today the the two three ring binders with the color-coded papers in them is that what she gave you uh I got here they're not color coded no I got I got tab papers but because it and it's a three ring binder she did this for me a couple weeks ago about a month ago probably okay um I didn't I mine's in the other room but I can show you that's what what led us to think we weren't sure everything migrated over so for example you know when I looked at the Personnel tab in the existing binder meaning your old policies it was about probably four or five inches worth of paper but in this current volume it looks like it's only you know a quarter of an inch and a couple of policies so um I think that's what Kelly and I are trying to figure out is um what else needs to go in so that we have one comprehensive binder that's got everything yeah and then we'll go ahead and upload that to the website because it's kind of all piecemeal right now okay it was originally in the 7000s now I think it's in the four thousands I know uh I'm missing the seven I was asking her about the 7 000 section I don't even have that yeah and so she says that is being updated she said um by Cabe and so I don't even have that section so yeah I think um you know I think what Kelly and I realized today when we put all those binders face next to each other um we've asked for one copy of the old binder in like a really ugly color like orange paper one copy of everything and then we're gonna break that out into sections and we're literally gonna go through them and make sure that they all migrated into the new binders which is probably what you have I hope all right any other questions from committee members okay any questions from board members who are not on the committee all right well again uh Kim and Kelly thank you so much for joining us this evening and walking us through these uh policies and and walking us through the game plan for going forward um we do have other committee meetings scheduled but we may uh as we come up with a more specific plan uh come up with some additional dates uh so that we can move this along I think it's really important that we try to get this uh updated uh as I know that uh that's a core component of the work we do here is sports so um all right with that said it's 603 I'll entertain a motion to adjourn please motion okay uh Michelle's motion and a second uh Tara you got your hand up I'll give you the second there all those in favor please
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[Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] babe [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you whatever [Music] baby [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] High School District Board of Trustees meeting of January 19 2023 is called to order at 3 46 pm the following members are present Jessica Guerrero and L Percy Catherine H Smith and Brian O'Neill staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda page two of the agenda pull phase two of them poll items four point B yeah 4.8 excuse me phase two 4.8 okay Pages 11 through 12 of the agenda [Applause] 11 through 12 pull 9 16. 9 17 9 18 and 9 19. so those are pulled 9 16 9 17 9 18 and 9 19. and exhibit f f yes replace base two to remove employee name from section g okay we got it all flat do I have a motion to adopt we have a motion in a second all in favor say aye aye opposed four zero public comments for closed session items only no public is going to comment and Miss Reynold Trejo are you all right oh you're just waiting okay it is now uh 3 48 and we are moving to closed session
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can you hear me okay the board did not meet in closed session this evening so we will call to order at trying to get arranged 603. an announcements tonight is uh trustee Lee is joining us remotely this evening utilizing the option ab2449 just caused relating to child care or caregiving need of a child parent grandparent grandchild sibling spouse or domestic partner hi Miss type festily under the requirements okay freeze under the requirements oh no I just said hi I someone said hi and I said hi um there's no individuals 18 years of age or older present in the room at this remote location with me and it is my intention to participate in today's meeting through both audio and visual technology thank you Dr Lee flight salute in recognition of free speech we welcome all and would like to note that saying the Pledge of Allegiance is not a requirement of to participate in the business of this board if you do not say the Pledge of Allegiance you are most welcome here as an equal participant of the business of this board so please now stand for the pledge foreign will lead us in the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all adoption of the agenda do I have a motion to bring the agenda to the floor for a discussion so move thank you Mr Bowen do I have a second I'll second thank you Mr Bruno trustee Bruno in regards to the consent agenda I would like to remove for separate consideration items one and items two is there any other on the consent agenda that would like to be removed Miss Pope I I know there are two that I would like to give comment if we can pull item 11 and 18 that way I can provide some a little more detail for for the board and the community very well to be clear we will remove for separate consideration and discussion on the consent agenda number one number two number 11 and number 18.
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the building was built in 1958 the appeal is on the tread depth requirement for the 2015 Michigan building codes it's a staff's opinion that the applicant is is appealing that the true intent of the code has been misinterpreted and it's a staff's opinion this is that the code is clear on minimum requirements for stair geometry and the intent is to keep people safe while using common stairways which is why the minimum standards were developed and adopted stayed in the petitioner's description the scare replacement at this property and the rise and Runner off by less than an inch if this was not done it would interfere had gone through the window that was already you'll play this it's unclear how the statement demonstrates a misinterpretation of the code the rise of the scare meets the code minimum requirements tread depth does not need the 11 inch requirement basis of the appeal of the state of the cost to take down the new staircase and move the window and rebuild the new staircase would be extremely expensive we've already invested over fifty thousand dollars in the project for the Sherman application the project was estimated at fifteen thousand dollars the costs and costs do not be presidents project cost is also not listed in section 113 as a basis for appeal in staff's opinion that the statements do not support the true intent of the code being misinterpreted and do not justify a board of appeals approval approved it would allow stairs in violation of the 2015 Michigan building code to remain in service all right thank you everyone could please speak until their mics that'd be helpful so we have an applicant here can you state your name and tell us a little bit about your appeal I'm uh Aaron wimbleen with Ox Studio I'm speaking on behalf of the applicant the applicant is on on the call um both as listed as Erica Hall and um so on behalf of the applicant I just wanted to clarify um uh the the response is that were originally published on as City staff response weren't I didn't see and I issued a supplemental um response to those questions but I think it would have caused confusion because the questions um in the staff response we're on a separate sheet so I apologize for that but if um but if I may um there's been some confusion on this project back when on the initial inspection when the tread depth was discovered and I amended the drawing to include based on a conversation with with Jamie and I think he's on it all too and we can talk about this um there's only about 10 people using this stair and so reviewing I understand the exception um for a 10 inch head wrap depth is based on um on an internal stair to a unit but the intent of that exception is based is for R2 is is actually defined by by a low occupancy and an occupancy that is familiar with with the trend the other and I can go through and answer any questions but and and I added a note on the bottom which I think caused further confusion was you know when we originally wanted to replace this 1986 stair which had two different tread depths and two different Riser Heights and one Rider hits was seven and a half but I went through the old field notes from 2020 by the way a long time ago um once there run was had a eight inch Riser depth and a 10 inch tread so they were all mixed up on the original and we as a repair in dealing with basically five datums to hit um including a window and a stair um you know we looked at the options and and we considered in 2020 you know maybe we could reclassify this as a fire escape we didn't decided not to do that but with that window and the chimney um and the the reasons why the 1986 there was so non-conforming um uh we did everything we did could do to move to make this the most safe stair including adding they're not installed yet which would actually make it less than an inch um a non-slip tread depth for the wood stair and because this is an exterior stair so um I guess I guess on the rehab condition um and without your your knowledge of of the 1986 there that was replaced um I can see the staffs interpretation but uh um it's you know I guess I would like your understanding of you know this was not done um you know for you know there's no there's no intent of other than feasibility of doing everything to make this dare in compliance to the rehab pose and um and deal with the existing conditions as a repair slash remediation and the existing stair meets all the Riser Heights it is it is not by the clinical definition of nosing to nosing but it is the full 11 inches and would be let be probably 11 and a quarter with the when the tread cover gets put on um so and the uh we've got two stairs North and South um and there's about 20 occupants on on um egressing and most go to the street this stair goes to the back parking of which again a low occupancy just using this this stairs that's it thank you okay thank you moving official have any comment about uh um I guess the only thing that I will comment on is uh the records that I found and in our system for the 1986 permit and when comparing that to the 1984 Boca code the stair as drawn in the records would be compliant with the code of the time okay um but with the um the work that was done it exceeds what is a repair it was from the foundation of a new stairway okay thank you does the board have any questions for the applicant um was was the was the original stair completely removed no I believe there was uh the two Landing posts that were um that Foundation we built off of that of that existing Foundation we ended up I did not I actually disagree that the 1986 there was in compliance with the vocal code I worked under the Boca code it uh it does not permit you know a seven and a half inch Riser and it doesn't permit altering depths and I do have the field notes they're not great field notes but there's three pages of them of the measurements of the 1986 and photographs before it was taken down that would document that the 1986 there was not in compliance so why why are there documents that show a 7 and 11 Code Compliance stare submitted that's uh so we have a standard note that requires a course we understand uh you know we have a a standard stairways note that defines you know 10 11.5.2 in this condition because of the uh complicated geometry of trying to improve I mean if you look at the 1986 stairs it was it was not a safe stairs um so uh in the specific detail of this stair on a601 WE very clearly now there's an amendment here but that original note wasn't there for the exception three based on low offices but the stair was in plan I understand that doesn't allow or permit any oversight to be but there was a clear intention to Define um the uh the nosing as one inch along with a 10 inch tread for an overall of 11 of foot depth with a no skid FRP exterior of non-slip cover to go over it which isn't the dimension of course doesn't is dimension to the wood not to the tread but um it was you know I was again this was this was drawn in December 11 2020.
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Alexander enjoys music and playing with with dramatic play toys career plans as Alexander would like to be a police officer one day congratulations Alexander [Applause] foreign Alexander I well done you're ready [Applause] congratulations to Abigail Castillo Abigail has one sister she likes to play with Barbies together um favorite schools music writing and drawing she likes to draw rainbows and writes her ABCs favorite hobbies I like to do puzzles I like when mom reads books to me career plans I want to be a firefighter so I can help people and keep them safe congratulations Abigail [Applause] [Music] come on thank you good job [Applause] okay awesome also also during Lafayette school that address congratulations to Alejandra Gomez a two-year-old sister named Victoria's writing because I like to write stories favorite hobbies like to draw and play games career plans you want to be a teacher because I want to teach students congratulations foreign [Applause] ER has a little sister named Victoria favorite school subject is writing favorite hobbies play at the park and career plans is become a teacher congratulations Nicole [Applause] please okay [Applause] foreign [Applause] school is honored to present the first unit of the month award to Luciana barantes she is in Mrs Perez's third grade class her favorite school subject is mathematics especially learning her multiplication facts her favorite hobbies are arts and crafts loves making bracelets with beads for her friends and when she grows up she aspires to be a dentist congratulations [Applause] thank you great job [Applause] yes Molly is also honored to present the next student month award to Diana Alonso Reyes she is in Miss G's fourth grade class her favorite subject is also math love all the math people her favorite hobbies are she enjoys playing soccer outside with her cousin Ivan and when Diana grows up she wants to be a teacher congratulations [Applause] questions all right you say perfect [Applause] Molly is honored to uh announce Christopher Diaz Gutierrez Guzman he is a Miss kiefer's fifth grade class he has two brothers and one sister his favorite subject is also math I think they have some great Math teachers he likes to play sports and is currently wrestling but his favorite sport is soccer and he's still figuring out what he wants to do he thinks he wants to be a soccer player or an athlete congratulations [Applause] foreign [Applause] Journey four cheese and misspelled and Miss lababa's sixth grade class she has two brothers and two sisters favorite subject is English language arts finally they get somewhere else here she likes the shop wrestle and do makeup and when she feels like she wants to be an anesthesiologist congratulations Journey foreign hello everyone our first student that we are recognizing this evening is Carter Arias uh Carter was referred for this award by his teacher of computers and film Mr Gary henningsen Carter lifts us his favorite school subjects physical education and computer science and his favorite hobbies are wrestling football skateboarding and video games in Carter's own words he's keeping his future plans open as far as a future career Mr henningsen wrote a few words on on behalf of Carter Carter brings a positive attitude and a great energy to my classroom he's always on task eager to learn and he asks meaningful questions Carter always stops by at my room in the morning to check in asks me how my family is and updates me on his life he also checks in with me at the end of the day and fills me in on his school day and what he plans on learning at wrestling practice congratulations to Carter who actually cannot be here tonight because he is at Hillsboro this evening and he's wrestling for the middle school party you made it [Applause] I hope the other teams [Applause] thank you [Applause] next up for the Community Middle School is Stephanie Reyes Stephanie was recommended for this award by her computer and film teacher Mr Michael Ratcliffe Stephanie's favorite school subjects are physical education because it releases stress and lets me be active favorite hobbies are writing stories about things related to my life or her life of course uh someone like the journal I hope it's not my life and also loves playing soccer career plans for Stephanie is pursuing acting or singing including songwriting and is interested in science which one day could lead to becoming a doctor or a biologist Mr Radcliffe wrote a few words of behalf of Stephanie he said I chose Stephanie for this January student of the month for several reasons first I noticed their eagerness to learn from day one in my technology class student that exceeds confidence and intelligence well beyond her age she has always been cooperative and courteous while following directions Stephanie has a tenacity to go far in life and her attitude toward learning is top-notch I'm impressed with the way she's not only participates in class but how she's never afraid to ask questions if she's not sure about an assignment she's an absolute joy to have in class with an impressive amount of creativity that will Propel her to wonderful success Stephanie come up and get your award congratulations [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] right good evening Bambrook School Community it's my pleasure to present to you tonight to be inside the Crusader citizen of the month of work okay our first recipient is Nelly Amaya Hernandez [Applause] Kevin uh her favorite subject is math favorite hobbies are playing with her brother and also cooking at home and for future career plans she would like to be an anesthesiologist [Applause] foreign hi Kevin there we go thank you [Applause] our next recipient is 10th grader Emmanuel Munoz uh his brother is Christopher Munos and Jocelyn Navarro um Mango's favorite subject in school is computer science his favorite hobbies are playing soccer and chess running and challenging himself his future career plans is to get into a good college or university and to become a software developer okay [Applause] okay [Applause] thank you [Applause] our next recipient Christian Morales Christian is an only child has no siblings favorite subject in school is Art favorite hobbies playing soccer and drawing and hopes to become a talented artist in the future [Applause] and last but certainly not least uh Daniel dadney is our final recipient Daniel does not have any siblings either his favorite subject in school is history favorite hobbies are spending time with family and friends playing sports robotics watching football going outside and playing video games College to major in history and work as a historian in a museum [Applause] I don't know all right thank you [Applause] and at this time I'd like the students of the month and their parents their families and come on over the stage so we can take a group picture foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you we want to tighten it up a little bit please so if you are one of the younger kids trying to stand in front of your parents maybe yes except for our high school guys drop this down thank you all right we got to make room for everybody [Applause] [Music] excited [Music] I'll put the cameras congratulations absolutely all right [Music] here okay the next order of recognition we have our educator of the month which I at the end of the month is from our very own smallest School Marina Academy thank you [Music] I am so honored that you are being recognized tonight goes out of her way to help every single member of our school community she works with every student at Smalley school which is amazing because we have 560 of them she gives her time and her talents whenever as and does an amazing job with the students the teachers and everybody else Miss padavid does an incredible job at fostering a sense of belonging and communicating a community for all of us she's always there whenever possible to translate for us for teachers for parents during conferences she's running around like a mad woman trying to get to every single person that and and not only does he do all of that at school she invites us over and cooks for us at home when I tell you that Miss pot of beef makes the best paella I have ever had and her cake decorating is an amazing work of art she makes us feel so welcome and it's really a part of Team Smalley she deserves this for all the ways she makes a difference I am so happy I have fans [Applause] manipulations [Music] thank you so much next up we have our educational specialist of the month from the month school calendar of over here is not available tonight but congratulations to Kelly a Golia this month's educational specialist of the month recipient Mrs agoia brings an incredible amount of knowledge to the ABA classrooms she goes above and beyond for our students staff families and doesn't hesitate to jump in where needed not only does Mrs Golia have a great rapport with students and staff but with our families as well she understands the important role a family plays in child's education and she makes it a point to contact and connect with the parents of each of her students she truly does go above and beyond to help us need it she's always willing to take the lead on school projects and help with everything from arrival lunch recess to bus Duty dismissal and prep coverage this year she also provided sub coverage for the teacher is out on maternity leave during that time she acted as a classroom teacher and a behaviorist and never once complained about her extra duties she made sure all of her students had what they needed to be successful and to put all all into her work this is a golia's trained staff with the Ables in ABC data collection and as a lead trainer for handle and Care Program her hard work and dedication are well known to all of us we are lucky to have Mrs agolia as part of our team congratulations foreign [Music] uh structuring curriculum and I'm happy to say that we did very well uh when they left they gave us some good invitations out in the past all areas we have one area left which is our test scores which uh will determine uh which will give us our final score but for first indication we did very well so I want to say hats off to our central office team our principals for putting everything together and making it so that we did so well so let's have a hand for them all right this is very important for those who don't know this month is the national school towards recognition month so we want to take a minute to recognize our education for everything that they do um on behalf of the leadership team myself teaching students families who want to thank them for all of you for all of that you do to support the wonderful programs at our school we actually have a proclamation from our governor which [Applause] to read [Applause] the schools serve nearly 1.4 million children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and works approximately 5 000 local Board of Education members without remuneration to the oversight of school district district operations including finances policy curriculum and Staffing and whereas as the policy making bodies for local school districts New Jersey's local Boards of Education Endeavor to make the challenges facing public schools and to help students attain the education necessary to excel in college and in the workplace and to enable them to compete in a global economy and whereas local Boards of Education have contributed to New Jersey being among the leading States and measures of academic quality such as the national assessment of educational progress course and the preparation for college through advanced placement using other curricular offerings and whereas the New Jersey school boards Association has declared January 2023 to be school board's recognition month and Grant by making the admissions to public education the dedicated members of local school boards have greatly enhanced the quality of life in our state now therefore Governor Murphy governor of the state of New Jersey hereby proclaims January 2023 a school board recognition month appreciated appreciation [Applause] [Music] that we are going to show everyone on Instagram we're going to publicize their years of service as well as why they became members of the board order against the grand page beginning next week so one last round of applause for our appointments [Applause] and I think that's it for the reference thank you very much so at this point we're going to move into the main body of our meeting for those of you who are here primarily for the recognition service I know I'm holding against you if you want to step out I'm just trying to do so quietly as we're going to move on to the uh oh parents before you leave we get a special treat for you students of the amount of parents employees of the month we have cookies which are located right in front of here trying to stay so grab a cookie enjoy let me stay home we appreciate you once again [Applause] thank you coach Caesar's weekend it's already 706.
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so they more than doubled the scoring of their opponents for those of you at the playoff games you know that um Desert Edge pretty exciting 45-42 had some of us sweating and I'll be honest the amount of praying that I did when there was a field goal lineup at Desert Mountain I hope that amount helped that ball go through but congratulations what an out signing time and then beating cactus in the finals at ASU uh so right now I'm going to turn it over to not just our own coach Eddie zubi but the 5A conference Coach of the Year Eddie zubi thank you very much uh it was a great season for us it was very exciting it starts from the top right everybody here at the district office the the school board Dr Foley Mr Lawson Heiser all the way down to our Administration super supportive of the things that we try to do year in and year out uh my coaching staff was amazing I had a lot of guys that were first year with us we had to indoctrinate them into the Higley way they were got came on board loved these kids up but most importantly is these guys right here day in and day out they showed up they came to work right didn't complain uh worked their tail off studied film did things outside of the football program we talked about love and Brotherhood I think our culture is really really good right now and it's something that happened at the beginning of the Season these guys really love each other they care for each other they play for each other and I think that was evident during the season we lost those two games they're very winnable games for us there were learning experiences for us it was something I feel that we needed to go through as a team to learn how to win those type types of games and when we got into the playoffs and got faced with those same types of uh ups and downs and situations we persevered we talk a lot about character we talk a lot about love we talk a lot about caring for each other these guys are the epitome of this they had a lot of Firsts this year we look forward for the seniors set the bar really high we look forward to having another great year next year we really appreciate you having us out this is super awesome we love representing our district and our Higley High School so go Knights [Applause] yep well that's a fun way to to begin a school board meeting uh to conclude the superintendent's report I've just put up some of our upcoming events as you know we're really excited that next week we have our performance our Chinese New Year performance at the hcpa a as well as Kindergarten Roundup and some upcoming board meetings by no means is this an exhaustive list of the multiple things we have going on but just a few highlights in the next several weeks so that concludes the superintendent's report thank you Dr Foley uh request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize District Personnel policy Keb provides a process for complaints about Personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not on the agenda that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to three minutes and we have Mr John Mason it's a pleasure to see many of you here one or two in particular on I would like to start out I I don't mean to be negative and we saw we saw a lot of great wonderful things happening here but we also have to look at some problems that are going on with the district right now so I'm just going to dive in and and start out according to Arizona revised statute 15-511 a person quote shall not use School District or Charter School Personnel equipment materials buildings or other resources for the purposes of influencing the outcomes of Elections here are three examples of how the district broke the law on the district website first the district States quote in order to continue to meet the needs of our students and provide them with every opportunity to succeed husd is seeking approval of a bond unquote this is an opinion and not a fact in addition it is the slap in the face of every parent that feels compelled to send a child to a charter school or private school due to the district's failure to adequately meet the needs of their children second the district implied that the bond would result in quote higher property values in the neighborhoods that surround those schools unquote that is an opinion and not a fact there is no and I look for this there is no research that exists to support the idea that very long-term bond to cover relatively short-term needs is a good idea third the district stated that quote Higley Unified School District has a proven record regarding responsible stewardship of bond funds once again that is an opinion and not a fact the district famously entered a fiscally disastrous lease according to the Gilbert Sun News article dated November 21st 2022 quote this has been a huge budget item unquote District CFO Tyler Moore stated at a November 16th board member meeting quote it is in every single budget conversation that we've had why didn't the website mention this lease why didn't they mention it that is the question because your job is to become neutral and not to advance a bond in my opinion to rest to rectify the historical problem of fiscal irresponsibility at husd the district should seek out guidance from community members to ensure that the district expenditures reflects the values of the community however however concerned citizens efforts to review such expenditures will fail if the district misleads the public as it did on the website thank you very much thank you moving on to 5.1 I move that we approve the consent agenda uh 5.1 through 5.18 second questions comments concerns Mrs Van Hook one eight so it's the entire consent agenda discussion anyone second that motion they don't need to be removed yeah you can discuss them removed if you want to vote on them separately right so you can take the time to ask questions but yeah yeah we can have conversation about it yeah got it okay no you can't no no the consent agendas all of it in one but you can so you can save specifically I have a question about 5.3 whatever it is and we can answer that question or director if not okay so 5.3 I'd like to understand what's happening um with with all this just so I've never seen this report before so I just want to understand what's happening uh president Schultz a board member um Hoke van hoek is that how we say it Van Hook and Hope Van Hook okay thank you for asking one of the things that as a governing board that you approve is Personnel action items this is the format that the report is done and this is like what we call the Personnel report for human resources because again as we discussed in the session that you had on The Retreat on Saturday one of the things that the governing board the oversight of the board is to approve the recommendations of the administration so there's the oversight of the board and then the recommendations we follow all of our processes and procedures and our policies for the things that are outlined in any of the consent or the governing board um Personnel items they're just listed as separate things um and what we'd like we discussed on Saturday in the consent agenda or otherwise you will see those items and as part of our agreed upon communication protocols you see these items the in the board docs the Friday before a board meeting which allows you to review them ask our Administration questions our process is that we kind of discussed on Saturday is that when you've got questions about any of those items that you bring them to the administration's attention so that we can provide back in writing to all board members any questions answers that you've got because everything in there has been vetted through our process it's just the volume of the business as usual that the board has to approve is substantial and we always want to be accurate and timely and complete so these are the reports and those separate items that you approve in a consent agenda that are one things and only things that can be approved for consent go in that agenda item that says typical practice board business that we that we work through that attorneys help govern and guide so the report you're asking about is the Personnel action items which is uh the hiring um or or people have submitted things for uh resigning or retiring those kind of things but it also includes sorry Dr it also includes teacher coverage stipends for coaching and those type of things so it's it's things in our policies and procedures that that they're entitled to and we're improving them foreign my next question is um so the expenses that are listed um is over 250 pages and it took a while to look at each item so um my question is is it possible to put this out in an Excel format so that it's easy not only for us to be able to review and be able to filter through but also for the community to be able to look at it in an easier format versus having to flip through over 250 pages um it was just very hard to have to go through each line item and because some pages also skip to the next page it was hard to just understand what was happening regarding 5.5 yes sorry no sorry yeah and remember van hope yeah we can certainly provide that in Excel thank you I appreciate that um and another thing on there that I I noticed is and I mean I I don't I don't mean to nitpick but um I noticed that we've we spent over 27 000 on t-shirts and hoodies um and I I think that's like one third of a teacher's salary um so I want to understand like is this just a necessity versus a want or is this for you know like the sports teams okay so uh president Schultz board member Van Hook one of the things that you will you will cherish from all different pots of funds and monies some of which were allocated for those specific things and it's large usually because of the size of the districts we're talking about all programs all activities I know that one of the things that we would be happy to do is that if we know what those questions are ahead of time we can sit down with you and show you the funds again as we kind of delved into a little bit on Saturday there's multiple fundus that we're using there's multiple accounts that are used for different purposes through for we have to follow all procurement laws we have to follow all the correct accounts and funds what you're seeing on those reports are the culmination of all of those things so without the story behind each individual line item and where it's coming from and why it's coming from it's hard to answer on the spot but what we can do is show you the vast amount it does look like a lot of a hole but when you look at how it's spread amongst and the multiple funds and where it's coming from it's much more reasonable in the size and the scope for the per item or per program versus as a whole but when you're looking at it in the district it's a vast amount because it's the whole it's all culminating Mr Moore can we at one point had on here what fund was what the 526 the 304 all those funds so can we can you put that out there again so that they can see what funds those are coming from because part of it too is that they may have appeal and it all comes in here that it could be a student group and because the money filters through the district like they fundraised for stuff like that or each student had to pay ten dollars for a t-shirt or something that all filters into here and we see it all together as a district so sometimes there's it's not that the district is paying that there was money coming in specifically for that and sometimes that's that's hard to see because I agree if you look at going why are we paying 27 000 for t-shirts and hoodies what are we doing um but all the groups come through well in the report we get because we get all the vouchers for this is what we paid so some of it may specifically it's not that the district's paying that funds came in for those from various things so if we have the listing of each fund the the number at the end of there it will tell you where it came from yes and that will you'll see the difference between a student fund between mno between um all the different 20 some funds something like that so thank you it's a board member Van Hook one of the things to remember is that we have to follow procurement and rules for all funds activities reporting including the reports that we submit to you um and so again the district serves kind of as the Clearinghouse to ensure those processes and procedures are followed at all levels within all organizations okay thank you [Music] um sorry I made a lot of notes and um obviously this is my my first meeting and I'm learning so bear with me please don't don't be sorry questions you're good so as far as 5.8 um I want to understand uh what um is column four um in column four is that the amount that is still owed based upon the budget spending budgeted spending and column five will there be a balance at the end of full year 23 yeah so you're referencing um 5.8 the monthly governing board financials um on both you're referencing the District financials not the Student Activities correct yes yeah yeah so call import represents the encumbrances for the district so those are currently encumbered funds that can be anything from um remaining pay periods that we have left to pay individuals that could be open purchase orders that we have for items or supplies that we have not yet um uh purchased yet and so yeah so how that reads is that comes off the budget balance and then that last column there is the remaining balance year to date now that that's not inclusive of our total remaining expenditures for the year as noted on here this is unaudited financials um but this is a snapshot of where we were in November for each fund and it looks like we um we'd have 35 million in mno carryover and 9.6 million in capital that's correct as of November thank you the items that have a negative balance what are those and how do they get rectified yeah so how Grant funds work is we also mentioned this in the Border trade on Saturday uh Grant funds are a reimbursable fund um they're administered by the Arizona Department of Education and so the district the process in which we have to get reimbursement the district expenses the um whatever it may be that's approved in the grant so we incur the expense and then we ask the Arizona Department of Revenue for reimbursement for those funds so when you see a negative balance those are expenses that we've incurred and we are either in the process of submitting a reimbursement to the Arizona Department education for that expense um or it has not yet hit our account yet and do they typically reimburse every time yes yeah so if you see we have a budget that's allocated by Ade and so that budget they'll reimburse us up to that budget amount so we're always operating within our budget there's just a lag between when you have a third party administrator there's a lag between the time in which we expense the funds in which we get the revenue that is the current model in which Arizona Department of Education operates under and so um we are not alone in not every school district operates in the same fashion okay and then the Easter carryover what happens with that so essers again another Grant fund so that is reimbursable um so what how that's how that's showing on this uh is um as a budget balance remaining um and again a lot of that is lagged between um when we actually expense the fund and when we get reimbursed for that fund none of that is carried forward and so all that has to be expensed by 2024.
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