that's amazing okay now the next um 17 slides are just going to be kind of running through them on what we saw get accomplished this past year we started out with Ball Junior High and they basically did their quad area and the eating area they did the stage they did the administrative building and the front of the school same same basic thing went with six Sycamore Junior High as well um I'm not I'm not sure if you've had a chance how often you get to the different campuses but I really would encourage you if you get a chance to take advantage of it because it's amazing to see what has been done I mean it's 21st century Renovations and modernization it's I mean I would be excited to be there attending at these different campuses because they really have done a nice job in design okay so Sycamore ball Junior highs and we went to to the Magnolia campus they've done a lot of major stuff there I mean down to the ground underground plumbing the showers the locker rooms uh again the quad area and the stage in the quad area just very I mean if you look at it it's pretty pretty impressive I mean like pretty sweet look at that that's amazing to me for any I don't know if any of you have architectural backgrounds but that's impressive it really is and then we have the uh underway or projects that are coming up and are already underway and ones that I will be underway here shortly this here some of those that's Magnolia they're still continuing on with Magnolia working on the administrative building and the cyber security building and classrooms there that's amazing looking to me imagine that High School looking like that that's impressive okay continue on with those and the one with the I kind of I like the she passed it the logo there with the Magnolia High School um that's the band and music rooms actually that's going to be building there okay so now upcoming projects and we're going to actually hit on Magnolia again because they've act they've actually already started right Patty yeah the complete renovation of the pool there so they're gonna have a brand new pool when they're finished and that's underway Western High School is going to get a practice field as far as football and soccer that should be started here in the next month roughly two weeks yeah so that's going to be really nice that's my alma mater for those of you that may not know that so I'm excited about that um okay and then also our Rivals Anaheim High School darn it they're getting a full-on field I thought it happened anyway okay but it's very impressive very nice back again at Western they're going to be getting a brand new entry to the school as you see that kind of A-frame looking device there um that's pretty impressive and then some of the inner areas are going to be updating as well now this picture here is actually of Orange Avenue and there for any of you that have been by Western and seen the student parking lot they did an amazing job of that with the nice masonry columns and they're going to continue on with that all the way down to Western Avenue with that same kind of look and it's really nice so that should be coming up here shortly as well all right [Applause] okay so in closing based on the review of the financial and performance audit report dated June 30th project updates and site visits that we've had we are confident that Anaheim Union High School District is expending the bond proceeds only for the purposes set as set forth in the measure of in measure H's Bond program now in in wrapping up like I say I'm not sure I don't get it to a chance to get around you folks that often but I suspect you realize the treasure that you have in Patty Neely and her team I mean it she honestly has done a masterful job at the design I mean she's had help obviously we understand that but approving this and getting the design done the quality making sure that the work is done properly and if it and if there's some problems that they didn't anticipate those get taken care of too and then she's funded and Beyond funded the projects that's that's impressive so that's awesome and for the members of the audience if you don't have a presentation with you you can go to the district's website and you can find the information there and it's impressive what they've done and you know I've been around the the district since 1968.
only the ten thousand but oh we're not well we're in the 1500. Katie had just prefaced you wanted to talk about both you're mentioning them both together the data thing that applies to both right okay so I guess I was following that track so this is specifically to that so you can keep that in mind as you make your votes on this one okay thank you so for this specific one do we have any more comments or feedback okay um um okay I move the governing board approve of retention well I'm gonna move the governing board and amend the approved a retention stipend of a minimum of 1500 based on remaining sr2 funds for the 2023-24 school year to be distributed following all deadlines for the return of contracts work agreements to all staff who returned signed contracts work agreements by the deadline all those in favor I I unanimously process okay that brings us to 7B approval of second retention stipends for the 23-24 school year and Miss mcchafree um first of all is there any discussion on this especially with I wanted to add two other points which I always forget all of my thoughts but um the other thing is you know I think that there's there's a power dynamic in the meet and confer process because we do have administrators in there but I heard nothing of that from the people I talked to who are in the room um but again that can be unconscious I think too um but um the people I talked to thought the committee was really really aligned so I will add that too and that's makes it even harder for me to make the statements that I I made but um I do really believe that if we're talking retention um that 100K Mark is a fair not personal you know way to cut off and still make it seem a little bit more fair for those to kind of bridge that Gap so um before we go into any motions because I guess we have two different ideas um at the table is that the last week I'm just going to share a personal experience last week I was at the Creighton Academy basically a full-time employee we had some call outs I was the chair of the Scholastic Book Fair and I saw it all unfold in real time on how hard and how everybody was busting their butts to cover for the teacher the librarian was out our front office was out and I understand that we all have opinions and we we we all do have you know there's some disparities we understand that and we're working really hard on that but that day really brought me into light of how important it is to have our leaders as principals to and everybody that it takes how everybody just worked around just to keep the the place running for the kids at the end of the day this is about our kids and if we do not um reward that whether you're a principal or you're an administrator it really does take a village to do all that and I saw it for hand um it's really easy to make assumptions and opinions of things but I literally did not work for a week just so I could provide that service to these kids that said that we were going to have there and if it weren't for my the flexibility of my job I think the Scholastic Book Fair would have been canceled and we wouldn't have raised that money for the PTO that goes back to our kids so whenever we're making these decisions and these things get brought up at the table at the end of the day we really need to look at who this is going to impact if we don't have bodies running these buildings we will not have kids who need to be holistically been taken care of um I go back to our mission I go back to our statements that we make you know that we are supposed to be this collaborative kind-hearted leaders and whatever opinions we have and who's making what at the end of the day it's taken a lot just to keep us running especially in the climate that we are legislatively where public education as we know it is under attack in every single aspect of it who knows what's going to happen with these next coming vouchers that are coming out that's 300 million dollars that nobody accounted for and guess where those funds are going to come out of first it's going to be us so if we have this money right now to value and all the work that you have guys done I I believe that it's a fair charge just for everybody um it's just crazy the power and the love that we really do have for our kids because at the end of the day that's what we need to think about is how is this going to impact our kids if we say no to this and we do this to this and that to that at the end of the day that's not a service to our kids so that's my opinion on it that's all I'm gonna say we have two different things you can move forward with that motion if you would like and then if it doesn't pass then we move on to the next one I would still like to make it oh yeah yeah go ahead I'm sorry I didn't mean to shut you guys out on the okay that's okay first of all it represent your admin okay so you do have admin that are members so you are representing all members here yes thank you um and the second thing is is I've been able to play principal for this past year through my college courses and I can't imagine all of the things that happen during the day that I haven't seen But what I have seen I'm a very empathetic person and so walking through the shoes of principles um on The Daily like it's amazing it's like a lot of thinking and work dealing with a multitude of things um and I have been a teacher for 22 years and I know we we work hard as well um but I like really commend the principles for everything that they have to do as well um and you I mean I haven't heard this is really weird but I haven't heard any complaint really about a principal like this year um per se which speaks volumes because um you know we always think about oh who's the bad egg right um but I feel and maybe Kelly you can tell me if there's been you know yeah so so I just think that this is like fair and equal in um really valuing um all of our people and I really commend the work that you guys have done um and I hope that I can do the same with my district as well so thank you thank you miss her Miss McCaleb you said it well um and as did you um I just this is important to Value all of our employees it we cannot run a school a district without every person at every level everyone needs to be involved and we need to show you all that we value you um listen I'm the first one to hate power structures all I do is get paid to fight the government every day right so I'm always about fighting the man um but at the same time right um that's why I asked for this data because I think I could be sueded to make a decision like that if the data showed me that there was an issue there that being said I don't have that data right now and what I do have is the word of these people who've made agreements and had conversations about what they think is best for each other and so that's what I'm going off of and and that's where I feel I stand right now and I think that's probably the best the best way to go given what I have so you want to share this see it I wanted to um I know it really asked directly but I think the position of the meet and confer committee we were talking about this specific stipend um we were trying very hard not to like determine how much people in specific positions should or deserve to be paid because it's a very divisive conversation when there's time there are times to be divisive and there's times to have like set and firm priorities and I think some of our other recommendations do Target some of those areas of worse retention um there but there's also times to be unified and we're talking about such a large pot of money I mean we all found it very productive to have like a very strong unified I mean it was a unanimous vote um with no dissenting voices in the room when it passed I think that that perspective of just trying to get as much money out to people as possible and then also keeping in mind like I think some of the concerns about um you know people in the district were more well paid receiving even more money I think that really comes into play and we're talking about things like flat percentage raises right because if you give a five percent raise to everybody that's a lot more money to someone making a hundred thousand dollars but when we're talking stipends um that is we referred to ten thousand dollars as a life-changing amount of money and it is to somebody making thirty thousand dollars it's a really good amount of money to someone making fifty thousand like our average teacher is but to someone making a hundred thousand dollars I wouldn't I don't know if you'd consider a ten percent raise life changing it's really nice for the one year um but you kind of get that scale I guess of impact already just based on um you know how much money it is for each of those groups and then we also talked about similar to how we mentioned how we don't want to punish everybody for a few people trying to run with money similarly like that group of people making a hundred thousand dollars in the district is hopefully small enough that it is not a huge budget impact to you know take five thousand dollars away from those people um but just the animosity that could be created from that kind of decision um you know I think everyone understands the value of principles I mean teachers make the school run but we only really get to see our classrooms right in the classrooms near us it's not good to have your principal leave right I think everyone can agree on that regardless of how they're doing or if they can improve or do something better you don't want to see a new person come in that doesn't know anything about anything just because you happen to upset the person that was there previously off of a decision like that so I think it definitely is a priority of being confirmed moving into the future to consider which groups of our employees are most impacted by retention we also talked about compression which we're bringing up later um and focusing more heavily on those groups but that's something we need more information for and with the tight time scale of Esser and also with contracts going out we really wanted to prioritize just getting money out to people as simply as possible um which as I think it was mentioned before again there was some overlap with the asset committee but this stipend is intended to go out five thousand dollars in the first semester five thousand dollars in the last semester to everyone that is employed on the day it goes out so it's not sign your contract next year and get the other five thousand it is not oh well you were hired this year you don't get it if you are an employee on the day the money goes out you get that five thousand dollar check so it can be used as a hiring bonus as well like or it can be advertised as such because if we can hire you before the money goes out it is a hiring bonus effectively right and similarly it can be retention for somebody who might be looking to leave in the middle of the year is having a rough spot they know that some of that money is coming later in the year as well um or if we need to hire someone halfway through the year it scales uh similarly to how it would for like full-time math but thank you Daniel Lopez okay any more comments yeah I just have a few more comments um you know this is certainly not about people not working hard and it's not about principles I mean I just want to reiterate that the people I talk to or just really happy with their principals and how they have stepped up during this shortage like they have to fill in for everyone so um it's not about it's not about that at all um and I don't want to punish a group of people for a few bad eggs either um but I do want this District to work on this and I don't like the percentage flat raises that have been going on for quite some time um because that's put this that's put us where we are today um and um those of you who are in leadership who are principals you know support your teachers I know some of you do really well but I think there's room for improvement there too I've um you know a principal makes or breaks the school and that may not be about like bringing Donuts in but maybe it's about like um you know giving a teacher a 10 minute break while you go into their classroom and teach you know and that goes for everybody um that's something I heard you know that was you know we have we're forced to do that during covid um people District District level people having to go in the classroom and and sub for an hour you know that would do um be a huge amount of support for a classroom teacher so I would like to see more of that kind of support from our leadership and I would like to see us getting you know closing the Gap a little bit so I am not going to make a motion um because you know we're not in agreement so um those are my comments okay perfect so with that I move the governing board approve a second stipend at a minimum of 10 000 prorated on FTE funded from sr3 for the 2023-24 school year to to be paid into installments all those in favor aye thank you guys so much for all your hard work every single one of you just want to take executive privilege here for a minute Diane pesh is our new facilitator to this process and the bumps in the road and the the various conversations are all part of this journey that got here and I know you're an Artful facilitator Kelly thank you for recommending her it's been a delight to see your Harmony and development in the feelings that came forward tonight so thank you Diane pesh thank you guys and congratulations who moved a doctor's appointment from Show Low to come down here and be here tonight I just want to point that out oh you're perfectly fine space thank you so much I appreciate that and congratulations okay that brings us to 10A um asba staff will give us an update on the superintendent search you're doing this on purpose you're just going to stay late every time no I feel like I'm part of your record-breaking meeting awesome getting to know the district exactly well I feel like I'm part of the family and that's one thing that we are quickly learning about the Creighton district is there is a huge sense of family um thank you madam president members of the board I'm Tracy Benson with Arizona School boards Association um we appreciate your time tonight we wanted to do a check-in just to let you know about where we are in the search process are we gonna checked out so oh okay okay in the folder folder yes okay sure that's fine um where is it under Library under PowerPoints yeah search and Survey updates there we go so just to let you know we are on target with our outcome goal of of working with you to select the highest qualified best fit superintendent to lead the Creighton Elementary School District and also with your process goal of ensuring Community input and transparency in the process um we are in phase two of the process which is the application Phase and also the discovery phase in terms of the application Phase we are in the middle of the application period the online application opened on February the 14th that will close on March the 17th we are in the midst of advertising and promoting the position that is well underway and our data shows that you have a significant number of folks who are interested in the position um we won't give you any hard numbers because we don't have um the full number of applications in but based on the volume of folks who our data shows are looking at the position and starting to to take action related to it we feel real confident that we're going to have a solid number of qualified applicants to bring to you when that applicant screening happens on March the 25th as you know first interviews are scheduled for April the 20th and then the finalist interviews and that finalists form that a number of you mentioned at the beginning of the meeting will happen on April the 27th so we are absolutely on track in exactly where we ought to be in phase two of your process so I believe that is that particular agenda item if there's any questions on process I I don't have a question on process but I do have I guess an idea or thought um I know that we only have 186 surveys returned as of right now and that's not an ideal amount that I think we would like we have um parent-teacher conferences coming up and a lot of the talk has been having a printout for them I know this is only like an online Link but actually having a printout where teachers can give to the families while the Parent-Teacher conferences are going on how can we make that happen and get that to our teachers yeah so I I don't want to speak for your staff but I think a plan is underway to do that I mean that's absolutely a strategy that is effective and other districts have used to make sure that they are on school sites and even in teacher classrooms when those parent-teacher conferences are happening and the process is pretty straightforward like I said um folks have done it in the past you hand them out you ask them to turn them in at the district or at the um school office and then collect them and then they get input and they're part of the tabulation okay so yeah I know I want to hear if there is a plan well also on that too like I know in the past we've done surveys where like have an iPad out with the survey that's what I was going to suggest um so that parent who's waiting because your other conference is running late or they're early they can do it while they're waiting fun oh I'm just looking at Emily because you will have this variety of that advertention but as your Community Education director it will be not worthy to say that one of the barriers in this service is that every response is highly academic and our families may not be able to understand exactly what is being asked in addition every every question requires an answer and is quite lengthy and so if there's a possibility of make those modifications not so much on the language of the items of each one of the questions but at least not require every single question to be answered that will help us remove some barriers and increase participation for the families so I know that the poor in the last meeting move the boxes of comments that's to be the first things and so if that's some of the incentivized to people to say here are my comments and ignore the rest of the questions instead of having to require each one over there the the boxes or the multiple choices I think that will increase the feedback that the board is really wanting to receive from the community members okay I'll share more about that when we go through the survey results if that's if that's all right okay okay did you have another question I'm Sorry Miss Michael um I know it's like procedurally did we I after we get an answer about WebEx for the 20s April 2017.
can you hear me okay um since 1998 my kids went to BMS and Carol was the principal at that time and we loved her and we had a great experience there my daughter went to Toronto my son ended up school choicing for not school reasons but for other reasons to Nashoba um so products of public school we loved it had a great experience I went to public school public universities myself and have a lot of respect for it and really would like to support it here all right so uh the committee has probably has some questions for you we can start Megan do you want to start we just turn around the table so this was a question that I was at I feel that it's um pretty important I'm wondering um a big part of being on this committee is we work together but we have to be mindful of open meeting law so social media kind of has taken over you know this generation um I guess my question is uh what's your presence on social media do you use Facebook and what are your posts usually like do you post political posts or are you usually try to stay relatively neutral on social media sorry it's a tough one I know yeah that's a great question and it's actually something that I've kind of changed a bit because um I was posting more political things um I guess since 2016 and um I ended up running for office I mean for Senate in this um in this district and I realized you know what it's probably not a great look you know because you don't have the opportunity to explain really people can just look at it and make assumptions about who you are and you know what you really intend and so I stepped way back and I I don't really go on there very much in fact my I don't really have like um a profile on my own thing oh okay yeah thank you all right you have a question um I don't have a question I know a lot about you Lisa because I researched um when you were running for election um I didn't want to bring something up because I think I'm curious about I think it speaks to who you are as a person could you speak about great is it braver Angels oh yeah yeah so I'm currently doing a training with this organization called braver angels and um they are an organization that's been in existence since 2017 and their mission is to depolarize um political discourse and I think we need that in a big way in our country you know just everywhere and so I am training to be an ambassador for them and also after that a moderator and to do that you really have to depolarize yourself and I I I've been working on that um because I think that we do need to listen to each other I think a lot of us are only hearing one side of the story um in terms of politics and it's just really important that we you know listen to each other we learn from each other and that we trust that we're all you know we have good intentions yeah so so I'm training with them and I'm very excited about it and if I am um appointed to the school committee I would use those skills that I'm learning there you know when difficult discussions arise thank you I just thought it lent itself so well one of the questions that we were asked when we were running for election was how would we deal with any animosity or difficulty um disagreements and I thought that that really spoke to your character as how you really view things because the people came from both parties that are polarized that have brought together to to for common goals yes thank you yeah thank you that's a good question I appreciate that um so my question is as school committee I wrote it down just so I've spoken many members one of our biggest goals is to it's important for all the community understand student achievement isn't measured solely by academic success we need to be considering a whole student not just the academic success of that student our kids right now are suffering as we just Justin Caroline's update so the overuse of devices particularly cell phones are contributing to kids Mental Health issues part of it is certainly in part his research is showing so my question is do you think that cell phone use in the schools serves as a benefit to student achievement or insurance and why that's a great question because they are so useful you know with checking schedules and things like that checking messages and emails you know things that are actually useful but I do think that probably overall especially with the younger generation but also with with our generation that it does tend to be um maybe not productive because we're looking at social media and we're comparing ourselves to other people who are just putting forth their A-game and it's probably not great for mental health and probably more of a distraction yes thank you Jesse um so thank you for applying to be appointee of the school committee and thank you again for answering the public questions that were put forth to us for the election um so I had a question so regarding the questions on potential controversial books or curriculum you say you trust the superintendent and teachers to choose the best materials for their lessons and under the next question regarding your individual stance your say you're committed to free speech and that's censorship censorship is a slippery slope which I definitely agree um but the next time did you say that political agendas with um new sexual and experimental and divisive content are being brought into schools and are another slippery slope um so my question is um how will you make sure our lgbtq plus students and staff and allies will feel supported and safe in our school I think that we need to have respect for each other no matter what and we need to listen to each other no matter what and we need to not bully each other no matter what um I think that that works for everybody including lgbtq community so if we have a community based on respect and understanding then that will help everybody thank you at least I don't have any questions for you other than just your availability um the reason this is here is because we meet on Tuesday nights there's been discussion about possibly changing when we vote on the calendar which would be the next month or the month after you were available on Tuesday nights at this time in earlier time or is another night I'm available on Tuesday nights yep I'm pretty I'm pretty flexible all right thank you uh does anybody else have any other follow-up questions or we can uh if anyone wants to make a motion to appoint Lisa mayor to the committee they can do so and then we can discuss anything that we need to discuss I think one comment sure I love your resume and your background that you're a yoga teacher and meditation and all that it's just a huge passion of mine so I just wanted to say I love it and I love that you went to the ini the nutrition school it's awesome okay I'm done for now if we had multiple candidates we would go to the next candidate and we would then see if anybody had a motion for anyone we have one candidate does anyone have a motion I'd like to make a motion to appoint this American Committee okay is anyone second that motion awesome okay go ahead sounds like Julie all right uh so any discussion on this all right I'll bear pointing Lisa to the committee anyone against okay Lisa your appointment uh thank you all right for tonight you can stay and hang out watch and listen you can vote or participate in new things you have to be sworn in about town but uh we'll get that going tomorrow or when their office is open thank you very much thank you Joy next is uh subcommittee reports I don't think any of the subcommittees other than the budget committee some budget subcommittee has met since our last meeting and Megan we're having a budget discussion in a bit do you have an update other than budget to me that is all we have been living breathing and drinking sleeping all we've been doing all right uh our last item before the budget then is a presentation of Ames with uh with Sally and Cara thank you foreign thank you all right so um our presentation is to help us to Hondo our sixth seventh and 8th graders take and uh take the age of them at the very beginning of the year almost immediately after school starts so that teachers can and then um each of the grades organizing ceremonies has again read about an individuals so usually towards the end of January or early February instruction and but it's not necessarily used so in regards to literacy and reading performance this bar graph depicts the average scoring levels of our 6th 78th graders our district role is to ensure that 80 of our students are performing at or above the 16th percentile as you can see that's happening in all categories for very proud of it also shows that growth is a measurement of the student progress from period to period so if we break down from Gray to gray we first take a look at grade six reading and you can see that this bottom line is the national um level and then at the top of our representative um not only our duty start off way above information but um we had groups that was higher than the nation as well and it's also depicted about the average being for our group was 10 points where the national was five and there's also a familiarity with sixth graders from taking things about an elementary school this is the seventh grade reading support where you can see again um the growth is not quite as deep as the national level is but again we are above and the seventh grade actually shares some observations with us you know just thinking that you know the growth may not be as high but it could be reasons such as complex as you know those in the year also that with regards to starting at high level there's nothing for improvement and there was also some comments that were made about the fact that um and we see this a little bit more instead of anything in sixth grade but the students really take it very very seriously when they first come into the very beginning there they still take it seriously in January but not they're a little more relaxed so and that may explain the fact that you know if you want the bathrooms did not have too much work we're still about the nation but we need to look in there again there's a there's complexity to the material um and then also as we talked about there was that observation that they don't take advantages so this one illustrates math performance again it adheres and shows that we met expectations for our distant pool six seven and eighth graders are all about the 16th percentile and performance level on the map and again the two measurements from period two period [Music] level of growth for the sixth graders in seventh grade is also the same and then take a look at um note on this one you can see that the actual national average there's less growth in comparison to follow Ranger but those seventh graders we saw a signal again growth our growth was seven points the national average was one I think one of the takeaways is that we have like actually many supports in front and place at school to help us and I think that's why our students are doing so well um for instance what everybody gets in a tier one level support is the fact that all our sixth graders take reading classes um all our seventh graders to take a class that we just started a couple years ago Post open called Middle School essential skills we can talk about the you know what they do in those classes in the next slide but and then of course there's English for tier two um we have um essential skills class and works on them one-on-one if they are students that are struggling on the April test and other things because I think that's just one tool we also have an Ela lab for grade 8 and we have a math labs for both ways sure and when it comes to tier three obviously that's an alert that there's more need for students for support we have Wilson we have Courtney Gillingham we're very fortunate that this year that's some of our specialized teachers are able to actually get trained to have more staff people to do that and again we have the Ells report classes for our middle school and high school I don't think I just thought of that we didn't put on here is that our great all of our sixth graders also take a quest class in sixth grade which is a intervention blog and the whole team works together to look at how students are doing and they will pull individuals you know to work on specific things with them that they you know whatever they specifically so that's a very helpful um and this slide illustrates the class targeted support staff enforcement that our staff members are able to provide for our students there's math lab instead of 18th grade it does not take place of their current math class it actually complements it so for students in that class have indicated they would be assigned to it based on teacher recommendations reports from aims web and Concepts staff so it helps them just to enhance that fundamental skills that they have and it's every other day in regards to the ELA lab runs similarly into math you're just enhancing your Ela skills so it's whether it's fluency literally content just knowing how to express yourself in writing and that also runs every other day and last but certainly not least is the middle solution essential skills class it's kind of helpful sorry um we implemented that right after opening because let's face it it's hard to get back from the routine so in this course they're talking about test taking strategies how to prepare how to study how to get ready for what's next in the class which we're very we're very confident that is just going to complement them as they go up in grade levels here at Donna Jones and they work on their writing skills excuse me questions just I think it's great um the class targeted support for the math lab and the ELA lab um I know how you said it doesn't take place in the regular map of the bla what class do they not have as a result of that it takes place in one of the electives obviously I think the aims web scores being so much about the national average speed to the efforts of the futures thank you yeah absolutely I just one question I'm sure it's not it's not you I know it's how aims web is I'm wondering if across the board we could see Ames Webb our district compared to Massachusetts oh really well I'm just thinking like Nationwide you know some of the states were different so even if it was like New England I just you know do we have that issue they used to and when they converted they upgraded to into a plus a couple years ago they still don't have enough data to do just a Massachusetts average they're hoping within the next year or two because the Massachusetts average are right was a lot higher when we compare our Massachusetts because these are you know Alabama kids well that's nice exactly why do you choose the 60th percentile for success and teams up too they all do it but I I don't know either because John did okay uh because of the sample that we're looking at we should be able to do better than like half of our kids and we could go and have to not when we roll it up to the 60th percentile you can start to feel good about our kids are making progress um and so that's what being made that our Target we it's a challenge sometimes to get there um it's more challenging um in the early grades than it is greater but it's been a good Target for us because it's still a stretch but again Heisman Middle School testing is a little different the sample size system is great what eighth grade do you show the client is that typical is this an anomaly year is that how does that compare the years past you know I can get that information so I'm one or eighth grade they're they're getting ready one of the nine degrees if they're not performing well in eighth grade is that one reason why they might be leaving the district have you looked into that at all if you do any sort of exit interviews for eighth graders that leave going into time because we do see quite a drop in enrollment in tonight right but I'm certainly part of the budget process that we're going through is trying to figure out what can we do differently to keep kids in the district versus going if they're going to go to a vocational school elect the plumbing can't help that but I think one more private school where are they going just because they don't like it and it's their chance to leave for whatever reason well that's one of the reasons we started the age of 9th grade transition meeting actually to give the information that we just didn't feel was maybe there enough for people to make those decisions you know so I think that's a start um but you know certainly the idea okay here's also the timing of the eighth grade reading test you know the last thought was teachers commented then they weren't as engaged so I'm curious if this is like a Friday afternoon before February break or you know like something we're making their attention wasn't as focused those are definitely all considerations we could take back to the team and just get more observation from them thank you great all right thank you all right that brings us to the budget of discussion but before I have a few comments to make about the last few weeks and months and I did write it down as well just like Julie so I don't Ramble On and you go on so um I'm just gonna get to it uh we have several special guests here from the select boards Finance committees I believe in town Christian that is here yeah uh just kind of help us along with uh tax implications of this budget that we're considering we agreed last night not to uh take a vote on it tonight with the finance committees just because they are still traveling around all their numbers uh we're probably gonna discuss this and vote maybe on the 21st of this month is as needed meaning maybe have that as our budget hearing but I want to start by saying thank you to the community for supporting your schools I want to thank Julie and Megan for working on the budget subcommittee so tirelessly bringing us through this process and Carolyn Nancy uh working beyond what anyone really should reasonably expect an employee to do to to get this work done how many hours on Sunday afternoon were we back and forth dealing with that um they've given more than anyone can know and uh I know you're working so good luck with that um thank you to the teachers of Berlin Boylston Regional School District you continue to show up despite the challenges thrown at you the past several years and everyone who watched last night's finance committee meeting in Boylston with the Berlin committee as well by now you know that we're in a situation where it is possible that we can have some positions that may or may not go if we don't find a way to fund a level service budget we'll hear more on that soon but I can't fathom the level of anxiety this might bring as as you go through these days teaching the social emotional anguish you might face knowing the situation remains unresolved yet you showed up today to teach our children and you'll continue to show up tomorrow to teach your children through all this so I feel confident saying that this committee is going to work and do everything we can to figure out the solution to this situation we are as we saw earlier tonight four months removed from the November election in this first election for the Regional School District which was delayed for two years many thought would never come and already in those four months we've seen our fair share of distractions changes challenges enough to sort of fill a decade of school committee work uh just a few short months reminisce of hiring multiple new leaders at our schools we have a new acting and soon to be superintendent Mrs Costello we're working for the first time with a new Finance director this year Mrs Kaminski we created the new budget cell committee headed by Mrs Brill and Mrs Lee and within weeks of the election we had unexpected challenges to deal with having only been a part of this team for a few days this is already stepped right in and helped us to get through we voted to hire an attorney attorney Mrs mosack she's been an invaluable help to this group as well in January our schools dealt with their own shelter in place order as our police handled an emergency situation close proximity to the buildings quite precisely the inopportune time that School dismissal all right so that that was a challenge um we've had to face the situation that we just completed tonight appointing a new member four months removed from our election so lots of distractions lots of challenges in there dealing with unprecedented budget changes that every town right uh most importantly though this committee is still relatively new to the job it's been a steep learning curve for everyone here myself included I'm happy to admit that but thank you everybody for your commitment to the job and your ability to act and react as fast as possible at anything that's thrown at you and we know you are committed to this job so with that uh Carol and Nancy would you please take us through the budget options sure um I also want to thank everybody who was there last night I think that we we talk to one another in a in a really significant way and I'm grateful for our time it's the first time we really all come together in that way and I said that last night and I'll say again I want to just reiterate that how much we appreciated the invitation from the boils and finance committee to come and join you in that conversation Berlin was there um Nancy's going to go through some of the slides that she shared last evening in just a moment I also just I have to take a moment to thank all of these people behind me and on the side to me that I work with and across there every day all of our teachers who I'm grateful for I know well we've spent many years together some of many of you um and there's certainly are new teachers and I do I do not Advocate enough for these people who are there every day with our children it means everything it's why I'm sitting here right now you know applying for this position in the fall I'm here because of your children all of them and um I am going to Advocate strongly and continue to do that for them and for all of you who sit there going every day you can take care of vehicles with that Nancy before you start if you want to mine for the committee if we can hold all of our questions until Nancy's done and then after Nancy folks from the town committees if you have something to say Kristen if you can talk to us a little bit about the process to get from here to stop meeting before the committee starts to ask questions my presentation is going to be brief I'm not going to go through the whole thing that's going to give you a summary of where we stand right now so when we originally came together for the budget we took our district Improvement plan we took all of our needs and all of our wants and we put them into our budget and that's where we started being very hopeful then as things started to come together meeting with the towns and kind of getting a grasp on reality of where we really stood some obstacles came in our way one of the obstacles was special education special education has skyrocketed for our next school year from budget to budget for special education from 23 to 24 it's gone up to 1.3 million that includes Auto District tuitions Personnel everything so that that was a huge obstacle that we could face another huge obstacle is health insurance our health insurance is going on 10.5 percent so with those two obstacles we knew we had to kind of really reevaluate and take a look at where we stand so what we did is we came together again and prepared two options that we thought we would share with the towns so I'm going to quickly go over those options with you to show you so the first one is a level service budget so this is your basic minimum required spending to keep your Educational Services flat from 2023.
so the total additional local contribution or the total local contribution both required and additional is 10 million 992 379 dollars so that's really just a high level overview of what our expenses are going to look like and how we're going to fund those expenses are there any questions at what point do we notify the um for sending communities of what their anticipated increase are going to is going to be so I think when we go to the towns to present the budget we'll be presenting this to them the required minimum contribution they have to pay that and then we'll be explaining the additional I I guess I'm just thinking that each of our cities and towns are already working on their budget so um I wouldn't want to wait till May at town meeting to ask for more money since the budget is already there for the vote so we'll have we'll have the budget book completed for the next school committee meeting and then that'll go straight out to the town so they'll have the information before that thank you other questions yes sir still thank you um can we make sure that somebody goes to Methuen I mean that one of the biggest complaints I get that there's never been representation from glts at budget time to talk about the budget [Music] um I'll move the recommendation um I thought it was just a summary are we voting on this to move it through to accept it so this is really a high level summary but this is what our budget is going to look like the budget book will just have a lot more information in it for you [Music] hi thank you very much and okay superintendent uh concussion policy this will need to be voted on ladies and gentlemen we have uh you should have the microphone through please Heaven you pack it up a uh the concussion policy that was revised originally created in 2018 and just recently revised for you to review and if you have any questions I asked nari to come to the meeting tonight to answer any questions you may have regarding the policy you may if you want to take more time over the next few weeks and then our next meeting uh um we can put it back on if you feel like you need more time because you've only had it since last Friday you got I think you received this in your packet last Friday if you haven't had a chance to review it would like to wait till next meeting we can do that questions have gone yes uh zayla sorry is this is this a device it is revised from 2018 so 2018 was the last time it was revised yes uh yes so this is what we what we oh well not this one but yeah this is exactly so how do we know what the changes are is there any changes different from the 2018 one yeah so the uh I can now do you know if we've made a lot of changes sorry about that um section two has not been changed because the law in the state of Massachusetts has not changed at all the only thing we did was we cleaned it up and took out a lot of the repetition because it kept saying the same thing over and over and over again so we just cleaned it up and just made it look better section one however we did add because we did not we didn't really have a concussion policy for within the school during the school day section two is more for athletics and that's what this whole document was for is basically for extra curricular activities but um section one is just written we put it kind of together on school day policies and procedures for the teachers because a lot of people don't really know and we felt that since we were putting it in we would just add it and um it actually makes it read pretty well I think um we've been working on it since since September and um everybody you know the doctor and the nurse practitioners and everybody um we've all come to an agreement with this so they all weighed in on it so are you saying that the aspect of the concussion policy section one is the main change yeah we added that and section two is pretty much similar to what was in the last uh guideline in the last policy correct we just added we just changed it around a little bit so it actually read better because before I kept saying you know they have to have their a physical so we just kind of made it more easier to read and understand okay I'm sorry my name I'm nyeri melconian and I'm the athletic trainer that's it um and some questions I was able to answer myself in the next page but I would like to know Mr Hayden Harry this is not State language this is all our policy it's it's not the state language um but it's how do I put it it is a state language but it's written that you can actually read it's it's the policy like on it's adaptive yeah we just adapted it to our school and what we do because like on page 10 it talks about physicals and the Mia Rule and things like that it was all over the place so we just kind of put it together to make it look a little bit better the return to play guidelines um these are all state the return like the return to play guidelines are the state returns or play guidelines um some of it is some of their words some of it is um made for other people to understand the lay person to understand a little bit better than um just us as the medical people um and you're happy with all of this language is there anything we should be concerned about as far as legalities did you check in on that anything we've changed um in the section two that we I we um we worked with the school physician who does a lot of who is Big on the concussions and all that information she's very up to up to date on it um there was kind of some concerns at one point is this document and the state law has been in effect since 2010 however concussion and how you treat and how you return kids to play has changed over the last 13 years so the problem is is we have a 2010 document but the knowledge and how to treat the patients have changed a little bit so we kind of went back and forth with that but we can only do what the state I can only do what the state law tells me what I can and cannot do so thank you Mrs Fitzgerald yes I'd like to um I guess piggyback on to Thomas question about the legality um I'm pretty sure that each coach and official that is here in the school has to take the mandated concussion course show that they've passed it produce a certificate so my question on the legality is that is totally covered under our at what we do for our athletes but now we are adding this on for the everyday school life shops academics whatever extracurricular activities but we are not mandating that those are is it will be mandated that every teacher has to pass a concussion course um because that for me that's a conflict if we're saying it's vitally important that we have it over here but if we don't require it over here then you is that a conflict so sorry do you want to answer that superintendent well right now we don't have a policy that states that the staff needs to take a concussion um exam or get certified in that it's not that's not to say that we won't look at it and see if that's something we should do because this is new I've had no discussions with anybody in the school at this point so at this time until we get a chance to discuss it and then I'll bring it back to the committee once I have a chance to to review this myself more thoroughly thoroughly and sit down with the principal to make some decisions and then we'll get back to you the other thing I want to just say that and I would say to nari the main question is does the policy align to state regulations are we aligned to that and if we are that's the key and what's most critical and so we've done that I I feel good about that I think the specifics about who we are the language may be specific to gray Lawrence Tech but everything we've done and the communication and the in the writing of the policy was done in a way that aligns to what the state says we have to align into overfalling all state regulations and policies this is the show yes I I totally agree that the policy especially regarding the athletic part that was pretty since 2018 that that is totally in line but my question is if we're now adding this other pot and not getting a ruling either from attorney or whatever else so you're give setting one set of standards for the athletic component and another set of standards for the day-to-day thing and I'm not I'm thinking well I shouldn't be holding this up I'm thinking that I feel good about the fact that we're doing it my concern is are we saying there are two different standards and has our attorney looked at this as a policy because I wouldn't want to vote on it until that had happened where our attorney has not looked at it as a policy and uh in terms of a certification of our staff uh I don't know if that's a state requirement or state law or not that they have to do that but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a policy that requires that so that would be something I would bring to the committee if the Committees would like to see that as part of a policy they certainly can require that you all set Marilyn are you here I'm sorry I know the principal wanted to make a point so I'd like to have her before I make one final comment I think I've been misunderstood in what I'm looking at I'm sure you have yes I have one second Frank yeah principal Solinski I just wanted to add on to what superintendent Lavoy said since we haven't had the actual policy um in terms of like in the day what happens um one of the things that certainly would be considered is in the beginning of onboarding like we have the arc Ed platform now which has all the training materials and so um there hasn't been discussions in terms of teachers actually taking the same trainings as say a coach but definitely something would be put in our training platform and our acknowledgment of policy Platforms in terms of like every teacher and every staff member knows what the procedure is and so it could be um maybe we could find a quick video in terms of like what it is um because if you actually look at the actual procedure for the day the first thing you do is call the nurse right because we have Professionals in the building like 90 for athletics and our nurses we're not looking for our Educators to start to diagnose but we have had a few we've had a few incidents that have occurred during the day and I think too just making it making staff more aware of what to look for so I think that um you know the superintendent and I and I think you know having it look for but it would definitely be something because it could be that a a teacher like on any given day if they're not a coach they might not even we want to make sure that they are aware that we have added this section so all staff members should know that we have this in the staff section so once it's moved forward I would work with Janice to integrate a component into our onboarding um again I'm not sure of whether or not actually going through the full train because they wouldn't be treating anyone but actually just at least having them acknowledge that they know what the procedures are if that helps Mr Fitzgerald you want to conclude no oh you're all set yes sorry I just wanted to add um in the rules and regulations of the state it only requires coach all coaches are required for CPR and they have to do the concussion training it doesn't have it doesn't State anything about teachers um having to do that as well as um the principal um Solinski said that you know the nurses are in the building there is a section that I will let everybody know of um it's called return to learn and it's what the teachers have to ex or what teachers are expected to monitor the children in their classrooms getting back into academics because academics comes first before the sports come so there is a section of that it's called return to learn that is and part of it is stated in the law but it's not um it's it's in there but that's about the only part that I believe the teachers are aware of Mr ciruelo you have a question yeah um first and foremost thank you for adding um part one because as you know Winter's here and people do fall on kids or even have walking down the hallway somebody could sleep before and bang their heads so this is a good thing my thing um and to Maryland's Point yeah there are some of the realities and stuff that we need to look at but I believe that if a student falls the first person that should be called is the nurses station the nurses in their medical professional before having our teachers diagnosed our children with that I will these times to dissect this and I would have preferred a copied of the state guidelines to compare the two sections um that's not that difficult to find but for me I want to make at least next time to the next meeting too to look it over and compare anything further it's time to chill except the motion the cable is Matt until uh the meeting of the 28th discussion only thing I would ask if you do have questions that do come up if you could uh send them to contact the administration so maybe we don't have to have Navi come back again just to approve this if you have any major questions that will report to the principal's office okay and if I'm sure if she has to you know that can be arranged also but it might be nice to uh not have to inconvenience her to come back all those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much okay this time the chair would appreciate uh you put them to the table of matters please next time okay uh this time the chair would appreciate a motion to adjust the agenda to do the little Reggie's handbook Ms Carpenter is here the director to uh along with the superintendent to explain it you have a motion please all those in favor anyone opposed superintendent received a copy of the little red piece handbook looking to open uh our child care centers next Monday March 13th um and uh as part of oops I'm sorry as part of the uh before we open the facility we would like a vote from the school committee on the handbook so we can Implement them and ensure that parents have a copy of this who are going to be enrolling their child into the program so if you've had a chance to look at it and have any questions I think you've had a preliminary copy of this provisional copy earlier I think we did we gave to you earlier so this is just a finished document so if there are any additional questions you have I asked Brandy to come this evening to answer any questions you may have specific to the document I have a motion to accept this document to move a second Vivian my apologies for missing last meeting so I'm not sure if I'm going to repeat a question that was already answered um was this handbook modeled by another organization or any other handbook that um that belongs to another agency Child Care Agency hi I'd be happy to answer that so the the handbook is um modeled through the department of Early Education and cares guidelines and policies that are required to be in here so the language is developed based on those policies for um the individual program that it's representing yeah I will just I don't know if Vivian's done okay okay does that also include like the late fees and the tuition costs um is that like we created that or is that also modeled uh the late fees and the tuitions well I'll take them out of uh individually the late fees um those are common industry standard practices of the ones that I developed to put into the handbook if you'd like to change them you know that's fine but these are the norm things that are charged the tuition I did create based on enrollment and Staffing to try to balance each other and cover the cost of the employment for the daycare uh Mr sorello hi actually name and title for because I don't know who Brandi Carpenter director of uh child care Brandy thank you for coming and thank you for your work um and I was looking over the the handbook I think is very interesting um it is a lot lower than most places I've seen um but which is good so I want to I commend you and I took a quick little tour of facilities deal of the day which I know a lot of people gonna be jealous thank you for coming and thank you for putting this together you're welcome thank you Mrs Fitzgerald yes this would be more of a school committee thing this is the handbook that we are being asked to adopt but normally we would be adopting something as a policy um which the handbook we're asking to be a doctor this evening okay not as a policy but as the handbook and do we have a policy for our child care center superintendent Europe we we haven't we have not at this point taken the handbook and developed into a policy yet we will be doing that moving forward but in order to get the facility up and running um I felt like we needed to get this in place so people had something to that we had some kind of regulations or expectations uh for um anyone that's going to enroll their son or daughter into the program Mr Fitzgerald one last thing my same old question have our district attorneys reviewed this the attorneys haven't reviewed this because um wanted to take the time to look at how we would transition this into policies and then forward the policies to the attorney at that time anything further anyone all those in favor all those opposed thank you very much and good luck oh I'm sorry yeah that's okay um when is um the opening I don't think John said that John the opening is Monday uh the 13th of March uh Thursday uh from 2 15 to 3 30.
yeah well no what I'm saying is if you use 14 and you want to do it for 20 years and fix your budget so they're predictable you know because we'll know how much Productions there we also can look at the last three years four years five years of buildings at 14 on 20 there's going to be a bucket of money there I could say let's just get it to eight cents in which case sure you're not using Opex for capex you're just getting a lower amount of money that you're going to have prefix in your electrical budget and then you're going to continue to battle for other funds for other priorities unless you're identifying them up front okay just to be clear the whether we're talking the 15 cents to 14 cents or the eight cents it's delivered it's not supply versus delivery okay anyway I will see if I can if there's anyone in Economic Development that's interested in yeah yeah and so so obviously there's moving Parts with solar sure it's whether it's ground Mark carport roof mounted um there's you know different cost structures uh there but there's subsidies they're called the nres non-residential that's the new program it was the Z Rec program Elric Z Rec program before um that's finished and now it's the NRS program the first year was two megawatts was the max now we're at five megawatts so we can produce a lot more it's virtual in that metering okay which means you can get those beneficial accounts it doesn't you don't have to consume it on site you can send it over via paper if you will uh to to another account to zero that out or less in the burden over there sure okay thank you if there's any general questions I know I started talking faster so um also the last bullet points support financing opportunities through bonds loans uh and different tax vehicles I mean this is just us trying to me telling you that we have figured out different ways to do different different things for different folks um that that work and everybody is everybody's flavor is a little bit different you know um and a lot of this is about shifting risk if it's a guarantee or if it's infrastructure as a service or you know however we're trying to use con different contract vehicles to get things done I'm going to end up sending you this email so so the bottom you can click on that's actually about school security um and and shooter detection and um I I don't know where you are with that it's a nine minute video it's very well done um that stuff that we do um I didn't in my research I didn't see that you were had a you know we're going to harden the facilities and we really want to do this but if you know that's something you want to talk about we again I I bring a different a different set of folks and have that discussion I mean we've done quite a bit of that you know but retrofitting an old building you know is always challenging no matter what you're doing with the security or HVAC yeah I appreciate it just so you know when you when you see it you'll hear it too like this is overlay on music some of your existing systems sort of tying in there to make sure that there's institution multiple alarms should the shooter detection be had everybody's phone is is as well as the police the first call goes 9-1-1 the next one notice buys everybody there if we're tying in some of the smart Lighting systems as well you'll be able to let people know this is the new evacuation plan based upon the location of the shooter I mean it's just there's a whole bunch of stuff in there that you'll see that may pique your interest for a conversation um we're really good at creating Wheels um so so this is a wheel um but that doesn't show okay so so the wheel has procurement methods on the top and blue okay and financing mechems on the bot on bottom and just so that you're hearing them I'm just going to go around so tax exemplies purchases what you probably did on your first um go around with amaresco with um unless you bonded it uh tax exempt lease purchase basically should never have been named that um it's just a financing vehicle like mortgage but you can sculpt the payments which means you can pay a little upfront you can pay a little bit more later sometimes those come into play where you're retiring debt okay and you want to be able to you know lower your payments until that debt's retired because that debt is already being paid by the existing tax base and so that gives you that flexibility it also gives you flexibility with regards to the rates of electricity or or gas and we try to plan the Commodities Market a little bit and try to come up with something that works so that's that's where you'll see that uh contingent payment uh here's a very unique way JC uh Johnson Controls jci will bring the money link to the table if I did a project that cost you principal and interest say three hundred thousand dollars and it was guaranteed you'd only pay me at the end of the year after we proved that we met the guarantee so you wouldn't have any borrowing um you wouldn't have to do any borrowing comes at a slightly percentage High more than what you'd get on the street and certainly a little bit more than bonds but the bonds you know have the issuance cost which is pretty expensive Aaron can you go back to the first one you're saying the first one is similar to kind of a reverse mortgage where we're we're obtaining whatever Equity through the bond and paying back or there's some flexibility in the payback there's always going to be some flexibility in the payback and so if if the project for a variety of different reasons one would be maybe some debt that's retiring you know in the short term four or five years and we're doing a project say 15-year project whatever the term is there's the flexibility to lower those payments until that is that debt is retired which frees you up free somebody up you know the dollars that they were already borrowed so let's say let's say it was specifically School dollars that we're going to retire in four years that you need to do in the other project you do it now we can fix the payments so that the payment would increase from an equity standpoint none of these you're not paying anything up front just to go back to what I stated earlier about the architect that engineer I mean all of that uh all of that project cost is born you know by us in the design it's like a design build process and then you're not paying it until construction is done and so you do have almost Instant Equity because if you think about the project if it's a 12-month cycle or 18-month cycle you're going to start to see what those benefits are right up front without having to pull any money out okay thank you straight down the bottom uh there's two things Energy service agreement which is an Esa or power purchase agreement which is typically what you would see where you don't borrow any money the assets not owned by you there's some sort of a benefit way fixed rate for electricity whether it be a fuel cell or solar or batteries or maybe say you know just some tax payment or Pilot payments coming in that form JC Capital coming up the right hand side of the wheel we can bring all the financing associated with it um with really competitive terms or supplant maybe some some project costs that need to be done that don't follow under the traditional uh statutory uh 20 years with no cash okay so state of Connecticut public act 1180 allowed us to do performance cut Contracting to a not to exceed 20-year term and it says that all costs of the project have to be borne by the savings associated with their project it's silent on you bringing Capital but let's say there's more work that you want to get into the project we can bring our own Capital into that project and then we'll just have two separate contracts one will be a performance contract that needs statutory one will be JC project that meets your requirements to help you guys get more done and then it'll that'll fall off because I'm sure that investment will be covered shortly go ahead is is there a way what you're talking about is there a way where this financing stays possible stays off the town council's books that it just stays with the school board here in Connecticut no okay well is it what you're saying it's kind of it almost sounds like you could do that so a tax for for when you do it when you do a telp tax exempt police purchase it is technically off the books um it has helped many municipalities do projects typically sizable which I'm saying more than 5 million that have increased their credit and the reason is is because the work is being guaranteed okay and the the financing that's be that's being guaranteed is being um uh we uh appropriated out of your operating budget and so when you go up to Boston and you sit down and you say and they they say oh you're doing an energy performance contract you're getting all of this work done and yes you're going to keep that budget better but you're not you're preserving your availability to borrow and I I leave it up to to your bond Council to tell you that but it is looked as being off the books so if I could just jump in that's exactly what we did with ameresco is we did 10 million dollars worth of work we did not Bond it we have a lease arrangement financed through Bank of America and the basic deal was we did 10 million dollars worth of work we were over 15 years we'll be saving about eight hundred thousand dollars a year round numbers and that savings essentially is being used instead of paying for energy you're paying you know back that lease that 800 000 per year so you have 10 million dollars worth of work done you had no change in your outlay of cash instead of paying utility bills you're making these lease payments um and then after the 15 years are over whatever Energy savings you have from the work that you did in that case replaced all of Highlands electric heat with natural gas and we got air conditioning so we continue to get that Energy savings did not have to go to referendum because it was not financed through bonds and it also didn't have to go through our procurement process because the contractor was essentially amaresco who hired the contractors to do the work so that you know was that was important for us under that agreement if you're doing one job you you would imagine you wouldn't be doing it this way but if you're looking at a multiple projects and you want to get them streamlined this is the way to do it um in same thing contingent payment if somebody didn't want to borrow borrow capacity as I have a school district they had they just did 186 million new high school and they're like we need to do this work but we don't want to borrow any more money we just borrowed 186 million so we'll continue to pay our books you know we'll put the money up you just same thing that ever Source line item now says eversource a eversource b and b means you're paying Debt Service for the work that you got done and you're doing that from the utility budget that you would you have to keep hold you know you'll get the enhancement of the budget the the line item from from Electric savings if you will you just put it over there back into the buildings and then uh the last two availability Arrangement and Concession agreements a lot that a lot has to do with the public private partnership um well let's just say we bought your high school um because you were going to put um you know 20 million dollar Edition on it and we give you concessions we buy buy the high school you stick the money in the bank maybe you generate some money we do the 20 million dollar uh project um and there's some streamlining there because it gets privatized from a cost perspective and a speed uh and lesser of tape and then we you know sell you back to building if you will um and those concession you know Arrangements happen availability payments happen if you weren't going to buy it back right away we built a new community center uh with a new firehouse on it and they just needed to prefix their dollars so they privatized it and you know we're in the process of doing that now and then up top and loop just a variety of different contract vehicles so from a from a what we do and delivery or it's anything that touches your buildings outside of your core Mission being educational this lens to the education component because we are a major producer of these equipment we know what's happening in the industry and nobody's going into the trades anymore um and everybody is getting around um 3D modeling if you will because that's what the universities are doing as an Avenue uh which we don't we don't disagree that there's certainly a need for that but we're sort of supplanting uh with some of our folks a different avenue for kids and exposure you know at a lower grade level and a higher grade level where they can learn and just you know get into that Greenfield energy field HVAC Tech field um where they maybe they can do something a little bit different again I'm going to Breeze through this I'll send it to you but this is you know stem based there's specific training that was designed for different levels of curriculum there's certifications and then we're actually building labs in in school systems where you know we're taking these unutilized space and we're putting lab systems in there and adding Renewables so adding batteries to some we're adding some some solar curriculum to those as well as straight HVAC and Tech so these kids understand you could start you know making seventy thousand dollars alternatively as going going to college and that curriculum was based and it's done at a national level with our team and I'd bring somebody in to talk to your curriculum people if that's something uh and it leads to internships we have great internship program too we have two offices in Connecticut one Rocky Hill and one in Shelton and we have students coming through our best program all the time so that's the that's the you know lab and so by the numbers up top I mean we know the shortage almost 40 000 HVAC jobs they're going to go projected open and that can't be filled and so this is going to get you know kids excited about there's a different uh different Avenue and there's something for you out there one thing our one thing our board has advocated is alternative Pathways Cheshire is a town that I think has a reputation for sending graduates recent graduates onto college and I think that's great but I think alternative pathways are also really important because of it's not working for every kid like you said 40 000 jobs open every year just for hvacs across the US which I'm thinking would probably translate to about 400 here in Connecticut yeah so many of those jobs would be right near here right near Cheshire a job where is is an HVAC job is that something where somebody might start at 70 000 a year out of high school uh depending on what level they're at but yeah okay yeah I mean I just I I just want to say thank you for bringing this up I think this is really important um alternative Pathways for kids I recently had this you know I got your five kids now the longest is 19.
when I went to orangeview Junior High School started there and then went to Western and the district has needed to be renovated for a long time so Props to you guys for getting it done because it's looking really good thank you thank you so much thank you I can make a they can make a quick comment yes yes um I just want to say um I'm also and I'm high school grad so I'm happy about the field at Anaheim high school but um I also want to commend the committee and their work um and the board for pushing the bond forward and I've had the opportunity to visit some of the sites and see some of the great work that the bond pushed through so very excited for that thank you good thank you I want to thank Mr Walker it's always a pleasure to have you here each year giving us your report and we feel very confident in your committee and being the oversight that it is seeing making sure that we are on track and being responsible for the for the bonds and we look forward to it for the future also yes indeed I just want to thank you for acknowledging Patty she there are not enough superlative words in our language to describe what she does and her accomplishments or I'm I'm just awed by what you do and how you go about it and you're such an important part of the structure of this community and thank you for the time and the love you put into this thank you Patty we appreciate it and I just want to add thank you to all of the committee members for giving your time and effort to do this because we need our community to support us and Alan and thank you because you've been us a long time you know head of this committee and thank you for all your time and effort okay thank you very much moving right along to 9.2 our second interim budget report Dr nian members of the public thank you for being here tonight I'll be presenting the second interim report which is all the financials ending as of January 31st 2023.
oh yeah that was something that got addressed on Saturday yes April 27th if the if we're going to have virtual option as well it's a Russell question oh okay and we'll meet with we'll meet with Russell and we filled in other District staff that are needed in that meeting to make sure that we've got those Logistics set up and the folks who are in online have the opportunity to do two things number one submit questions and number two provide feedback that you'll see when you are deliberating on who you're going to select and one last thing was is that I didn't see a quick nice link and that's probably on our end where it says yeah in the website it says we're looking for a superintendent search but we didn't have the job posting or like a link to click and there's the job posting of qualifications so I think that's something that should be added because it wasn't easily accessible if we have a candidate and they go to our website it you can't find the link of where to apply okay sorry not to labor but on the virtual option I know for Saturday it was webinar mode and so yes we could ask questions but in the chat um so I don't know if thinking about the 27th like how this is a Russell question but like making that a little more um interactive I don't know what our limitations are I know like Zoom bombing and all that um but I'm just thinking kind of going back to what you were saying um Yvonne about like accessibility like typing in the chat and getting out your thoughts can be hard so so let me explain the way the Forum Works um because this might help to answer the question so we're going to start at six o'clock that's typical it'll be 90 minutes we spend the first 15 minutes um letting folks know how it's going to run and at that time the people who are there submit their questions so the people who are online during that 15-minute block can submit their questions we then collect the questions and then the facilitators ask the questions rather than having everybody who's there ask their own questions sometimes you know they can be grouped together and and that sort of thing um so the people online I think should be able to do that and it's fairly easy way and we'll be able to see what the questions are and include them in the questions that are submitted by the people who are there in person then when it comes time to provide feedback um the people who are live in the room have a comment card and they fill out the comment card what we've done in the past for folks who are online is given them an email address that they can email their comments to or we've also provided an online form where they just click on the link and quick type in their comments and have the same amount of time that the folks who are in the audience do to provide that feedback okay so I was just saying like I've tried to do WebEx on a phone yeah and using the chat on a phone is impossible so I don't know if there's a way during that 15 minutes if somebody needs to auditorily share the question that they would like submit it like I don't I don't know what that would look like I just know that WebEx is incredibly clunky depending on what device you're on so the chat is not necessarily accessible maybe we can provide whatever email we're using for the Forum part but in the beginning just for those folks who may have an accessibility issue and providing their questions up front we could do that too yeah something yep any other questions or comments on that okay okay it's important though it is um so that go ahead no okay go ahead yeah okay so um the next thing we wanted to share with you is um an overview of the input we've received to date from the community survey as well as the community input sessions um and as you know this all contributes to the leadership profile um that we're developing for you that that you'll be using to screen applications and then also develop um the themes for the questions that you'll be asking the candidates and the finalists uh so this gives you an idea of who has taken the survey so far this is as of noon yesterday there were 186 people who completed the survey about two-thirds of them identified themselves as working for the district um 30 identified themselves as a family member with a student in the district and you'll see that there's some overlap as well with um 14 the next biggest group uh of folks who had children who had attended schools in the district at one point um I want to mention the um what Mr Carvajal brought up and the Order of the questions um I actually think you got greater persistence by having those narrative questions at the front 186 people took the survey there were probably 170 comments in those open-ended questions at the beginning by the time we got to the final questions on the survey where it was selecting a couple of items you had 155 people continuing to answer those questions so the persistence on the survey throughout it is pretty strong compared to others that I've seen so that's a good thing and not required and they're not answer every question then right yeah okay they can answer I think that was your question was like do they have to fill out an answer for every question yes because we practice with the it's an effort to ensure that we have a major robust responses the department of communication we attempted to take the survey and we noticed that they were required that's why I brought that comment forward I wonder if sometimes like if you click on it at all then you have to answer that question you're clicking on maybe I'll double check that but I don't think that they're required um but I I will absolutely double check it because we want to make sure that's true perfect and thank you and we'll uh reassure that uh message through our specialist and especially next week during parent teacher conferences yeah and I do appreciate your feedback about the um the language that's that's used in in some of them that does seem um academic and it could you know um throw some folks off thank you for that I do appreciate that I'm concerned about um well clearly I'm concerned about family input obviously but there's been zero feedback from students in the district yeah I understand the same issues are probably going to apply there I'm wondering how we can get feedback maybe it's not through this survey maybe it's some version of this survey that's like differentiated for students of certain grade groups to be able to give feedback on maybe it's in a bigger group well you know the four question thing you had you had of the community input what and that's basically what you're sharing with us is strengths and challenges um maybe we could somehow get that out to students just those four questions with the other you know open boxes um yeah I mean if there's a way we could send that to all students I mean you know Friday Friday fun yeah there's got to be prizes for that yeah we're gonna have some incentives yeah I don't know what that looks like I'm sorry I don't have a solution right now I apologize um but I just you know I would love that there be some student participation yeah yeah and that's and that for wrong one that we had that could be even a good one that we could have with our families that are not able to go through every single one but student council and like kids Congress would probably be the best part to start at because they're already involved and they already have that kind of stuff so that's an easy one and I'm just going to throw something out there um the Phoenix Elementary District when we did their search last year they invited a group of students to come and meet with the finalists before the main Community forum and gave them it wasn't long it was maybe a half an hour to hear from the finalists and then ask them a couple of questions so I'll just plant that seed it's a possibility I think that's a great Point um in the we've done a bunch of listening sessions on the Phoenix jeans city and what we found is when students were in the same room with any other group they were much less likely to share or ask any questions but when they were isolated and able to ask questions they did yeah okay I like that idea thank you would if if we were to develop um something a modified four prong for the students what impact would that have with you guys as far as timeline just because I know this was closing March 13th if we wanted to have their feedback added to these four components what I'm just thinking of that in terms of break is next week I think I think the way that it would work is that we include them in our finalists so when we have the community Forum on the 27th that we specifically open it up let's say 4 30 to 5 only for the students groups and then at six o'clock we open it to the general because at least they have input and they can ask those direct questions and we have their input for when we're going to make that decision that day and we didn't do it without that student voice considering your spring break is coming up I think it would be a rush to to maybe get student input at this point because we'd want to have it before we finalize that leadership profile for your screening which is on March 25th so I think that might be a little bit too compressed to and that's why I wanted to bring that up because I don't want people like doing the work to make this work a survey if we're not going to do this survey and instead do the finalists day yeah I think that would work better I just wanted to clarify Okay so yeah okay and then we can talk more about that if we that's what the direction that we want to go in we can just let you know okay um any other questions about the survey before she moves on comments okay perfect so the next thing we're going to do is share as as I said the results of the survey not the full results but summary of the results of the survey and then also the community input sessions and I just want to let you know that they're very consistent between the survey and the community input sessions the feedback that we received and as Mr Greer and I sat here tonight we also noticed it was very consistent with the conversations that you were having in this boardroom tonight so I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Keith Greer to share more superintendent Lewis honorable board exec team we're so happy to be here but what we want to do tonight since the hour is like we want to tie together some things for you a lot of things you've talked about already we didn't have to give you that and we don't want to read it to you either because I think that might bore you to tears well let's let's tie some things together emerging interests and priorities successfully recruited selected and retain highly qualified staff that's important to you you've been mentioning it this is our third time through fourth time we count the two survey sessions that we had that's important and that not only is it important to you as a board which is kind of interesting the board said the same thing in our individual interviews that the community said as well as the the staff other thing have parents staff community members and students as appropriate in developmental recommendations so we need all those people involved when you make a decision now here are your highly ranked attributes one have a great communicator and in being a great communicator individuals want this leader to be visible in the community and be authentic proven success as an instructional leader in improving academic performance we live in an A through F world and I know you like Ace and you know because the way that you pluses wouldn't be bad either but the A's are are definitely not something that you want to take a look at and then have an appreciation and respect for the diverse population we can see the diverseness of the board we look at the teachers who come up they're diverse so we want to make sure that that don't gotta lie to us about the board right now oh you're the verse I trust me yeah personality personality does count you again values and prioritizes social emotional learnings and Equity how important is that and then the ability to analyze and prioritize competing priorities we heard that tonight with the teachers and and the raises bilingual would be a plus those are some of your challenges recruiting retaining and compensating qualified skilled staff that's classified and certified didn't have a whole lot of problems with that tonight as you approve those stipends student discipline kept coming up safety and social emotional well-being that's a topic that really your new leader is going to have to address and improving academic performances again it came back but particularly in math and reading Superior strengths your family and student oriented culture we saw a bunch of little ones coming to those meetings perfect we we see the staff not throwing Tomatoes right so we know that they they're on they're on point with you recognition and celebration of the diversity everybody clap tonight they recognize how hard of a job you have and they appreciate it strong community and family involvement and support the individual that was a Community member that was there on Thursday what a joy that was outstanding and those individuals who came into the meetings from the community the the one man and woman that was there Had No Children Here at all and they came in and they offered their input a caring staff again that's that's important that's a strength of yours and then excellent communication with staff families and the community hey you can't go wrong there so those are your strengths those those are your challenges any questions that you might have about this but like I said it overlaps the individual meetings that we have with the uh with the board and what we're getting from the community and staff it's the same thing any questions I don't have any questions but I I do have that same sentiment that this whole process has really shown me that we really are aligned with their community and the needs and the voices that our community needs is obviously something that we've all in one way or another have discussed brought up so it's just really rewarding to know that as elected officials in reflection of our community that we kind of are in that same vision so that's that's been good to to see that we kind of are aligned with them um does anybody else have any questions or comments that's perfect start going that validation I think it it gives me this is a huge huge task and so it gives me more confidence in taking this on knowing that we're not representing five people we really are representing everyone so I'm gonna give it back to my colleague Miss vincently all right we just also wanted to share with you about the community input sessions and um before I share the data about that and kind of summarize that I just want to say that it was obvious um how valued folks who were at those sessions felt and how appreciative they were and I think one of you mentioned that at the beginning um of the session tonight so that was abundantly clear to us so you may have noticed when folks checked in they had an opportunity to say sort of which group they represented I don't think everyone checked in but of those who did I think most people did um there were 30 people total who did the majority were staff five community members from the district a former employee those amazing neighbors who were here on Saturday so those are the folks that were here um and I would say that those who spoke and those who filled out those quadrant boxes really reinforced what we saw on the surveys a couple of other things that emerged from those Community input sessions were this idea of the adventures collaborative and kind-hearted leader to match what you are trying to um nurture in your students um that deep understanding of the community whether they are from the community or have had experience in communities similarly diverse similarly sized similarly situated um we did hear more strongly at the community input sessions the priority was appreciated about professional development um someone who would grow the district's focus on equity and social and emotional learning and the ability to analyze and prioritize programs which I think Mr Greer mentioned also looking at for which things is the juice worth the squeeze right um and then also we feel that you may need to hire a Master Gardener because folks really love your garden program right um but really just that whole idea of supporting the the whole child I think that came through with all the conversation about the gardening program and with that I believe the next time we will see you we'll be when when we're back on March the 25th I'm sharing with you the the final information from the surveys that will be in that leadership profile and then working with you to look through all the applicants in this position I was going to say a big thing going back to that first thing you mentioned on the last part was not just it was just like not switching up especially from staff but sticking to the Strategic plan we've already adopted in the mission and trying to implement that more effectively rather than trying to create a whole new having someone come in and start over any other questions or comments I guess my only other thought that's still sticking with me is I still want to try and get more kid input I mean if we wait until that very last day that's going to be a chaotic I remember you know we're getting feedback from everybody and then we have to go into executive session and make a decision um based on what happens over those two hours basically um if it doesn't have to be part of part of this leadership profile necessarily I would just like to hear what kids kids say maybe we can do that on our own as a listening tour um in some way but just if everyone can just kind of keep their thinking caps on about that I would like to I don't want to miss that constituent of ours you know a potential would be to ask students between now and the first interview if you could ask a question to the new superintendent what might it be and maybe give them a couple of choices or I don't know you you could potentially frame it some way like that because there is a pretty significant period between when you screen applicants and when you're going to have your first candidate so anyway go out there any other questions or comments thank you so much for the update we look forward to hearing more information in March and then we'll be in contact on how we decide to do that student sounds good okay thank you thank you I was gonna say we need to like mention like like I don't know if we can just throw at them what question are you going to ask the superintendent they're going to be like what well it could be like a 10 minute little lesson I don't know and I think that goes back to there was a comment about that on Saturday though too not just for our students but as we move forward through this process and leaning preparing for that finalist I think we do need to and sorry Emily this is probably going to fall on you but we need some more education just to sing yeah and was like so who's running for superintendent yeah like no yeah so however you know maybe social media campaign with little snippet I don't know something to educate what a superintendent is yeah maybe it could be a newsletter campaign Emily even even for the students too sending it out to teachers and say hey teachers please let your students know the board wants to hear from you and maybe there's a way they can and you probably need to explain to kids what the board is because I think that's right I mean I mean Emily and I are good at that yeah all right thank you guys so much I appreciate your time all right that brings us to agenda item 10c legislative political report I will not have anything until the next board meeting because I will be at the Capitol this week getting all that fun stuff so if anybody else has anything to add on I I won't have anything definitive perfect all right that brings us to our future agenda items I have a couple ones I'm gonna allow anybody else to give theirs first if they need some I still feel very much like okay I'm I'm waiting almost two years for this now so I think it's an important thing that can identify money savings and other things that we don't know what we don't know you know so I would like to see that on an agenda sooner than later yeah yeah okay understood anybody else have any future agenda items maybe it's it's prudent for us to think about um when we were talking today about an executive session maybe on a study of the current things that are funded through Esser and looking at um like the study that is going on like what is uh what a study session be okay yeah I'm talking about like maybe at the beginning of next year but I just want to put on there because I tend to forget about things Okay this may not be an agenda item I I just want to keep I'm going to keep pushing accessibility and a lot of other districts have maintained the ability to give virtual public comment after covet and I think it's important for us to still provide that opportunity especially for people that are homebound or have disabilities that prevent them from attending our meetings in person or they have other obligations where they can attend virtually but can't be here in person so I don't know how we can get that done I don't know if it's through an agenda item or if we just need to talk to Russell or what but I think we just Direct on whoever we need to direct yeah it doesn't have to be a future agenda item that's something that we can kind of like what we did during covet where we allowed people by a certain day to do virtual comments but we can discuss that but no it it doesn't have to be a future agenda item and we can discuss that more and then direct to do that anybody else future agenda items I have one one all at the same time and discuss as a whole because um prioritize those um on Saturday you know I did get feedback from asba that you guys should be auditing stuff right now so your superintendent can hit the ground running you know so um I'm not crazy to me asking for these things so I would like the board to discuss as a whole and prioritize okay perfect um and for me um future agenda item I would like to put um an update of Larry C Kennedy I think that that's one of the things that were coming up we haven't talked about it we haven't really decided anything so definitely put that as a future agenda item maybe as a study session um the crane Virtual Academy as well I think that's a big source of where our money is going and before we drastically make any changes I would like for us to talk about what that looks like since that's coming up right around the corner and um future agenda item not nothing in the near future but board committees I want to get started on actually having um us having some type of committees and we can discuss that later but those are the three things I would like to see in the future basically funding what that looks like in the future how do we can sustain it what are we going to do yeah so more that aspect versus how the school's going it's more the financials I guess portion of it we need to start having real conversations about those type of things and that's it for me Perfect all right guys this brings us to our last item I moved the governing board adjourn second all those in favor thank you guys so much for being with us tonight I appreciate all of you
so nothing nothing changes your every all your services all your programming stays the same except for your contractual increases your vendor increases your teacher contracts all of that you go according to all the rules and regulations that's the only thing that changes so looking at that I have it split out by each School so for Berlin Memorial you can see that the you have the operating budget on top so the dollar increase is 550 000 for the 13 increase for Boylston the dollar increase would be 784 000 out of 16 increase in to Hunter would be a 1.2 million dollar increase at 13 percent then you have your capital budget which will stay the same throughout so and it's broken out for school again so for Berlin it's the increase is 284 000 at 173 increase Boston Elementary is an increase of 558 000 at 859 increase in Toronto 585 000 of the 21 increase our state revenue has come in in our district revenue is forecasted out so for our Chapter 70 Revenue we've got an increase of about 350 000 in our chapter 71 we got an increase of about 117 000.
we have an open house for the staff uh to come and visit the uh the facility toward it so committees any of the committee members would like to do that's welcome or we can do a tour quickly at the end of today's meeting if you'd like to take a tour of the space tonight we can do that Thursday the open house Thursday from 2 15 to 3 30. for this coming Thursday not this week next week this week this week the society staff member who um child is coming on Monday gets a chance to look at it before they bring them in all right okay Mr Hayden do we have any early applicants and how many do we have thank you for asking um currently I have um an interest list which I started the first day that I came on board here so that I had an idea of who was interested and based on that interest list we would be fully enrolled for September and um probably about 80 enrolled starting probably in April when you say based on that's not the people who have actually signed on how many do we have actually signed up for when you open up um I don't have anyone actually signed up because I didn't have a start date so now that I have a start date what I can do is take that interest list tell them that they are now able to enroll and then we can move forward from there Vivian would you have a question no yes superintendent so we didn't have a start date till today because we were the state inspectors was inspected by the state today and so until we knew it was going to pass we couldn't have a start date so there was two items they want uh resolved which we're doing tomorrow which is putting a fence up in the in the playground area and putting in a dishwasher in the day in the infant room which both things were doing tomorrow so then she's going to come back Thursday and if those are all set then we're ready to go on Monday which we know they'll be all set so we're letting staff know tomorrow but we had already given staff a preliminary date that when we expected to open so um we'll open with as many or and I feel like we're going to be there's quite a few people waiting to come so they may not you know sign up for this Monday but within the next couple of weeks uh more staff members will be bringing their children so we've like uh Brandi said April 1st we look to be about 80 percent full you all said Mr Hayden I guess one of the Mr LaMontagne police is any faculty member exempt because they don't live in Massachusetts no not at all that would be most of the staff yeah anything else okay thank you very much okay thank you and good luck thank you Brandy moving back to the regular art of a business marketing strategy superintendent so um I'm not uh I'd like to table this for now because I have not had time to sit with the soup with the principal to develop our strategies um it's going to take us some time because it's it's more than just the principle of myself sitting down to develop this we uh have we're putting a committee together to help us design this because it has an impact on a lot of the different uh programs and things that are going on here in the school and we also want to get some expert advice into in developing this who someone that has a little more that's done a lot of work around marketing so until we get a chance to do that I didn't want to bring something that's incomplete and we're not positive it's going to be effective so I want to bring something we believe Will Be an Effective tool moving forward for marketing and make recommendations whether it's to uh again pose for an in-house person or post for somebody on the outside of the school but once we have that once we have that study completed I'll bring it to the committee you'll appreciate a motion to table of marketing strategies discussion all those in favor I'm going to polls okay moving right along professional development superintendent please so let's see right thank you so do you have those slides okay I'm just going to review our last professional development which was was last week I believe uh it was focused on two different uh areas um one of the areas was um let's see student Student Success plan on and failures so um and the other one was on a strategic plan so at this point I'll go over the Student Success plan some of what was talked about at the professional development program and so we utilize this professional development day to talk to the student I mean talk to the staff about Student Success plans because we had we required all teachers who had students who were failing to develop a Student Success plan for those students and uh I think both myself and the principal felt that we needed to give them a little more clarity why we were this expectation was now presented to them and why it was required that they do success plans just so that and then ask for feedback from them as well so we want to give them an opportunity to weigh in on some of the philosophies and and some of the work that we're looking to do moving forward around student failures and how we deal with that so we use some of our professional development time this this last Wednesday to review that we spent about half our time on that in in the auto in the auditorium and half the time on the Strategic plan which I'll I'm going to be reporting on my goal for this year which is to develop a strategic plan which was I'll go through the some slides with you on that which part of it was presented at the professional development on last Wednesday but if you look at the slot if you look at the slides we started the presentation with my particular philosophy on um on failures and Student Success plans um so I won't go through them but that slide kind of outlines um the goal for uh for the goal of Education you know is to for students to continue to learn and talked a little bit about uh failing students and what it does and how to Mo and what until we talked about motivating kids and uh the sixth plan uh reflecting uh that the teacher is going to what they're going to do to continue to support students moving forward after they've missed and that a grade time forever that grades need to have students need the opportunity to continue to reflect on and go back to making up or doing work that will that they can approach and learn what it is they missed or don't understand so that uh that the grade will should always reflect what students know and are able to do and if a student let's say give you an example we've got a 40 in the first quarter but in the second quarter did makeup work did we did a new assessment and now knows 80 percent of the material you didn't know in first term that grade should be changed to an 80 that that 40 shouldn't stand forever and if we wanted to do a grading regarding responsibility and expect meeting expectations that maybe we needed to have a separate grade but that grade needed to be reflective what students know and able to do moving forward and then we talked a little bit about there was a lot of teacher perception about um the idea of of success plans and what teachers what we were hearing or some of the um things that we felt teachers might have had preconceptions about and so we went through that and talked about each one of those bullets that are on there regarding students failures and what that made how that made teachers feel in some cases and had conversations about that and then allowed the we allowed the teachers to turn and talk three or four people got together communicated what they had heard over the first 15 half hour and then we gave them another half hour to respond and ask questions of myself regarding and make comments about what they heard so that they could express their own feelings so that we had from that point we were able to move forward moving forward we can look at strategies and methods we're going to use in terms of grading we have a grading committee that's looking at you know how we grade students and Grading policies and we're looking at whether we should have a common grading policy that it's adopted a school policy adopted but it will be part of our five-year strategic plan moving forward to take a look at our grading policies and how we grade students and so that we use that time to reflect on what's going on with students who are failing and how it we should be addressing that so we had a I think a good uh give and take and teachers got to really talk about how they felt about our expectations and we got to talk to I think respond to their thinking in the auditorium which I thought uh went well um and I think that the teachers appreciated being heard and I appreciated hearing you know their thinking so it helps us as administrators our whole administrative team was there to continue to do this work in a way that supports students at the highest level we can particularly those students who are struggling for various reasons one of the things they had everyone had to do in their Student Success plan is first to do an analysis on why the student was failing anywhere from having difficulty with the work to struggling emotionally or dealing with something at home that might have impacted their ability to learn in the classroom so you know the idea of how do you develop a success plan first we have to know what we're dealing with before we can move forward so that's some of the way we ask teachers to approach it until that was part of the professional development and the other part was on the Strategic plan which I will outline you'll see as I outline where where we're at with where I'm at with the Strategic plan and my goal for this year uh will uh you'll see that we uh utilize some time in professional development for that as well questions for the superintendent yes [Music] in about students career having to have a certain great um no let me think this through so you were saying that they need to have they need to pass that's what you're saying yes yes and then in a strategy to for those students that need help that's that's why you are explaining and all that and yes and um so what about the students that don't want to that they actually don't learn even if you give them the help what happened with the students how you're going to pass them so well first of all I believe all students can learn so we've got to figure out why they're not learning we have to figure out how we can help them to learn um you know there's various there's lots of reasons why students struggle or having a hard time learning so we've got a our job and our responsibilities and that's what the whole success plan is uh is all of the uh Student Success plans all about us first to analyze why is that student not learning what are the things that are going on whether it be something going on at home having difficulty with the work sure I I don't think I asked the question the right way they are students that actually don't care so my question is what happened with those students that actually don't care and they're not going to learn more than what they what they're here for yep so we have lots of students who feel don't care and that's the reason they don't they don't learn but students don't care there are many many we need to know why they don't care so if a student doesn't care what's going on in their life that we've got to understand and figure how do we motivate that student to want to learn is part of our job so we can never accept the fact that a student doesn't want to learn we have to we have a responsibility to work with some people that they want to learn and not our job is to help them learn motivate them and figure out what it is that's causing them not to want to learn that's not normal I'm sorry I'm Different to you again because I'm not sure you you got the question I need to I want I'm looking to know what happened to a student because you're talking about giving them a grade to pass why so my question goes into if a student don't want to learn and you find out that they don't want to learn are you going to give them a passing great that's my question what happened to the student are we going to continue to have a student taking a seat of for another student that do want to come here and they didn't even make it here because somebody else is here and don't want to learn and we're trying to pass that student somehow that's my question yeah and I just yeah so first of all it's not about passing to be honest with you it's and if a student well let me just explain it's if it's students are not automatically passed students have to earn it's not about passing or not passing we we have expectations in terms of students knowing the material and able to do what it is we're trying to teach them whether it be skills or whether it be knowledge whether it be what are the materials the content there we're trying to teach them they need to be able to know and be able to do what it is we're trying to teach them now if they if they don't reach competency in these areas we're not going to automatically pass them the what we're going to do is figure out how do we help them so they do pass and there's no time what I'm saying is there's no time limit whether if they got a 40 to 4 first quarter and then they by the second quarter they know what they didn't know in that first quarter we need to change the grade because it's about what it is they know and able to do that we always want to measure if a student doesn't want to learn and is refusing to learn then we work with the student through guidance through all kinds of support help it might be an ell student might be special ed student that has all kinds of plants so we that the point is all any student that doesn't want to learn we've got to work with them to motivate them to want to learn and that's just not acceptable in terms of and once the students get here by law we can't just tell kids that we can't throw students out or we can't expel students because if that's not acceptable because the law doesn't allow us to do that number one and the other thing is my belief and I say this all the time if a student comes here they are are responsibly in our students to teach not to get rid of but to work with them and figure out every student we have to figure out a way to teach them and help them learn what it is we want them to learn I don't want to see I don't want to throw any student out I don't want to send any student back to Lawrence I want to work with every one of those students they I feel like there are students there our responsibility we accepted them so we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to help that student learn because that student is going to be an adult someday and he's going to be as one of our citizens and if we can teach them and help them gain skills and knowledge they're going to go out and be successful we want that for every single student no matter what their challenges are because a lot of our students are struggling with a lot of issues at home a lot of things that they're having difficulties with that we've got to help them we've got to help every single one of our students and that's why I convey to every teacher I convey that to everybody that works at greater Lawrence Tech where family and it's our responsibility to educate our kids not to quit on kids we should never quit on a single student if we quit on them they're going to quit on themselves how can we quit on them if we get we do what we got to do no student I'm not going to quit on any student if they don't want to learn I'm going to we need to figure out how to help them deal with whatever is causing the problem that they don't want to learn and it's easy to say absolutely and this does every single student learn not always but we don't want to quit on them we don't want to give up we'll keep working at it as long as there are student we'll keep working at it well anything further okay we'll bring on superintendent new programs Aviation child care and programming web development you're going to fill us in on those so uh the three programs that we're working on now Aviation all of those programs we're working on Part B Part B is due to the Department of Education on Friday and we are in actually very good shape in meeting the um the standards that are required for Part B in fact we had tonight in one of those requirements is to have a advisory meeting so tonight I think it was uh let's see one of the programs programming was uh meeting tonight and or uh Earl uh it's either next week I mean next tomorrow Thursday I think is Early Childhood advisories meeting and then Aviation we had part of that meeting today we had the FAA in today to meet with us three people from the state FAA to meet with us today to go over and talk about what the criteria is and uh for uh to get the program certified by FAA which are very similar to the ones for the Department of Education we have the consultant uh for uh for Aviation from the school out in Westfield who's been working with us so we've met we're pretty much there's about 15 different areas and standards we are required to complete in order to get approval and in each of those programs and we're in pretty good shape I feel confident that all three programs should pass Part B and that would then next last part would be for them to visit the school and look at the space we're going to run the programs which would happen in the spring sometime in May so but I I think we're in pretty good shape for all the programs everything from developing curriculum to purchasing and having equipment in place for the spring everything looks good at this point for a Go in all three programs the questions for the superintendent Vivian superintendent um do you mind providing me an update in regards to the hanger space I received a phone call from the director of the airport regarding some concerns which I've tried to reach out to to kind of touch base on that um so I just wanted to make sure if anything has changed from our last meeting visiting the airport so um there was the hangar that was for sale at the airport we made an offer to the gentleman out at the airport also asked to be on the airport commissions next to meeting because they have to vote and approve us purchasing a hanger um since then um the other part is I've turned it over to our attorneys to determine what the if there are any state regulations or laws that prevent us from purchasing the hangar out there or purchasing another building uh if there needs to be any legislation to approve that um so I'm still waiting I called them again today but he didn't return my call um waiting for the response on that but we have made an offer on that Hangar since then the manager of the airport did call me and asked me if I would reach out to the gentleman who owns who wants to build a hanger out there who wanted to partner with us to see if he was still interested uh he would like to see us pursue that partnership I called the gentleman at least four or five times he has not returned my call I called Francisco the manager out at the airport and informed him that the gentleman was not returning my calls if he had any influence in communicating with them so I could communicate and see if he's in you know where it's his interest lies before we make a final determination on the purchase of the hangar hasn't returned my call no one's returned my calls yet at that point so at this point I I'm going to wait for once we know the answer from the attorney which I'll reach out to him again tomorrow on the final purchasing of the uh Hangar that's available I will um if there's no state law that prevents us from purchasing that uh then what I would do is uh move forward with the commission and I've asked to be on the agenda to purchase the hangar I would move forward with purchasing that hanger I don't want to wait on somebody that's either not ready to do their project or not responding in a way that's just going to make it difficult moving forward I don't want to get caught in something that's going to derail our opportunity so what's available is the hanger so I would continue to pursue that yes yep Mr Hayden Mr lavois this Hangar falls through I just want to confirm that this will not affect any other existing shops in this building if we have to bring this into this school no it won't have any impact on it but we're also building a hangar here at the school so it's part of the uh three projects that we're pursuing the architect is doing some drawings for us and um so we need a hanger here and we also need one of the airport so it won't have an impact we don't really need the hangar at the airport for another year a year from September uh although there'll be some work that needs to be done to that existing one but rarely doesn't hang or become available that's a rare situation and this so we we really need to take advantage of this opportunity because it may never come again we may never get the opportunity to get a hanger out there if we miss out on this particular one and it's actually uh it's in a nice location and it's also it's about 3 000 square feet which is a perfect size for what we need to do what we want to do out there so and it's at a reasonable cost was on the market for 320.
so I missed this boat um but but they're not fully grown interesting they're definitely but I had this conversation with somebody and I said look just go down to a marina on the shore and walk around and ask everybody what they do because I can tell you that when my in-laws had a boat there was five guys in there two that were plumbers and I actually have a lectures with money you last he's like yeah I had the vote too all those electricians of the boat we they're making plenty of money and they're making really good money and there's a good career path there certainly and just you know kids don't know it they just maybe it's our fault maybe we just tell me oh I got to go to college educating parents yeah yeah and you know I mean you might be an entrepreneur you might be somebody that's really good and you're going to learn this trade now you're going to open up your own business and forget about the seventy thousand I mean you're you're going to do fine so I it's about the exposure and getting them you know motivated about something else that's out there and so you know HVAC Plumbing electrical diagnostic HVAC getting to the Green Fields facility operations uh just it's good exposure I need to go through the rest of this but um I've covered most of it so um so some things that we've done locally so I worked with a town we did a nine and a half million dollar design uh and then discovered that they needed a new roof so what we did is we paused on a large component of the solar project got the Architects out there designed the roof they borrowed from Bank of America to they beat out TD Bank they bought 9.5 million dollars from Bank of America and we redesigned the project like I said before we got too far along and then we um we did 14 and a half million and they never borrowed another dime and so we've got two roofs paid for uh utilizing the state's program for roofing uh in the state's program for solar okay and so under the nine Pro non-uh priority list is Roofing solar wind turbines building management systems windows being recorded nobody's ever done a BMS job to the office of school constructions because they have no guidelines they won't give them to me they have no guidelines who has no guidelines School construction for what qualifies oh we know it's a pneumatic system right you guys have an automatic system only schools that should qualify that's exactly why it's up there is why it's in there I can't get the specs on it so but but anyway give us a minute no no that's the thing then I have to well because you want to know what it is I'm trying to consult right I can tell you what's in the winter right I can tell you solo a lot of people don't know that they have the opportunity to go up there for solar does it make sense to go up there for solar if you're only getting 30 you know 30 percent I mean there's a lot of red tape it takes a lot of time and you know you may have z-rex already in place and you gotta you gotta move but um it's that's something that you know that we did to help them because it was an unknown problem um while we were in there now that was possibly because the facilities guy had left while we were doing it in Zion work new guy was in there there was no paperwork we had no idea you know that the age of the roofs and you know they were 20 plus years old so they qualified for 100 of their rape reimbursement and they were only getting a little north of 50.
I do want to take this time to thank my staff who has helped with this report this is extremely important then work countless hours including weekends get this work done so thank you so much Karen um our um executive director of physical Services Joe kimono controller as well as our budget manager Brianna Chrome thank you so much I do want to um to start by talking about the overall broad economy so the overall broad economy there is still the inflation although that you can see on the chart here inflation is coming down from the height of June of 22 from the 9.1 percent the latest number is uh at January was about 6.4 so inflationary numbers are coming down however they're still they're raising interest rate that has continued on as well as the supply chain issue as well as the struggling stock market so these um four different issues has um would continue to stay for the growth of the national as well as for the State of California however our governor has really made a strong commitment to continue to fund education so we are extremely excited about that in the proposal back in January when the governor proposes budget for the 23-24 there was a 22.5 billion dollar shortfall however the governor has proposed multiple measures including funding delays reductions and pullback in some of the fund fund funding ships uh some of the other reductions in borrowing so the goal really is for the governor to continue to fund the um cost of living adjustments so which I'm going to talk about that a little bit later so we're extremely excited um the governor has made that commitment to public education however um during this time the um whether the severe winter that California has been experiencing as you all know this has actually pushed the shift of the tax extensions so that latest tax extension for filing the um personal and some of the um business tax returns has now been pushed to October 16th and um 51 counties so in Orange county is one of those counties so this will actually affect what the revenue that will be released as of May so when may revised usually the state would have the um all the taxes as of April however at the May revised the numbers are going to be um not as reliable since the taxes Revenue will not be coming in at that point so this is something that we are I'm closing to monitor so probably the budget will be adopted in in June um you know and then um we'll probably have to wait many months to see what that real number for 23 24 would be so that's going to be really up in there at this point so that's something that we are going to monitor as you have seen here this is our um projecting enrollment as we have known we have been declining enrollment um so we um back in about 2011-12 we're about 33 000 we're now about 27 000 students and projected to further decline so the biggest issue that we're running into is we have lost about 5 000 students in the last about 10 years or so but in the next five years we're projected to lose another 4 000.
it's more than we've gotten in Prior years but it's not enough to make a difference I'll solve our problem our next option is looking at the below level service budget so with a below level service budget we lose everything from the above level service Plus a reduction in force of approximately 11 positions across the district including teachers and support staff support services for general education and special special education will be produced additional programs and courses will be eliminated class size increases across the elementary school holding class sizes will increase so that looks like this for Berlin it drops it to a nine percent with the 360 000 increase the capital stays the same we kept the same for Boylston Elementary and brought it to a 556 000 increase at 12 in for Toronto it brought it to a 763 000 increase at eight percent quickly I thought I just showed Jesus where what we requested for our Capital requests so as I heard earlier we'll start with the middle one Boylston Elementary from HVAC installation additional I.T support to help with the Chromebooks that was mentioned earlier to help with the switches in wireless access um half years in the building the kitchen floor and the kitchen needs replacement um requests for a truck facilities we have a new facility director who uses personal vehicle going from building to building it'd be nice to have a vehicle that we could use that we call our own that he could use the roof is it currently on here but we're looking into it because there's a lot of different things going we got to figure out what's really going on with the roof before we can put a dollar amount to it we're not sure we're having we are having a facility assessment done on the building and when that comes back we'll know what repairs need to be done for the group and then we'll reference again putting that on here and they're fully aware that that that's coming up in Berlin Memorial a new flat roof I.T support copiers plumbing repair a lot of the boys rooms the toilets and the sinks needs to be replaced we need replacement for some exterior doors and the trucks on there because it's split throughout the district a lot of the stuff in Berlin Memorial we did a building assessment two years ago so we're trying to kind of work on some of the issues that were brought up in the building assessment most of these things are spread throughout the district so you're going to see repeats of them throughout the school so you've got a security system upgrade we need to upgrade our security system in Toronto we need more cameras so we can kind of see what's going on inside and outside of the building copiers 3D printers for some of our programs to keep up with their everybody else HVAC upgrade and then you have your principal employment interest for the for the building and I think I'm just going to leave it at that I think we have a lot to talk about tonight um and then if anyone has any more questions that can pull there's a lot more slides here right thanks you would be the best that yeah that's great thank you yeah so before we get into the discussion so there have been some questions brought out below do the towns agree what a one-time agree is another time doesn't agree uh what's the process to who has to approve the budget how do people vote on the budget when does that happen how do we get there so uh Kristen from Berlin is here and she's gonna help us with some of those answers I'm right here so wherever you come from okay no problem this is where all those years so let me talk about kind of the process of how it goes on in Berlin first yeah what happens once the committee votes on budget what happens after that okay so we checked with this because I feel like this there should be a flow chart because there's a lot of if this happened and then this happens so it's a little bit complicated which is probably why you've gotten some different answers um and that's obviously confusing so I've actually spoken with our legal counsel the way that the process would work is your budget does go to the town meeting and there it would be recommended as either a recommended by the fincom or the fincom can recommend their own budget so it they can both be on there if it's just one that everyone comes to an been on it will be it would be the one that goes on there but your budget goes on the warrant as you vote it no matter what um and then there would be a motion say the budgets are different there would be the ability to make a motion to accept the higher budget should school budget be higher who makes that much um that motion can be made by any Resident on the Florida town meeting so at Berlin it would have to be in Berlin registered voter so I'm also the superintendent has afforded an opportunity to speak at the town meeting as well that is part of kind of the statutory guideline as it's outlined um and then basically if the budget is read-upon we all go forward and everything is great if there is a difference the town meeting is adjourned the school committee goes back and has an opportunity to take another look at the budget and present another budget to the town for another vote that is a 30-day typically 30 to 45 day process so the issue you have there is you're running up against a little bit of a timeline our child meeting is made first and I believe oil since is the same evening as well so trying to get the logistics of that we have to figure out because we need to get a budget agreed-upon in place by July 1st so say you come back a second time we still can't arrive at an agreement we will go to a district-wide meeting so that would be folks from that are registered voters in Boylston as well as Berlin um and it's a majority I'm sorry the district-wide meeting who calls at me is it both towns together the school committee school committee will call for that meeting is my understanding okay yeah so and then um hopefully we'd all agree um if not the you know worst case scenario is you go to What's called a 112th budget um and that's for every month until um you know we can reach an agreement and it's based on typically FY 23 or the commissioner gets involved from the state they can actually set that budget slightly higher than the FY 23 if they so choose um and hopefully you won't get that far down the road I you know I'm glad it's got all along I'd really like for us to kind of work together and come up with a plan um and it's definitely just an issue of the numbers and as we kind of talked about there's that access leveling capacity versus override which I think is a little bit confusing for some folks so I can kind of outline that if that's helpful relationships so Berlin is not taxed to the max basically so we have approximately uh 1.9 million dollars and it was called excess loving capacity that means we have the ability to tax that additional amount to the taxpayers but we don't tax it because they've made decisions over the years the fincom should try to be approval with those resources to access that capacity because it requires an increase in taxes above whatever your minimum contribution is every year which is typically a two and a half percent increase so what we did for our budget was we based it on your typical two and a half percent increase plus you're able to add in any new growth that comes in over that year and um then what we end up with is where we got our kind of numbers out of it on the town and our town went by two and a half percent budget increase unless there was a fixed cost like Worcester Regional retirement goes up health insurance as you mentioned we got hit with a 10 and a half percent increase on our side as well so there's some challenges like that that are fixed that we don't have a choice we have to we have to pay um and then basically what we do is we look at typically supplemental funding requests we looked at very few of them this year because we really wanted to give whatever we had left to the schools um the school system typically from looking over the years have done about a four to six percent increase um this year kind of looking at with everything in the mix where we're at we're at about five percent right now that does not include tapping into that excess Levy so just at the two and a half percent increase which brings us at the five percent for the schools that's and this is a rough number so I'm going to put about 17 caveats on this when I throw this number out because Berlin has a split tax rates small business exemption this is based on a calculator that's for fy23 numbers um and if there's any devaluation on the commercial side that gets formed by the residential side so please this is a wide burden of give and take on this number but based on the current budget you're already looking at a 400 increase in taxes just with the base two and a half percent so then if you're going into anything from five percent on to reach a level Services budget with the school you're basically tapping into that access loading capacity and adding in and so I did a little bit of a calculation as to what that would be and um you're basically coming down to the average single family home which again wide variety in most people's homes are worth so the state defines our the average single family home in Berlin at 558 thousand dollars so that's your benchmark give or take wherever you're at um so you add 400 as a base on an average single family home of 558 a give or take five I have to keep saying that's just an estimate um and then you're going to add on where you're at for the school so one of the things we talked about was and I think we're still close to this number and I know we've gone with percentages changed a little bit but 14 is about close to where you're at for your level Services number so that would require our budget to increase by another approximately 588 thousand dollars what that comes out to give or take I would say 50 to 100 is about three hundred and fifty dollars additional for your average single family home valued at 558 000 on top of your already 400.
I tried to see if he would donate it to us but he wasn't interested in that he had he had already had an offer for two seven 275 000 so we offered him 300 and he took it uh till now but we got to move quickly because he's anxious to get this thing sold um that's why I want to get back on track with the uh but again we can't actually purchase it till the airport commission approves us purchasing it uh because they have to approve any owners of the any hangers out at the airport so that's why I asked to be on the March agenda at the uh for the airport Commission so these three programs we already had the child care with a director which is the lady that was here Randy Carpenter and we have a star day of 313 right and we also have a Hamburg and we're in the process of doing a polisa uh how about the other ones can we have some details of that what I just um program yes the program on who's who's going to be in charge when it's a start day and how are we working on the policies for those yeah so all three of these programs won't start until September in June the child care center is opening now only not as an educational program but just as a service for our teachers it opened in September as an early childhood education program so it'll have different rules and the handbook will be totally different this handbook only is utilized for the child care center under chapter 74 they'll be totally different policies and regulations they'll be the same as every other shop in terms of our policies but this only is for getting us through until then except for there will be as long as we're going to continue to take students in there'll still be some alignment of this policy book with the chapter 74 policies then we'll have to work on between now and September and need to be approved by the department an event so that will also be going into the department of Ed as one of the requirements so but the third program programming the space we have a space to put that in for our ninth grade program so next year we have all our spaces designated with a 9th grade exploratory programs will be I'll be doing a report at the next meeting I think it's on the agenda on space on for all moving opening up next school year all the additional space we need for classrooms and for all the shops outlining and going over that with the committee I'll have that ready for you at the next school committee meeting but we do have space for the to open up all three programs including programming programming is meeting tonight the advisories meeting tonight which is a requirement of the part B so we have a committee put together the curriculum's all done and written all the standards we need is completed all that there's all those checklists for that particular program is all ready to go we even have an instructor what we know we have the possibility of an instructor I should say we've posted it we have an instructor that applied that is licensed so we feel good about that also in uh child care we do have an applicant for that for the ninth grade teacher and Aviation we actually have one instructor that applied as well that person doesn't have a chapter before license yet but they can be put on a waiver so we're actually looking pretty good for all the programs including programming so we're in good shape for all those programs to open up next September also anything further okay thank you moving on uh superintendent uh evaluation timeline John yes yep that's you buddy you're the superintendent so um so my goal for this year was to develop a strategic five-year strategic plan so at this time I'm going to give you an updated report on where I'm at with that with that process um so you can see what we've done and what we still have left to do it's a extensive long a lot of work program program it has a lot to it a lot of work to it and trying to Encompass our total Community both inside the school and outside the school in this process so I'm going to kind of go through the process with you at this time so you can see kind of what I've done and what I haven't done I'm going to go through some of the slides pretty quickly because it's lengthy I think there's 25 slides so I'll try not to I'm not going to spend a lot of time on every slide but certain slides I'll spend a little more time on so you have a better picture of what's been done already and kind of the direction we're going in with the Strategic plan all right so the Strategic plan give me one second Mrs Fitzgerald sorry John this before we start um I am wondering how many people are have been involved in this strategic plan yep so there's been quite a few people already involved in it but there's going to be hundreds of people involved in it before it's completed so you can see the process and how everyone gets to participate whoa so it's strategic plan it starts off the the plan itself will probably have two or three pages of text to start the plan off before it gets into details with all the focus areas but of course we start off with our mission statement which is our school's mission statement our school vision and our core values they're all part of the Strategic plan so they align both to our school Improvement plan into our work that we've done around accreditation and the work that that the whole faculty in the school has done in the past so that doesn't get changed so we have we utilize that as our starting point for the five-year strategic plan is the foundation of what is critical and important to our school then we have the vision of reality um so the foundation the vision statement and the glts core values will be reflected in the overarching goals of each Focus area so the focus here is we have nine Focus area that this strategic plan is going to develop uh where we are we're starting off where where are we today in these Focus areas and where do we want to be five years from now where do we need to go five years tonight from now uh so it's going to take a lot of research and work to look at you know in each of these areas where the world is going and education is going and a lot of the things that are critical to who we are as a school uh and the work that we've done the last few years and how that has to progress moving forward so the areas that we'll be working on is leadership and governance curriculum instruction and assessment teacher recruitment teacher retention student support increasing student access finance and asset management Workforce Development School culture and climate so you'll see you can see in there there Just Hits about every credit card or important issue facing the school and a lot of work that we've already accomplished trying to move that work for uh further but also uh how we're going to implement some of the work we've already done over the next five years so that uh that it brings meaning to the hard work that it's been accomplished in the past so we're not letting go of the the work that we did in the past we're embracing it and implementing some of it in our five-year strategic plan and that'll be outlined in the plan itself so each of the areas I outline just uh some samples of some of the things we'll cover within those different Focus areas I won't go through each of them tonight but you can take a look at it and you'll see it's just a small outline of the work that's going to be done in each of those areas areas so so so just well I'll just just to give an example in governance and Leadership the governance body that oversees school policies budgeting operations made up a school committee superintendent advisory Council and administrative leadership team examples of responsibility that fall under the umbrella of governance and Leadership is determination of policies outlined in the student and staff handbooks hiring practices compliance with federal and state laws so these are all things we're going to look at as we start to develop our plan and and make decisions about the future but for each Focus area this a lot of the slides you're seeing I went through with our administrative team already and the faculty as well so um there's a slide for each one of the focus areas so it takes us to uh what has happened so far so what's the work that's happened so far on February 16th I did a presentation to administrative team soliciting feedback from on uh on the Strategic plan moving forward in um and also did some work assigning them some I assigned the administrative each administrator to co-chair one of the focus areas so for each Focus area there will be a co-chair uh there's uh co-chairs one is an administrator one is a staff member so um Susan and I um uh assign the administrators the principal and we are going to look at tomorrow we've had well we'll go through this but I have applicants who want to co-chair faculty members who want to co-chair these particular Focus area that the principal and I look at and assign them to different Focus area on three on March 1st did a presentation to The Faculty did approximately I think about six slides to The Faculty regarding the um a strategic plan uh and as part of our work on our professional development day last Wednesday we used some of that time to solicit solicited solicited feedback from each collaborative planning time group so the CPT groups got together and we gave them a activity to do on the Strategic Focus area priorities we collected the work that they did at the end of the uh professional development day which will be you uh the each of the Committees will be utilizing um we filtered faculty input data by Focus area and designated priorities distributed to the administrative co-chairs so the work that the faculty did on that day we pulled all that information together all that data together and Destroy and have shared that data with the administrative cultures of each of the focus area we've posted a job for staff co-chairs for each Focus area committee which can be approved at our last meeting we've reviewed those applications as I said tomorrow we'll make selections as who will be the other co-chair of each of the committee to work with us with each of the administrators currently soliciting exceptional ideas on how to engage our singing community members met with uh we've met with the director of special education director of erl department and assistant principal for discipline each of these have different committees uh uh fat uh parent committees and other members who participate in some of their uh their specific committees so we met with them to talk about what kind of uh how we could uh reach out to their the people that they work closely with uh from members of our uh parent groups um where oops um oh we have upcoming uh meetings with the chairs of the bypoc committee which I think is tomorrow and all the CT administrators and directive guidance in the mission we still haven't met yet but we will be meeting with them also so solicit ideas how to reach out to our uh greater community uh outline the work going forward so the week of 313 committee chair excuse me committee co-chairs uh will be setting up initial meetings the week of 313 committee chairs made contact with staff who have already expressed interest in sitting on a particular committee and I quote additional members a link to a sign up sheet will be also posted in the ready Spotlight the members for all them staff members they'll be also in the newsletter uh we will send in a separate email and postings around the building to solicit members to participate other staff members support participating on the committee on our committee we put out some documents at professional development to solicit people to participate on the different committees as well depending on where their focus area interest slide lies on the week of 320 co-chairs share staff feedback with committee members committees to speak for the first time so all the co-chairs will schedule remaining so meet with people who are interested in being part of their committee on 324 discussions regarding strategic plan uh I will presenting our legislative breakfast on the 24th when our legislators come in to talk a little bit about the Strategic plan and what direction we're going with the Strategic plan on March 28th on myself and the principal will facilitate a discussion on the Strategic plan at the school council meeting game preliminary input on April 1st strategic plan workshop at the school County it's on April 4th I'm going to do a workshop with the school Community to get your input on particular levels and Leadership which is the area in which you oversee and promote the score and the policy so what should that work look like over the next five years so I'll put a I'll be put in a small program together so I can solicit your input and give you an opportunity need to give me feedback on that and I'll see um if they're interested in give me feedback on any of the other Focus series as well so we'll do some work on our meeting of April 4th throughout April the committee developed a basic overview of the work to present Intel communities to be held on April 11th and uh so we're going to be doing Zoom meetings so which will be uh looking for are parents and other members of the community to participate in um the committee develops a few key questions to put in a survey to be distributed via home happenings which is our ready newsletter and email to the community from myself and in a chat during the Zone meetings questions that we'll put out to most people who are will be attending the zoom in a specific population to be targeted for communication advisory council members current families perspective families students foreign [Music] um and so that kind of outlines where we're going moving forward I just gave you some example of what some of the focus area work will look like so this one is built on the sample that I uh shared with uh the administrative team and then some members of the different committees so uh just a small example of some of the work that they'll be doing is so increase access which is uh the goal so they in each of the Committees will start off by developing a goal statement uh so the goal statement should explicitly reflect some of the key elements of the school vision and the core values to in this case we have uh on this particular goal statement is to increase student access to Great Lawrence technical school in order to provide greater opportunities for students within our sending districts core strategies expand and renovate the physical so these are some strategies regarding the goal that um that I put in there expand and renovate the physical plant was one of the core strategies and the objective was this automatic marketing plan to educate the community about the core strategy complete a feasibility study to identify industry needs and Community Support file an nsba letter of interest for additional funding secured City and town approvals increase faculty square footage in order to support existing programs expansion and new programming implementation except more students to all programs so it just gives you know and that's all in specific to uh giving more students X access to the uh school and so the expected outcomes uh that they'll work on is in this case we did do a feasibility study architect complete within the first two years Community meetings msba letter of interest necessary funding and school committee and approval marketing allergy Outreach plans additional building and expansion of current buildings and the outcome is a 15 growth in student population was one of the outcomes of it um and additional strategies are needed is necessary goal statement should explicitly reflect at least some of the key elements of the school vision and core values I think I gave you that already and then so um so in the final slide a superintendent will bring the Strategic plan to the school committee for a vote so that just kind of outlines some of the work that's happening and some of the work that needs to still happen so still a lot of work to happen and a lot of work will be committee work in everybody in the building and outside the building have opportunities away in on the Strategic plan questions to the superintendent okay John enrollment procedure after acceptance so you should I think I um I asked the director of admissions guidance and missions to provide you with uh the the documents uh just so you're aware of what our um let me see our procedures are once students are accepted and you can take some time look at it and if you would like to respond to it at the next meeting we can respond to it our next meeting I know you just got some of the documents tonight so um any we can have more discussions about it but I thought it's important for you to understand because you've had committees had questions often on this and I thought it was important for you to read some of the letters and the communication that goes on to parents after we do the acceptances you have microphone please thank you so I was looking at the letters um and one I mean I would like to see the director here um every time something like this is presented like we have the other ladies that were here that was nice um so this petition is that she comes and presents these things at least I asked her to come next week rather than this week yeah thank you that's that's good so hopefully she'll be here next week next meeting next meeting so in the one where the student is accepted I know it says in there's a sentence that says they have 10 days to return you know to respond or otherwise they're gonna be taking that seat is going to be taken but I didn't see any date of the acceptance so again I wish she is here to answer and unless you know the answer I guess I missed the question on what was what was the question so the letter that shows that the student has been accepted the first one yeah it says there's a sentence within the letter that says you had 10 days to respond correct or to to provide the required documentation otherwise they're going to be taken that that acceptance is going to be taken exactly but it's not a date so I don't know if it's it was um left out or that's not a day on the letter so how they know let's see go ahead sure okay where are we here now so so did you have a question an answer I mean excuse me John sure I mean superintendent was trying to say that the reason why there's not a date yet is that like once it's the ones that that they determine the actual date that they're going out to it would there would actually be a there would absolutely be a date on that yes they will all be dated right if she didn't give you an example on it no yeah and I didn't have her come because I thought you would need some time to review it more and then she could be here once you've had that opportunity to do that yeah okay just trying to chill except the motion to table this matter to table matters discussion all those in favor anyone opposed admission reporters in your packet ladies and gentlemen did the veggie little reggies report from committees none District committee priorities policies who need a vote uh share to appreciate a motion on Section B bdg School attorney you have a motion on that please discussion all those in favor all those opposed new business I see no table matters here Personnel consideration resignations non-leave of absence social social studies instructor on a parental leave effective February 27th of June 20th 2023 no retirements appointment a Miss Cali La Chapelle a PT medical secretary office assistant effective February 14 2023 the Mr Alex Torres LTS for social studies effective February 14 2023 the following ladies and gentlemen job postings it will need to be voted on John want to take take the first uh the first two please because they're lenti the uh yeah the athletic I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt your athletic and the guidance admission please yeah so the first one is uh job posting for athlete this is a posting that we do every year um it's an annual position athletic rental security I'm sorry athletic athletic rental security field maintenance will work during the evening to assure the fields are only used by organizations that have authorization to be utilizing the facility as well as maintaining upkeeping property and assist rental organizations Monday through Friday 5 30 to 9 30 uh 20 hours a week 40 dollars an hour annual position this person does mostly maintaining when there are issues that are happening when people are utilizing the field and also doing an inspection at the end of each after the facilities rentals are done going around and checking the facilities to see if there was any damage because anyone that utilizes the field has the responsibility to um maintain and keep the field in good order and if they don't then um we have it in every contract that we can charge them for any damage so we go around and check that at the end of every at the end of every evening to see if there's any damage and then also that person is responsible to work with the facility uh director to ensure that something that things are repaired sometimes that person will do it themselves whenever possible okay guidance and admission specialist kind Mission special one-year position to provide administrative support to the admissions and guidance Department with primary responsibility for admissions and enrollment process per contract this is a replacement position feelings of the motion to accept those chairs up the motion to accept those of a second Mr Zillow athletic no no that's every year every we have that every year every we we posted it every season in the spring and in the fall watching Vivian okay so just again Clarity because as I'm hearing you read this position I'm like Oh I thought we had someone already that handles that so when you say uh so it's a seasonal position then and is that the reason why it's considered annual as opposed to a replacement yeah so it is we do have someone that's done it and but we still posted we still posted every season we're required to we should we're required to post it every season because someone else might be interested it's not a full year position Mrs Fitzgerald at the present time is this an unfilled position like we had somebody but didn't they leave that was a different position this is they only they only work 20 hours a week okay they work weekends and uh a total of 20 but we have someone on security um every night and throughout the whole weekend are you looking for this be an in-house position yes all right thank you anything further all those in favor and anyone opposed hey John math instructor environmental math instructor CBA effective August 2023 replacement position environmental science instructor teaches CBA effective 2023-24.
and so we were we were helpful there we then have another school district where we use three solar opportunities um as Revenue generators in their bigger project to allow them to put cooling you know in a vrf system into the elementary school which they had sent kids home six days two two years ago three years ago now very hot summer very hot you know end of the year and they had to shut the schools down because as you can imagine they had no ventilation and it was hot and even opened up the windows the block building was cooking so um those are some of the things that we're doing on a on a creative side what I will tell you is that and we had this discussion that we've only talked once you got to look at the building you got to tighten up the building and you got to make sure that whatever you do inside the building you don't lose a lot and then once you get all of that done okay look at the next level making sure that you can digitize it and control it okay and set it and forget it and make it very easily make the alarming happen over the weekends make the nighttime shutback and the scheduling very easy and a very good system so that your buildings start to do that if we ever move to the next step and we are doing this with some of our customers that have done enough already and maybe you have I haven't walked your buildings we're adding a layover technology that we call open blue and that's your advisor and we've got real-time data of what's happening in that building with AI that are directing us with lots of data and things that we can do and we're driving them now to be able to to meet decarbonization goals and and it's just a very exciting time there's a plethora of science projects that are coming into that technology World um so you may hear stuff but we're not doing it right away but we're actually looking at indoor air quality and outdoor air quality okay and making sure that we're doing everything from a damper control to maximize those based upon the CO2 and the number of people that are coming in and out of the buildings to give the healthiest environment that you can and you you just can't do that sitting at a screen and you know taking some data points I mean this stuff is is happening you know with the brain power of AI so there's some really cool stuff is this one thought on that I appreciate what you're saying at the same time I was I also get Leary of bells and whistles that can go wrong so there's to me there's a balancing act in using you know technology as it comes forward absolutely but I still want things to go south because of every school district and they're they're like in the lower performing in the state that we're talking about um and and I wanted to be able to take their building management system and put it onto the screen and when the proper uh air changes um weren't going to come those buildings were going to turn orange then red depending on what the quality was they're very fearful of that but if we do the upgrades right then they'll be bringing in more than they need to be actually 62.1 anyways and we'll actually be pandemic ready and I told them that this is this is a transparency play that they should do this at this campus it's a three three school campus and then they should model that system around it and it's very inexpensive because it's technology there's some software subscriptions and stuff but that to me was telling you know these students you know that are in a district that really needs you know something behind them like you're providing the inner air quality it's been monitored you know on a minute by minute basis you know this this is not this is something you should really consider so they still got to go through Council but I mean those are the things that are out there but science projects were not we're not going to do it and it all depends on what you already have controlled on your existing systems because it is foreign so I have to you said this word three times and typically when this word is said I cringe a little the fact that the supplanting aspect is okay because in most cases when we're talking about grants and funding so planting is a taboo so can you kind of enlighten me then maybe as far as so I think you're taking a supplant word with if you have a matching funds Grant yes you can't Supply I understand that so am I used to the word is just me using a word that falls into what that doesn't have the proper definition and so I I'm familiar with different grants like that I'm saying that if you're utilizing grants as buy Downs to the projects okay they're they're going to be variety of different metrics that will have to be satisfied for that Grant and so each one is different and so that the doe Grant had a 95 you had to have five percent we actually got treasury approval that that five percent could come in funding from the energy performance contracts from the bank it didn't have to be cash that they had and so there are different things and you know my grants people go through that work with with uh whoever's signed uh from the school of town to do it too to make sure that we're meeting those but you're you're right I know I did say it several times um it reminded me of a a woman I just was talking to in another community that said oh grants everybody thinks they're all free and but nobody wants to fill them out and they also don't understand that there is cost involved with different grants I mean you have to also bring more money to the table because you're getting a specific variance up so just and I know you're trying to get a kind of a sense of you know where the planning committee you know might be in terms of our interest level of um you know Carbon you know carbon neutral versus you know just fixing the buildings that we need to fix so I know we talked a little bit about Doolittle yeah you know and maybe if you could give you know everybody a sense of you know right now too little you know which is one of the elementary schools that will be staying do a little on Highland or staying at least from redistricting but do a little neat Windows right there we're mostly still single-payment shows um do a little needs a roof it's not leaking yet but it's um we have a desire to um make that school you know give it proper ventilation and central air conditioning and we might have an opportunity for doing the roof to do solar on that Route 4 we had a z-rec for a solar in the form of a carport that that's actually still active so I mean can you talk a little bit about how we might just look at that school to to tighten up the building envelope and bundle some of this and finance it let's do those of the 13.5 million is Windows 3 million the HVAC is about six the windows two and a half to three something like that yeah all three yeah so it's about 39 bucks and so fifty percent of that for the for the roofing and windows comes through State construction OSG gr um and so we run the whole pro forma and then we we look at what savings are associated with adding cooling fuel switching um whatever the design should be um and we look at that at efficiency that's going to be small and then we're going to look at Revenue creation we're going to look at where the solar is going to spin off money uh and how much that that could spin off and with that would be hey I could I could show you the pro forma uh at no escalation or I could show you at one percent escalation and by the way now it's fully funded but but to one point that you made xerack is tied to a meter it's not tied to where you located it also is tied to the amount that you've applied for and you you've received so for argument's sake if you've received the 100 KW for there and maybe you said it was going to be a carport because the roof is old and you didn't want to put it there you still could put that on the roof if you put the roof on that would produce more a better Roi than the carport the meter will not allow me to add so if I wanted to put some on the roof and some on the carport until that first one is given its PTO permission to operate okay and so I see a little bit of limitations with Doolittle but if I was doing that I would one put those costs together maybe even the way you have them look at the systems that you want to create for better ventilation and add a coolant to the building and then I would look at what do I need to do to create enough Revenue on site then I could look at maybe one of the other buildings that has a new one say I only need to put 200 KW over there and virtually send it over here but let's put 400 over there and now we've covered all the cost over there for for that work and so that basically became you taking Doolittle doing the things that you want to do and not asking for Capital contribution yeah and so when you talk about Revenue so I I from I'm a rescue project I know we looked at you know doing windows and windows have a very long payback in other words the Energy Efficiency you know the window um doesn't pay back the cost of installing the windows for like 25 years so when you say Revenue that's what you're talking about well so when I say Revenue I'm talking about Renewables first when I talk about Energy savings creation I'm talking about doing things in the building that will save energy when I talk about Revenue it's just like you have the ability to own an asset that produces something so produces electricity that's where I call that repo but it also has a substitute so you're getting you're getting the 12 cents cost avoidance okay as savings or Revenue plus five cents if we bid it into right so now that asset over 25 30 years 25 it has degradation so solar doesn't produce the panel doesn't produce at 100 it goes down to 0.06 okay but that means in year 25 which it has a warranty to it's producing about 80 to 82 percent so I can only monetize it for 20 years okay based upon the state statute right now if we did a contingent that's like a treating like a PPA I could fund that for longer but that's creating Revenue over and above paying for itself and paying for other things and so that's why I I have that differentiator coming out if I change your lights in that asset's already there we're changing it over for efficiency it's dropping to the bottom line bucket we can use to fund then I'm going to take something out there that produces it might be fuel cell batteries I mean demand might be so high I can shave that you know a ton of money off your Demand by deploying batteries I'm not going to have you own batteries that's that's for somebody that is in the science and and we have a lot of companies that do that we actually used to produce them but they'll put deploy batteries on there and give you the ancillary benefits they'll get the benefit out of the utility program one of just one of the things to keep in mind and tell me if you feel differently about it basically the state has its goals so years ago it was 20 by 2020 now I think it's 100 by 2040 and so one of the ways that it's incentivized by the state is I think it's 29 cents kilowatt hour is what like at least for residential you literally if you put in a solar you if you put solar on your house you could get paid 29 cents per kilowatt hour so that's real Revenue as compared to like an efficiency that's found or something like that yeah absolutely and um we're lagging I was talking at a casual event that you weren't at about sustainability and what it means to people but you know state of Connecticut is lagging in terms of putting some real teeth um in schools in municipalities I think when they do it'll be you know commercial industrial first but this is happening you know in other parts of the country there's five states that have actual mandated um regulations in terms of reducing carbon and and you know setting some goals not that lip service is bad but our lip service basically was 30 by 2030 85 by 2040.
so we are actually accelerating our decline and so this is a phenomenon across Orange County not only Orange County but as well as cross entire State at this point but especially in Orange County due to the high prices in housing this has even significant and further the decline and as our district we have now formed a school efficiency committee to address our declining enrollment issue that we have here so the purpose of committee is to really um to look at a student-centric focus to mitigate the impact of declining a woman from a facility perspective relating to these criterias student educational goals staff budget facilities and community the committee is made up of principals teachers classified staff parents and district office staff currently we have five sites that are being represented from orangeview Brookhurst Western Savannah and Hope and the committee has met since December and we are meeting every two weeks and the goal will be to present a recommendation to your superintendent by the end of April and make the presentation to the board sometime in May or June at this point and that's the goal if um in the if the there is a surplus site at that point then there will be a separate committee to address um that issue at that point but that was only if there is going to be a surplus um in in a school side but at this point um no decision has been made at this point so do want to be very clear um there may be some um some people may have been sharing different things but at this point the committee have um not made any recommendation at this point you will be made to the board hopefully by mayor Jim the other issue that we are facing that started just um this year is the attendance rate so we can look back about 10 years or so our district have been achieving at about 95 percent density in attendance for a secondary school district that is extremely extremely impressive you don't get that that means our staff are doing a great job to make sure kids do come to campus so really thank all the staff that includes all the teachers all the classes staff our admin thank you so much for doing a great job so our kids are here um and even during the pandemic the first year we came back and uh which was last year we still achieved the 95 however this year we started out the school year pretty well at 95 and then as each month have gone on we have been declining to 93 one month then 92 and then to 90 percent so the projected number of the attendance rate for the current year is at 91 and we're seeing this is been a phenomena across the area we've talked spoken to multiple other districts this is the same phenomena in elementary districts as well as in high school districts so something is happening and obviously um we do have a task force that um our assistant superintendent Dr jerman free is leading is the Quantic opticianism attendance recovery task force so this is an advisory committee to address and mitigate of the impact of declining attendance rate and the committee is made up of principles assistant principals teachers counselors classified staff including attendance secretary faces and nurse and as well as district office staff and they have read I've been reviewing data relating to attendance by Target groups and they have identified strategic steps for targeted groups it's called the success monitoring teams and the group I know that at each school said they have a team that is developing recommendations and really the goal is to improve the attendance by the end of this month which was the P2 cup of day and so we are monitoring this work and so thank you so much to Dr John free and your team and especially in student services I know that um Dr Hernandez and um and his staff have been working really hard on this task force so thank you so much for all the hard work as well as the people at the school side so thank you for doing that so um with that attendance rate we have now then reduce our projections I'm moving forward so the blue bar is um what um it was Prior and as you can see they're pretty big deep deep for a current year at this point um and obviously our enrollment is going down so therefore when we put in the new percent for 91 in the multi-year out the Ada is coming down so for our budget assumptions as you can see here um this is our current year plus the next three years and as you will see our declining enrollment this year is about 731 and next year we're projected to decline about another almost um you know 724.
so you're talking somewhere between your bill going up 850 to about 900 total um so I'm happy to answer any questions I don't want to speak too long for you that's I think that's a diffusing part for people my notes as you were speaking said the five percent where your hat is not tapping into the extra Levy that's within like the two and a half percent which is your typical budget increase but then you went on like your next sentence was the two and a half percent cap on tax increases creates an extra 400 that's into it sounds like you were saying it goes into that Levy not that it's already calculated to the taxes no you're not on the timing of when all this happens as well so you're actually allowed you know typically within your your limits of proposition two and a half say we didn't have excess living you're allowed to go up two and a half percent over what your maximum tax ceiling is every year so we typically tax within that two and a half percent to keep it stable with other towns because we're retaining that excess leveling capacity so kind of the direction I've received from my select board and fincom start with the two and a half percent and look at what that increase represents as a base that's where the 400 comes from so in order to increase beyond that which that initial increase represents a 400 increase in taxes so you're looking at about another 350 to 400 to get to the 14 increase does that make sense where does that five percent come in again so the five percent was basically when we did our budgets at a two and a half percent increase and we backed out our fixed costs and the small increases that we had over departments and trust me they're they're really razor 10 barebone that was basically what we had left to allocate so we're basically giving everything that we had left over within that two and a half percent model or framework for budgeting so you're saying everybody's gonna well let's just say everybody's house is worth 558 000 because it's 200 right so you're saying everybody's gonna get 400 increase regardless but to get to level service so we don't have to let go of anybody it would be an extra 350 correct okay I wanted to ask a question about exemptions because I know there was a document floating around about the town of Wales evaluation and tax summary and I so it's similar in Berlin if not I apologize um but there are some exemptions for elderly and blind disabled veterans widows and or even minor children and I know with like the CPA being passed last year there was a certain cap like above under 150 000 income you were exempt from that so I'm curious what that would look like for taxes for people within the town how hard is that process is that something that people have already done and are aware of um it's definitely a process we do exemptions along with the maintenance regularly there are exemptions for veterans there's also what we call a senior work-off program where folks can help out with different town departments and exchange they get a reduction on their taxes so we definitely try to advertise that program and if anybody has questions come to the town offices talk to the assessor's office and we can get you more information what is that reduction I'll sub to well that's a good question right now it's up to about 1825 because minimum wage has increased but we're looking at lightning capping at 1500 that's the normal minimum wage has sort of thrown us off a little bit I had one question on the timeline so like you said the flow chart so school committee votes on the budget Goes to Town floor the recommendation of Capcom and then there's a school Community budget right so it could potentially need to ideally that but potentially two um somebody makes a motion on the floor to accept the school committee budget if it's a yay we're good yep if it's an a then you go through that process then but July 1st is the deadline so you're getting an agreed upon budget okay okay will that goes back so there would have to be a special town meeting then or just an agreed upon budget um if so say the town put forth this five percent um which it sounds untenable given everything that you've spoken about and I completely understand that um but say for some reason some miracle happened and we all were able to agree upon five percent you came back and said we can do the five percent then my understanding from legal counsel is that's considered an agreement because you're agreeing to the amount that was voted for at town meeting if you come back with an amount that's higher than the original amount of time and we have to have another town meeting to vote on that number worth the vote it's not a higher amount it's what someone makes them it's a school convey's budget so you this is whatever you guys vote you'll right now you have a couple of options in there yeah whatever you end up voting for that's what will go right to the folks at town meeting and um that's what can be voted on you cannot go higher than that number um someone could propose lower someone could perhaps propose in between but you cannot go higher than that number because what the whole idea of both leading law is it's posted in advance and folks have an opportunity to see that number and maybe somebody was okay at 10 but they're not okay at 14 and you know so you have to be able to get that information out to the public well yeah why did you want to open up yeah uh I know some most selected and can copy related if you want to add anything I do this yeah I'll introduce myself as an hour program I'm the Boylston on thin cup so before I talk about some of these things just the easiest way to say this is Berlin and boylston's budgeting processes are very very similar we're literally the same steps and everything else we've worked on the same two and a half percent increase in your sensibility to have level we also have a little bit of buffer in uh by the capacity that we try to reserve and we don't go up to that level uh those numbers of tax increases they're literally almost the same or the Royals decide for what we were backing out last night okay um but before I think a little bit more on that I want to do two public service announcements for everyone here in either Berlin and Boyleston if you're involved abort thank you if you're not please look in and follow into these towns work on Volunteers Of course fincon it's an unusual board members of financial committee are not supposed to be on any other Town board as my understanding okay so there's some Independence here it's an advisory committee we can't tell you this is what is going to be we advise the talent the select persons in that town meeting of what we think the town would do that's you again literally what Town Administrator in Berlin said in April on our side is going to say the same exact thing here so uh in some ways from what I'm hearing what we saw on our side of what else can cite I think we're a little bit better on our Revenue side and I Eric the chair needs to just go before the select person is here but I think the level of service budget is probably going to scope on the oils inside I think from what your discussions are so that's what I will leave it at on our site so whether that's helpful or not with the issue some information at this point and again the discussion last night was very useful it was it started as an oil spin finance committee meeting wow so you had started with the Boylston finance committee meeting we had discussions with Berlin we asked them to join us at the school committee and then he needed to get this whole thing I heard some people mentioned that it was on the uh the disabled Channel unfortunately there was only one camera there there were some microphones when I was turning their laptop and it takes a lot of technology to make you know cameras work and everything else Etc so um no I mean I think I spoke with Eric briefly last night when you um basically sharing with with you just shared with us all um I think I'll say you know obviously as a town we want to be careful of how much we're raising taxes we have we have our students we also have our senior citizens so we need to make sure that we're we're paying attention to um that being said there's there's costs especially this year in the special educational District tuitions that are kind of out of our control and I think the more we can evolve our state representatives our state senators to kind of hammer this home but this is a big issue right there's it's not just that there's how many of you guys know better than you know unfun advantage that are out from the state that they said you have to do this but we're not gonna we're not going to pay for it um it's getting to the point that it's going to break the tax right um and that goes along with you know they're pushing um housing which everyone deserves a nice place to live but it's also untenable for the towns so neither of our towns how the infrastructure right to support all that all the time so the state really needs to step up and I know um Senator Kennedy's team was at the meeting last night and encouraged us to write a letter expressing our our issues and our eagerness to get more out from the state so I think if people call teachers call and write letters and all that I know it sounds kind of wish I had to say write a letters they representative but I do think that's kind of right right now to handle that one across to them especially it seems like under Governor is interested in putting more money into education a little bit thanks man we heard the same thing so we contacted um our state reps and state senator I know our fincom contacted them uh select board and they said the more I don't want to say annoyages but basically it's sort of like the squeaky will gets the Greece we understand the fixed cost of special education and they said the more that you can put it out there put it on their radar it may not be a fix for this year because but there is a new governor in place and she is listening and starting to build her priorities so now is really the time to get that information out there and we've been pushing it on our end as well yeah I shared something on Dancing with Carol earlier today and we're going to talk about that tonight yeah I'm sorry Janelle and I took a look at it earlier and yeah we'll work on it cool yeah for Kristen or yourself if it passes in one town and on the other one that's what I was gonna ask that's the process it was outline so let's say it's it's early and it doesn't pass yeah throughout the following process it's the same process and it doesn't pass into the oil student decide but passes on them earlier now the question is what if it doesn't pass in both I think it comes back to you guys to figure out a budget again right it still goes to both towns again first is my understanding and then if both towns can agree then we come together at that District meeting okay let's hope we don't get to that point I would love not to uh so we heard from the Boylston select board finance committee any Berlin select Board of Finance here um well first I'm just glad that the numbers I was present you last night Christians match exactly with what I told him you know dependency there uh we are in sync about what we're talking about in Berlin trying to find a way to you know to fund is uh I think we have made some progress about you know we clearly our point of just targeting the level um budget or level Services budget and uh that definitely is a big product obviously that whole dollar amount we're still ways away um I'm still digesting what I received last night I do have some more questions about some of the funding numbers or some of the numbers especially in special education and I definitely want to reiterate with some people to talk about Olympia on special education I mean I I've been financing videos back in 2006 uh to 2012.
this is a new position and one more please and then HVAC instructor pulsing for two teachers currently on waivers annual position Joseph the motion a little second discussion all those in favor anyone opposed continue sir electrical instructor pulsing two teachers currently on waivers this is our annual positions Plumbing instructor posting for two teachers currently on waivers annual position Horticulture instructor two pulsing for two teachers currently on waivers annual positions jail accept a motion for about a second remember second okay uh comments questions all those in favor aye they want to pose future agenda items ladies and gentlemen okay there will be a need for an executive session for the purpose of collective bargaining uh negotiations I have a motion on that please all those in favor anyone oppose could you call the roll when you have a moment please Mr Hayden cyrillo and his mama Miss Fitzgerald Mr LaMontagne yes we will be coming back to uh okay [Music] oh that's not working oh [Music] me too nice I feel like it was already October I'm excited better not be October I know it's like how was that I've never had that I mean neither but I would rather that over the country in the afternoon yes time to me what's that the uh the watch and all that yes yeah I haven't signed off on it yet yeah you're welcome thank you have a good evening oyster dragons with our new security we are awesome no problems everything got open and hold on hold on yeah yep
um the one thing that I I did see that you're impacted in is the school bus situation um where you can get a 10-year contract if you have one one bus that is a battery so out of your Fleet if one is battery you can sign a 10-year contract which helps you lock in that price lower and longer uh and then I don't know 2040 or something like that it's changing over to almost everything has to be you know that's that's one thing they're adding some curriculum um teeth into the climate change and I forget exactly what it was but I just I just heard about that and then um people were testifying I don't know what bill it is I wish I did but they they're trying to get some additional stuff that are happening it won't it won't happen this year from everything I'm told but it'll probably trick around the next year we'll see some sort of it one other thought um in terms of our energy transition it's not in Connecticut but I think it's Rhode Island it's the first state in the Union that's had a bill introduced to ban new gas hookups directionally this is where at least I think the Northeast is headed so just something to keep in mind I don't think it's a ban it using gas that's in place but on uh hookups yeah I mean years ago almost everything needed to go to gas right yeah yeah so I mean you know the um there's there's a lot that's happening with hydrogen we'll see how that plays out the batteries are going to become you know better performers the fleet you know will do their own we're actually doing some fleet changeovers in other parts of the country but you can imagine that they're they have a lot more land mass um but you guys have some really good infrastructure close by that doesn't limit from a capacity standpoint I have some other towns that want to can't even put a megawatt in because they don't have the three-phase capacity and so you know and you guys from what I looked at you know didn't seem that there'd be too many limitations but that's something that's part of the due diligence to make sure but you do have a pretty good lineup get all the decent amounts just come back to that natural casting the one thing that 50 of the electricity in Connecticut or eversource anyway comes from natural gas so even though you want to limit and I know we're not doing it in Connecticut but you want to limit natural gas hookups well how are we replacing that electricity production I I don't know what the plan is for that I haven't heard much about that but cold it is a mystery yeah and I think we forget it comes together too you know German saw that's working out one thing I just want to mention is the the shift uh for a 501c3 municipalities being able to take advantage of the ITC um the only guidance that's out is is the wage guidance right now but in there you you should understand which is actually good is CHP heat pumps solar all that stuff is in there where you couldn't take advantage of that before you had to privatize it on the PPA side or somebody else and I know we talked about what you guys did down at the pool um you know you could have done that and gotten here you know 30 or 40 and known that that was available not that that that's what you want to do all the time but if we're doing heat pumps in a school and you can take advantage of that you know get 30 to 40 percent off uh that's a pretty good chunk of change which we didn't see that was available to you in the past so so it's heading in the right direction from subsidies so so let's just go by a little bit so the xerac program here said is replaced now with this program yep is it is it better I mean or is it equivalent it's just a does it it's still the same financing it's better and here's why for you guys because you're a Sam account State agriculture municipal being a Sam account you can virtually that meter the only way you could do that in the past is to go into a program that was limited to 30 megawatts and it was oversubscribed you could never get on the list so number one that's better number two it's 20-year contracts not 15.
but if you look at the third year out the decline will be more than 1100 students at 11 52 and then the um third year out from this point at this point it's another almost 1100 students so 1100 students we can think about how many they are it's almost like a size of a junior high school so considering we are almost declining a junior high school each year that's what we're facing with at this point thank you so the budget assumptions for second interim as you will see here occurring here our lcff is at 6.56 percent the augmentation this is the add-on is 6.28 so that went on to our base funding um the categorical programs unfortunately only received the um 6.56 percent Cola and not the augmentation however if you look at the out years uh we're um extremely excited about the cola of 8.13 and we have been here also that that number may change and obviously the higher it will be better right that means we our base funding would go up and we are extremely excited the governor has been made a commitment to fund that cost of living adjustment which we are extremely excited about and so that's a number that we are really going to Target at this point but we see some of the other numbers um that I do want to point out is um the purse which is the classified retirement system um since only with some of the funding has not been as good other than on the reinvestment side so you can take a look at that the um current year is a 25.37 the purchase rate is now going up to 27 next year and then going up to 28 the year after and then continue to go up as well so that will be something that we um that means it would cost more money to fund that retirement for that uh something that we are considering looking at and these numbers will get adjusted at some point um when they release those numbers soda second interim report um this point our total uh revenue for the year is projected to be a 619 million dollars as you will see bulk of our money is um the lcff local control funding formula that's the bulk of the money we do have some um federal dollars coming in as well as well as some other categorical dollars with the state funding and our total expenditure for current year is projected at about 543 million dollars at this point as you can see bulk of our expenditures is really on Staffing right the salaries and benefits of our staff so as you will see here for our our Montana projection a second interim um the changing fund imbalance we're actually bringing uh 76 million dollars at the coming year but we see the out years um for projected numbers for next year in 2324 we will be deficit spending uh in that fiscal year as well as in 25 26.
I returned in the uh began 19 2021 and even back in those days special education was a big pain in fact at that one time I was referred to if I was a kid for a day two things that I would have done is the state take a while special attention special education costs and elimination of the Clinton building but one of those actually happened for a great extension to get rid of the Clinton villain the whole place to be on school on their extra incentives but there is hope that though maybe special education can be fun to understand because that is really our uh big issue here and next I think the piece that people most have to understand and I'm still trying to get my heads around exactly you know what our reimbursements are and the big issue is the fact that your costs are now will reimburse you next year and that's the thing next no because obviously this will follow up you know when you're talking about the budget next year we're going to be dealing with this because there is a big office special education here hopefully the state is coming back and getting you a big bump to compensate for that and then of course how you use those funds so this year is just one step of that process next year I think we're still going to be sitting here talking about the budget exactly where we go because I you know it's clearly see where you guys want to go um we try and keep things at the two and a half percent I don't know anytime I can remember schools living at the two two and a half percent um and as you start taking more and more of that Levy capacity access let me pass it away one day you will be looking at having to live at the two and a half percent without doing an override so there's something to think about expect we do have that capacity this year probably next year but if you start eating into it eventually that will be there and then you'll be looking at overrides so um I wonder if it would be a good idea if we set up some sort of some sort of committee between the district the finance committees and select Works to kind of start Maddie reading and forecasting uh a uh budget that firearm as well obviously won't be perfect but at least you have much more information we talked about that this morning actually me Carol and uh I think that's something we do have to do be in the one District now if we can live with a level service budget this year we still do have not just things that you want to want to do when you flash and searched as the actual means we heard from Caroline is uh tonight about actual Deeds so the more we work starting you know year round don't even start you know we typically don't start till December we started over the summer this year we we have been discussing that um is something I was going to bring up to you guys but uh yeah we need to do that because it's on the problems are only going to be broken not problems but the issues and concerns are only going to grow from here as the towns grow uh more diverse populations in town more needs diverse needs more housing more families more students it all just snowballs so being one District now a lot in three separate committees or three separate districts or however we're both in the past probably a lot more opportunity for that so let's do that I think of note too I know Nancy skipped over the what was included in the about level service kind of the vision of the district from Carol is that they're going to add on um special education teacher special education Aid and then also a board-certified behavioral analysts and occupational therapist in hopes of keeping more kids in District and eliminating some of those out of District tuition so you know I think the three-year vision is really important to invest up front so we don't continue getting these out of District costs thank you everybody Kristen Matt Awards finance companies everybody I hope everybody here has a better idea now better picture if we have a discussion to have Now's the Time to have it um so for this day if anyone who wants to take off the Free State it's up to you we're going to discuss it are you really going to make the flowchart not do you need anything else to do right now if you do I love it again it's like a big bright pink poster board yeah that's awesome so to start the discussion we did agree last night that we weren't going to vote tonight on the budget as a committee so the towns can continue working we can continue working but uh we've seen the presentation we have it you know what's in we know what's out does anybody have anything to say I got a question actually so I know I learned about the coven Esser grants which we got I think for three years and it ends this fiscal year um I was curious are those I know the adjustment counselor and the voting nurses included there is that in our love and service budget or is that are we going to lose those so for next year the Copic Grant actually extends in Toronto for the adjustment counselor for one more year we can we have we'll have approximately 57 000 left over to transfer over so the adjustment counselor is still there so they're supposed to find them yeah after that no no what other positions within the SR Grant with me for one second and just a point of clarification I actually believe that the adjustment counselor that's in that Grant is the adjustment counselor that's at Boylston elementary school as opposed to the women no I I don't think so it's just a point of clarification of where that adjustment counselor is is based out of oils yes so one of the nurses was part of the um and we just said that the floating nurse and wraparound services and that's it yeah you know I think earlier in the year Carol and Nancy had made some amazing presentations on the three-year plan District plan and um Anchorage will go back and watch those presentations because I think it really speaks to the strength of our schools and also the direction that our students and our schools need to go um you know some of the above level Services were um ains in the kitchen at the kindergarten classrooms um guaranteeing Three classroom teachers for each grade of Bes so teachers don't have to skip around grades um you know this is not about our personal children but my daughter's in fourth grade at Bes and she's a 23 Chief recommend today um classroom whereas my son is in a class of 16 in kindergarten but without a need in the class room so I think with the needs of the children as they come up you know I I really appreciate that Matt said we need to meet you know both towns in the district to really try to make that three-year plan happen I guess um kind of going off what Jess said um I mean just listening to everyone and I I feel like Julie we have been like on this train for so long but like listening to where everyone is tonight and the finance committees it sounds like the level service budget is probably going to be the most the one that everybody agrees on um I'm wondering if if Carol and Nancy if there's you know something from this list we have a list of I think it was 31 items um that we cut from our original budget that we approved in December I'm wondering if there is anything that we feel is critical that maybe we could squeeze in um you know looking at the capital budget I think there are some great things in there for for anyone that's you know we have the devices on there so to you know about the teacher that had the broken laptop and they didn't have one we do have the devices in the capital budget and you know so I think that's good the other thing we have that I'm thrilled about is we do have an HVAC coming to the es because it is unhealthy in the months when when the temperature is in the 80s outside so that's another great thing so I do I feel like we're making progress I wish we could push a little bit more understand think it's a great idea to work with the towns but I guess I'm wondering Carol if you know if there's anything before we vote and I know I don't want to make you have to redo the budget I'm just wondering if there's anything that we think that is a critical out of that list of 31 and you don't have to answer now maybe that we can squeeze in so it's March by the time we get to June 30th there's gonna be changes yes always yes with those changes let's hope there comes savings right yeah so with those savings that's when we get together and talk as to what we can do with them what could is there anything additional that we could bring in with those savings yeah so that's that's how usually I look at it you know and I mean God we talk about the budget every day and look at the line items and say what can we do here what can we do less with here so I I sure Carol I'm sure you feel the same way that that will be our what we'll be doing until June 30th I think we can do that with programs yes we may not have been able to get this time I certainly you know it's hard to look at this list and prioritize that's the thing prioritize you know because you're all needs they are all needs for different reasons yes you know I think we spoke so much about the special education piece of internet and and the fact that it's given these CPA an additional one those may help us down the road to keep students here um so as far as that would be a consideration I I do want to mention tonight you know I've been working with um some private companies about private organizations about trying to get some supportive devices um so we're working in other avenues to get some of those the technology in place those devices so we're trying to go outside on the box to get additional items thank you thank you for getting all the facilities assessment covered from outside yes assessment yeah so I do think that um we're on the right track and I love the idea of having a collaborative group work together so that we can get this list of items it might not be July 1st 2023 but it's coming it's on the radar and now it's going to be on the radar of the towns so and that totally looked at it this is a three-year plan yeah so I'm just still slightly confused about Maryland level is that so we're not super level I mean we have our meeting tomorrow okay with that vets I mean last night they they actually met so we're forgiving on Wednesdays so so we will discuss uh tomorrow attention I can expand this tiny little bit on here so what does the financial committee do with these meetings we take all the proposed budgets from each of the apartments with the specific requests of the Town Administration look at two and a half percent increases would have been the mandatories put that information in any wish list and see where our number starts and then from that we'd have to work backwards if we're well over that point and that's typically the process it's rather tedious because everyone has what 20 25 apartments and everyone wants everything the killers are roads Paving the cost of national keeps going up every month that's another hundred thousand dollars in that budget to pay for close and so they get a little bit and your thirty thousand dollars more each year so this is this is what it comes down to the machine all right you want this if you ask because that means we can give someone else tackled what they want to and that's that's really what this comes down so our drafts available to be so that information is a working document for the finance committee it does not it's not public records the meetings are public okay okay laws and we have to follow back foreign had the so many dollars per the average cost of house and how much more to me with a level service I was at your meeting until ninth grade last night listening and bless you all for what you do um do you do you think you know people are gonna be like well how much is this going to cost us some oils and I know you were doing some creative things with how to cover it what was the I don't get what the 0.5 mean per on the dollar so this is where I had to ask the chair Eric who's not here he has all these numbers off the top of his head for reasons of how I work and kids enter that new level so basically what we're saying here is that people pay the tax rate whatever it is expected to go up approximately two and a half percent on average each year we select the Two Towns to look at and occasionally we bump that up a little bit but then that keeps hitting that little Reserve buffer before we get the maximum Levy but then the towns are allowed to charge for taxes okay once you hit that limit to automatically move it to two and a half percent as mentioned unless the town folks do a talk to and have overrun which requires how do we end election results being positive and does that help in this case so by the way I think you're asking is what the assessed value of oil spent property is that what you were asking um no I guess she doesn't want to get you want to get to where you want to understand we've got a calculation of what vulnerland would have to pay what boy you know it was 350 but you said it to be similar numbers so I think in terms of the boils and we can assume if we hit Level service it'll be another 350 dollars if you have a 550 000 house on top of the board but they on top of the four that you're going to have no matter what you have before so so for Boston uh from what the finance committee went through last night we're in a little better shape than what I just heard from the Berlin okay so we probably are not pushing that extra little limit but we are going right up to that two and a half to probably about three percent so if we are going a little bit higher than probably the two and a half rates to them okay okay so yeah it's gonna be it'll be like a couple hundred dollars maybe on a 550 000 house so no no that's above and beyond with a little too about half we have about to be on the Forum let's say hypothetically boils the property assessed with the same average rate which is a little less so if you use the 400 number and now you're adding a little bit more to get to that level service in coils that I think we're looking at um how you're really stretching my uh you're adding more than the 400.